Category: Professional

coming in 15 mins late (obviously)

know your audience. crazy problem with court tv video thing, system being gamed.

“the biggest trainwrecks haven’t even happened yet.”

what is AIG? “wide enough breadth so people can get enough out of it”

understand what you mean when you say “hardcore” vs “casual”

at penguin see how writers can tell stories in different ways, see if there’s an audience for that. examine the future of the story (while selling books). comes from an “innovation budget” (whereas most of these projects come from marketing budgets)

weird metric for a campaign: number of people who got married to someone they met thru a game (?)

oh, ARG, not AIG. still don’t know what that means. (alternate reality game)

still relevant to the core of the brand, how does this connect?

with playful behavior, you can see the learning in action, map activity to a URL, measure from there.

some thing in britain treasure hunting in the 70s, took 2 months (2 years?), nowadays would take more like maybe 2 weeks, maybe less.

office max elves. a long-term thing: 1st year did 20 different things, then brought back just the elves in year 2. (altho the marketing had nothing to do with office max)

so many of these campaigns (ARG) just run and then get shut down, even after a community got created.

badly branded, nothing to do with the brand “adver-games”

power of stories & games.

okay, so does any of this connect with anything for me?

ugh. post-lunch wipeout.

“what’s our Second Life strategy?” and that’s not necessary a useful way to think.

brand not just about the thing it makes, play well by using those associations.

ah, the mention of middle-aged women playing “casual” games.

“what happens when they figure it all out?”

okay, bailing again. getting caffeine b4 next panel.

missed the very beginning.

costs of creating a logo: printing/money, time, momentum (excitement?)

the logo brought in by the industrial revolution, distinguishing non-local products

(lots of people straggling in late. go lunch!)

blah blah blah long ramble.

logos can be bought for a hundred bucks, whereas some URLs go for thousands. impact switch?

gucci bags made in china; spam with ebay name. (hasn’t there always been copyright issues)
not looking at the logo for trust, but the from address.

logo exercise is about consistency; easier when you start small.

why are they making the panel rooms SO VERY DARK?!

switching panels….now.

again, I’m not entirely sure that this is the best fit for me; if it’s not rocking by 10 minutes in, I’ll probably bail to the “how (not) to piss off bloggers” panel. (man, this one is packed!) also, I don’t think I can meebo & blog at the same time. will probably pick blogging, because I need these notes for myself for later.

attachment to the products that you use. “aichaku” products that make you happy. (very pretty slides!) when it’s done right, we’re not consiously aware.

first impressions. (what does the branch look like? what does the home page look like? what does the entry page for online banking look like? what do you get with the account opening letter/email?) do that (good impression) through communication. no opportunity to go to counseling with products. 🙂 most important in unexpected situations.

he (who he?) is doing analogy between product relationships & intimate relationships: trust, commitment. (some weird semi-sexist relationship stuff.) hey, I think the prius looks cool! forgiveness. “how many times has your best friend pissed you off?” (hmmm, that feels particularly apropos after spending time with H.A.) “you’re not going to get everything right all the time” and they forgive you. difference between forgiveness & allowing stupidity. respect. “the sum of all of these parts” “a product that can correct our mistakes as they happen gains our trust” – maeda. (was that in the simplicty book that I read? I can’t remember.) in human relations: watching out for the other person “got my back” (aha!)

on the flip side: not being appreciated, being used, ignored. sad broken icon. (wow the star wars music from the next room is super-loud.) wow, with examples: real, riaa, atm (!), phone, photoshop, “press 1 for sales”, windows.

(hungry.)

conflict. “with most of my technology.” we don’t try to make bad products, but we are fallible. escalation. (C’s electrical field, among other things.) tumble into the insolvable. who’s in control? where does the blame go? tone of voice of error messages. (yes!) stubborn – learning from mistakes, not being flexible. deception. ugh.

goal is to make us think about the similarity between relationship of our product (etc) & user and relationships we know among people. (whoa. dimly lit bar analogy re: deception. ew.)

jealousy. in terms of software? closed document formats.

the HAL eyeball. the ultimate negative relationship with a computer. (or something)

hope, redemption. until the robot uprising (!) we are in control of the products we create.

examples: prius redefining how cars communicate; netflix returning control of movie-watching & redeeming the postal industry; flexcar & car ownership (oh, sigh. I wish we had that in Oly); method cleaning w/out harsh chemicals AND being mainstream, well-designed; tivo, more with the control.

the golden rule. create a product that you would want to use. yes!!!!! (this is my issue with a couple of tools I’m supposed to be promoting, supporting & evangelizing. and I don’t like them.)

experience of flow. mmmmm. storytelling, imagine the journey. memory recall. the photo that reminds you of something. tastes, smells. perfumes that remind of people you know. (there’s this conditioner, I think, that…yeah.) primal. (not their word, but that’s what it seems like to me)

oh, hey, that’s luke 2 rows up and in the middle.

should there be a connection between the website & the branch? a visual one, and not just a photo of the exterior of a building.

symbolic meaning. enhancing your sense of self. why do people join the credit union?

gddm iphones. but yeah.

tactile experience. usually products & industrial design. like the stuff billie jean does going out into the branches, picking materials.

I think I’ve gotten enough for my brain to be full, and I’m cold, and I need to get lunch/go to the bathroom. So, off to find the MeFi meetup.

(more about yesterday later)

hmmm, 5 after and nothing is happening yet. little conversations both in front of me and behind me. (I think a big chunk of the brighton crew is sitting right behind me.)

“we’ve got a bit of a problem with the site” (at 5:30 pm) no page refresh, not a bug but a feature. “oh, yeah, ajax, I remember.” but…”it’s not in the functional specification” can’t get finance to sign off.

wireframe as a replacement for functional spec.

I wish it wasn’t so dark on them, because they’re actually standing, moving, etc.

“nothing is easier than believing we understand experiences we’ve never had” box quoting matt webb.

“trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try” (a fundamental rule of the internet)

something more complex & nuanced than prior technique, traditional wireframing.

limiting the possibility space vs expanding it. (really?) maybe it’s a question of stuff vs action. what about the problem of too many choices?

see the patterns, create a framework for discussion.

switching from why to how. yay!

“ElfCartel” OMG that’s actually a cool name. 🙂 As an example….

“may be a little overdesigned for a wireframe, but it was just off the shelf.” I worry about something like that being too “designed” — when I did grey-scale work at Pierce, I always made it “deliberately ugly.” Times New Roman, grey background, default link colors.

I like the way their notes look, and the show/hide thing. I tend to use just a paragraph with “yellow” as the background color, not that faint yellow, but the one you get with “background: yellow.”

“Not calling the server” just the visual bit with jQuery to make it mimic the interaction.

shared library of patterns & widgets. (shared with myself? yay!)

so much mockery of Jeremy Keith, one assumes in a friendly way.

I’ve been chatting on meebo: interesting discussion of timing, how interaction & design are scheduled.

missed a switch to a real wireframe; site to track carbon footprint. (it reminds me of wesabe, in terms of the goal bit.) showing multiple interactions, and discovering that an inline form wasn’t the best way to do something. okay, this is where it gets useful.

(damn, just realized I left my water at the ikea lounge. sigh.)

“don’t want the tool to get in the way of the hard part, which is the thinking”  which makes sense particularly if this (HTML/CSS/JS) is the tool you know best. (vs visio et al)

q: js should enhance, not be required. but it doesn’t look like that’s here. they design for js on, but they are still thinking about what happens if JS isn’t there. if time the wireframe includes that status, but usually “just have that conversation”

do clients get attached to the “off-the-shelf” look? “managing expectations” I still think that there’s too much “pretty” in what they’ve got. For most people, that looks like a finished (or mostly finished) design concept. I wonder if that really works; they say so, but….

how long have they been doing this? they are being cagey, IMHO. what year did they start using this particular technique? what did they do beforehand? why didn’t that work?

good to pick up: the use of JS to mimic behavior. I don’t have anything specific to use that for, but it’s a cool technique to know.

Nick Finck (gotta see him talk somewhere, since I’m probably not going to webvisions) — “not going to talk about myself” right on! but his damn slides are too small a font. (tho this is a CAVERNOUS room)

the User

the Task

the Environment (his home office. hey, the Jerker!)

the Technology (he’s talking too fast)

long discussion about using the iphone, then fitts law. (fitts is mostly used for military stuff?!)

developing for the mobile context: everything stripped down. (here’s a question: is it possible to just run online banking as is on any sort of mobile? iphone, win mobile, etc. so could we do some sort of templating thing for mobile? hmmmm….)

what you don’t get in a survey? where are they? is there other electronic equipment nearby? the context. (sitting on the sofa vs sitting in the cubicle, even)

talking about readability of NYT, but only talking about use on iPhone. (grr. quick googling turns up that MS projects 20 million Win Mob units in 2008, where maybe half that many iPhones. but, how more frequently do iPhone peeps go online? because it’s part of the contract. I missed a bunch of what he was talking abt in that research/complaint.)

buttons are too small.

“contextual design” – “observing the user experience” – kewl. we’ve talked a lot at work about how “online banking” (which they used to refer to as “online home banking”) should really be called “work banking” because the traffic is SO much higher on work days, work hours. what would contextual research look like there? also, how much was my usability research skewed by running it only during normal work hours.

this one was thin on content, IMHO, and he talks too damn fast. but it gave me food for thought, which I guess is good for something.

oh, hey, question: why didn’t you talk about mobile banking? security? “you can’t make transactions through your mobile device” BULLSHIT. are there any industries leading? (who is this blond lady? is she an FI person?) he thinks airlines will lead.

As expected, this morning I am definitely more chipper, despite waking up randomly out of a sound sleep at 4 am. Habit from the cats? Who can say? But I got back to sleep, and woke up with the glorious! spring sun. Altho, OMG the cold. I thought my fingertips were going to freeze off riding over here.

Now powering up with coffee (free thanks to a gift from a co-worker) in prep for the first session of the day. It’s a panel of teens talking about what they want/do online, including with the phones.

Ugh. why so many paper handouts? First an eval form, then someone from the panel organizer with fliers for a conference they’re running.  Whyyyyyyyy? (I had this same issue at the last neighborhood assoc. meeting, btw. Instead of letting people pass stuff out through the audience, I had them all put their fliers & sign-up sheets at the back of the room with the coffee & cookies. Just seemed more appropriate.)

These teens are from Akins New Tech High and some college prep school. So are they representative?

Favorite sites from all the teens: goodreads.com (get good info about books to read); myspace & facebook (create your own layout, communicate with friends & family after school, how she communicates with sis — not mom!); again myspace & facebook, digg (stay updated), news for gamers (big on counterstrike); myspace (mic not on!) (she’s 12 IRL, 16 on myspace); myspace, mixmatters (?) and another mixtape website; “I do not have a myspace” seventeen.com (not quite happy, doesn’t quite tell how to do hairstyles), hipster.com (?) (make your own playlist); myspace (talk to people), moonscape (RPG, chat all over the world, make new friends).

annoyances: distracted by popups. general nodding that ads are annoying. “every time I play (ESPN?) video, miller ad. got really annoying.”

I can’t hear what she just said.

“when you have to see an ad before you get to the next page” or with sound. “obviously it’s bogus”

“when it takes 6000 years to load because there’s so much crap to load” (video ads in particular) also, she’s taken a web design class.

2 on facebook, all but one on myspace.

“when I first got a myspace, I was checking it every minute; once I added all my friends there’s nothing else to do.”

“they keep on updating things to try & make it better, and they don’t need to” (!) (mmm, teenage sarcasm!)

“myspace is kinda like email” (sez the moderator)

got email so he could get “a myspace” and now uses it for registering for anything. otherwise, would be using parents email.

email to talk to sis out of state, to teachers asking for homework.

smackdown on her generations writing skills “teacher must love you”

“I used IM when I was younger.” nice.

“don’t have internet on my phone, too expensive” plays a lot of Tetris. 🙂

has blackberry, gets SAT question of the day in email on phone. plays Pac-Man, has lots of ringtones, but gets them from other phones.

has an emergency-only phone.

older sprint phone “in 4 pieces in my pocket right now” only really cares about phones & texting, plus “emergency games, in case I’m bored out of my mind”

again with the pac-man!

paid for her phone herself, and pays for her own plan, limits her texting. sounds like she’s really cost-consious, knows exactly how much every feature costs. but uses the camera a lot.

nobody watches video, except one person who makes her own.

those who’ve had phones a while couldn’t live w/out. guy with super-fancy phone has only had for a week, could probably live w/out.

avatars? virtual? runescape. xbox live.

interesting point about “pay-to-play” vs. something like counterstrike. used to play gaia (?) — but I’m in high school now. (even tho apparently that site positions itself as for teens)

yahoo avatar — play with hairstyles. 🙂

“degrassi”?! omg, watching that online. heh.

opening for questions at the mic.

“we’re trying to sell things to you.” entered a contest with your own photo/video? air jordan commercial on youtube. “when you interact with something somebody’s trying to sell you, makes you feel like you have a little bit of a say.” respect more? “I know that it’s hard to get people to buy stuff” 🙂

substantive content? (news, causes) one guy is really into digg, keep up to date about the war. interested in the presidential contest, keeps up via Google, YouTube. wikipedia? some nods, some no head-shaking. the onion! gets into the articles via the headline. a different angle, more than “this is happening.” also visits human rights campaign website. no CNN, etc.

can you affect changes online? (someone from PETA?) doesn’t remember the site, but something with donating rice to Africa. “hid the cause inside a game” school class doing heifer, growing veggies to sell & then donating the money. bhopal  incident (! jeebus, was she even alive when that happened?) donating money. a lot of people “don’t want to do something physical.” oy.

from disney online: watching shows on tv or computer? foreign dramas (on some long URL that I didn’t catch). abc family, learning channel, watch them online. used to watch disney channel on her phone, now just tv & online. if he misses an episode of the boondocks, can go online & find the season, click on episode.

more about favorite shows: wrestling, anime, telenovelas. (true story: my sis used

“anti-marketing” — “projects designed to stop marketing on the internet” what do you think? “it’s always going to be there, right? to help fund the website?” if it didn’t work, would back down. “ads should go with what you’re going to.” anybody seen the futurama where they broadcast ads to fry’s sleep? “I don’t want it to be like that.” “in some places, and not in some places” would join a project to eliminate pop-ups. (specifically. huh.)

missed the question. something from an ad agency. addicted to “shoot the money” type games. totally disinterested in “fun” stuff, unless there’s a reward that matters to them. (xbox points.)

little online games? finishing work early @school (same addicted guy); also, a parent’s computer too old, too slow. if at school if “flash isn’t blocked.” and they all know how to unblock

“do any of y’all (incl audience) go outside?” basketball team, job, junior counselor at summer camp.

make plans? texting. in person at school. in person or on phone. phone, except those who need to be texted, myspace doesn’t work because you don’t know when people will get on.

what don’t marketers get about the web? if you could have a greater say, would you welcome it more?  (oh man, the questions are super-incoherent. I wonder if people are using this as an alternative to doing their own damn focus groups, etc.)

my thoughts? many teens have financial restrictions, and that means that they are restricted on what they can do with phones in particular, because (as I have kvetched about before) everything costs too damn much! popup ads are teh devil! (no sh!t sherlock.) and kids are kids. they all reminded me in one way or another of people I knew in high school, even tho that was 15+ years ago. and teens are more explicit about WIIFM (what’s in it for me?), I suppose because they can be?

I’m not sure (yet) what this means for my recent work project. (and it just occurred to me that maybe I should also consider if this has any implication for the ENA, but that’s a thought for another day.)

as far as mobile banking goes, it’s a reasonable reminder, amidst all the early adopter nerd hype, that web for phones is still crazy expensive. otoh, should we be thinking about doing it now so we shake out the bugs before it gets to be popular? ::sigh:: that all depends on the carriers, as far as I can tell.

Kinda brain-dead tonight. Today was long and involved standing in line, smacking my camera into an escalator railing, riding my bike 4 miles and back to get to a camera store and then get back to the panel in time. I think it’s fixed, but it’s powering a little weird now. (Something it’s done before, tho.)

My shoulder hurts. This laptop bag is not really meant for bike riding. I wish there was a locker or something downtown so I didn’t have to lug that thing around to lunch and after panels.

On the plus side, I met up with Andrea & Glenda, ate some tasty food, and went to the Higher Ed meetup. Yeah, I know, kinda weird. But fun, and surprisingly inspiring. Pat Ramsey had some good info about running Windows on the Mac, and using Window Mobile. Plus he gave me the name of someone who’s been doing interesting things with WordPress, which should give me some comparisons for a project I’m considering.

Oh, plus I picked up the Townie (obviously) and the women’s 7-speed is hella fun to ride.

And I just got an email from my old friend H.A., who might be able to come down from the town where she lives now tomorrow. That would be super-cool.

For now, I’m definitely getting ready to get some sleep, so I can really get into tomorrow panel’s. Here’s to better blogging tomorrow.

long crazy story to go here later.

instead of presenting designs, let them draw what they want (on paper) before they started the design process. (visual requirements gathering.)

the classic complaint of “decorating”

otoh, designers can be snotty. (one of the things I like where I work now is that there isn’t any of that amongst the design-y types.)

what helps is exposing the process. I think that works on both sides, respect coming from understanding (to paraphrase) — they’re talking designers vs. developers, but that works with knowing the “business process.”

using Basecamp as a way to have the conversations be unobtrusively visible. (is that like the serendipity of overhearing actual conversations?)

having copy happen at the same time as design, IA, etc. have everyone in as early as possible. edge cases of content going into the design. (weird funny accent from Z)

validate work through awards. is this a viable strategy for web peeps?

“maybe in the print world it meant a little more, but….” they’re talking in the context of agency/freelance. it’s interesting; I’ve had the same experience with internal marketing: going out for all the awards.

awards not judging things that were really web design, instead photography, infographics. (some web magazine award?)

okay, now he’s just drifting.

“just by doing good work I’d like to hope stuff gets around” (not Z, but somebody else.) ah, yes, that would be nice. 🙂

“flash is sort of cheating again.” — giving up the requirement of extensibility, portability, etc. (ah, that must be Jason Santa Maria)

Z is asking Bowman some sort of rambly question about being design guy at Google. he came in through the blogger folks, they recommended him to Gcal. Had to start again from scratch, reputation-wise. Sounds like contractors have the status at Google that one hears that they do at Microsoft. hrm.

“were using a proprietary firefox property to emulate IE.” jeebus. altho not surprising.

and it sounds like he’s still struggling trying to get people to pay attention. “an uphill battle”

peers or higher-ups? both. and because it’s a democratic system, even peers can bring in the smackdown.

“how many have…” f’d up situations with getting content from the client. just this junk that we’re waiting for, instead of driving the whole process. a lot of their clients are getting into it earlier because they’ve had such awful experiences before. (I’m thinking that I may end up with some design changes to my recent project as I incorporate more content. Also, I find that I’m doing a lot more work with content than anything else in my work, design doesn’t necessarily happen very often. That’s okay.)

all the style documents have “why” – why is this important, why should you care? huh.

Yeah, this makes me want to go back and finish tackling the remnants of that project.

(Oh, my shoulder hurts. my kingdom for a backpack!)

“Imposing a voice because they may have 7 different authors” yes! Fits with that article I read recently about branding & writing. “no puns on the heart attack page”

“sometimes marketers write stuff that’s too marketing, and not enough web. […] we normalize it.”

IA: “like therapy sessions” becoming open to the process.

(aw, hell. connection is lost.)

having that conversation internally, too, asking what they need. problem is then “getting invited to the meeting.” stuff just gets built.

sometimes it’s nice being both the designer and the developer.

(connection found!)

providing understanding & explanation; sometimes showing things help people (clients) make decisions.

“if that would get my board of directors to listen to what I’ve been saying for 3 months, it’s worth the $25,000.” (for Jakob.) Dale used to call it “bringing in the prophet from the east.”

Slept reasonably well. This morning is bright & sunny, which is a nice turn of events. Breakfast at the hotel was…meh. Hotel breakfast. Definitely need to get some real food to keep in the hotel.

I finally got around to adding a text message bundle to our phone plan, too, since it looks like Twitter is going to be fairly useful. I’m only having direct messages sent to my phone, because I don’t want to go over. I wish I had a data plan, too, but that’s absurdly expensive. Maybe I can coax my phone into talking to some of the public wifi around here. (It’s annoying. I can get my phone to connect to the wifi at home, but very rarely anywhere else. WTF is up with that?)

I’m getting going kinda slowly. My goal is to save up my energy so I can get into being sociable later w/out burning out. Because as y’all know, the social is not the easiest thing for me to muster up.