Anatomy of a Design Decision [Liveblogging SXSWi]

Presenter: Jared M. Spool, User Interface Engineering @jmspool

One thing about design: we don’t have a lot of language, like what Gray’s Anatomy did for medicine. What’s the language we use to describe the design decisions we make?

• Look at any site, and think about all the little decisions that went into that page.
• All the choices we make take our design in one direction or another – what’s the pattern?

There are lots of ways we make design decisions. Design Decision Styles:

1. Self Design: When we design something for our own use. What works for me? How would I use this design?
   1. Requires 2 conditions: Works great when users are just like you, and you regularly use the product every day just like your users do (“eat your own dog food”)
2. Unintentional Design: when the design just happens on its own
   1. works great when our users will put up with whatever we give them and we don’t care about support costs or pain from frustration
3. Genius Design: when we’ve previously learned what users need – we know these users well
   1. works great when we already know their knowledge, previous experiences
   2. designing for users beyond ourselves
4. Activity-focused Design: designing for new activities we’ve never designed for before, no previous knowledge
   1. who are the users? what tasks are they’re looking to do? this will drive the design, whether it’s for doctors or highlighting Six Flags rides (but Disney highlights experiences)
5. Experience-focused Design: designing for the space between the activities – the activities can be great but the experience can still suck
   1. how do you design for various experiences – you need to design for the ENTIRE experience
   2. we want to improve the users’ complete experiences, in between the activities

 

Rule-based Decisions: (prevents thinking) ”site guidelines” don’t work – they are outdated and can’t be enforced for more than a few months. It doesn’t matter where the search box is as long as it looks like a search box! You can’t make anyone a designer with a template and a checklist.

ex: The University Website Epidemic: “Girls Under Trees” and making different site sections look totally different.

Informed Decisions: (requires thinking) Teach people the basics of design and this will work in normal situations and exceptions.

 

Tricks > Techniques > Process > Methodology > Dogma

Process is made of the building blocks for how we get things done. The issue is we mix up process with methodology (where we want it to be repeatable like a recipe). Methodology can become dogmatic, where we think our methods will save us no matter what. This is rule & faith-based decision making (style guidelines).

Process is made up of techniques that require practice. Tricks are techniques that aren’t quite used the right way, it works not in the way intended but it saves time and effort (DIY fixes). This is informed decision making (non-prescriptive patterns).

Good companies had methodologies and dogma, but the best companies didn’t (or ignored them). The struggling companies kept trying to force the creation of methodology and dogma. The best teams are spending way more time using their own designs. Eat and know your dog food. Usability testing, field studies, understanding personas and patterns.

Useful discoveries:

• Every style has its purpose. There’s a place for every style of design.
• Great designers know which style they’re using, whether it’s for them or whatever.
• Great designers use the same style for the entire project.
• Great teams ensure everyone uses the same style.
• The more advanced the style, the more expensive, so allocate budget to support the design and necessary research. Agencies cannot go beyond Genius Design. They want to sell you more but they can’t.
• Activity-focused and experienced-focused must be done in-house. Outsourcing does the job but not how you want.
• The more advanced the style, the better the design.

So what kind of designer do you aspire to be? Your portfolio should tell the story of your decisions.

You need to know which decision style you’re using. Encourage informed decisions. Techniques & tricks are better than methodology & dogma.

Web Science: Web Standards Project (WaSP) Open Meeting [Liveblogging SXSWi]

Not a lot of people here – guess that’s part of the problem!

So, what happened to WaSP? We used to be really relevant, we lost our way.

• We started out by spreading the word to anyone who’d listen about web standards.
• We led browser upgrade campaigns.
• We took browsers to task for their sins against web standards (not just MS).
• We goaded software developers into embracing standards. I
• n many ways you could say we won the battle over web standards. So why are so many websites built without standards? We’ve been preaching to the converted, but we want to change that:
  • InterACT education
  • small business outreach
  • web standards sherpa mentorship.

1. WaSP InterACT: Going strong, highly relevant for those who want to hire web pros who haven’t been properly educated

Challenges for educators: Time (gotta stay current), Change (happens so fast!), Resources

The Interact Curriculum: standardized assignments, grading rubrics, modular/mixable. It’s a “living curriculum” to stay relevant, open to change/feedback. Check out the book: InterACT with Web Standards - maps with the curriculum, extra resources, “try it yourself” sections – teachers, spread the word!

Also check out Leslie Jensen-Inman’s website, Teach the Web, especially her fantastic interviews!

Master’s in Internet Technology degree – business management meets techie skills and know-how

What we get from Interact:

• interesting curriculum and content for teachers and students
• most of the core curriculum is by industry professionals
• a community of professionals and educators passionate about web standards, get access to pros
• teaching, training and tech standardization

2. Web Standards for SMB

Small businesses don’t know how to gauge the competency of the designer they’re hiring, or they can’t afford a professional. We’re reaching out to SMB’s directly to help them hire the right person – we developed an interview guide to cover the questions SMB’s should be asking and watch tech language to know. Launching the site in May 2011, also will be available as a PDF/print guide for distribution.

3. Web Standards Sherpa, just launched

The goal of WebStandardsSherpa.com is to provide web professionals the opportunity to receive feedback, glean advice and learn best practices from experts in the field to help them improve the quality of their own work.

We’re looking to publish about one web issue a week from one of our five “sherpa” pros.

 

Games: Tools for Mass Communication [Liveblogging SXSWi]

#masscommgames – Presenters: @JamesPortnow, @michaelagustin, @Benjamin_Taylor, @bmccall17

• GameSalad – WYSIWYG-esque game design for everyone
• Check out Escapist Magazine and their show Extra Credits Show for game industry discussion.
• Gaming is one facet of transmedia storytelling – “transmedia” being this year’s SXSW buzzword

How are games different from other comm media?

We’ve had 2 competing forms: interactive vs. linear. Now we can distribute games as easily as books for Tweets. Games provide an interactive simulation. Think “War of the Worlds” – allows people to engage in a fictitious story and become an active participant and influencer in the story, the gamer can explore. We’re looking now at the gamification of passive media, like TV – answer how interaction will benefit the user and make an impact.

How can we use games as a more effective tool for communication?

Don’t you think it’s better to have interactive questions than me talking at you? There’s something to be gained in the quality of the conversation and content when there’s an interactive component. Discussion vs. one-way lecture where you have no say in what’s going on. “My 11-year-old daughter is playing a DNA game that actually contributes to real scientific experiments by professionals.” Cool!

How has the medium evolved to become a better mass comm tool?

From Pong to now, you’re engaged in a fictitious space where you can fail and try new things – exploratory learning, not necessarily reading the manual and learning the controls before we jump in and just figure it out. Chat mechanisms in games like in WoW adds a whole new level of engagement. The gaming medium is becoming more accessible and democratized, where newcomers, and kids!, can create great games. Along with this, distribution access is easier, you don’t have to go to the store to buy or play a game anymore if you don’t want to – direct downloading, etc. Game simulation as an interactive interpretation of current events. Recognizing problems and opportunities in interactive television – hate the ending of a show, write it yourself.

How can games make more of a positive impact?

The opportunity to engage with another human being, creating dwellings where people can be creative and talk about real issues even in a simulated environment – tell your own story, not following a pre-written one.

Games like “Fate of the World,” “Peacemaker,” and even “Play the News” cover real world issues, encouraging people to learn, experiment. Versions of Peacemaker teach you how to play “the other side” and teach players tolerance and listening to others by playing in their shoes.

Right now, games are focused on hardcore to casual cinematic entertainment for children. But there are so many other games and stories to tell – if you’re an educator, what game would you make? Games are one of our greatest teaching tools, but be careful about incentivizing your bias rather than helping players come to their own conclusions – make a teaching tool, not propaganda.

Should everyone be allowed to participate and if so, should their contribution be filtered? Like Shell, or Bank of America? How do we stay positive while we broaden our reach?

Why not pick something you’re passionate about and make a game about it? Tell your story and encourage engagement in others. Work on solving these problems via gaming – we all know chore games, but get your kids’ input to help determine the rules and they’ll buy in on a more exciting level. Re: corporations, their games could help us learn about their brand and perspective (games are a form of free speech), but remember games can be used insidiously as propaganda. Two sides: monetization via addiction (an abusive substance) like gambling and social media games/reputation, but let’s not buy all the hype about gamers dying by not eating in Korea, etc, these numbers are not as high as the media makes us freak out about.

What would happen if games were not treated as a form of expression, if they were censored or treated as an abusive substance?

Games shouldn’t be censored/policed by the game company, but rely on gamers flagging offensive content to bring it to the company’s attention – allow for accountability, especially when comments are logged and tracked by people’s usernames. The Dead Space 2 commercial is not good for the game industry – remember the comics code authority? That set American comics back 100 years – that’s not what we want for games.

Q&A:

Games are a medium, not a pastime. So how do we spread this message? Improve PR by making some positive games. What if BP had made a game about the oil spill to educate people about what was going on? Stop rewarding bad behavior where these game companies make horrific offensive games – if you want to buy a bad game, buy it used so they get no money.

In education, how do we take the game experience and provide Epic Meaning? Game or no game, set a metric to show that your students can demonstrate what they learned. Give them mechanisms to share what they learned – write about the experience, blog, tweet, etc. Have the kids draw connections, like how WoW actually teaches the scientific method. Turn Descartes into a game character! Games can encourage kids to be ready to learn about the topic they gamed about when they come to class. We’ve seen some games give grades at the end of each section, but they are negative reinforcement – you can always expect to do worse.

How can companies make good games? Make your game meaningful, not just one big ad. Think about bringing game mechanics into your store. Check out the book: “The Art of Game Design” – great for advertisers too.

Conserve Code: Storyboard Experiences with Customers First [Liveblogging SXSWi]

Product development at Intuit (where the panelists work): Design Thinking

1. Deep customer empathy
2. go broad to go narrow – if you need one great idea, you need a whole portfolio of ideas
3. **rapid experimentation with customers

Who storyboards? Web Application, Mobile Application, Customer Care, Human Resources, Community Support

Case Study: Snap Tax (TurboTax tax filing app)

• The team spent a year experimenting, using storyboards to get feedback.
• Drawing freed them from worrying about the phone interface. Focus instead on the concept and process of the app use.
• Team Hypothesis: How do we get someone excited enough to do taxes on their phone? Show them the refund early so they’ll finish the filing process. Hypothesis wrong – people were worried that an app could really file taxes
• Storyboarding saved them the time and effort – what if they had tested this hypothesis with working apps?
• Keep the storyboard drawings basic

Benefits:

1. It’s a Mirror: you’re telling the customer’s story of what you think their situation is – how close are you?
2. Pity begets honesty: the cruder and rougher the drawing, focus on the concept not criticizing the art/design right now.
3. Narcissus Antidote: we’ve never seen anyone fall in love with a storyboard like when people fall in love with the code of a failed concept. (Think “rapid, disposable”)

Remember, we create prototypes to learn from customers. Learn early on if your solution really solves the customer’s problem before wasting time coding.

Storyboard structure:

1. Present the Problem
2. Solutions you want customer feedback on, would this solution work for them?
3. Benefit – what’s good about your solution for the customer – is it a big enough benefit for them to keep using your product and share it with others?

Storyboard Development: (this is why they handed out a blank storyboard and pack of post-it notes at the beginning at the panel)

1. Problem – Structure the script – see storyboard structure
   1. What’s your project? my example: developing a wordpress workshop
   2. Who is your customer, pick a specific demographic? students
   3. What’s the problem? “I’m trying to _____ but, [problem].”“I’m trying to build my own wordpress.com blog, but I don’t know where to start or if I’m doing it right.” *frame and capture the problem*
2. Solution (3 panels today) – what are the 3 most important moments in my solution? attend the workshop lecture, participate in free workshop time to get started on your blog (take action on what you just learned), leave with a list of helpful resources you understand will take you further in your blogging efforts & take advantage of our ongoing support as you work on your project.
3. Benefit – What would your customer say is great about your solution? – “I didn’t have to….” “It affirms my idea…” “I feel more confident using wordpress.com effectively and I got my blog up and running in just an hour and a half!”
   1. can your solution provide more benefit than your customer’s current solution?
4. Let’s draw! Keep it simple
5. Get feedback on your story from coworkers.
6. By the way, Intuit does this in 30 minutes, that’s all you need. If your problems are too many or too broad, do multiple storyboards – like one problem, multiple solutions, do one storyboard per problem, etc.

What do we learn from storyboarding? Your goal is to gather as much feedback as possible.

1. Problem – Do you understand the problem? Is it an important problem? What about the problem are you unclear about?
2. Solution – Does your solution solve the problem completely?
3. Customer Benefit – What is good about your idea from the customer’s perspective? Does the customer care enough?
4. It’s a rough process, but the customer will help fill in the blanks in the story, things you may not have thought of.

Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel [Liveblogging SXSWi]

#jzsxsw

The 90s again: Proprietary platforms vs Things that work Everywhere (web standards)

• Users are technology-agnostic but creators are focused on developing native apps for specific platforms/devices (the second coming of “this site best used in Netscape 6″)
• as these things get complicated, the web and web standards looks better and better (check out Treesaver) – how are we going to support these native apps and platforms? Appealing to business: write once, publish everywhere – saves money and labor.
• With the web, there’s no “tyranny of the page,” you can up the text size, etc.

On Publishing:

• If you’re on the web, you’re a publisher. It’s all about content, but it’s often the last thing we think about in design.
• Now in book publishing at A Book Apart, you can build a community first, and publish to them.
• With a good business plan, pricing model and good content – people will pay; book publishers still aren’t getting it

and Content:

• On the web, you don’t control your design as much as you think you do
• Readability: all these ads and shoving stories into multiple pages is painful when reading news stories; this app will hide the ads and re-format the page, bring the focus to frictionless reading
• How do we do Flipboard for HTML?
• tablets, toning down the sensory overload: people want to consume comfortably and expect tech to allow them to customize the experience - this is why print is still popular: frictionless reading (also with the ability to annotate!) that people will pay for

Summary: “content 2.0?” edited/curated content to make sense of the firehose, and well-designed to boot (Flipboard); scalability – does good content have to be supported by junk content and ads (HuffPo) and paywalls (NYT) ?  We need easy, non-obstructive pay models. There’s not only one problem with this, so there probably won’t be just one solution.

Q&A:

Mandy Brown: Any writer who can self-publish, should. My authors make more money off their books than I do and that’s how it should be. (Same is said for musicians.)

Attendee: Pandora should build a better user experience to earn people’s money, not just take down the ads.

How do you delight users with your designs? Pour yourself into it, like a writer, a personality that connects directly to the user. Don’t advertise, people hate ads, so stop creating flashy annoy ads – “create things that remind people that they’re human, something people really like to use, it’ll automatically be good advertising.”

For example, attendee loves small sponsorships where advertisers respect the content and the users in podcasts/public radio. On the web, you can think “mobile first” to help you focus on the users’ needs.

Keynote: Christopher “moot” Poole [Liveblogging SXSWi]

#sxswmoot

4Chan Culture spreads far and wide, and it’s misunderstood.

Founded in 2003 as an image-sharing community & chatroom, and grew organically, never advertised. 12 million visitors a month now.

Most know 4Chan as /b/ where a lot of the culture comes from. More than 1/2 of traffic goes to /b/ but 4Chan has over 50+ topics on the site.

Notorious for memes, activism, exploits, Anonymous, net culture. It’s interesting to see over the course of the day on the boards. The culture is very creative with only images and text. Everyone sees them as young teenage males, but it’s far more diverse.

There is no registration, structure barriers that keep you from contributing, and there’s no archive. Posts on /b/ fall off in minutes, so the stuff that people care about stays on the board, and what they don’t falls into the abyss.

Working on 4Chan for 8 years now, and Poole started thinking about how we can do forums better – the aestethic of messages boards hasn’t really changed at all. Let’s re-imagine what these boards should be – where strangers can talk about stuff, arranged around topics. 4Chan’s design is very basic, bare bones, just like it’s structure.

It’s not the product that’s fascinating, but the process of how it came to be on 4Chan.

Y U No Guy

What Poole’s learned from 4Chan:

1. Fluid Identity via anonymity. What we’re losing with today’s persistent identity is the loss of innocence of youth – you can’t make the same mistakes as a kid because it’s all recorded and tied to your name. On the web, your reputation precedes you and the cost of failure is high when you contribute under your real name. Zuckerburg has equated anonymity with lack of authenticity, but contributing anonymously protects you when speaking your mind.
2. We believe in content over creator. On other community sites, rewards are tied to names and people start gravitating to a small amount of influential users. Content generation is all about riffing back and forth and it snowballs: “Half of Tumblr is built on “Y U No” guy.”
   1. there was anger about 4Chan using CAPTCHAs, but then users jumped on it as they got funny ones and turned it into creative art & jokes.
3. What is fleeting about 4Chan isn’t content, the content is often the same stuff re-posted  over and over. What’s ephemeral is the shared experience, the group presence and sharing in the moment with others in a way that can never be repeated. Overall, 4Chan is a community for just hanging out, we forget how important that is.

Canvas is not 4Chan 2.0: focused on the idea of “play” and hanging out online

• anonymity is allowed, but in the beta we’re using Facebook Connect so people don’t feel inclined to troll, etc. The fact that you know that we know is enough to keep people from mucking it up.
• we have a simple HTML5 image editor to save people the time and effort for editing images. These people are not using Photoshop, they’re using Paint, which levels the skill playing field and getting more people contributing – anyone’s idea can take off when the bar isn’t set so high (lessening the fear of failure).
• More people are more hands-on. People are uploading content and checking back every day to see what it’s become.
• It was important to us to carve out a middle section of user between content creators and lurkers, so they’re tagging content using “stickers” (like voting).
• We started integrating chat for a real-time experience, but we decided to go back to asynchronous comments because the chatlogs were not as interesting and did not create the feeling of “being there”.
• scaling the community slowly and organically for controlled growth. You have to allow for a culture and identity to form on the site for itself so the site doesn’t blow up tomorrow with millions of users and the culture becomes confused and diluted. But SXSW’ers can sign up at https://canv.as/sxsw

No Excuse: Web Designers Who Can’t Code [Liveblogging SXSWi]

#noexcuse – originated as a tweet by @elliotjaystocks, which he followed up on his blog.

What is it about code that we rally so strongly for or against this idea?

Meet the Panelists: What’s your origin story?

• Ethan and Ryan got into music as teens which led them to building websites for their bands/music groups. They appreciated the immediacy of the concept and execution of building their own sites, they could build something and see the results right after. Also, Geocities & web rings.
• Jenn Jukas had to choose between being a designer or developer, her boss said she was spreading herself too thin.
• Wilson Miner started out in print design/T-shirts – I had all these designs and I knew no one else would build it for me – “I downloaded the first Dreamweaver beta, but I remember the tools always falling short so I had to learn HTML.”

Pivotal similarities: love the immediacy of being able to take an idea from concept to done to sharing all by themselves, found interest in the web & design in high school, got internships, had personal projects as teens that motivated them.

Act 1: Real Web Designers

“Real web designers write code. Always have, always will.” – @zeldman

There’s a line being drawn – we stand on this side of history and you stand on the other. But what exactly is a “real web designer”? A bit like asking what’s a “real American”? It’s highly subjective and different for everyone. We’re not going to debate semantics.

How does this debate affect our collective identity? We clearly care about it and we’re defensive about the idea of “real”. It’s us vs. them and we bond around these shared values.

What makes a “real web designer”?

• Hire the one who can write – Jim Coudal, and by write, can you organize your thoughts and communicate clearly?
• Hire the one who can write code – don’t care about language or spec or technical level, but I want to know if you can think systematically and understand the form and structure that you’re designing for
• Taking a holistic approach to what you’re doing, pick up on the intangible patterns, problem solve. Do you consider yourself an artist? You may or may not. We get so tied to the tools and processes we use as we go from novice to expert.
• Ethan: Solves visual problems. Should be able to articulate solutions. It’s a culmination of all the hats we wear that makes up the nebulous cloud of “web design”. If a developer understands grids or color theory, they’re a better developer. Same thing with design – think visually, sketch in code.
• Jenn took a survey – “web designer” should go the way of “webmaster”. simple answer: “someone who makes websites” and super long answers about having a big picture understanding of your site, from front end to back end, etc all the way around.

Act 2: Tools of the Trade

Tools vs Materials – tools (software) manipulate the materials (code is our language, our paint)

It’s easy to get caught up in mastering tools, but tools will not save us. Tools can’t keep up with the web.

“the only way you truly understand a material is by making things with it.” – Jonathan Ive, Apple Sr. VP of Design

Also depends on the circumstances: in a large business, you’ll probably be more specialized, and at a small company you’ll benefit from knowing various aspects of web design. As a team, you combine your knowledge together.

“Some of the most important design decisions happen in code.” – we need to understand these crossovers, “you can’t have a beautiful design without great code.” But as our industry grows and specializes, we can’t all wear all the hats.

Designers and developers should be able to communicate and understand where the other is coming from at a basic level so you can relate and be more efficient. When you share some common skill knowledge/background, you can establish a common overlap that will make your interaction with your team easier.

Q&A:

What’t the best way to get over the fear of code?

• I learned how to code so that I could tinker – immediacy! I don’t write markup, but I tinker.
• Jump in by viewing source, using Firebug.
• Work with a developer to learn more about what they do.

How far into code should I go?

• Learn what you need to do what you want to do. That’s the best way to learn, to accomplish something, not so you can check a box or fill some competency.
• Designers: Learn usability and accessibility! That’s something designers should be thinking about and take some responsibility, like color checking in Photoshop before going to code.
• Don’t forget about the print style sheet design! Developers might otherwise have to pick up the slack after the designer hands off their design.

The Politics Behind HTML5 [Liveblogging SXSWi]

When Opera started working on HTML5 it was outside the W3C. What’s the story?

The history is clear – the W3C made a mistake, they said XML would rule the world, hence XHTML. So HTML5 was started as an alternative to what the W3C is doing. W3C realized the mistake, and they negotiated to “bring to prodigal son back into the family”. Also important for bringing HTML5 to royalty-free patenting, but it’s only for finished products – if we don’t get a full working spec, it’s all for naught.

TV on HTML5: BBC, Netflix want real TV on the web. We’re also seeing web TV, browsers in TVs. One of the issues is digital rights management, how does this play out?

The reality is, there’s ownership here – you want control and compensation. At what point does the owner of the intellectual property get their due – it’s the artists that are losing money. The artists need to retain control, and it needs to happen in HTML5 because otherwise they’ll be no money to be made and people won’t do it.

But is it HTML5′s job to do DRM or should it be a DRM’ed format? No, HTML5 will not declare a default format – all they’ll do is facilitate creation of the tags and attributes to facilitate use of what formats are developed. But the problem is we have to rely on browsers to support multiple codecs. The benefit of standardization is interoperability, but the drawback is you inhibit innovation through format types. Extension points are a double-edged sword but the HTML working group should promote and lock ourselves into a single format.

The HTML working group is 400-500 people, we only meet once face-to-face every year, discussion is over e-mail and surveys. We find bugs that escalate into issues that require proposals – we’ll aim for the solution that causes the least amount of dissent. Ex: removing the longdesc attribute in the <img>, the title attribute is also flawed. Two groups of people – those that believe accessibility aspects should be required in HTML5 and others that don’t. We’re dealing with stuff that transcends technology it’s about human discrimination, accessibility should no longer an extra “feature” that gets left at the back of the bus.

Aiming for “last call” in May 2011 – looking for wider public review of the spec. Does the W3C HTML5 spec go to last call with or without the accessibility? The audience seems to want the spec out as fast as possible, not wanting to wait to fix certain issues first. The problem with HTML5 today: there’s a disproportionate amount of accessibility issues that need to be resolved – the 80/20 rule. There’s accessibility features in HTML5, but none of the browsers use these features.

“Willful violation“: the HTML5 spec violates other standards about 12 times. Ask yourself: should our user agents be violating web architecture in these cases?

From the spec:

This specification interacts with and relies on a wide variety of other specifications. In certain circumstances, unfortunately, conflicting needs have led to this specification violating the requirements of these other specifications. Whenever this has occurred, the transgressions have each been noted as a “willful violation”, and the reason for the violation has been noted.

If we don’t, the government will – the FCC is already determining the specific codec that should be used for captioning commercial video. The FCC can legislate whatever it likes, how should that impact what an international working group does? What’s the impact of having the working group made up mostly of old white guys? Creates in interesting tension between technical groups and politicians trying to pass legislation on web privacy – it’s about the money – the politics of HTML5 is on the front page of newspapers.

Attendee: When will the spec be finished? Market forces will determine that. Response: there’s massive pressure on the W3C to finish HTML5 and get to work on HTML6. Another double-edged sword – how do we decide when a spec is stable enough so designers won’t have to build a whole new site 3 months later?

Attendee: XP won’t run IE9, and those with IE6 can only upgrade to IE8, so now we’re going to have all these IE6 people likely stuck on IE8 for the next several years – Microsoft is the barrier between us adopting HTML5. Panel response: encourage your users to use different browsers, to upgrade, etc.

Microsoft employee Paul Cotton: getting rid of IE6 is not as concerning to MS as getting people off XP. also, at the end of April, the W3C is having a workshop on privacy and we plan on bringing regulators, politicians & the public into the room.

SXSW Interactive Links & News So Far

Here’s a few links if you’d like to catch up on things you missed so far at SXSWi:

• Check out the Austin 360 blog “Digital Savant” for more articulate panel coverage than mine
• and a bonus, Scoble’s post from a few months ago about creating a MicroSXSW experience

And related Mashable coverage:

1. HOW TO: Actually Get Something Done at SXSW
2. The South by Southwest Panels, Illustrated [PICS]
3. It’s Not TV, It’s Social TV [VIDEO]
4. Coverage of Marissa Mayer‘s talk

Disconnecting the Dots: How our Devices are Divisive [Liveblogging SXSWi]

Presenter: @RoyChristopher, #divisivedevices

"We'll all be happy then," drawing from 1911 depicting the fear of technology taking over 100 years ago.

Tech is not taking over our lives, it already has. Go to a coffee shop, right? This concern has been with us a long time – see the comic to the right!

1. Disconnection
   1. between each other
   2. between ourselves and our work
   3. between ourselves and the world
   4. between ourselves and our selves
   5. where’s the tipping point in technological mediation between augmentation and obstruction? devices that “free us” also bind us to them, think cellphones
2. Threshold
   1. we use screens for different reasons – we gather around one kind of screen, and other screens alone to connect with each other.
   2. we’ve gone from wanting to enter the machine, to using our bodies as input devices to bring the machine into the room.
   3. the limitation now is the human scale, we design our devices for our appendages.
   4. advent horizon: the line we draw at the edge of our level of comfort with technology, and we feel a sense of loss when we cross it (the new popularity of vinyl records, analog tech, shopping in a record store and buying an album on iTunes is not the same thing)
      1. example: speaking > writing > typing > word processing
3. Bridge
   1. the most ubiquitous bridge: the computer keyboard (writing itself is a bridge, an internal process that externalizes info)
   2. the tyranny of adoption: a new technology is worthless if no one uses it (like MySpace now).
   3. we design these things, but they end up designing us - technology curates culture, makes decisions for us
   1. 1. our behavior changes to adapt to the technology, like switching between operating systems your thought process has to shift (look at your feet, they’re shoe-shaped)

“The long-range question is not so much what sort of environment we want, but what sort of man we want.” – Sommer 1969

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