SXSW – Day two

Pain Free Design Sign Off.

This talk was delivered by Paul Boag. The talk encompassed how the design process and in particular getting design ’signed off’ can be pain free for both the client and agency.

Paul discussed that the designers main problem was this… ‘You believe you do everything right.’ Because of this, ‘the ‘big reveal’ when a final design is first shown is often disappointing for the client who, invariably, had a load of thoughts in their head that you knew nothing about.

Paul made the case that the problem lay with designers and that ultimately -we are all too defensive.

We limit the number of revisions in contracts. We don’t produce multiple design. We only produce design when it’s finished. We control and discourage clients sharing with their colleagues. Result = the client feels like we think they’re an idiot!

The skills to solve the problem: we already have them.

We often get in to the heads of the ‘user’ but not of the client (who is in the first instance our ‘user’ even though the site may not be intended for their use).

So, what do clients want:

•To understand the process. What’s going to happen.
• Reassurance about decisions.
• To feel in control.
• To be confident in the end result.
• To personally like the site. (this is important as the site won’t be kept up to date etc if the client doesn’t like the site)

But How?? Through collaboration not confrontation. Paul then offered his ‘6 principles of collaboration’.

• Ensure that the client understands their role in the project. This helps them understand the process, and helps them to feel in control. A clients job is to find problems, a designers job is to find solutions. Often clients offer solutions ‘make the logo bigger’ etc… what the designer really needs to know is ‘what the problem is’. If we ask ‘why’ when a client want’s a change made, we’re in a better place to recommend solutions.

• Have a strong methodology. This reassures clients of the process and ultimately the end result.

• Include the client often and early. This helps ensure that a client is engaged with the project and ultimately that they have helped to shape the outcome.

• Educate the client about the decisions being made. This gives the client ammunition to help explain your design to their colleagues. This is fundamental and allows them to take ownership over the decisions that have been taken when you’re not in the room to explain them.

• Ask for specific types of feedback from the client. Don’t ask clients ‘what they think’, ask them ‘what they think their users will think’. This allows them to understand who we’re designing for. ‘I don’t like the green’ becomes ‘will my clients like this green’. We should trust clients to know their users and business objectives, therefore this is comfortable territory and will further illustrate their part in the methodology.

• Avoid saying no. Allow the client to make the decision to say no by educating them on the consequences of decisions.

How does this look on a live project?

• Kick off meeting: This is where a clients enthusiasm for a client should be harnessed. It’s important to get everyone who will be making decisions excited about the design stages – if the CEO will have ultimate sign off, get them in the room.

In this meeting it’s also key to outline the roles of everyone on the project – that the process is collaborative, and that the success of the design is equally a shared responsibility. Designers should be asking provoking questions so the client can get their head in to the right place early on.

• Inspiration: Asking clients ‘what sites they like’ won’t work. Instead we should send across some links that we like, that we think they will like. This way we lead the area we should be leading.

• Moodboards: Spend an hour or so creating a mood board. This allows the time to discuss many design elements before the design has started. We can explain the styles, typography, colours and ask direct questions related to design content in a shorter amount of time. This can help educate why a solution will be suitable and help the client understand wether or not their own personal opinion is different to those of their users.

• Wireframes: This allows the agency to separate content from design. This is key as it allows the time to discuss the content outside of the content in context. Often a client will see a design and start talking about content. If a wireframe has been completed, the content will be agreed prior to the design phase.

• Design mockup: If all the above has been completed, this won’t come as a surprise to the client. Ideally the designs should be presented face to face and the earlier design stages should be referred to in rationalising why you have taken certain decisions on the design.

• Design testing: This allows real users to respond to the design and informs both the designer and client who have been close to the project. This gives a key signpost to wether the user will take the correct points away from the site at first glance as well as determining at a more content driven level, if they will keep coming back.

All in all I think this is sound advice for agencies. It was good to hear points which are fairly self evident if you think on them, presented in a clear and concise way. It also helps us (as agencies) attribute a value to what, at first glance, can seem an extensive initial design process to a client (particularly for those who’ve dealt with freelancers or agencies offering a site for a few hundred pounds). Good design is communicative, and if time isn’t spent ensuring the brief is communicated early on, I believe the success will be limited.

iPad: New Opportunities for Content Creators

This next talk was a much shorter format. Speakers from different industries were asked to give short 5 minute presentations on how (if at all) the iPad will change they way they deliver content. The notes are bulletted so hopefully will make sense!

• 75+ million iphone units sold to date, and counting.

• Is there room for a third category of device in the middle? Unlike the launch of the iPhone where there was an existing smart phone market and the MacBook where there were existing latops, the iPad is creating a new market. Short answer – yes.

• ChangeWave data suggests that the pre-launch demand for the iPad exceeds by 3% that of the original iPhone. Significantly for the eReader market shows a 40% occupancy for iPad already. Just on the Apple Store the Valcent Financial Group shows pre-orders yesterday at 51,000 in two hours. 90,000 in six hours.

• Bill Jensen – Village Voice. They own 14 newspapers with 1.3 million papers on the street per week.

How can periodicals thrive?

• Print is hurting. Some organisations are making a transition to digital.
• Digital growth of 70% year over year for the past 3 years.
• Weeklies can thrive as 90% of business is local.

Mobile – Periodicals are there, but iPad is a different ball game.

• People don’t want to read a 6000 word story on an iPhone app.
• The focus has been on ‘non reading’ short content – the iPad should get people back to reading.
• The iPad delivers a focus on DESIGN and READING. Tablets solve the design issues -reading on mobile is too small, reading on the web isn’t pleasurable. The ads and design on iPad will look better – therefore ads will become more valuable.

Shervin Pishever - Social Gaming Network.

• 76% games top grossing apps in the app store
• App market project by 2013 is $30 billion
• Projects are 20 million iPad units in 2013.

• The iPhone has allowed developers to produce good looking, multi-player games over 3G. The iPad will push the boundaries further for gaming.

• Screen real estate. more going on, better game flow.
• Processing power, immersive experience. The chip is incredibly fast, even compared with the iPhone.
• Convenient size, easier handling.

This means… new usage occassions, boosting the creative frontier, boosting engagement. The users for the iPad will be appealing to a certain type of user who typical spend high online.

Jason Grigsby - cloudfour.com

Opportunities for web developer.

• We’re spoiled with the iPad- standards based browser. It’s familiar in terms of aspect ratio 1024 x 768. The broswer is faster and more capable – great JS engine, and people will likely be using on wi-fi. it’s almost the perfect browser.

• Native vs web vs hybrid. Native apps on the iPhone are less important on iPad. The web based applications are more important.

• People can type on it (and easily!) – it’s about creating not just consuming. Think iWork etc.

• Content with well defined form – layout wise it’s designed for reading. It fits traditional book grids and unlike other e-book readers it isnt ‘formless’. Vertical scrolling is a remnant of non-touch computers – expect this to fade away. .

Katherine Tasheff - Hyperion.

The publishing industry – what do we do now?!

For the past 500 years the physical book has been the business model. It’s unsurprising that the industry hasn’t evolved – historically it’s been robust with no reason to evolve. That’s changed.

In the past 3 years the iPhone and Kindle have changed the rules (a little) iPad will change it (a lot),

Video can now be integrated in to books. The market will generate $1 billion in the first year. The iPad mimics the book experience like nothing else – book sales have declined 5% since the ereaders came out.

The oppertunites for publishers are apps and the book store. Currently books underperform on the app store, even though they outweigh games in terms of numbers. People aren’t willing to pay if it’s not a better experience. The iPad experience will be better – it creates the gap in the industry that publishers have been waiting for.

SXSW day one

A few months back I drew the lucky card (long straw?!) at 383 Project and so for the next few days I’ve jetted off to Austin Texas for this years SXSW. For those who don’t know SWSW is a huge (in every sense) film, interactive and music festival. I’m here for the interactive section of the festival and as such, will be uniting with other designers, developers and entrepreneurs for a series of talks and panels on a variety of subjects. This year there are over 300,000 people in attendance, so it makes for a pretty intense and interesting time!  Where I can find time I’ll try and pop notes up from talks I’ve been too. Apologies for any typos – most of this is being typed on my iPhone!

Beauty of Web

This first talk was by Cennydd Bowles of Clearleft. It covered the topic of ‘web masterpieces’ and explored why, unlike many other mediums such as product design, or architecture, there are still no stand-out ‘masterpieces’ when it comes to web design. With the web still in it’s relative infancy, at only 7000 days (ish), Cennydd explored whether the web was an appropriate medium for sites to be considered ‘art’ and explored the psychology of what makes a Beautiful site.

First, we looked at the responses to ‘art’. These were loosely defined as:

• Visceral/first response/precognitive response. Mainly covering colour/form etc. This approach to the web is problematic as it rewards initial attraction over ongoing usability. This is a ‘very visual’ approach to web design and often results in the emergence of following of trends and fleeting ‘aesthetically pleasing’ fads. Think of CSS trend sites and galleries which rate the initial aesthetic only and you’re pretty much there.

• Behavioural design. This is where the usability of a site comes in to the mix. Examples such as facebook etc were shown as examples of this good behavioral practice, where the ultimate purpose of why the user interacts with the site, dictates the aesthetic.

This approach I think is where a lot of division comes in to web design. There’s very much a two camp mentality of those who want a ‘useable’ web vs those who want sites to be more viscerally satisfying. The concerns here are all about user mapping and messaging and allowing that to take precedent over the ‘look’. As much as this approach works or fulfills the requirements of the user, it doesn’t always excite. It was argued that often a solely ‘useable’ approach results in a mediocre visual experience (something that by and large I’d agree with).

• Lastly, we looked at ‘Reflective design’. Rather than just combining the two points above, this approach is far more wide reaching and only really emerging in very few cases. Like art, ‘reflective’ web design can be quite subjective-’how does it make me feel?’ and ‘Do I want to share the experience?’ are good indicators. Sometimes sites this approach will be a little less useable, but the user experience is ultimately more satisfying for it. Reflective design allows users to ask ‘What does it say about me as a person? What makes me tick?. In the same way as big brands make people feel something that can’t quite put their finger on, ‘reflective design’ has a similar output.

The reflective web is far slower to emerge than a ‘trend’ and taps in to other changes-it involves wider tech development, better connections, more web fonts, a larger palette of colours etc. and a number of other shifts to contribute to it’s emergence.

Cennydd then covered a few points that he believed would lead designers more in to the path of reflective design. These were:

• Get emotional – Experience isn’t just about usability. Use stories (old media recognises the power of this) content is key.

• Think Bigger and get beyond the idea of the site existing as an ‘island’ entity within the web.

• LEAD- This I think is a big one for agencies. The responsibility to lead and not always allow design to be diluted by committee is a good thing. There can often be a ‘too many cooks’ approach to web design, which a definate differentiator when compared with art. Clients pay for a clear vision from agencies as it’s important that this is shown in the way we lead the design stages of projects.

• Think long term – When designing, think about what’s susainable beyond the visceral. Keep it interesting and surprising. This may involve rewarding visitors to keep the experience fresh upon their return, or hiding hidden treats foe those users who delve deeper in to content.

• Broaden your horizons – Again, I think this is great advice. Web designers shouldn’t just be looking at other websites for inspiration (if at all!). As designers we should often look at design beyond the web, enabling us to analyse and pinpoint what makes users tick on many levels.

• Be brave. – As well as transcending how we translate design to clients, this is often about how we translate ideas and understanding within our industry peers. We should talk about how we ‘design’ together and focus less on techniques (flash vs HTML etc) – discussions should be about deeper design philosophy and not just ‘how we will build it’.

All in all a good talk and a nice start to SXSWi.

What are Analytics?

The second talk was titled ‘What are analytics’ and was given by Margaret Francis of Scout Labs and Blake Robinson of Attentionusa.com.

(the notes for this talk are a little more sketchy as a lot of the focus was on screen visuals and Q&A).

Why bother?

• essential for understanding what’s going on.
• critical for tying social media expenditures to business outcomes
• Analytics are the key to mainstreaming social media marketing into the larger organization.

Useful analytics aren’t always about volume or regurgitation of data. Also important is the percentage of share relative to competitors. Putting things in to contextual relevance to the competition is key.

Basic metrics are loosely defined as:

• Number of mentions, by type, source or channel
• Key themes/emerging memes from conversations
• Most viral content, as measured in links, retweets, traffic, views
• Top sources, as measured by volume, influence, engagement or relevance.

Customer intimacy gives a competitive advantage it allows you to get a beat on social media.

On challenge is dow do you distill the themes? You can’t read it all! Qualitative analysis allows you to apply a weighting to filter the most important over the the least important. Scaling to match the data volume doesn’t work – analysis to filter does.

A company with lots of follows can’t engage with all of them. Figuring out what ‘influence is’ is about google searching the influencers – this gives you a handle on who in your streams has ‘influence’. This is about number of follows – it’s about blending that with job role, location, tone of voice etc.

Insight metrics

These allows you to measure your share of voice compared to competitors. How do you mainline positive data back in to your widest streams?

Top sources as measured by volume influence engagement or relevance

Sentiment – This is the great divide between companies. You can make people agree with each other about 85% of the time regardless of tools. You’re looking at the balance between useful or not useful. Is it helping you find direction? Is it informing you of swings and themes? If so it’s working. It’s NOT about 100% of tweets sentiment matching. (false positives etc – it all needs context).

Gaining a business value

- One important factor is to cross ref the foundational metrics against the company or brands own metrics (campaign data, google analytcis, facebook fans, sales data. (it all adds meaning).
- Age demographics are helpful in ascertaining  (sysomos). Info is extracted from user profiles. You cant judge age based on language.
- by job roles.
- geo data a little suspect too – are you from where you’re tweeting?

Sentiment

The great divide between companies. You can make people agree with each other about 85% of the time regardless of tools. You’re looking at the balance between useful or not useful. Is it helping you find direction? Is it informing you of swings and themes? If so it’s working. It’s NOT about 100% of tweets sentiment matching. (false positives etc – it all needs context).

Business Metrics

How do you correlate this with money>

• Social media analytics can’t measure ROI as they don’t have the R or the I. Google analytcis is more well suited to this as it allows you to set specific goals.

You can measure….

• Most viral content, as measured in links, retweets, traffic, views.
• Campaign performance: views, traffic, reach
• On site conversions, ecommerce and other
• Correlation with sales.
* Product extension ideas.

We’re helping Bullring make Life Feel Better

We’re really pleased to have been appointed to work with Bullring on their new ‘Life Feels Better’ campaign. There’s a number of bits and bobs in the pipeline, all of which we’ll put up on the site as they happen.

383 have been appointed to undertake a number of local level events and projects in and around Bullring. So far we’ve helped organise a launch event of feel good films at the Electric, introduced Chris from Created in Birmingham to the project which has spawned a number of exciting developments (one of which is the new Created in Birmingham shop) and organised last Saturday’s live graffiti project with Mohammed Ali.

‘Tweeffiti’ blended live art with real time online contributions around the themes of Hope and Optimism. We built a microsite for Bullring which was displayed on screens at the event and allowed users near and far to contribute key words and messages via Twitter which were then interpreted by Mohammed and integrated in to his piece. The event was a great success and attracted coverage from BBC and ITV, as well as generating a big crowd throughout much of the weekend. Here’s a few snaps we took throughout the project….

Seamless in Seattle

Best known for its coffee, Frasier (which incidentally was entirely filmed in LA) and the iconic Space Needle that shapes the City’s skyline, Seattle is also the home of some of the worlds leading tech and digital businesses including Microsoft, Amazon.com, Real Networks, Getty and Omni. No surprise then that the 8 companies forming our trade mission were made up of some of the leading innovators in the West Midlands. Amongst our consortium; Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Screen WM, Advantage West Midlands and a mix of games developers and interactive agencies.

Along the way we met with Valve, quite possibly one of the most prolific creators of entertainment based gaming titles and games distribution platforms such as Steam. Similarly, we met with Big Fish Games, a company who’s frankly ingenious business model has generated some impressive and equally enviable financial results. Recently securing $38,000,000 in venture funding.

We talked extensively about why businesses like Big Fish and Real Networks have been so successful; because their products in themselves are something that I think you’ll see us as an agency working on more and more, something that Razorfish have coined; Social Objects. In short, a conversation starter, something that conversations and particularly chatter around social media should surround. It’s far more than viral, it’s something entire communities can be based on. The use of sites like Facebook and Twitter are creating micro-communities that are driving traffic to game preview sites at a rate that’s up to 6 times greater than that of traditional display advertising.

Razorfish, previously owned and operated by Microsoft, is now part of the Publicis Group and one of the world most successful digital advertising and engagement agencies, turning over in excess of $400,000,000 whilst handling everything from strategy and planning to creative and media buying across their network of 19 worldwide offices. Their client list is made up entirely of Fortune 500 businesses, on the rare occasion they’ll accept work with top 1000 companies, but only on the basis that a specific project or brief excites them.

I met with Matt Wood, Manager of Media Development at Razorfish. We talked through a number of principles that are integral to the successful running of any digital agency regardless of size and learned of some new processes that they had adopted since being acquired by Publicis earlier this year, some of which we’ll be exploring here at 383 Project. Amongst them, the use of Wikis as collaborative tool for designers, developers and clients, new methods for gathering trend data and the importance of white papers to their business development efforts. The most impressive of which being the 2009 Feed Report which you can view here. If ever there was a reason for Marketing Directors to start apportioning more of their budgets to online brand experience and not just display, this report is it.

One thing that can be said for all of these businesses is that they are all, without exception at the very forefront of their respective industries. As such, there has been much to learn, especially from some of the digital agencies operating in The States. These lessons are valuable but over the next 6 months prove to be invaluable. Stateside new business executives for example are reporting a significant decrease in their clients willingness to spend over online ad networks and display and are now far more focused on creating immersive online experiences and social objects.

Inevitably now in the UK, we will see these trends continue, particularly with the increase in sophistication of social media measurement and analytics tools. If digital agencies can embrace measurement solutions to help tweak, perfect and justify their increased activities in this space, the sector as a whole will doubtless become more trusted and credible with our respective client bases.

Seattle is a truly digital city, where they just seem to ‘get things’ quicker, this may be down to the fact that their agencies have client lists made up of huge corporations who can afford to be braver in their activities, it could be that with so much hot competition on the doorstep of game developers they need to be constantly investing in research and product development, or equally it could be that these businesses are effective at securing the finest talent from around the world to work in this booming sector. Whatever your take, I’m convinced that increased relationship between Birmingham and places like Seattle is vital as we aspire to be a ‘digital city’ within the UK.  For 383, the exposure to new thinking allows us to offer our clients and customers the latest and most effective solutions, increases our confidence in the relativity, longevity and value of our offerings and most importantly will ultimately work to keep our clients attracting and converting more online users into consumers in new and innovative ways, seamlessly.

383 Project go to Europython 2009

In any industry a conference is an important event, but in the web development industry they become almost vital. Conferences provide people within many sectors of the industry an opportunity to;

• Network and meet with their colleagues,
• Discuss developments to the industry,
• Share ideas and gain feedback on projects,
• Inspire new ways of thinking,
• Provide a sense of purpose to your role.

This week 383 Project have been at Europython, a conference about the Python programming language. Python is a high level programming language which features everywhere across the programming world as a tool for running servers, completing and automating tasks, but most importantly to 383 Project, building rich web applications.

The conference was held just around the corner from 383 Project, at the Birmingham Conservatoire. With more than 400 delegates from across Europe and the world the conference was the biggest it has ever been.

Community is a vital part of software development and Europython is entirely community run. The introduction featured a great phrase;

“If it’s not here, its because you haven’t done it”

This really sums up the achievement of the Python community in Europe, because the conference was packed full of useful talks, discussions and opportunity to share ideas and get involved.

So what did we learn at Europython?

The main focus of the conference is the lectures. Anyone is free to submit a lecture topic, but generally they are presented by well renowned people in their fields, so you can expect real expert opinion. We went to a range of talks covering everything from the nitty gritty of python, through to testing our code and using new technologies such as Google App Engine, and Amazon’s S3 to host our Python projects.
As professional developers there will always be things we already know, but often this is just blind convention. One of the definite highlights was learning about the underlying thinking behind what we do and gaining a deeper understanding.

Of course, when at a community conference you can expect divides within the community as people vocally demonstrate their passions. There was a great discussion on automated testing in Python which turned in to a very productive debate about the best way to be testing our software. Usually when a community debates like this you realise there is often no “right way” of doing anything, but the debate highlights reasons that you may choose one approach over another to suit your needs.

But there is so much more at Europython than just the lecturing. Book sales from major publishers, open spaces for un-moderated discussion, and a personal favourite, the lightning talks.

Lightning talks are free for anyone to present, but can last no more than 5 minutes. Usually this is just someone getting up on the stage to tell everyone about their latest program, or an idea they’ve had that they wish to share. Listening to people’s ideas and seeing new trends from the grass roots of the community can only lead to inspiration, and there was no shortage of ideas on offer this year.

Finally, Europython provides a more subtle benefit to developers. Throughout the conference, both formally and informally, those steering Python are listening to feedback of users. As a commercial user its a chance to explain what it is that makes my job easier with Python, and how it benefits the clients of 383 Project directly. Its also a chance to say where Python doesn’t work, what we need and how it can improved. As a community driven programming language it really is possible to see how this feedback directly influences and brings about change. This channel of communication is essential to the development of Python and is infinitely more difficult without the real-world interaction.

All in all Europython is one of the best conferences of its kind in the world, and it was great to be there. The contacts we make, and the knowledge we part with with can only make us better at what we do.

Next year’s conference will be in Birmingham again, and I highly recommend anyone with an interest in Python attends.