Interactive Infographics.

This panel gave examples from some leading agencies producing infographics. Infographics involve the presentation of complex data in smart and beautiful ways.

The main concept I took from the panel was that effective visualisation is not about trying to tell a story around the data. It’s about allowing the data to tell it’s story.

Casey Capalowe of GOOD did a great talk running us through some of the fantastic data visualisations on the site. There’s a nice example above of some infographics produced for the Haiti relief effort, but the site is well worth a visit for full enjoyment.

Ben Fry used a great example to illustrate how effectively mapped data can really tell a story. The graphic above illustrated how water consumption trends were shaped during the Canadian olympic hockey final. Not the most beautiful, but certainly one of the most interesting examples of data telling it’s own story. There’s more here.

Ben also showed us this great example of how infographics can clearly illustrate a complex set of data when displayed correctly. The example above shows the entire growth of Darwin’s Origin of the Species from 150,000 words to 190,000. Using clear colour coding and some clever rendering, you can see establish in a few seconds where the revisions came in and in what order.

Next up was Shan Carter, part of the New York Times infographics department. They’ve done some fantastic work, but in particular I enjoyed the geo-mapping they’d done on the archived Twitter conversations during the recent superbowl. This tells a clear story of the game by displaying trends and themes and applying a weighting to volume of conversation. Again, this works best in it’s interactive guise, so head over to the site and click play.

Last on the panel was Eric Rodenbeck from Stamen who had about fifty things I’d like to put in to this blog! One really interesting example was some of the experiments they’d been doing mapping real time twitter trends using imagery to denote popularity. This gives an excellent insight in to chatter and seems a much more engaging way of displaying the data than some of the other tag cloud/wordle based systems I’ve seen on other sites. As well as the example above I highly recommend check out their site and blog for more.

Luckily today I made it in to the Evan Williams keynote – I say lucky, because the queue was long and there was a LOT of people!!

Evan is one of the co-founders of Twitter.

Disclaimer: these notes were made in real time and published as the talk finished so apologies for any typos or brevity.

@anywhere

Evan started by announcing a new app platform for integrating Twitter in to websites called ‘at anywhere’. The platform enables sites to integrate the platform in a number of ways.

These were the main headline benefits that were covered:

• The app can be customised by sites adopting it to match their intended use.
• Allows user to Tweet from the embedded site itself
• Follow a user straight through the site without users needing to jump back to Twitter – improved discovery costs.
• For site owners it enables them to leverage more followers.
• Should enrich the experience allowing users to build a community around their sites more easily.

Evan described the app as aiming to ‘reduce friction’ in terms of integrating the Twitter experience more richly away from Twitter.com

You can read more here

‘Experimentation creates value’.

The process of building a business is all about experimentation. It was recommended that finding where you’re going wrong through experimentation was one of the keys to building a rapidly growing business.

Twitter aim to create the best experience for users and businesses, they wanted to create a market, then figure out who to get a commercial benefit later.

Evan’s main involvement on a day to day basis is experience and strategy. He focuses on how he can build culture internally. How can the company scale? He aims for an internal parallel between the service (openness and transparency) and the company. They’re trying to grow with this methodology through ‘autonomous teams’ who are able to develop and follow a specific service benefit without needing to think of Twitter as a single entity. There is no one monolithic team or code base – that isn’t scaleable.

‘Openness’

‘A window is transparent a door is open. Window allows users to ’see in’, but a door allows people to experiment and play.’ Evan used this sentence to illustrate their attitude to openness.

It was discussed wether openness gives away the ‘golden goose’ and can infact devalue a business. Twitter creates value by maximising the value in the eco-system and not necessarily in the ‘business’. The focus is on ‘How do we increase the value of the network? How do we give more value to users?’ not necessarily on ‘how do we build the value of Twitter’.

Businesses can be built around Twitter.

The third party developers using the Twitter API and building for Twitter create value for users and through proxy, for Twitter. Companies like Co-Tweet and Hoot Suite have improved the interface for a sub-audience within Twitter that Twitter couldn’t have reached with their all encompassing interface.

WIthin the eco-system Twitter has created there are opportunities for third party developers. Twitter need to balance managing the open-ness with managing the eco-system to keep it useful. This means they need to protect the main user base against things like spam projects built using the APi. The ecosystem needs ’shepherding’.

Open value – building a network which reaches the weakest signals.

It was discussed how Twitter are aiming to bring a positive social benefit. An example was provided from a Chilean citizen who had emailed Twitter after the earthquakes thanking them for connecting them in a way that could aid rescue and help reestablish real world connections. Twitter is aiming to reach and connect users who can humanly get value and benefit from the service in countries like Haiti, India, China and Iran.

How does Twitter define a ‘user’

There are many dormant accounts on Twitter. Evan considers anyone who gets value from the eco-system as a user. This isn’t about Tweeting, or even signing up, it’s about wether value can be found in the data pool of those active users who broadcast from the space.

The cookies are out of the Oven.

Evan mentioned that one of the principles of Twitter was to create an information network with meaningful outcomes. This may be something as simple as a tweet service which lets a business and customers know that cookies are ready, or something as powerful as Tweeting within countries where there are firewalls or barriers to information (China etc).

All in all an interesting keynote and a nice insight in to Twitter and its culture.

The Designers Accord is a movement around 2.5 yrs old which was started by Valerie. Valerie is an interaction designer of 15 years. She began the talk by discussing the importance of narrative in design. By looking at design narratives she expanded upon how all stories can be told simply in this way.

The beginning of the talk opened with a series of images. Valerie illustrated a number of distressing issues that have been communicated recently online.

This image illustrates the environmental toxins man has introduced in to eco systems. The photos of baby birds who’ve died through their parents feeding them plastics which were mistaken for food were taken by Chris Jordan.

The next graphic illustrated how political corruption can be communicated with the ‘why does a salad cost more than a Big Mac?’ infographic. In the US, the agricultural industry funds 70% of the total pharmaceuticals market which all go in to animals. Because of the imbalance in the federal funding shown in the graphic there arises a  bizarre corruption in between health and politics which is clearly communicated in this design.

The next image was of the recently reported ‘burn pits’ in Iraq. This are pits which are setup by contractors such as Halliburton, The pits burn 24/7 and serve as garbage and disposal pits for workers. The pits burn human waste, animals, clothing and even vehicles and weapons which need to be disposed. As a consequence of the pits, its has been suggested that soldiers are now much more likely to die from the impact of being near the toxic pits, than the direct impacts of war.

Before and after shot taken from Google images

Finally, Valerie covered the disaster in Haiti and mentioned how there’s emerging evidence that natural disasters could often be man made and linked to climate change. Recent studies hypothesise that he polar ice cap ice keeps a constant pressure on the surface of the earths crust. As the ice melts the plates ease and start to move. This is providing evidence of the ‘human effect’ in both tsunamis and earthquakes.

So, all this doom and gloom may seem like the above message – ’save the planet, kill yourself’ is a reasonable response.  Valerie contended that it wasn’t and that interaction design can offer solutions.

Designers accord was started with a philosophy that by uniting the creative community designers could look at sustainability and the planet in a completely different way. The Designers Accord premise is comparable to a Kyoto Protocol for design.

One of it’s aims is for members to acknowledge a personal accountability in their jobs – this involves educating clients and employees, but also sharing stories not just about successes, but about failures and compromises. The Designers Accord organises meetups at locations across the globe so that interaction designers can come together to talk and ask questions of one another.

Additionally they produce toolkits for young designers to raise awareness of sustainable issues. The ‘School by design‘ pairs designers up so sustainability can be thought about more openly. There are many schools, corporations, and 6 continents all tackling sustainability together through the scheme.

Sustainability

Valerie then focused in depth on her views on sustainability. She covered how the media talks about sustainability very much from the ‘green’ angle. Magazines often feature ‘Eco-warriors’ or produce a ‘green issue’ – this is a bizzare narrative to talk about sustainability and doesn’t ‘mean’ anything tangible. Significantly, Valerie argued that material choice or recyclability completely misses the point of what sustainability should be about.

‘Systems thinking to solve problems’

Valerie then covered 7 key points of ’systems thinking’. This is the idea that any environment has two fixed points, whenever you move or affect one end, there’s reverberation through the system. Everything we do or don’t do has sustainability implications.

7 points:

1. A system is more than the sum of it’s parts:

Looking at the Hippo roller project, we looked at how product design can change a system. The Hippo Roller allows 200lbs of water to be rolled at an effective weight of just 20lbs. This allows more water to be carried in areas where previously buckets were utilised – freeing up time for communities to work and develop other projects, decreasing the risk of travelling and reducing the strain on collection for those making the journey.

However, as a single solution, this project still had problems.  For every 75 that came off the production line 125 were made – there’s was a quality problem. Shipping was also extremely expensive (because of their size). As such, a company called D2M redesigned it. They changed the product transportation in to 2 parts so they could be nested. This meant that for every one unit that was previously sent, three could now be fitted in to the same space. Additionally recycled plastic wasn’t robust enough for the product and as such was an ‘eco backlash’ from a few people who became so hung up on the products ‘green credentials’ they were in danger of missing the benefit. Valerie illustrated how within the system the point of the project was worth more than the sum of its parts.

2. Feedback Delays + Bounded rationality = design traps.

This idea is that a system takes a while to gain leverage. Bounded rationality is the idea that you can only make decisions on the information you have available to you. When these things come together they create a design trap – the results is that designers focus on the symptom, but miss the problem. Valerie illustrated how the Dell compact desktop meets all the ‘requirements’ of a sustainable project, but it misses the point that we shouldn’t be making more desktops in the first place. Sometimes when thinking about sustainability, legalism means we design by a checklist and trick ourselves in to thinking that less bad, is good. It isn’t!

3. There is no such thing as side effect:

In this fascinating example, we looked at a study called ‘global taco shed‘. In this project, the participants bought a single taco from a street vendor. Each person was then responsilbe for tracing an ingredient. It was found that 1 taco = 64,000 miles (roughly 2.5 times round the earth). At this point I was thinking ‘that’s shocking, and must be bad’.

Valerie explained that lots of people believe that ‘local’ is always better – there is a general agreement that food miles are bad. In this study however, they went a step further than just looking at the miles and analysed the embodied energy in each ingredient. This gave a measure to compare the embodied energy in tomatoes grown in a greenhouse locally, with those which were much higher but had been grown naturally farther away in other countries. The outcome gave another measure of system benefit and provided an alternative way of viewing the Taco. Another example given of mis-concenieved sustainability was the foil that had been used to package the Taco had been flown from new Zealand. On the surface this sounds bad, but the aluminum alloy used in the foil turned out to be indefinitely recyclable – a clear benefit over local products which may not have been reuseable. This example clearly illustrated that the new system took apart the theory that local was always good.

4. Creating the right measurements of success:

In this example, we looked at how we often use the wrong measure of ’success’. In the US, the most common measure is the effect on the GNP. It is assumed that if the GNP increases, the effect was good. However, this measure has nothing to do with health, well being or relationships and as such is a corporate measurement, but not necessarily a good one. An example illustrated that if there are more car crashes there are more medical bills, another car needs to be built and economic prosperity goes up. However, you’d struggle to find someone who could argue that a car crash is ever a good thing!

Designers can help challenge the way that we measure success. A project that was mentioned in India looks at ecological performance standards for the built environment – essentially, when a house is built, rather than seeking to use expensive ‘green’ products, they instead use a measurement which takes in to account the initial impact of the land they’re building on. By measuring in this way, land can be assessed in terms of filtration, soil erosion and establishing the ecological benefit of the land. When building, the measurement is to then build something which performs identically, so the land benefit is completely replaced. In this measurement rather than building something ‘less bad’, they can create a building which performs identically so there is no loss to the environment. This illustration emphasised that ‘less bad’ is a very short term approach to sustainability.

5. Selecting the correct lever for change:

This example focused on how often, designers can tend to identify the wrong thing to change when they’re trying to change something. Valerie illustrated this through an example from Romania in the 60’s. The government had realised that the birth rate was dropping significantly and wanted to remedy this. They decided to make contraception and abortions illegal for under 40s and figured this would sort things. Initially, there was a burst and increase in births, however it then leveled out. As a by-product of the new law the mortality rate of mothers had spiked – people were seeking illegal abortions behind closed doors. Similarly, loads of kids ended up in orphanages through unwanted births – another unforeseen, but significant impact. Clearly, selecting the incorrect lever for change had had an awful impact.

The example offered as having selected the correct lever for change was Naked Pizza. Naked Pizza are a small 500 sqft pizza outfit. Their mission is simple, they are attempting to make the worlds healthiest pizza. However, they also are restricting themselves to make it affordable, pitched at an identical price point to other competiors. Unlike expensive organic alternatives, their mission is framed with the correct lever for change – they have recognized that to reach the masses it must be affordable. By making it affordable, they can then invent the recipe and scale it – kind of a trojan horse in to the mass food industry. In this way they practically educate people about the benefits of nutritional health. Instead of being a whole foods activist which is prohibitively expensive, this idea is all about making people talk.  It’s more sustainability rich as there is a dialogue.  It’s not about recycling- in fact, adding loads of green rules would’ve put the price up so much it wouldn’t have achieved anything!

6. Enabling new models by recognizing the relationship between knowledge and behavior:

Valerie explained that for real change to occur, it’s not good enough just to have knowledge, but the behaviors in systems must change also. The analogy that was used was that with Obama, there was a huge wave of optimism upon his election, which has now disaptated. The changed he promised is unachievable in its fullest unless the governmental system itself, of which he is a part, also changes.

7. Finally we looked at the attention cycle and how the ‘degree of awareness is inversely correlated to the degree of productive action’:

This is the phenomenon that when the public starts to get great attention or passion around a specific issue, the degree of productive action is inversely correlated at a certain point. Essentially, so many people get excited, but nothing actually happens. If you get thousands or millions of people interested in an issue it actually has a tranqulising effect – people start thinking ’someone else is doing it, so I don’t need too’. Valerie explained how This could fatigue the sustainability movement as people opt out due to the mass of attention – designers need to avoid the idea that ’someone else is looking after it’.

Concluding Notes

Loosely defined a system is: ‘a collection of elements and interconnections that are highly organised to achieve a purpose.’

The interactive community is missing a sustainable movement – but that’s ok. The last thing we need to do is create more green movements, but instead be the voices that are the connection between all these disciplines to create a constant dialogue for all the other movements.

Designers have a powerful role to play in information flow.  We are uniquely positined between many industries and responsbile for communicating issues to the masses. What would happen if our purpose was oriented towards sustainability rather than commerce? What if social media was about social impact?

Valerie encourage us to recognises systems thinking and be the connective tissue between all these different industries.

‘Every profession bears the responsibility to understand the circumstances that enable it’s existence’.

We need to lead and not sit on the sidelines. We understand the qualities of interactivity therefore we should make them work for positive change.

You can find out more on this talk and the designers accord on Twitter @designersaccord

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.

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 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….

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.

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.

Being responsible for the fantastic photos there’s more to read over on Steve’s site as well as the official press release on Rewired’s site.

Our involvement has been predominantly on the accompanying brochure, map and outdoor advertising to help promote the campaign (more images to follow).

The Celebrate Independents exhibition launches today at High Street and New Street Birmingham, and runs until the end of the month. A special fashion show featuring Independent Retailers will take place at Radisson SAS Hotel, supported by Harvey Nichols, on Wednesday 8 July.

Well that was it folks! Only a few weeks since we first speculated about the possibility of organising a Birmingham Twestival and it actually happened. Thursday night saw Birmingham gather with over 175 cities around the world to get together and raise money for Charity: Water. The turnout was amazing and saw 185(ish) local tweeple make it down for an evening of music, raffles, games and general fun. To cap it off, the total raised was  a superb £1519!

It has been a busy few weeks for us at 383 Project, having been involved in both BrumTwestival and doing design bits here and there for the wider Twestival campaign. We’re currently trawling through tons of press coverage and photos etc from around the globe and will do a separate follow up post in the coming weeks on Twestival’s impact as a whole.

For now, here’s a few more pictures from the evening provided by the very talented Lee Allen. Fullrange were also around on the night doing some filming so expect video content to follow!

Lastly, thanks to everyone who donated raffle prizes, got the word out and helped plug the event. Birmingham couldn’t have happened without the help of the other organisers. I’ve listed everyone below and would suggest if you’re not following them on twitter already you should do so- they are good people to know!

@ellielovell
@bounder (Jon Bounds)
@victoriahedley
@chrisunitt
@getgood (Nicky Getgood)
@lovelychaos (Jessica Elvidge)
@abbycorfan