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Participating in SXSW 2010 reminded me what a privilege it is to work in the interactive industry. There were a couple of wow moments both big and small, but mostly it was the conversations with developers, UX practitioners and social media leaders that bring home what how exciting it is to be a part of this digital revolution.
And, for the most part, SXSW highlights the fact that we’re doing it “right.” Development success story after development success story reveals an industry deeply rooted in the customer experience. Jason Fried notwithstanding, successful properties are placing user feedback, testing and product iteration at the center of their innovation processes.
A few examples: Google integrates user testing as frequently as possible into all product development, Facebook lab testing stories abounded, Intuit’s Turbo Tax turns to customers for help with marketing plans and understanding mental models as frequently as once per week.
Here’s another takeaway. Convergence is not impending, it’s just plain here. Video, music, the web, television and digital social interaction are all blending from their once very separate channels into our various computing devices. This means that the development and presentation norms and standards that we’ve long used to develop software interfaces are now being applied to nearly every aspect of our lives from music library and play software, to e-books, to banking transactions and grocery shopping.
As we augment nearly every aspect of our lives with a digital reality, it’s imperative to remember that listening carefully to users, and incorporating their needs and their reactions into the Web sites and Web processes that we are developing is crucial to our success. Cheers to those of us who are doing it right!
As conveyed by country music legend Willie Nelson, often the best defense is an aggressive offense. For example, you are unfortunate enough to step out of the car beneath a riled flock of seagulls. Run! Or, you receive a late night phone call from your ex-boyfriend. Voicemail! The case is no different when navigating the plethora of sessions at SXSW. If you want to get your money’s worth and have a great time doing it, you need to know when to fold ‘em” when you find yourself in a lame, misfit or otherwise uninspiring session.
So what if you arranged the whole day to go to the session because it was a perfect ten on paper? The SXSW panel picker isn’t perfect and, sometimes, even if the description is accurate, people just don’t relate. If you find yourself in this situation, better opportunities await. Take a deep breath and think of Willie. For type As, it’s not a bad idea to have a contingency plan if several sessions appeal to you during the same time slot either. Knowing what you are missing will help keep it real. Remember: SXSW is short—and Chicken shit bingo starts at 5:00 sharp.
With so much information being streamed into our lives around us, UX designers are faced with a new challenge. We need to help people filter and manage the vast amounts of data available at their fingertips (through their devices) and to help them make sense of it.
This means that when we wireframe -- interactive wireframes or not -- we need to think through spaces in the interfaces that can stream or aggregate filtered information in a meaningful manner. And we need to design and plan for the fact that the shape and meaning of this information will chane over time. More than ever we need to understand both the technical requirements and possibilities for the types of content we enable, and we need to design user controls that put people in charge of what they do and don't want to see. With such complex information and interactions designed into increasingly compact formats, it's incumbent upon us to plan for affordable user testing that can be incorporated into our creation processes on a regular basis. Interactive wireframing is one way that we will be able to make this possible.Robin’s post on developing interactive wireframes is not just a practical idea – it’s demonstrative of UX’s bigger mission to make technology more usable, and wherever UX succeeds in doing that, we’re a little less likely to slip into a dystopian technological future. I mentioned in my post how readily we adopt new technologies without fully understanding them, and no one knows that better than a UX professional, as they watch users crash around inside interfaces without ever bothering with the helpful instructions that are given to them. Our cultural insistence on super-simple, never-have-to-open-a-manual solutions must be an enormous challenge for UX, and one that’s in no danger of going away quickly. Perhaps EEG technology will develop to the point that UX folks can design interfaces that intuitively respond to the human mind – that, after all, is the ultimate goal of good design.
Best,
Eric
eric anderson | WHITE HORSE | p 503.471.4200 | f 503.471.4299
Personal choice. Control. They are fueled by information and resources. In the old world, the ruler, or king, had the most of both. As a result, it was clear the he was in charge. Today, it's not so. The digital lifestyle affords convenience, choice and ultimate selectivity. In the digital age, we are all kings. There is little aggregated control; it's anarchy. This was my digital lifestyle revelation at SXSW. It equally excites and frightens me.
