I’m fresh off the plane from South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2010 and still reeling from some of the amazing people I connected with and talks I checked out in Austin, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts of some of the top trends and highlights of SXSW this year. This year saw a record number of attendees – I heard as many as 17,000 (a 50% increase over last year’s 11,000) and you could see the difference everywhere.

Panels on user experience and social media were often at capacity, with long lines of people hoping to get in to catch the high-paced hour-long talks. SXSW’s notorious parties hosted by Foursquare, Gowalla, and Mashable and more saw the same surge in people, many even braving the rain on Monday night at the many outdoor venues to get a chance to network and, of course, get in on the open bar.

SXSW panels can be hit or miss. It’s a very loosely organized conference, where you can walk in (or walk out of) any session you’re interested in – no registration required. There’s over 400 sessions to choose from, and I typically had 5-6 really interesting panels to decide between in each time slot.

For me, this year saw a marked increase in the quality of panels I was able to check out. SXSW can be a good barometer for what types of things we can expect in the User Experience and Interactive worlds over the course of the year. It was most famous for the launch of Twitter several years ago, and startups have since capitalized on the massive event to make a major launch event, marketing push or announcement. Our local friends at Freshbooks and Rypple even got in on the action.

This year, at a keynote with Evan Williams, Twitter announced its @anywhere platform that will integrate Twitter into sites in a similar way that Facebook Connect does today, allowing users to more easily register, login and otherwise extend their social presence online.

Apart from this, several trends in the UX and Interactive spaces began to emerge several days into the conference.

Geosocial Apps

Foursquare and Gowalla, the geosocial applications that both used SXSW 2009 to launch, saw a huge surge in adoption at this year’s conference. They were initially met last year with a good deal of confusion, and the web app implementations made them difficult for users to grasp. I remember walking away with a green Gowalla t-shirt last year not really even knowing what it was (but admiring the cute line-drawn kangaroo they use as a logo).

This year, however, both companies launched new iPhone apps just days ahead of the conference with enhanced UI and interactions supported by specially designed badges and achievements for SXSW. Users signed up in droves and not an hour went by where you didn’t hear the words “check in”, “unlock” or “badge”. Attendees were often seen slinking over their iPhones, scrolling through their list of friends to see what sessions they were checking out, or the trending places as hundreds of people made their way from party to party after 5pm.

The rivalry between the two companies was clear even before the conference began. The feature sets of both have been enhanced and each has copied one another to a certain degree, so for me the deciding factor comes down to the user experience. Although Foursquare certainly has gathered a more solid critical mass of users, Gowalla was the standout for me this year, offering attendees a nice welcome banner the moment they touch down at Austin’s Bergstrom International Airport with links and locations to key SXSW events including badge pick-up and upcoming panels & parties (as shown above). Not so shockingly, SXSW awarded the the crown to Austin-born Gowalla over Foursquare at the SXSW Web Awards on Sunday night.

Neither application had been particularly useful for me at home here in Toronto up until SXSW, but that changed in Austin where they were great in tracking down friends and getting a sense for what was worth checking out at the conference and beyond. This worked only because I was a part of a very similar set of users with aligned goals, motivations and contexts for using the apps. I’m not so sure the usefulness of Foursquare/Gowalla will extend beyond SXSW unless you live in an urban area with a wired population; Like all social media, they won’t take off until your friends are on board.

They also have the not-so-simple task of assuaging users concerned with privacy that Danah Boyd so eloquently made a great case for in her keynote early on in in the conference. Provided Foursquare, Gowalla and others can address these issues, the opportunity for these companies to add the ‘where’ to our vocabulary of ‘who/what/when/why’ established by Facebook and Twitter presents an interesting opportunity to make more serendipitous social discoveries.

Content Strategy

As Dave pointed out yesterday, Content Strategy (CS) is seeing a major push as the “next big thing” in User Experience. A relatively new niche in UX, a Content Strategist ideally is brought in early on a project, working in tandem with the client and Information Architect do to audit what type of information a site will contain, and what forms it will take on. This Content Strategist has attributes of both an Information Architect and a Copywriter, and has the ability to weave a brand’s story into the structure of a site through different forms of content, including text, images, video, infographics and more.

How do you plan for the future if you don’t know what you currently have – or need?

It was clear at SXSW that this was a subject that was close to many of our hearts. Content Strategists Margot Booomstein (slides), Rachel Lovinger, Karen McGrane, and Kristina Halvorson (slides) collaborated to present three separate panels on the subject, ranging from why you should invest in a dedicated CS resource to how to implement it in your organization. The need for a Content Strategist became clear in these sessions, as they can offer clients predictability, reduce unnecessary whitespace and prioritize communication goals while reducing costs – words will always be cheaper than design comps, after all.

We’ve always made pretty bold proclamations in this industry that Content is King, but it really hasn’t been. Content is all too often considered as an afterthought after wireframes and design comps have been presented to and approved by the client. Relegated to boxes as placeholders and Lorem Ipsum, too many of us take a “do it later” approach with what is most important to the user. People aren’t visiting your site to look at colours and boxes, they’re there for a purpose, and the content should be at the core of any design.

Wireframes and design concepts are much more believable when populated with real content, both to the team creating them and the client reviewing them. Speaking from experience, the worst thing that can happen to me as an Information Architect is when I’m asked to design an experience without any content provided up front. It’s like building a house without having any clue how many people will be living there and decorating it without any regard for the resident’s taste; Ultimately, you’re going to end up with a pretty dry experience, a lot of filler and too much empty space.

Persuasive Design

Persuasive Design, like Content Strategy, isn’t a new concept, but is seeing increased focus by designers trying to motivate Web users down a path to take a desired action. It’s the use of tried, tested & true psychological techniques to take advantage of our innate subconscious wills and desires as humans. What it comes down to is taking advantage of concepts like sensory integration (providing a highly rich experience for many senses), social proof (when we’re influenced to follow the behaviour of others, like lining up in a queue), and scarcity principles (offering limited access to a beta or limited editions of a product).

There are many, many more biases and concepts that can be used to enhance Web design. In his panel on Persuasive Design (slides), Andy Budd calls them Cognitive Biases. Stephen Anderson called them Seductive Interactions, and handed out a sample set of cards he’s working on that he calls Mental Notes (see photo above) to help inject psychology cues into Web design.

Many of the examples Budd and Anderson used involved introducing concepts of gaming to give the site or service a sense of playfulness. As humans we inherently are drawn to play and challenges. By making tasks (even menial ones) seem more like a game, we’ve seen user uptake and productivity increase significantly. Take Google’s Image Labeler for example, which lets you play with a random partner online to assign matching words to an image. Google builds up its image search keyword descriptors, and it’s surprisingly fun and addictive to play.

Having started in to this industry by way of my love for games, I’m excited that to have started incorporating some more playful elements into projects here at Teehan+Lax that will benefit both our clients’ objectives and be fun for users. Look for more on that in a future blog post.

More to Come

Having sat in almost 20 sessions in about 4 full days, there’s a lot more to share from this year’s South by Southwest. Over the next week or so, I’ll be rounding up some of my favourite video highlights from the conference. Did you attend SXSW? What was your sense of what made waves of the conference, and how was it for you? Let me know in the comments.

In the world of marketing and advertising, knowing what interests people have in our client’s brands is somewhat exciting for us. At Teehan+Lax we use social media measuring tools to help monitor our client’s brands, and the competition. What are people saying? Is it good? is it bad? It is ugly…

“What’s particularly interesting is the negative sentiment has jumped to 40% from 15%, while the positive sentiment has dropped to 14% from 49%” @sysomos

The findings can help validate expectations, but they also yield some interesting insights and trends. But what happens when these tools are applied to measuring a person’s reputation?

Sure one could argue that celebrities are often thought of as ‘brands’ in today’s society, but imagine being judged by your peers and the general population and be able to physically see the results?

The folks at Sysomos (who offer a variety of measuring tools that we use) did an interesting experiment along those lines. They recently blogged about Tiger Woods’ reputation pre and post the latest media frenzy surrounding his accident and admitted transgressions. (You know where to find these stories).

The social media measuring results are fun and entertaining when it comes to celebrities – but what happens when your own reputation is on the line? There have been recent reports that the CIA have been investigating ways to watch the social sphere. Beware… one false ‘tweet’ and you may end up on a list!

Having been born in the late ‘70s (ahem) I can clearly recall the amazing transformation that digital innovations quickly brought to my everyday life. I got to witness the significant firsts that made everything suddenly accessible – the first web site I visited (in awe), my first ICQ chat with people I just met “online”, the first search engine I used for research, my first “wireless” phone (what a brick!); and the list goes on and on. The things that we pretty much take for granted now.

‘The bottom line is this: if you understand the Net Generation, you will understand the future.’ D. Tapscott

I just started reading Don Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital which predicts and discusses the traits of the Net Generation (aka Gen Z, Digital Natives). Those born in the ‘90s who will never have penpals, fax a confirmation, or look at an encyclopedia (among a million other things). This notion of such a generation gap initially scared me – imagine a generation that has everything accessible at all times, anywhere!

But then it got me thinking about the unique opportunities this brings to my so-called Y Generation (aka Trophy Kids, Echo Boomers). We get to be the first group to fully share and embrace future experiences with the younger lot – our nieces, nephews and kids. Something that even our parents can’t say.

We will also get to use phrases that start with “Back in my day…”. Here’s to looking forward, together.

The @font-face rule allows authors to specify online fonts to display text on their pages. In other words, you’ll be able to use fonts outside the usual Arial, Verdana, Georgia and the like, even if the end user doesn’t have them resident.

There are a few other things worth mentioning. The rules are unique to CSS3, so only a few of the newest browsers support them. The fonts you use must be made public, so if you use the rule you’re essentially distributing the fonts – not cool. That’s its biggest hurdle right now and may in fact lead to its demise unless someone can figure out how to protect the fonts. I’m not convinced services like Typekit are the answer.

Originally, we had designed a page using some recently purchased H+FJ fonts but quickly realized we couldn’t use the layout without distributing the fonts. Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.

Before you go clicking you’ll need a really modern browser. Firefox works best, not only in the way it renders the actual type but also the way it displays letter spacing. The new Safari and the Opera beta browsers will also render it decently. We could have made the page degrade gracefully for older browsers, but we didn’t. While you can still view the page in older browsers it’s gonna look like it’s 1999.

Update: It seems as though Firefox 3.5 for Vista doesn’t render a few of the fonts well or at all.

view the sample page

Okay, so we won’t be using it anytime soon due to the issues stated above, but it sure does look promising. There’s a good post at craigmod on this subject too if you want to learn a bit more.

After attending the MediaPost Digital Out of Home awards in New York (where we won the best point-of-sale award) I was invited to attend my first Toronto Digital Signage Industry mixer. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect but have to admit I was pleasantly surprised and had a great time.

Most of the people in attendance were from the hardware, installation and deployment side of the business, but there were also reps from research companies, developers, and a couple of account types from creative shops. Apple sponsored the event and was there to showcase the latest mac mini as an affordable network solution for displaying HD signage.

I mention all this because I was taken by the diversity, enthusiasm and positive vibe of the group. It reminded me a lot of the early days in interactive where people talked about how the Internet would change everything. As one attendee said to me, “It’s just a matter of time before digital signs replace regular billboards… they’re simple to update, way more engaging… and eventually you’ll be able to interact with them.” Now, I don’t think digital signage will ever have the same transforming influence as the Internet, but I can appreciate the enthusiasm. And that got me thinking about where digital signage is headed.

Over the last two years we’ve seen digital signage show up on more and more media strategies, in direct contrast to the declining spends on TV and print. Clearly clients and media companies are see a benefit. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we got into signage. It was seen as a natural extension of the online work we did, there was a compelling budget/timing argument and quite frankly, the traditional agency didn’t want to do the work. And even though tough economic times have resulted in some production flowing back into the studios of traditional ad agencies, they still aren’t necessarily the ones best suited to do the work. As Michael Lebowitz, CEO of Big Spaceship, said in the article, Digital Shops Caught in Transition,

“The changed (economic) landscape will inevitably lead to new models that blur production and agency services. “One of the big issues for the traditional TV-driven agencies is they have outsourced craft that forget how to do it and its value,” he said. “Craft is more important than ever. Making things and seeing what sticks in a time of flux is the only answer.”

So who will be the ones to test new approaches and make sense of this opportunity? Personally, I think it will be innovators from the interactive world. And I hold up the MEGAphone work being done by Colin Moock and Derek Clayton as a prime example.

I’m also reminded of a visit I made over a year ago to the testing lab of a local digital signage company where they showcased gesture-based interfaces for retail storefront windows. It was very Minority Report, but it worked.

When it comes to digital signage, the future may not be here yet but it’s closer than we think. And with it will come new opportunities to extend a brand’s digital footprint and connect with consumers in fresh and meaningful ways. See you at the next mixer.

Follow 3beat on Twitter.

Talk to anyone in marketing these days and they seem to be saying the same thing, “how can we leverage Twitter”. It feels like the early days of Facebook all over again. And no one wants to be the kid at the party who isn’t tweeting.

I think marketers are missing the point. Twitter is not a magic bullet. It will not instantly increase top-line revenue. And it certainly won’t have customers gushing with brand love just because you send out what you want them to hear. That said, I think Twitter is full of marketing potential. If you use it correctly. If you accept it as a tactic in your marketing mix. And if you give it the attention it requires.

So, what exactly is Twitter? The team that created it provides a great history lesson. But essentially it is an instant message format that allows you to publish in 140 character bursts. It allows anyone to follow you, read your messages, and publicly reply to them. And if you choose to follow someone back, you can share private messages. Oh, and all your public communication is on-the-record.

But in marketing terms, Twitter is an extremely efficient access point directly into the mind of your consumer. It’s self-subscribed. The communication flow is 100% controlled by the consumer. And your success or failure is completely up to you. Create the type of relationship your customers crave and Twitter can change your business.

So, where to start:

1. Decide if Twitter is right for your company. But know that using it to extend your offline ad campaign as 140 character soundbites could be a recipe for disaster. Twitter isn’t advertising. It’s a conversation. You need to respect your consumers’ views, and understand their relationship to your product(s) and brand. If they want information about retail sales offers, do it. If you sincerely want discussion about a product, ask for opinions and consider the feedback. [UPDATE: and as @thirtytwoteeth suggests, “provide useful/insightful updates.”] But most of all – determine your voice. This is likely the most intimate conversation you’ve ever had with your customer. Don’t squander it.
2. Make Twitter part of your communication plan. And this really means you’ll need to find someone in your company to own it. At this stage of the game it’s not something you can pass off to your ad agency, PR company or digital partner. It’s fast becoming a critical component of your social media mix, and potentially, more important than your advertising. If the US Army has a social media strategy, so can your company.

1. Most of all, embrace failure. The best way to find your voice is to start talking and listen to what your followers say. Engage them. Ask questions. And don’t be afraid to change. Twitter is extremely cost efficient experiment, so don’t let budget stand in your way.

   These three tips are by no means the only way to get into the Twitter game, but they will get you started. And no matter what your objective is, Twitter can help you define your social media approach. This is only going to get more important as consumers continue to become more savvy. So, get in there and figure it out.

   Follow 3beat on Twitter.

I’ve noticed a few new services that have replaced the traditional registration form (email/password) with email as an alternative sign-up method.

TripIt, a travel service that creates a single, readable online itinerary from your flight, hotel or rental confirmation is the first site I noticed doing this. To register, a user simply forwards a hotel, flight or rental confirmation email to plans@tripit.com. The site automatically registers you and replies with a confirmation and link to your new itinerary. Brilliant. (Note: TripIt also provides the classic registration form as well).

What’s important about this is that they’re reducing a psychological barrier to entry. Most people using Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail, etc. feel signing up for yet another online service is an annoyance. After a while, another registration form can feel like a burden. Email-based registration avoids this barrier by rolling registration and the way you interact with the service into one action. For example, the same way you use TripIt is the same way you sign up, by forwarding emails to plans@tripit.com.

Of course, form-less registration doesn’t fit for every solution. While flushing out the IA for ImageSpark, our home-brewed creative inspiration tool, we decided upon the classic email/password registration. The reason being that the core interaction with the site isn’t done through email but rather integrated browser and desktop upload tools; For ImageSpark, there was no gain in baking in an email-based registration. (Although we hope this won’t stop people from using it.)

A service like Posterous however, which uses email to create and update a blog, is built on avoiding forms at all costs. It makes sense than that your first email registers you and initiates your first blog post, all in one.

I’m pretty sure we’ll see form-less registration grow into a design pattern as new services emerge. And I’m looking forward to using it, so long as the situation is right.

Had the opportunity to attend this month’s Torchi event, featuring two guests from Microsoft. Lisa Anderson, MS Surface User Experience Director, talked about the fundamental shift from command line interfaces to GUIs, to what she called Natural User Interfaces (NUIs, I guess). Some really cool theoretical thinking in her presentation but it would have also been nice to get into a more concrete discussion about where they’re headed with Surface. I guess we’ll just have to wait for the SDK and interface guidelines spec. Lisa talked about how they’re trying to make the interface “disappear” by leveraging intuition and allowing interaction through direct manipulation. But there must be at least some standardized interface elements built into the Surface and I’m really keen to learn what these are and how they work.

Jansen Harris’ discussion about his work heading up the Office User Experience Team was also really interesting and much more concrete. No matter how you feel about Microsoft’s past performance when it comes to innovating the user experience, it’s hard to deny that they did a great job with the latest Office suite (and this has been borne out both critically and in terms of revenues generated). 3 things Jansen mentioned that stuck with me:

1. Early-on they established a set of design tenets to guide decisions at a high level over the course of the project. One that really stood out to me was “Straight-forward is better than clever.” I know I’ve often been guilty of breaking that rule :)


2. Developers took the first couple of months basically rebuilding the programatic foundations for Office specifically so that the UX team could afford to make mistakes and revise as they progressed along.


3. The Office 2007 team was comprised entirely of people who passionately believed in the project. If your heart wasn’t in it (and there were apparently those who fundamentally disagreed with the idea that MS could or should re-engineer the UX for Office), they found something else in the company for you to work on.

In general, I was impressed by how much grunt-work the team put into validation and evaluation throughout the design process. Rather than testing for testing’s sake or gathering data just to justify pre-ordained decisions, they used evidence to answer very focused, well-defined questions.

Quick plug: ToRCHI events happen monthly and are usually worth coming out to. Great guests and good discussion.

The US presidential campaign is widely seen as one of the most interesting if not important contests in a long time (and—full disclosure—I have to admit that I’ve been taken in by all of the hype myself). But as an interaction designer, and just as someone who’s interested in how people engage with, influence, and are influenced by technology, I’m even more interested in what’s going on in the political arena south of the border. Here are some things we’re talking about at work:

Campaign websites

Now I wasn’t paying close attention back in 2004, but a quick trip to archive.org shows just how far campaign websites have come in the last four years. A PEJ study showed progress in key areas like fundraising (e.g. real time drives), dialogue (blogs and social networking) and rich media across the board.

At the office, we liked Democratic contender Barack Obama’s site the most. The highly polished aesthetic, while a little too rich for some, is nevertheless upbeat and fresh, and the underlying IA makes for a very compelling experience. For example, content from the blog, articles and video section can appear in multiple views (states, issues, people, etc.) Because of this bottom-up IA, the site can be used as a very nimble and responsive communications tool. Tactical content and utility for getting out the vote make the site a good practical resource for grass roots activists to organize themselves locally.

Barack’s site isn’t the only one leveraging new technologies to promote local support. Huckabee’s site is still up and features a simple but effective Google Maps widget that allows users to drill down to find details on meetups in their area. Clinton’s site, like others, features tools like this one that automatically distributes call lists to supporters who can help get her message out in Pennsylvania.

Social networking

Some candidates have launched presences on both Myspace and Facebook social networks, but the Obama campaign has really invested in this area, enlisting one of the creators of Facebook, Chris Hughes, to help create my.barackobama.com.

I signed up to get a sense of what MyBo was like and found it to be highly focused and flexible at the same time. For example, while some elements on your dashboard place you in the context of local opportunities for involvement, others allow for personal expression through blogging and user-generated fundraising campaigns. In this month’s Rolling Stone, Tim Dickinson talks about the great lengths to which Obama’s campaign has gone to translate online enthusiasm into real-life, boots on the ground effort and organization to move the electorate and GOTV (they’ve apparently learned a lot from the mistaken assumptions Howard Dean’s campaign made about their net roots advantage back in 2004).

Coverage websites

Finally, we’ve been really impressed by how online coverage of the campaign has really progressed. CNN, which really lives and dies by meta events like these, launched their Election Center 2008 site, which is packed with data and analysis. It’s the ultimate tool for the political junkie—in fact, CNN personalities will often encourage viewers to log on to EC2008 simultaneously during major campaign events like primaries or debates to track along with their correspondents and feed into the process live. The highly usable, well-considered and fresh-looking design provide easy access to a very rich pool of data.

Photo from ArsTechnica

37Signals is profiled in this month’s Wired. It paints a picture of some very talented and intelligent people who come across as supremely arrogant.

I have long admired Jason’s approach to design and technology. His fervent and passionate drive for simplicity is admirable. I don’t agree with everything he says or does, but I do see his point of view.

One of the criticisms against 37Signals is that they are “arrogant” that their attitude is dismissive of other point’s of view. But I don’t think they’re arrogant, instead I think they are unapologetic about who they are and what they value.

They don’t want to apologize for the decisions they make and as a result it comes off as being arrogant. By definition arrogance has an “exaggerated sense of one’s own importance”. Exaggeration leads to an unrealistic or distorted sense of reality.

I don’t believe Jason exaggerates his importance. Quite the opposite. He says that his products aren’t for everyone. He has always stated that they design products for themselves and no one else.

There have been times where Jason will talk in absolutes about being small as if there is no other choice and that you are stupid if you are large. This is arrogant because it exaggerates the importance of being small.

I believe he speaks this way for effect and because he is passionate. If you listen carefully, Jason will qualify that this is what works for them. Unfortunately, it’s sometimes the last thing he says or buries it in other points.

It is easy to confuse arrogance and being unapologetic but they are very different things.