Institutional Knowledge

Ah, the highs and lows of SXSW. The conference sessions this year have been hit and miss, and honestly it’s been a 50/50 split in that respect. This year, there are two 30 minute tracks in the afternoon in what I perceive as a way to simply have more panels. While theoretically this is a good idea, it’s fallen a little flat as two of the best sessions I’ve been too have only been 30 minutes long when they really could have gone the full hour and still presented tons of valuable information.

The Highs

• Grids are Good
• Everything you wanted to know about Mobile Web but were afraid to ask
• Accessified! Practical Fixes for Web Designers
• Why we should ignore users
• Moving Corporations toward accessibility
• Uniting the Holy trinity of Web Design

The Misses

• Design Workflows at Work
• High class vs. Low Class Web Design
• Web App Autopsy

Web Awards

Last night they held the 10th Annual Web Awards, hosted by Ze Frank. He was by far the most entertaining person I’ve seen so far. In some strange coincidence, I was wearing my Vitamin t-shirt and was approached by Ryan Carson (the proprietor) who thanked me for wearing the shirt. Turns out, Vitamin won an award for Educational Resource. WooHoo! After the show, Gillian Carson approached me and thanked me for wearing the shirt. Turns out there were only 25 shirts made, and so far I was the first one they’d seen wearing one. How cool is that?

In his book Ambient Findability and SXSW session, Peter Morville, presented his user experience honeycomb that shows how user experience is shaped by a series of dynamic and interconnected qualities.

• Useful — To have the courage and creativity to ask whether our products are useful and be able to develop innovation solutions to make them more useful.
• Usable — Usability, ease of use, is necessary.
• Desirable — Image, identity, and brand are all parts of emotion design to keep in mind before sacrificing for efficiency.
• Findable — Build navigable sites that help users find what they’re looking for.
• Accessible — It’s the ethical and legally required thing to do.
• Credible — Design elements do influence whether or not a user will trust and believe the information presented.
• Valuable — The user experience must advance the mission of the organization.

So what purpose does this diagram serve? As mentioned above, it breakdown how Morville views the qualities that make up the user experience of a website. The advantage is to look at one of your existing sites or products through this honeycomb. It can be a conversation starter that’s a little different and more interesting than “How do we make this accessible?” or “How can we change the template?” While those are two pieces of the puzzle it’s not the whole puzzle. Taking a different approach to evaluating your site can lead to changes you might not have dreamed of.

The second advantage to using this model is that it affords you the opportunity to tackle a larger problem in more manageable chunks. Sure you might not be able to do a complete makeover of your site, but, for example, it might take that many resources to improve the findability of the most sought after content.

Challenge
The next time you tackle a web project, evaluate any existing site, or your own design, through the honeycomb matrix to see if you think it will create a positive or negative user experience.

Here’s a loose collection of thoughts, ideas and quotes from SXSW this year.

Demystifying the Mobile Web
When thinking about a mobile web problem, remember…

1. Context
2. Content
3. Component

Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible

Don’t read WCAG 2.0, read Understanding WCAG 2.0

Whether a site works with or without Javascript is an interoperability problem, not necessarily accessibility.

Holistic Web Design

def: Importance of the whole & interdependence of the parts

• Involve everyone
• Share, communicate, educate
• Compromise

Microformats

Principle: Keep things “micro”
Process: Emphasizing getting real
Community: Minimize duplication

Roach motels are so Web 1.0 — Jeremy Keith

Embracing Standards

Transparency with the public is a good thing. Airing dirty laundry creates pressure internally to be better.

Networking

I had a great chance to meet-up with some University Web folks. It was great to meet: Chip D (University of Denver), Dave Lowe (Biola), Josh Works and Jessa (KSU), and Andrea (Humbolt State). It was great to hear that every institution faces their own challenges and it sounds like Chico has a good infrastructure in place to grow.

WaSP Educational Task Force

There was also a buzz and push for web designers and developers in the university sector to become more active with the Web Standards Project. The Educational Task force is trying a two pronged approach of trying to:

1. Get universities to develop web standards compliant web sites
2. Get instructors and professors to teach students about web standards

If you’re interested, join the mailing list or check out the IRC.

Get them while they’re hot.

Notes from “How to be a Web Design Superhero” presented by Andy Clarke and Andy Budd.

Powers you need to be a web design superhero

• Keep pace with new trends and technologies
• Be Agile
• Stretch yourself
• Understand your clients needs
• Be able to convince your client that what they think they need, is not actually what they need
• Empathy – Understand your Users and their goals
• Be able to sense danger ( ‘here be dragons’)
• Precognition – Anticipate new trends
• X-Ray Vision – Understand the semantics
• Invulnerability – Don’t let comments and criticisms discourage you
• Have a sidekick

Who are your web design heros?