- How great a name is that?!?
…and, yes, the death metal was loud.
Archive for March 13th, 2009
Friday, 13 March 2009 at 3:30PM
Presenter: Paul Annett - Clearleft Ltd
Basically, this presentation focused on the power of Easter eggs in design and their power to please users. When people see the existence of something hidden or the trick of the trick, they want to share with everyone. He gives the example of a YouTube vid he posted. That is a secret to web design - adding clever bits to design. They made Silverback and the meme over the faux parallax is an example of this.
Other examples:
- The arrow created by the negative space in the FedEx logo.
- Toblerone logo bear.
- Truce vodka and other ambigram logos.
- British show: Trick or Treat.
- Innocent smoothies box bottom.
- Apple’s Mighty Mouse projection.
- about:mozilla in the address bar of Firefox - the story unfolds in each version from the fictional Book of Mozilla. [Look for the entire story]
- Flickr “ho ho ho” tags that put hats and beards on flickr photos around Xmas.
- Google moon shows cheese when you zoom in too close.
- d.construct web site
- Kyan media: little worm at the bottom is link that reveal more information
- Modernista - is not a page as much as a parasite on other pages. It offers meta-navigation and overlays upon other pages.
- Skittles (copy of the Modernista idea)
- Trailer for My Bloody Valentine is a great use of transparency. They make a fake browser.
- Able (agency)
- Zen Garden diver
- We Bleed design
- David emory’s site david emory online. Cool because the content is always immediately below the fold. Strange info design but cool technically.
- de-online.co.uk/archive/
- Breaking things in the browser: Wario on Wii, Apple’s iPod ad on Yahoo games and this Dutch HEMA web ad.
- http://twequency.com/ has a nice parallax cloud background
Kano model of customer satisfaction: [if I find Paul Annett's slides, I will put the graphic here. Until then, feed on this.]
It is often up to designer to create the excitement needs. This that cause excitement this year will be performance or basic in the future.
“It is not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable - we als need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes, beauty, to people’s lives.” - Don Norman
Other references made during presentation:
- http://delicious.com/paulannett/sxsw09
- youtube.com/nicepaul
- clearleft.com/slides/paul/sxsw09 (link does not work)
Friday, 13 March 2009 at 2:00PM
Presenter: Dan Willis - Sapient
Making the argument that the Harry Potter movie site is everything that is wrong with web design. Why? They hide the web native stuff. Everything else is basically print magazine stuff regurgitated for the web- “Print in Disguise”. Headlines are a commodity that lead to linear text. Many newspapers have not realized how to exploit the web-native features. How can your website exploit the web and not just be a print brochure. We still treat web design as print design.
This happened with the transition from still to motion photography. Technologists create the content until artists catch-up. He used Birth of a Nation (1915) by D.W. Griffith as an example of using the techniques developed before in a new way (e.g., cross-cutting is much more effective that transitions in live theater). Hitchcock, for example, takes the close-up and pushes into emotion. Example: Bird’s-eye view used in Fargo.
“One plus one equals three”, or take some of these elements and combine them to create more:
- Random voyeurism
Flickrvision and Found Magazine. We like to look at people vo - Self-aware (but controllable) content
The content is meta-tagged and aware of itself in many different ways - just as referenced in Ambient Findability. Data/content grows beyond the intended purpose of the creator. - User-created content
Fighting the user for control causes them to rebel. Forcing them down paths is problematic because they will rebel. - Ambient awareness
Example: micro-blogging. Over time, something like Twitter allows us to know others in a way we did not before. Each tweet is a dot in a more sophisticated image. - Experiential content
Basically, content is still king, but today content is more than the text and images. Interactive experiences augment the content now and this is the future of what designers will need to create, but the designer needs to share space with the user.
How can we overcome print-in-disguise web sites? Hotel example: Use webcams in the hotel lobby (voyeurism and ambient awareness). Pillow choices linked to sleep research and customer experiences, concierge is expert on good sleep, etc.
In the context of news, metadata links parts of stories so they can be reused. Don’t pollute too many pages with dynamic headlines because you can. Old design, print design needs to evolve and extinction is part of evolution.
Design solves problems and the visual design of the web can’t be answering the same questions as print design. We have, traditionally, compartmentalized our design (information arch, interaction, visual, etc.) like a TV dinner tray. We need to look at it like jambalaya and mix it all together. This begs for a see-saw implementation where everyone is involved in the party, but experts need to know their area of expertise and acquiesce to others, too.
- Organize cross-disc teams; exploit and protect expertise
- Design for specific users and their needs
- Embrace your ignorance. We have not figured out the web, yet.
- Don’t be distracted by business models that don’t begin and end with the user.
- Don’t be distracted by technology.
- Don’t be distracted by failure. Ideally you will fail quickly if it happens and learn from it. Move on.
References made during presentation:
- Presenter’s article: http://www.dswillis.com/sxsw/everything.pdf
- Book: The Experience Economy
