Web Directions

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Virtual reality isn’t the television of the future, it is the telephone of the future

Background

• We’re in a time and place where anything is possible; much like at the birth of the World Wide Web
• We are at least 98% identical to chimpanzees. We have now found the gene that gives us a bigger brain than our chimp cousins. Both chimps and humans are incredibly social creatures.
• The social qualities we have as human beings are essential to our lives and our origins
• Social modelling happens in the neocortex of the brain; we have more neocortex than any other animal.
• The Dunbar Number: the number of people you can hold in your head is directly relative to the size of neocortex. The reason we have a bigger brain than chimpanzees is to hold a bigger social network in our heads […] that’s what being human is all about.

Virtual Social Networks

• Much like a shark swimming in the ocean, if a social network is no longer fed fresh data, it dies.
• Social networks need our time to survive. In the 21st century, time is the non-renewable resource.
• What if my social network could be used as a spam filter? […] if it’s not from a third degree contact, it’s highly suspicious
• Email forwarding of funny links is an ad-hoc social network. The essence of our electronic experience is that we find things, we filter things and we forward them. The three F’s
• For every minute you’re online you create masses of data; the data shadow. All this vital information is being poured on the floor. We don’t currently save it to utilize later
• As beautiful as the Mashup is; it’s not nearly enough We need to comprehensively cross reference every bit of data we create to make maximum use of that data.
• The Web is the universal glue
• The mobile phone is a nexus for human communication The phone has become seamlessly integrated into our lives. Many say that don’t have an emotional attachment to their phone; drop it down a sewer drain and see if they still feel the same way.
• Phones (via Bluetooth) could easily be used to map physical world relationships and social networks. This has already been achieved at an experimental level. The automatic mapping of real world relationships done this way opens the floodgates to mapping richer layers of complex relationships. The goal being to help you navigate a noise-rich environment.
• The street finds it’s own use for things, uses its makers never intended

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• Screen magnifiers make graphic text blurry, but alt attributes still render as proper text
• If we’re not writing scripts to suppress the right click menu, perhaps we should avoid suppressing the showing of alt text on images in IE
• Square brackets are often used to separate links to different document formats; when read through a screen reader using a verbosity setting that doesn’t announce punctuation – if the user hits ‘p’ to find the link that he/she believes starts with P (eg: PDF), it will not be found because the actual text is [PDF]
• Even if the link doesn’t make sense out of context, users of assistive technology are usually smart enough to point their device on line above the confusing link to try and get some context.
• We have bigger battles to fight than links with repetitive text (eg: Read More…)
• In a magnified context, “Back to top” may not be what you really want. Just because most users can see the page title from the top of the page doesn’t mean everyone can. For example, the header and navigation could be enough to psh the page/article heading out of the initial viewable area. Perhaps ‘Back to heading’ and ‘Back to menu’ would be more suitable.
• Derek considers the Opera browser as the best option for a keyboard user. (more specifically, someone who navigates using the keyboard). Opera also allows the user to re-map any accesskeys assigned within the current page.
• Don’t assume assistive technology users know everything that their device is capable of. If you can help them while doing no harm; do so.
• Source ordering: research indicates it actually means very little to screen reader user; document structure is far more important. When styling is off, source ordering becomes a cognitive issue. Basically, keep doing your best to keep that content block up high in the source. You may not be helping the people you think you are, but you’re still Doing Good.
• Derek demonstrates his correctly source-ordered advisory information on a form; demo is form SimplyAccessible.org. Involves floated text and em width. He then shows using a strong element to define an error in place of the em element that was showing the initial instruction.
• Don’t mess with the status bar while the page is loading, but it is a good method of indicating there are errors in the form or similar. The same is true of the title element.
• tabindex=”-1” can be used to force the browser focus on elements other than links or form elements, such as headers. This is an invalid value for the attribute, but you’re doing it to help people so make sure you mention that if anyone wants to burn you at the stake for it.

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Public health warning – there will be code!
Taking notes on a code-heavy presentation is a difficult challenge; I strongly recommend you grab Jeremy’s presentation slides to accompany these notes.

• AJAX is often treated as all or nothing technology, much like plugins – either you have it, or you don’t.
• Ideally you want to have one site that provides both AJAX and non-AJAX facilities; this is progressive enhancement.
• Progressive enhancement begins with semantically meaningful content; you then add the presentation layer and the behaviour layer.
• Stylesheet must be kept external; inline styles are no better than font tags.
• JavaScript pseudo-protocol is evil; always has been. JavaScript is not a protocol, pseudo or otherwise.
• Inline script, much like inline CSS is a maintenance nightmare and should be avoided at all cost. Both presentation and behaviour layers can be kept external; there’s no reason you can’t.
• Jeremy shows a JavaScript function that scans through the DOM looking for links with a class of “help” and makes them open in a popup rather than the current window. This is the alternative to inline event handlers. This is unobtrusive JavaScript.
• Don’t use global variables kids; they’re bad
• Next code walkthrough involves creating an instance of an XMLHttpRequest object; setting up the response handler and calling the object’s open method (define POST/GET, URL and whether it should be an asynchronous request)
• The readyState property: has 4 states, but only the value of 4 really matters to us; that’s the one that says I’m done, lets rock!
• Returns either responseXML or responseText; responseXML MUST have the correct mime type from the server, repsonseText can be text, JSON, HTML, whatever you want.
• Progressive enhancement with AJAX is very much possible – Hijax is Jeremy’s buzzword for it.
• Step one of Hijax development: build a website using traditional page refreshes.
• Step two: Hijack (get it?) the links and forms using unobtrusive JavaScript
• Server requirements: back-end architecture needs to be modular; pages are then made by joining those modules together when needed. You need to plan for AJAX when deisgning the back-end, but don’t implement AJAX on the front-end until the very end (end)
• Visual feedback is incredibly important; if adding ‘field is required’ errors via JavaScript, add it to the &ltlabel> element to help out screen readers.
• Jeremy demonstrates examples of Hijax including shopping cart and contact form. The data the server needs is always contained within the form or the link query string. These values are grabbed by JS and the script returns false on success; thereby cancelling the default action for a link click or form submission
• The browser is no place for business logic - use the XMLHttpRequest object like a dumb waiter; it is just to carry data around, not to do any heavy lifting with that data.
• The browser is an unpredictable environment […] you control your server, do all your data processing there
• Jeremy recommends we don’t even use JavaScript table sorting scripts.
• Key benefits of Hijax: no need to build two versions; no duplication of logic (eg: form validation done exclusively on the browser); Keeps your logic where it should be – on your server; keeps your JavaScript file size down.

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• MP3 of presentation (to come)
• Transcript (to come)
• Presentation slides
• Session description
• LiveBlog post
• About Cameron Adams and Kevin Yank

Presentation slides

Session description

Adding JavaScript to your portfolio used to mean more work. Thanks to the wide range of APIs springing up from the likes of Google (Mail, Maps, Ads, Calendar, Search, etc.), Yahoo! (Flickr, Maps, Search, etc.) and Microsoft (Virtual Earth), JavaScript can actually save you a lot of work these days. JavaScript veterans Cameron Adams (The Man In Blue) and Kevin Yank (SitePoint) will take a whirlwind (and somewhat irreverant) tour of the "free stuff" you get from JavaScript today, and the creative things people are doing with it.

About Cameron Adams and Kevin Yank

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Cheryl’s experience with Virgin Money

I’m going to save the world by making my company go to web standards -Cheryl Lead

• Used numbers to sell the idea X more applicants if we make it accessible
• 400,000 legally blind web users in the UK. Tesco launched Tesco Access and made 13 million pounds more via that site the next year. Cheryl doesn’t believe you should have two separate sites; I certainly agree.
• Virgin has approx 25 brand values that everything must tie in with; most of those relate to customer service. Accessibility fits in with this perfectly.
• You must learn how to talk “online” to non-online people. Marketers completely shut down if you talk tech speak.
• Our web site as it stands is a pair of acid-wash jeans -- Oh my God, we don’t want to be acid wash jeans!
• Having a project sponsor who understands what you’re trying to achieve is a key leverage point. This person will help you fight the battles that you will face.
• Endless presentations were required to prove that accessible design didn’t have to be ugly or plain.
• Standards advocates want everyone else to be as passionate as they are. They want to teach you to fish, not just give you a fish
• Created a 60 page style guide with what markup could be used, etc. Was a nightmare to have to force this upon people, but at the time appeared to be essential.
• We’ll fix that in faze two - faze two never very rarely comes.
• By pushing the agency to learn standards, they’ve now turned for good. All their future clients benefit from the work put in by Cheryl’s project
• Virgin Credit launched six months after Virgin Loans site; used same CSS templates and cut development time in half.
• Going forward – need to be careful with the maintenance; must retain that purity of code into the future.

Ben’s experience with Griffith University

• Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing what you thought impossible
• Central web team that maintains core infrastructure
• Evolved from tag soup to XHTML/CSS; framesets to frameless; 20,000 files to 250,000 files; all without a CMS.
• It took a long time – Ben invested six years of his life pushing a cause he knew was right
• 1998: recognized that the online brand needed to be different than the print and signage brand; first steps in the right direction. Perl script used to create text version of entire site.
• 2001: banned font tags entirely. Publishing tool checked for font tags and rejected them. That one change caused people to use heading elements and basic CSS
• 2003: Killed off Java applet in favour of Flash (lesser of two evils). Java applet crashed browsers. *BAM*. Goodbye NN4
• 2006: XHTML + CSS, no plugins required; elastic em based layout. Offered a low contrast version after receiving staff feedback about headaches from extreme contrast. The end of the second text version. Now the one site is available to everyone.
• Be prepared! You will have to say unpopular things that won’t win you any friends. You will need to compromise. Be ready for the big meetings – you’re your statistics ready and know your facts.
• Get allies; you will start as a lone voice, but you will soon find others get onboard as they start to “get it”
• Start with smaller changes; be realistic about what you can achieve at any given stage
• Buy in: You’ll need management on side; you’ll need your coders enthused, they must want to make these changes. If you can get marketing onside, you will have a very powerful ally.
• The moral high ground rarely motivates actions.
• Appeal to the present audience – You’ll save money attracts managers; You’ll save time attracts coders
• Use analogies – they really do work!
• Be positive, be motivational. If that fails, then you bring out the Big Stick.
• You are not alone, you are part of a worldwide movement.

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• I’m not going to talk about CSS today, I’m hardly going to mention standards
• Art is design without compromise -Jeffrey Veen
• Limitations of what we do: Environmental – inflexibility of 2D screen; Materials – limitations of CSS et all; Medium – poor support in older browsers; Ourselves – unlearning what we have learned from past experience
• The web is only ten yours old, we really don’t know what we’re doing for the most part
• Standards advocates are still a very small proportion of the entire industry – it’s time to let go of what we’ve done in the past and focus on what we can do in the future.
• Classic CSS resources like bluerobot.com and noodle incident used absolute positioning; while we have moved away from that method now, Andy believes it will make a return due to the increasing ability to use 24 and 32 bit PNGs, amongst other options. Absolute positioning is the new DOM scripting
• It’s not about the technologies, it’s about what we can do with them
• How can we use design to get across that deeper message?
• I don’t think we’ve even started to know what to do with the technologies that we use […] we need to continue to be playful, we need to continue experimenting
• Designing for the web is starting to lean further away from graphic design and closer to physical design; we can’t let the graphic design side of web design stagnate just because we’ve realised the importance of interaction design.
• We’re trying to build web based products that people love and want to use. Aesthetics play a huge role in getting people to love your site.
• Why do I use ma.gnolia over del.icio.us? They provide essentially the same service […] It’s because it does more for me aesthetically.
• The web isn’t a power drill -Andy. It’s a series of tubes! -John Allsopp
• There is a wider world out there and we need to remember that it’s not just about our small community
• Utilitarian sites (eg: amazon.com) are not a pleasure to use, we go there because we want to achieve something. I go in, I get what I want and I get out!
• Andy feels strongly that we need to work harder to bring in more external influences (away from the web); I certainly agree – re-sampling from the shallow pond just makes the problem worse. Drop shadows Rounded corners Reflections, anyone?
• Sample of scrap-booking shown - I like to get the clients involved in the design before we’ve even picked up a copy of Photoshop. Used to get the client to clearly explain the mood the want their site to achieve
• Take influence from the modern art world – found objects in the real world are a great source of inspiration.
• I hear all the time that the web isn’t print, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the print world
• To design an eCommerce site, why not check out cooking magazines or other print media relating to the products your site will sell. Is Amazon really the height of what an eCommerce site can be? I don’t think so.
• Where ever I go, I collect sidebars (magazine sidebars)
• The Grid – print has hundreds of years in experience in utilizing whitespace, controlling proportions and other core design skills. Web design needs to re-embrace those fundamental skills and make them our own. While the terminology between print design and CSS design is different, the building blocks are essentially the same.
• It’s not the technology that’s limiting me anymore, it’s my own inspiration (context: IE7 and native support for transparent PNGs across major browsers)
• Look to other cultures as well as other mediums for inspiration. Andy shows examples of Arabic, Japanese and Russian newspapers; each with their own use of the grid and each different from what we would in most western newspapers.

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• Vast chasm between what consumers understand the web to be and what is required of us to build the web.

• Mum doesn’t need to know XML, XHTML et all to get online, post photos, have a blog. This is fantastic and needs to remain.
• The chasm has gotten worse since the early days of the web. The consumer is being bombarded with web 2.0, AJAX; have grown to expect these new features/approaches for the old prices. We are many years into this industry and yet the consumer still isn’t educated in what is required to build quality sites.
• How man people here only do one thing every day? (No one raises hand) We are the tribe of many hats
• Lawyers, Doctors, other professions required to get further education every year in order to keep up with developments in their industry. All we have for that in our industry are workshops like Web Directions.
• We still have the problem of people just into web development for the quick buck, with little thought for quality; esp. relating to standards.
• General Practitioners are GP’s everywhere – our industry does not have any formalized titles, causing many people with the same duties to have very different titles, growing confusion.
• Certification – there is great concern regarding proving web skill-sets; currently have to be proven through past work, yet prospective employers basically only want to see a piece of paper. It is extremely difficult and expensive for certification/education to keep up with developments in the industry.
• Professional organizations such as WaSP, WSG, Port:80 and many others are the type of groups that could be the birthplace of relevant certification.
• There is a huge disparity between working people of the world and the academics in the ivory tower. (primarily relating to the W3C.)
• wipa.org.au – New industry group put together by Russ Weakley and Peter Firminger and will hopefully be addressing some of the issues raised by Molly – specific to Australia.
• WaSP sub-group International Liason Group formed to produce resources in as many languages as possible.
• The Professionalism, when it comes, has to come with certain value systems – who and how do we determine what our ethics are?
• Quotes from the audience regarding ethical values: First do no harm, Don’t abuse the trust of your community, Don’t lock your client into coming back, make them want to come back.

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where are we right now

Checklist syndrome – Section 508, WCAG, IBM Web Accessibility. These lead to a mindset of compliance over anything else. Accessibility is not just a technical endeavour or a quality assurance process. In reality accessibility is about removing barriers; it is personal.

Derek demonstrates a ‘typical’ search bar – mentions that it is the most difficult one he has ever worked with. Contains search input, pre-populated with Search Terms, Go button, Advanced Search button and Quick Links select box. Discusses the potential problems caused by using JavaScript to remove default text in text input boxes – don’t remove text unless it is the default text; this confuses everyone, not just assistive device users.

Compares asking What is the biggest failing in accessibility? with asking What is the meaning of life?; both result in an endless stream of different answers.

New ways of accessing web based content are creating new problems in accessibility.

What if screenreaders recognized microformats – plays audio demo of JAWs providing a page outline review containing 4 events and 3 contacts along with the normal header count and link count.

Where can interaction designers go for inspiration? Gamers? Gamers have insane keyboards with a plethora of extra keys and key bindings.

Notifying assistive device users of notable change is very difficult and needs to be addressed. Campfire provides an audible ping to notify browser users of missed messages.

Derek shows a rippled, dark pathway that leads through a cafeteria; real-world examples of providing high contrast to guide people.

Discusses his addiction to his BlackBerry mobile device - People make fun of me ‘cause I sleep with my BlackBerry

Research in Motion have filed a patent to make an accessible version of the BlackBerry. Includes the ability to have user defined accessibility features – screen magnification (controlled by thumbwheel); audio interface for announcing icons, contacts etc out loud. Adding touch-screen for the dexterity impaired; will include on-screen keyboard.

There is a lack of understanding of the needs of people with cognitive disabilities.

Derek shows screen capture of using BaseCamp with a voice-controlled browser. Shows the problems with accessing checkboxes which can be solved by refreshing the page. Whose fault is the problem?

Demonstration using a voice controlled mouse. This is obviously difficult, imprecise and highly frustrating.

Web 2.0 is all the web sites out there that get their value from the actions of their users

Can Web 2.0 help?

Tagging – tag movies that are accessible. Tag quicktime files, flash videos etc rather than just tagging a page. Tagging a page is just pointing at a URL and assigning keywords, why not directly tag a resource?

Expands upon Kelly’s True Gravatar concept from keynote – global XFN profile, rather than entering it again and again (connections.webdirections.org, flickr contacts, linkedIn, etc). Why not let people define their own accesskeys in a globally available profile; what about letting them define styling preferences in the same way? (eg: 1 column vs. 3 column).

Proposes advanced configuration in browsers – if you’re always bumping up the font size on a particular site, why shouldn’t the browser just make it the default for that site?

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• Centralized solutions - Someone owns this data, we have to trust them not to be biased.
• Search – 38,000,000 results for the movie title, first 30 contained no reviews
• Standardized data formats help software understand what we mean – semantic markup.
• Standardized data allows more mashups – combining maps with info about people has already proven very popular
• Open source, open standards for document formats getting more important and more popular. Open data is the next step; an important step at that.
• You publish in one format, I publish in another – the result is neither of us can make use of each other’s data.
• Formal standards take a long time to be adopted, if they ever are. “So many carcasses litter the road to XHTML and XML”
• Web has developed as an evolutionary process – build upon what we already have. This is the approach microformats have taken
• Microformats work with existing tools and existing development practices. Encourage decentralized development and content. Distributed data.
• Current microformats: hCard (vCard), hCalendar (iCal), hReview, hListings for classifieds; many more.
• Tag microformat has become very popular – you can point to an internal tagspace, or use an external service such as Technorati
• Big sites are starting to adopt microformats – Yahoo Tech has started using hReview for product reviews. Reviewers of products listed in hCards
• Web Directions South and North sites are microformat rich – hCalendar, hCard, tag etc.
• Cork’d and upcoming.org are more examples of real world use of microformats.
• FireFox Talis extension offers a great way of finding embedded microformats
• Brian Suda has written a service that takes hCards with GEO data and creates a Google Maps mashup. (sends KML to GMaps API)
• Microformats allow new solutions – the more microformatted data we have, more options will present themselves.
• Shows example of hCard; while the content-to-code ration drops, it’s for a good reason – we’re making the content more useful to machines. Shows converting of hCard to vCard to allow import into address book using a web service. John demonstrates importing entire Web Directions program into iCal.
• sure, I’m a geek; but that’s COOL
• More information – microformats.org, microformatique.com. John has a book coming out in early 2007

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Background

• started IT firm ‘Switch IT’ during the first web bubble 2003-2004 approached by more customers to send bulk email
• Always something missing from existing applications – the seed of idea is planted
• Took a few hours per day for 6 months to have a go at building their dream email campaign system
• Designed exclusively for web designers – 15,000 clients so far, 1,000 new users per month, 90 million emails delivered so far.
• Campaign moniter has grown from a project to a small software development company.

Deciding What to Build

• Knew there was a problem, knew how to fix it.
• Mentions example of 37signals and Basecamp – solving your own problem first, then making it available for others.
• Don’t try to please everybody
• Chose to target a small group of customers – in this instance, web designers. This choice allows you to develop the killer features that are perfect for that market.
• Kill the bloat your chosen market doesn’t need.
• Shows example of trying to do everything – ‘Constant Contact’ – requires 83 fields to be filled to send an email. Campagin Monitor uses one field by allowing designers to point to URL of their own email design
• More chance of creating passionate users – “It’s almost like it was built just for me”

Pricing Your Application

• Many people don’t think about pricing until the end; or throw it up for free and add a ‘beta’ tag
• Investigate competitors, but you don’t need to be the cheapest. If your biggest draw point is price, that can quickly fail.
• If you solve the problem better, don’t be afraid to charge more.
• Keep charges simple – charge in a way that is best for your users rather than best for you. Eg: no monthly charge on campaign monitor, charging by email recipient instead. Simple pricing model has worked for them to get more good publicity
• Try before you buy: C.M. allows campaigns to go to 5 subscribers for free.

Build the Sucker

• Identify ‘Need to Have’ features – light, agile.
• Give yourself a version 1 deadline and stick to it
• Use it yourself – Eat your own dogfood. This allows you to find the UI elements and features that may annoy future clients. Will result in a smoother, less frustrating end-user experience.
• If you’re not going to make your self-imposed deadline, re-asses the Must Have feature list and consider leaving some for a later iteration
• Early feedback: REAL customers. Iterate, iterate, iterate. Don’t dismiss this early feedback just because it might be opposed to what you thought they would want. Flickr given as an example – started as a game with a photo sharing app on the side. Photo app became much more popular, so Ludicorp dropped the game and kept with flickr.
• Technology is irrelevant – solve the problem and clients will be happy

Marketing and Support

• Make an app worth talking about – word of mouth is golden.
• Update religiously, be transparent. Shows community and activity around application, this in turn breeds confidence in potential users.
• If you’ve chosen to fix a problem for a small market, it is easier to market directly to them. Eg: tool for designers advertised on design sites
• Promotion through education – write about your industry to draw new traffic. More trust.
• Export Market Development Grant available in Australia to assist with international marketing and pushing your new product
• Feel their pain – Ben and Dave still do all their customer support.
• Opposite time zone troubles – provide a comprehensive help system within the application; increase the chance of the users helping themselves. Let them know what time it is where you are, eg: it’s 2:37am in Sydney right now

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• Introduces AJAX and the birth of the term.
• Maybe it is just a buzzword; maybe that’s not a bad thing
• X in AJAX adds “the X factor” – if anyone’s looking to coin the next buzzword, stick with X. Clearly we need more X words – XHTML, XSL, XML…

Two kinds of buzzword – ones where everyone knows what you’re talking about. The second type is the bad buzzword – buzzword 2.0 – ones that mean ten different things to ten different people. The second type causes backlashes; risking throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Crappy buzzwords considered harmful.

• “AJAX is not an acronym” as an acronym, AJAX is a misleading term and could do more harm than good.
• XML is not required, HTML and JSON are also popular
• AJAX as a term is starting to consume JavaScript – “Nice bit of AJAX you’ve got there”. That we don’t need –DHTML, DOM Scripting etc. Already too many terms for JavaScript.
• AJAX gives the illusion of speed. Whilst the HTTP is no quicker, loading page fragments helps give that illusion. Improved usability as a result.
• “If the traditional web was letter writing, AJAX is instant messaging”

Jeremy says “AJAX is a way to communicate with the server without refreshing the whole page” certainly not a sexy definition, but it is accurate. Flash, frames and iframes are AJAX by Jeremy’s definition; though XMLHttpRequest is the vehicle most associate with AJAX.Microsoft invented XMLHttpRequest in IE5 for use in webmail client. XMLHttpRequest was so useful all major browsers adopted it. This is one of the few cases of a proprietry feature being adopted and formalized by W3C.“Am I AJAX or not?” asks room to yell out answer - google maps: yes - bunny hunt (game by Cameron Adams): no. Jeremy shows flickr shot of a topless Cameron Adams. Room erupts in laughter. Cameron threatens to kill Jeremy - flickr: yes - lightbox: yes and no – changes src attribute of img element to load new image - amazon (rating system): yes - meebo : yes

Suitable uses for AJAX

User account applications, especially systems where the new users first choice is rarely available. ‘Add to cart’ – let them keep shopping. ‘Rate this’, ‘add a comment’. Search results? Perhaps not.

design challenges

• Loss of information to user; eg “loading in progress”. Commonly use animated gif to indicate loading, although indeterminate progress bars are not ideal. ‘Yellow fade’ as used by 37signals apps to indicate small changes.
• Real danger in adopting interactions from other areas – drag and drop implemented in a half-ass manor on the web is confusing.
• Make solutions as simple as possible, but no simpler.

beyond the browser

• The back button – AJAX has no history stack. Lots of clever people working on this problem; Jeremy recommends avoiding the problem altogether as you may be using AJAX in the wrong way in the first place. Back button is not Undo, it is navigation.
• AJAX must be accessible. Too many people use AJAX UI’s as an excuse to throw the accessibility rulebook out the window. James Edwards doing extensive research into notifying assistive devices of AJAX changes
• Joe Clarke investigated 37signals apps for accessibility – “usable by screen reader users some of the time”

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• Everyone’s talking about the internet, what’s working, not working for them.
• Different cultural implications of technology – very different whilst very ‘the same’
• “two years ahead, ten steps ahead” – what will we have to work with in 2 years from now?
• Designing for lifestyle is where we really are – dive deeply into immersive experience

Demo of Second Life

• ppl using to network, business meetings in second life
• virtual conferences are the next step
• Approx 740,000 ppl in second life at the moment
• important for sense of comfort, sense of home, even in VR world
• use it integrate life currently and network individuals around the world. Introduce avatars of self
• Global Avatar should follow – flcikr, second life, etc. All one ID.

Innovation

• Business looking at innovation – cultural change in big business. manifesting a culture that embraces innovation “we listen to what customers didn’t say, and observed what they did” – Jock Troung, VP of 3M Supply Division
• Ethanography – about hanging out w/ ppl, waiting for that “AHA!” moment. Example: “CHECK ENGINE” light – we’ve been trained to ignore some signs. Check Engine = where we are currently.
• Human – Human communication and Machine to Machine communication is smooth and easy. We have that down. Human to machine and Machine to Human are where the troubles remain
• Web2.0’s interaction revolution - “Trying to get our machines to be more human, every single day”
• Demo Eliza; discuss turing test. Chat bots etc, often used for live help. Changing back to natural language; machines speaking ‘human’
• Lifestyle focused companies – TiVo, Google, jetBlue, Apple :: big, friendly, people love the interfaces. Excelled by creating friendly, human interfaces and interaction processes
• “Friendly 2.0” Machines should talk to us like they’re real; make us more comfortable. Causes spread of word through positive experience.
• “Google Just Works”
• Google develop a culture around innovation. Pride themselves on brilliant ppl, allowed freedom to “do what they want to do” – 1 day per week innovation time has become legendary in the industry.
• IPOD: personality lifestyle driven – not just a mobile device
• Fluid user experience. Ubiquitus control over the devices in our daily lives.
• Practical vs. Emotional – how can you design an appro. Exp.
• some mobile devices are expensive and hard to use, but because aesthetically pleasing, we use it every day; develop Emotional attachment to it
• Emotional connections cause dedication; potentially addiction

• getting information off internet like trying to sip from firehose
• Practical – convenient, learnable, cost effective. Functional; meets needs; trustworthy.
• Emotional – intuitive, customized, unique,, aesthetic, Meets desires, Compelling – leads to addictive behaviour. Kelly trying to understand what leads to addictive behaviour? myspace, flickr, second life... all proven addictive.
• Companies in silicon valley trying to create addictive behaviour. Ritual != addiction Ritual most important thing you can create for cutomers, employees etc. Can’t create addiction, can create ritual

Mobile (r)evolution

• 116billion US per year mobile devices 88% goes to carrier, rest into data/content providers
• nterviews revealed no longer only early adopters watching mobile TV.
• opportunities for billions of dollars from mobile market; mobile infiltration quit high approx 70-80% US
• Lifestyle design is important – huge open window; coming quickly - most popular phones in Europe very different from most popular in US – different UI’s etc.
• “2.0 is cute” – 2.0 is about not freaking us out with the technology – friendly
• More servies integrated into our lives, our pref’s – exciting when it works, keep trying when it doesn’t
• Transfer great online exp to mobile
• Content – create an experience out of your content; not just pile it on and hope for the best
• location based services ie dodgeball.com – not everyone wants that level of info available about them
• lots of interest in location based services; GMaps being a posterchild of the web2.0 experience
• “mobile phones are the new cool”
• south korea is largest mobile device market.

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The following posts will be in raw note form for now so as to allow me to keep up with the presentations while getting as much online as possible. When I get some more this evening I will come back and expand upon the points.

Caution: falling character debris...

[tags] wdo6, raw notes[/tags]

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Virtual reality isn’t the television of the future, it is the telephone of the future

Background

• We’re in a time and place where anything is possible; much like at the birth of the World Wide Web
• We are at least 98% identical to chimpanzees. We have now found the gene that gives us a bigger brain than our chimp cousins. Both chimps and humans are incredibly social creatures.
• The social qualities we have as human beings are essential to our lives and our origins
• Social modelling happens in the neocortex of the brain; we have more neocortex than any other animal.
• The Dunbar Number: the number of people you can hold in your head is directly relative to the size of neocortex. The reason we have a bigger brain than chimpanzees is to hold a bigger social network in our heads […] that’s what being human is all about.

Virtual Social Networks

• Much like a shark swimming in the ocean, if a social network is no longer fed fresh data, it dies.
• Social networks need our time to survive. In the 21st century, time is the non-renewable resource.
• What if my social network could be used as a spam filter? […] if it’s not from a third degree contact, it’s highly suspicious
• Email forwarding of funny links is an ad-hoc social network. The essence of our electronic experience is that we find things, we filter things and we forward them. The three F’s
• For every minute you’re online you create masses of data; the data shadow. All this vital information is being poured on the floor. We don’t currently save it to utilize later
• As beautiful as the Mashup is; it’s not nearly enough We need to comprehensively cross reference every bit of data we create to make maximum use of that data.
• The Web is the universal glue
• The mobile phone is a nexus for human communication The phone has become seamlessly integrated into our lives. Many say that don’t have an emotional attachment to their phone; drop it down a sewer drain and see if they still feel the same way.
• Phones (via Bluetooth) could easily be used to map physical world relationships and social networks. This has already been achieved at an experimental level. The automatic mapping of real world relationships done this way opens the floodgates to mapping richer layers of complex relationships. The goal being to help you navigate a noise-rich environment.
• The street finds it’s own use for things, uses its makers never intended

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