Well it’s getting around to that time of year when conference submission are due.

Now, I go through this process a few times a year, it doesn’t change.

What to submit?

When you take into consideration the process and the timeliness of the talks, blogs on the topic and  similar talks, is it really worthwhile.

I often wonder if the benefits outweigh the outlay of time and effort.  Does your talk really change things, even just a little, for the people attending.

The Speaker

It’s not just getting a submission together that is the hard part, the entire process can be time intensive.

• Finding a Topic.

  First off, I struggle to find a topic,  I think other people will find interesting.    Often I find that my short list of ideas has been done already at a US conference or I know some who can/will do the topic a lot better than I can.

• Referencing Your Case Studies.

  Often I’m not blessed with big budget projects. There tends to be a large number of short intense projects, mainly it’s just mundane stuff that we all do.  The ones that work but the outcome isn’t ground breaking.

• Submission.

  Pitching a project to a client usually isn’t an issue, but to your peers, this has to be perfect, more than prefect.  So  putting together the submission can be a lot of work.

• Preparing the Talk.

  If you get the nod to speak, it doesn’t end there.   Often for people that are freelancing writing that talk is going to be on your own time, while you are doing it you’re not earning money.  Usually I find that it takes a minimum of an hour per minute of the talk. Hence 40 minutes of talk is a minimum of 40 hours to prepare.

• Presenting.

  Presenting for me isn’t an issue, conference audiences are a lot friendlier than any board room. Anyway I really enjoy presenting.

• Post Presentation.

  After the presentation is done, there is the post  presentation work, like a blog write up, assuming you are not reusing it.

Now that’s a lot of work if you add it all up.  Do you think it’s worth it?

The Organiser

Now lets consider the process from the organisers view.

Consider most conferences organise their program at least 6 months, sometimes 8 months out from the event.   This means the talk submissions are at least 6-8 months old by the time they are presented.   In most cases talks will be about case studies that happened around 6 months before submission, so when the conference happens the talk is working off things based on 12-18 months ago.

This means that in the intervening time, options can change, similar talks will be presented, the presenter can even change their view on what they submitted.

It’s a constant on going issue.  Sometimes I know conference organisers will leave 20% of the program to fill at the last minute, selecting the best “current topics”, and hoping they can find a speaker available.

Or the speaker may hedge, and put in a projects that haven’t finished, in the blind hope they conclude well before the conference happens.

The Question

You know when you attend a conference, you really want to ensure that every session you see is of maximum value.

Now when you are speaking at a conference in some ways you would often prefer to see the person you are opposing on the program – why does this always happen!

Makes you think is it really worth the effort  all that above) when you maybe taking up a slot another speaker you really want to see could be presenting in, After all most good conferences only have a limited number of sessions.

It comes down to present or relax and watch someone else’s preso goodness?

Webstock 2012 is my second Webstock, my first being for Webstock 2011, but you know what the people at Webstock are so friendly that it feels like I have been going forever.

What I like about this conference it isn’t overloaded with streams, vendors or the like, it’s just kept simple, one main stream, and a minor secondary stream for a limited number of sessions.

With a range of the best speakers from around the world, talking about their passions.  It’s like every talk is a keynote, yes the quality is that high.

What is cool about Webstock is the attention to details from the bags, to the table layout, the coffee or the wonderfully different food. There is an under current that Tash and Mike love Webstock with all their heart and it shows.

The funniest thing is that you talk to New Zealanders about Webstock and they are often surprised that people like me will come from the other side for Australia to just “old Webstock”.

They have no idea what they have here – a world class conference on their doorstep.

There is a  complete set of sketchnotes for Webstock 2012 available.

Kathy Sierra – MBU: Building the Minimum Badass User

I have been waiting to hear Kathy speak for a long time.

Her style is  purposeful, however it’s not very interactive, more a preaching from the expert.  I suspect she gets very nervous talking.  Note Kathy also gets a little ranty on gamification, understandable, but it’s sometimes a little overboard in my view.

That’s not to say what she said wasn’t without merit.  Kathy was discussing ways to improve the potential experience of a product or service focusing on making the user feel “awesome” as a result of their experience.

This is achieved by transforming the user into an expert in the opinion of their peers. It’s about allowing users to transform their vision of the world into a high resolution one.

I attended the workshop on the same topic – which I frankly hate, as I feel ripped off a little having the talk the same as the workshop.  You know after doing the workshop for a day, I’m still not sure HOW to implement Kathy’s idea of instilling the expert knowledge into the user.

Jeremy Keith – Of Time and the Network

I hadn’t seen Jeremy talk in ages, I had forgotten what a good speaker he is.  After personally greeting just about every attendee through the door that morning Jeremy mused over our pretext that the “internet is forever”, and the information will always be available.

It was a good talk, I could nearly feel a number of my archivist friends tapping me on the shoulder during this talk saying “told you so… nothing is forever”.

Jeremy walked up through the information recording mediums, the possibilities, the failures; and the way it all seems to die.

The only way to maintain the ageing web is for us to take charge and at least personally archive it.  We need to think for the longer term not 5 years but 20, 30, 50 years.  Very inspiring talk. Maybe I should bring back some of my very old sites.

Danah Boyd – Danah dreams of Valentino

Danah is another speaker I had been looking forward to seeing speak.

She talked on the culture of fear that we are unknowingly designing.  How by social media and our desire to completely fill our attention span we  are now pushing the boundaries in order to meet this need. Problem is the “news” resource is very scarce.  To the point we now push into the unethical.

Technology was meant to bring us all enlightenment, when in now all we have is Governments promoting fear and trying to control the information flow.

We really need to take stock. Stop, take care, filter the bubble of information that we design. Build it so we can control it, because everything being visible is not always good, we socially need to have some boundaries. Privacy is important. We should not discount it.

This talk made me think are we opening people up too much to the web, maybe some privacy is a good thing.

Estelle Weyl – Mobile: Don’t Break the Web

I was to in two minds to go to Estelle’s talk or not.   I’m glad I did go.   It make me realise I really miss building stuff!  Now to find some cool projects, where I can build and design.

Estelle present an honest, non zealot based presentation on mobile performance issues. The type that you will encounter with an average site, the gold is that she showed how to get round them with various  tricks  and hacks.

The little hack, for example, for embedding locally  on one page and saving to local storage was ideal.

Lot’s of goodness in this talk, some givens, but overall very informative.  Watch out for the video.

Erin Kissane – Little Big Systems

Erin presented a talk that I didn’t expect.  It’s wasn’t something I was against, just it surprised me.

She talked on the value of craftsmanship.

How we often are we just  cookie cutting and churning out products without providing the love the passion and engagement. Soulless things that lack the care to attention to detail of a product that has been sweated over.

It is easier in the digital world to just stream out a product without due regard to the quality. Cut and paste is almost the enemy.

Discussion focused on the corporate CMS and why this beast has been allowed to exist.  Solutions lying in making project managers learn to love quality and the craftsmanship of their industry.

Nick Mihailovski – Acting on Data

Okay I’ll be frank I didn’t like Nick’s talk.  I considered it to be the lowest point of Webstock.

Nick talked on using Google Analytics and aligning it with your business KPIs and goals.   He showed the highlights of the Google Analytics functionality.  Pointing towards little used elements like error message pages, conversation paths and social media sources. Personally there was nothing inspiring or new here.

There wasn’t much to this talk, it should not have been on the main stage. I really hope this wasn’t a paid speaker slot.

Matt Haughey – Lessons from a 40 year old

Matt Haughey talked on the lessons he has learnt over the years.   This was a great talk in my view, very much honestly from the heart.   I found myself nodding in agreement with a great deal of what Matt was talking about.

He talking on spending too much time at work and not focusing on family.  Oh, Matt I know all about that one.  He reflected that you really need to focus on the smaller aspects and things that are important, the money will come, but really if it does, you don’t really need it anyway.

He took the view that unfunded startups are like unsigned bands, more control, more freedom, more agile.  Cashed up startups are like signed bands – you sell your soul, become a brand.

Very sobering talk.

Lauren Beukes – Kinking Reality

Up till this point I had never heard of or read anything by Lauren Beukes.  I’m no longer a big SciFi reader, I leave that to my sister.   So when Lauren took the stage I had no idea what she was going on about for a little while into the talk.  Then it became a little clearer.

Presenters please take note – your audience is not full of fans, some of us have no idea about who you are, assume nothing!

I must say Lauren’s story was amazing, the lengths she went to in order to capture the realism, the feeling for her stories is a template for writers everywhere.

She used her journalistic skills to the maximum to find the rigth people and circumstances to mirror the situations and environments for her fictional world.

It was the attention to the details that mattered to Lauren, and this talk reflected that passion.   It also presented a good number or storytelling methods that would be very useful for any UX professional.

Amy Hoy – Change the Game

Amy did a wonderful job given the short notice she had to step up as a relief speaker.

She talked on the 3 invisble rules that are all around us.  How we try our best to avoid having to think, how you just apply social and proceedual patterns that we have learnt in place of having to think.

The rules focused on being conservative, doing what you are expected to do, and getting the approval of your peers.

Everything that I personal can’t stand. Which is why I enjoyed this talk as Amy systematically broke the rules down and destroyed them.

Amy suggests we just find the smaller paths, less todden and take those, break invisible rules.

Matthew Inman – How to get a buttcrapload of people to read what you write

Matthew is the guy behind the web comics by Oatmeal.   He reminds me of a good number of my old cartoonist or comic artist friends.  The quiet disposition, a somewhat shyness.

His story was filled with the under dog going against the system, and yet focusing very clearly on just making things good, funny and likeable.  Making it reactionary, short and snappy… maybe with more pop.. and pink, don’t forget pink!

Matthew was the last talk for the day, he stood between us and beer.  Mind you he is a PITA to sketchnote, hard without copying his work.

Also note to organisers it gets dark in the main hall, not good for taking notes or drawing.

Jared Spool – The Anatomy of a Design Decision

Jared had the hangover slot, the first talk of day two. When everyone is a little tired, and the coffee, even a triple shot, just doesn’t cut it.

He took us on a journey through the various types of design styles from unintentional design to experience focused design (trendy new Jared speak for UX), with an explanation of  their  strengths and what makes them work. All this will a side trip to Lings Cars.

The core of Jared’s talk is the comparison of informed design vs process design.   Process design is the one where you use a methodology, produce guidelines, processes, and methods, or just dogma on how to do things.  Well according to Jared’s research this just fails.

Our major problem we are in the corporate world using  process based approach. Going from failure to failure.

The better way is to empower people with knowledge on how to react to a design problem.

You do this by teaching them the relevant techniques and even tricks or hacks around problems, help them be informed how to overcome the issue themselves.  This works mainly because you have to understand the problem to over come it.

You are not just blindly applying a methodology “hoping” it will work.

Gabriella Coleman – In Lulz We Trust

OMG – this talk that Gabriella gave was very intense.

I had to focus really closely to this one to even follow the context and the understand it.  This was a talk that I think you would get extra information out of  by re-listening to it twice.

Her talk was on Anonymous and the  LULZ  of the movement.  It dealt with the aspect of the real and the unreal or shadow players in Anonymous and their overall base desire to maintain the LULZ.

She systematically recounted the take down of Visa and Mastercard in operation payback, as well as the Church of Scientology, and the Arab Summer.  Amazing what a few well placed DDOS attacks and hacks can do.

It was interesting to see the chaotic Anonymous thinking and multiple headed hyrda approach to things, and yet they didn’t present a solution to all the issues, just disrupting things such that we have time to rethink on the issues being controlled by government or big corporates.

It will be very interesting to see the direction Anonymous takes as a “fractured” movement going forward.

Scott Hanselman – It’s not what you read, it’s what you ignore

Scott’s talk was one of those timely reminders that you are a slave to your own workflow.

His rules for dealing with workflow, were a little GTD, but overall they were interesting.

Simple things like don’t  check you’re email in the morning, don’t look at stuff you are CC on, in fact just file it.  Only reply with a 5 sentence reply for emails, use templated replies – yes it just saves time.

If you are going something and it’s not improving your life – drop it.

Was a very much a wake up call type of a talk, certainly made me rethink the way I was doing things.

Wilson Miner – When We Build

Having seen Wilson’s talk before (online), I was keen to see him live, and really see if the talk had been updated any.  Would this talk be as good as a legendary TED talk.

It was a good talk. Nothing amazingly new from a design or ethical direction perspective.

If you are a developer it maybe new.  But a lot of the bigger picture aspects of this talk I have been considering for years.

Wilson took us up through the worlds of why we design the way we do, to reflect our image, our totems.

How we have progressed in our interfaces from paper to screens. How everything we interactive design for and our use of an interface has to be learnt. Usually by investigation, trial and error.

In the world we produce we have been running headlong into a stream of shorter and shorter time periods for  society to learn and except a medium or device. From the radio 40 years to Youtube, just 6 months.

What we need to do when designing is remember that sometimes things are complex for a reason.

It’s not about what you know, but what you don’t know; we have to see the world as it really is not as we have learn and expect.

We are transforming design, in small prototyped live steps, shifting the enviroment from a world of paper to that of screens, always on.

Rob Malda – Slashdot — the Rise and Fall

Rob had an interesting journey, telling the tale of the Rise and Fall of SlashDot.

I had no idea on SlashDot’s humble beginnings and the way it was basically held together by tape and chewing gum (well almost) in the early years.

This really appealed to me.  Especially as I remember the industry very well back then.  Before we become professional.  It really was just seat of your pants stuff, with servers under desks and the like.

Was amazing to watch the unfolding of SlashDot’s slide into stagnation and the rise of the social networks around SlashDot.

Does just go to prove you can survive the fire hose.  Oh and Cache is your friend.

Adam Lisagor – Clients make the world go Round

I had a long chat with Adam at the after party.  A really humble and nice guy.  Almost everything Adam talked about I have done, and learnt these lessons the hard way over the last 17 years in this industry.

The number of times I have taken that project on just for the money, with no love or motivation than the payday at the end is just countless.   He is just right you have to “eat the dog food” or not bother.

The more we liaise and collaborate with the client, the better the overall outcome.  You should expect things to fail, as we all do, but when you have a good liaison with the client, that is being in constant communication, any failure just becomes a problem for both of you to solve.

Alex recommends when researching and talking to clients, trust answers, but question when it’s an opinion, knowing the difference is the skill.

The big one was – Don’t Lie.

Make it personal, business is personal, it’s about people, it’s abbot emotions, feelings, no matter how cold people try and be in the board room.

Just know when you have to stop, and walk away.

Adam also suggested – it’s just about telling the story.

Michael B Johnson – Making Movies is Harder than it Looks: Building Tools for Telling Stories

Okay Mike’s talk is not videoed, I don’t think it even has an audio recording for various copyright reasons.  But you know I’m okay with that.   It was a really good talk from a genuinely nice guy.

Mike walked us through the 3 ways to make a movie and how we could tell a compelling story.  Reminding us it’s in the attention to the detail, and the design pain is just temporary compared to the “suck that is forever” from a badly released product, that you rushed.

The way to make a project work is to have a plan A, and a plan B. You always need a backup plan.

He suggested the best teams are the ones where you have fun, and surround yourself with heroes, as then other teams will  then defend and support your team.

Jenn Lim and Tony Hsieh – Delivering Happiness

Before this talk I had no idea of the book – Delivering Happiness and the company Zappo.   It was particularly telling when both speakers ask who had read the book, a few hands went up, or when asked who had used Zappos, even less hands.

Still the talks were  entertaining.

Jenn talked around the experience of the book and it’s promotional vehicle.  This was was a little flat, as I had NO idea what the book was.

She assumed (again) I would know all about it.   It was interesting, but I still to this day have no idea what they did or what it was about, and really I’m just chalking this one up as, Huh!?  I’m not about to waste my time on this book, if the author can’t even tell me about it.

Now Tony’s talk was very direct he just explained Zappo’s service and culture ethos as a company, this was very enlightening.

Showing a company that is committed to its core ethical values of delivering a WOW service.

They haven’t chased the cash dream, but instead ensure their customers had the best service ever.  Very simple.

Derek Handley – Doing Good and Well

Derek’s talk was the closing keynote, not that Webstock really has keynotes.

He made us question if we had the scale of our issues in the right order.

When we are on our death bed, it’s not that money, but a meaningful life with purpose that we crave.  That level of personal success.

Yet we have our ecomonics measuring finances and resources, we have fallen into the trap that business is a shareholder profit only.  The aspect of service just seems to be gone, lost for shareholder profits.

We have forgotten that service and communities are all interlinked.  The sad thing is that we have also forgotten that history we judge this generation as we are the most documented generation in history. They will know all we do wrong and right, as we have been telling them all about it.

It’s simple according to Derek just live life for a real self satisfying purpose. Something to think about.

Webstock 2013

Will I be back for Webstock in 2013? Finances and project schedules permitting I should be back, might even do a little touring around.

If you haven’t put Webstock in the your calendar for 2013, I suggest you do so.

We now have the famous Webstock card game and webstock bingo in full force, the second day starts a little later, just as well considering the night before.

After an amazing reception that seemed to go on forever,  and a relaxing dinner with friends it was time to pick it all up again the hustle back to the Town Hall for WebStock part II.

So far the conference had been all it was promised to be.  To say it had been anything short of entertaining and informative would be a lie. In fact it was shaping up to be much more than that.

Already for me Webstock had a vibe, the feeling of community, of making the impossible possible.

This essence is something a good number of other conferences have lost over the years.  Somehow Mike, Tash and their team have managed to retain it.  So continuing on from Webstock Day One.

Marco Arment - Contrary to Popular Beliefs

Marco Arment is the founder from Instapaper.

The major thing I took away from Marco’s talk was that we should never build anything for ourselves, not for us geeks.  As we are the technocrats, our needs wants and desires are often warped and not reflective of the mainstream pubic audience.

If you you want a product to appeal beyond the geek web community, you just have to make it useful for everyone.

David McCandless -Information is Beautiful

Now David was one speaker I was very eager to see.   He is responsible for the the Information is Beautiful site and a series of books on information design.

David mused on the complexity of data and how we need to simplify it, and how as designers it’s our job to achieve this.   However he pointed to the downfalls of making it too complex and unreadable for the sake of design.  This was a very hard talk to sketchnote..

Glenda Sims - Practical Accessibility Testing

Glenda Sims is a fellow accessibility professional, her talk was particularly of interest to me, mainly to see if I was on the right track.

Glenda focused on automated accessibility testing tools, a subject that I have toyed around with via using several in house developed bots (none of which are every going to be ready for commercial release)  It was good to see Glenda’s viewpoint, and her passion for the Open Web.

Jason Cohen - A Geek Sifts Through the Bullshit

Jason is another one of those honest no nonsense speakers that Webstock  seems to famous for.  He talked on ignoring the traditional business model.

Consider the web and subsequent ubiquitous computing media to be so far really outside the old school mold that the old business rules just don’t apply.   Not really heard this type of talk since the Dot Com boom.   Still interesting approach.

Peter Sunde - The Pirate Bay of Penzance

Peter and his crew are rebels, that is very clear.   There are standing firm within the localised law of their respective countries and using this to bring about change.

It’s extremely obvious that nature of the Pirate Bay has and will continue to change the way the traditional media publishers operate.

Peter did introduce Flattr to the audience a random money distribution system that allows for tipping of people as required but with a social monetary distribution.

Sadly I was interrupted by a phone call halfway through this talk. One to watch the video of.

Michael Lopp - An Engineering Mindset

Michael presented a very interesting view that there are basically three type of people on a project development team, designers, developers and dictators.

Each has a separate function and they are all needed, but over all the dictator leads the chase adding direction, killing things off, and providing velocity for  moving forward.

It’s an interesting concept, one at least worth exploring in more detail.

Tom Coates  - Everything the Network Touches

Tom Coates reworked a presentation previously delivered at SxSW.  Still it was entertaining and did make you think, that maybe the web, as we know it is dying, slowly but surely.

It’s being replaced, not by mobile computing, that too is dying, fast, but by something greater, an infrastructure of services that provide information across all media and structures.

You know we can’t see it, as we are too close;  but I think Tom maybe onto something, we are laying the ground for a society of information connectivity beyond the web in the fabric of our lives, the scale to which we haven’t really  conceived.

Scott McCloud - Comics: A Medium in Transition

This is another presentation I was waiting for and Scott didn’t disappoint.

It was very interesting to see how the comics industry has tried to translate it self into the digital channel. With success and failure.   It really just pointed towards, there are no rules, no answers, only dreams and maybe solutions.   We just have to find them…

Merlin Mann

I’m not publishing the sketchnote for this talk.

I have from time to time watched Merlin Mann from a distance with a fascination. A fascination one has for a horrible train wreck happening in slow motion.

A lot of people considered Merlin’s talk clever and a good wrapup of the conference –  I’m not in that group.

The talk was rambling, it relooped about five times (at least) onto the same topics, as if we couldn’t understand them.  It was depressing, it was everything you don’t want as a final talk for a conference.

For the record he talked on facing your fears and that nothing really bad is going to happen anyway, and we’re all equally scared at one point it our lives.

The one saving grace was Amanda Palmer doing the gig for the after party, that was a great up note, and a major highlight.

In Summary

Webstock is a small conference compared to the massive ones in the US, it has from 500-700 people attending.  This year was the first year it has been capped and the ticket numbers restricted.    There wasn’t four or five tracks, at best there were two tracks.  The speakers however are very entertaining, informative and really do make you think or go explore for more details on the topics.

It’s the limited high quality speakers, the nature of community, the venue and the attention to detail that makes Webstock a leading conference with that killer vibe.

It’s not a highly technical conference in general, catering for the generalist of the web industry.   In terms of hit or miss with speakers and sessions, in comparison to other conferences, Webstock presented itself well, with all but one exception was very good value for money.

Yes it’s worth the time and money,  mark Webstock in your calendar for next year.

There is this gem of a conference that happens every year in Wellington, New Zealand at the end of February it’s – Webstock.   Now I have been hearing about it time and time again and how amazing it is.

However I hear that about a lot of  conference, to often they don’t live up to the hype.  You attend and they just let you down with the corporatisation.

Webstock for me is just at the wrong end of the year, being post Christmas, you have to make the decision to go in the quiet period of January when money can be tight. Hence I usually miss Webstock.

This year was different, this year it all came together and I finally got to attend Webstock.

The following is my sketchnotes and views on the talks and conference in general.

Frank Chimero – Digital Campfire

I attended a pre conference workshop with Frank, he struck me as a talented, young designer, if not a little shy.  For some reason I just didn’t join the dots as to who Frank was or his kickstarter project – The Shape of Design (which I contributed too).

Yeah it does happen, sadly too many times of late.   As you know I’m not that big on following designers, or wank sites like dribbble.  So Frank was off the radar.  Still Frank was, down to earth, honest and a generally  nice guy.

His talk was a perfect starter for Webstock. Frank projected the web to just be stories and storytelling and prompted us all to just make the stories wonderful, hijack the format and take the content from the cold corporate nightmares to the warmth of the campfire stories.

Michael Koziarski - Planet Webstock

Michael is local Wellington Ruby developer, and a core Rails team member, something, again I was totally unaware of.

Michael had a simple message, it’s not hard to make  coding fun, there are just a few simple rules that you have to follow.

Follow the rules and maybe you can avoid the 83.8% project failure rate!   In summary – use small teams, hire top talent, use best technology, use most suitable technology, iterate and ship small items.

Christine Perfetti –  Adventurous Usability Techniques: Novel Approaches for the Seasoned Pro

I know of Christine Perfetti, I was a little wary of this talk, as too often of late UX or Usability talks have provided no new content for me.  I suspected Christines would be the same.   However for non UX people this talk would have been gold, as I expected it to be.

The talk gave a good summary of 5 techniques that can help any team with usability issues.  The kicker was simple – “Go out and make your team watch real users”.

Mark Pilgrim - The Future of the Web: where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Mark’s talk on the Future of the Web was a very lighthearted approach to the future of front end development areas for the web.  He rolled off the features HTML5 and its groupies after giving as a whirlwind history of HTML.

No new information here for me, but it did make me think about the way we do things and allow legacy technology to hold us back.    Mind you I noted he didn’t mention ARIA elements causing screen reader issues when used with HTML5 with Internet Explorer.   Still it was an entertaining talk.

Jason Webley - Portrait of an Artist as an Independent Musician

Jason Webley is a musician from Seattle.  He does everything, he has no support staff, no signed label, no contract, no manager.   He is the modern basis for the old school wandering bard.

I have a lot of time for people like Jason who have taken to independent road and are reshaping the music industry one step at a time.

Jason was an inspiration, with his can do attitude and willingness to rely on his online community most of the time to support or assist him.  This was frankly refreshing, honest and humbling.  He’s touring Australia at the moment, sadly I miss his Perth gig.

Jason Santa Maria - On Web Typography

Jason is one of those easily approachable people, in fact most of the speakers at Webstock were like that, he mucks around with typekit and other minor  ventures and stuff.

His talk on typography ran over the basics with an undercurrent to practically choosing a good font. Things like looking at the overall section of text as a whole,  not using pre styled (baked) typefaces, look at the contrast of design and the quality of the type.

It was a pleasant reminder that type like content is critical component to the overall experience on a site.

Kristina Halvorson - Content/Communication

Kristina in some parts is “famous” for writing that book on content strategy (which you should go read).

Her talk was very assuming in that like Frank Chimero’s talk it centred its theme on Wall-e.   Basically she discussed that we don’t look at the content early enough in our design/development process, and that we are forgetting that content is very critical in the process.

And yet we still product mountains of crappy content online.   Mainly because we have no content strategy.   I totally agree with Kristina.

John Gruber - The Gap Theory of UI Design

John Gruber, I’m told is a bit of a legendary blogger.

Okay that automatically puts him off my radar, not one to follow the fanboi sheep.   So I wasn’t expected much from John at all.

Well I was surprised, his talk was upbeat and discussed the ‘Fear of Change’ that can occur in User Interface development, with direct references to Apple’s OS interface design.

He showed have having rules is good, but in reality you need to break those rules to move forward and  bring creativity back into your design.

Doug Bowman - Delivering Delight

It’s interesting sometimes you know exactly what a speaker is going to talk about before they do it.

Doug’s talk was just like that, it was a well delivered professional talk, the core was all about moving beyond usability and designing to delight people, making change easy to cope with and by delivering a delightful experience turning your customers into passionate advocates.

Amanda Palmer

By this stage I was all sketchnoted out.   So sorry Amanda no sketchnote for you.

That said Amanda presented a welcomingly honest and thought provoking talk on the realistic state and direction of the music industry.   Which is undergoing a dramatic leveling of the artists status.

Amanda dreamed of a way to make it easy to pay for things over the web, as easy as dropping a coin into a buskers hat.    Like Jason I have a lot of time for trailblazers like Amanda that are bringing the music back to the people and away from the corporate labels.

So ended Webstock Day One, but wait there is more goodness continued with Webstock 2011 Day Two.

I’m sitting here in a hotel, in Wellington, the day before some of the workshops start for Webstock. Which is a conference I have been iching to get to for some time.

Now conferences can be a fantastic events, they can be very stimulating mentallly and socially. You can gain a great deal of insight, new ideas and even an increased depth of professional understanding.

They can also be a complete waste of time. Which one they are is totally up to you. The organisers, can make the conference the best in the world, but the value aspect all comes down to the individual – you.

Picking the Right Conference

The first thing is to pick a conference that will have at least one of two benefits:

1. The conference is with your peers, or
2. At least in an aspect of your work that you feel needs improvement or you just want to keep upto date on, or
3. The conference is centred around a potential client audience.

The later is especially true if you are Freelancing or running your own team. Even more so if you are prepared to speak. For example – if you specialise in Non for Profits or the like, then any conferences centreing around NFP would be a good idea to attend at least once and a while.

Mind you it’s no good going to a developer conference, for instance, if you are a designer, unless you are looking to hook up with some developers, even then I would just recommend you rock up to your local developer meetups instead.

Now you have the right conference selected, it is very important to maxise your investment of your time and money, again especial if you are paying for it yourself.

Remember a conference could be costing you from $100-$150 per hour to attend. And that’s not including lost time and productivity.

There are a number of key things you can do to maximise your time spent at the conference:

Relax

In order to retain the most information it’s important that you relax and don’t stress too much over the latest project or other work matters you have put aside to attend the conference.

Get some Sleep

Okay, we have all been guity of this one, now this is especially important if you are attending workshops, which can often be very intense. Ensure you get a good nights sleep, maybe more than you normally do. You want to be fresh and alert, remember falling asleep in a session is just burning money.

Take Notes

Unless your have a photograpic memory, note taking from the written form, peronsalised shorthand, blogging, twittering or sketch notes is very important. By taking notes you have a higher chance of retaining the information as you process it. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you will have time to review the presentations or audio recordings later, because you won’t.

Review your notes

After you have returned home, or even the evening after you have taken the notes, review them, read over them, remember what the speak said. If your notes are good, you will even be able to picture the speaker delivering the talk.

Share

Share your knowledge from the conference with others. Share your notes with others that attended. Give a talk on what you learnt. I finding having to speak on a topic is a fantastic way to re-enforce what you have just learnt. As you will want to ensure you have all the facts right.

Talk to Strangers

You know those people you sat next to. Did you talk to them during the conference. Did you introduce yourself to them. Striking up a conversation with a complete stranger is hard. However you at least have a common interest, you are in the same session.

Socialise and Network

It’s very important to socialise and network at a conference, often the most insights comes from talking to your peers. It’s true, the best converations are in the corridor. I have often skipped sessions in favour of continuing an in depth discussion with a speaker or a colleague I have just met. Also arrive early, maximise the networking time.

Picking the Right Groups

From my experience I have found, you will find five groups of people in the breaks at conferences. Picking the right group to talk to is critical.

1. The people that all know each other and will often huddle close and talk in a closed circle, watch for the closed in huddled shoulders. Avoid this group.
2. The work colleauges that are all talking shop and will instantly go silent the moment a stranger enters the group. Can be hard to break into.
3. The groups of two people talking, This is often a personal conversation so I wouldn’t interrupt these, ever. The exception here is when one of the people is making visual signs to escape.
4. The mixed group of people open to strangers joining them, that is not 1 or 2.
5. And finally the lone person, often they are just shy (like you) so why not approach them and collect a group of them.

Go to Dinner

Like networking in the breaks, a conference often doesn’t have to end after the offical events. Again often the most interesting conversations can happen in the small hours of the morning, drinking coffee on a hotel balcony. Okay this doesn’t work on developer conferences they tend to end as soon as the offical events windup.

Talk to the Speakers

You know what, not a lot of people engage in meaningful conversations with the speakers. Despite some being old hands at the circuit, they are still people too and will often be open to discussing their topic of interest.

Ask Questions

You know people do hold back asking questions at any speaking event. it’s human nature, they don’t want to appear as not knowing the subject or understanding. Asking questions during the session, if time allows, can be critical. As it’s often during these adhoc questions that the speakers will reveal their special gems of wisdom.

Move Session

If the session you are in just isn’t working for you, then get up and move.

Now if you are in the front row this can be a little embarassing, but there are ways of doing it. Better you get the most value out of the conference and goto one of the alternative sessions. What you can do is – fake you mobile ringing (which will be on vibrate) take it, wince, pack and leave. At worst you’ll get a comment from the speaker “about to much work or something”.

Don’t eat too Much

This may seem a little strange, but often at a conference there is a lot of wonderful food, and it’s usally of a very high standard. There is a big temptation to eat lots, espeically at lunch. The result is the after lunch snooze. That’s $100 down the drain.

Travel Badly Arrive Early

If you travel badly and have trouble adjusting to time zones, then I would recommend arriving a few days early to help you settle in. It’s no good arriving at the conference on the red-eye, as by day two you are just going to crash and burn, falling asleep most of the morning or afternoon away.

Hold off on Work

This one can be hard. I’m very guity of this one. Try and reduce your workload leading up to the conference so your focus can be 100% on the conference and the people attending. It’s no good if you’re mind is elsewhere on work and not the conference at hand.

Now I know there are going to do some more points that I have missed,I can just feel they are not all there. So help me out here and just add them below.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking at the Edge of the Web conference in Perth on UX Architecture for the Small Guy.   I will do a brief write up on the conference shortly, so standby on that one, but for now on with the talk.

Why this Topic

Too often I have been to various conferences and I have heard from some very experienced UX people discussing numerous case studies of projects.   All of them have one thing in common – large budgets or large teams.   Frankly these are not the projects that happen from day to day in Perth.  But they appear to be the mainstay of the UX designer, one gets the impression they are the general bread and butter in some parts of the world.

It is from this frustration and the lack of direct application of IA or UX in general for smaller business projects that made me rethink my design approach a number of years ago.   Why couldn’t we apply UX principles to SME projects or was it just for the larger projects?

I asked around the UX community, no one seemed to be willing to discuss applying UX to smaller projects.    I did have one amusing conversation in which the other party considered a small project being our gross income for the year.

Hence talk was born from this lack of a reality check and the need for information that could be applied on day to day basis in the real world.

So what was Covered

This presentation is aimed at people not familiar with UX Design and UX practitioners who have not considered using User Experience Design tools and techniques on smaller projects.  In a way this talk was also a lead-in for the other UX based talks that where on throughout the conference.

The talk itself dealt with the way we are still using a simple waterfall based process for SME projects, and why we are doing it – suggesting that maybe an Agile UX approach would be a better way to work.

Based on my years of experience of designing user experiences for small business I presented a dramatically shortened list of tools and techniques, for a UXD process focused on smaller projects, down from the 50 odd usually available.    Some of the tools I have discounted you maybe surprised as to why I have cut them from the process

I also discuss what happens when we go with our “gut instinct” and ignore any user research, the outcome is very interesting indeed.  Finally I look at selling user experience, be it to your boss, a boardroom or just a SME business owner.   Without knowing how to sell UX any change in the way we do things is just going to be a waste of time.   So in a way this aspect is the critical element of this presentation.

I touch on a fair number of different topics in this talk.  To really do each topic justice I’m going to present then here over the next few weeks in a lot more detail than I presented at the Edge of the Web.

Also if you were fortunate enough to be in the audience of my presentation any feedback is most welcome.

Last few weeks have been a little busy here, returning from conferences, dealing with the project backlog, and preparing for my Edge of the Web talk.

Moving on now with my fifth and final interview in the 5×5 series with speakers from the Edge of the Web conference (that’s just over a week away) , this time I’m talking with James McCutcheon. James is presenting on Why the web doesn’t have an edge anymore, he is a self confessed leader in Microsoft development community with a passion for windows mobile and a serial entrepreneur .

MWNB:

At the Edge of the Web you will be talking about the blurring of the traditional boundaries. On the web we have seen the development of all sorts of dynamic user interfaces over the years; some revolutionary and some that are better of being left to history.  Still there has been a distinct increase in usability online. With SaaS we are seeing a rapid response to our user requests and increased functionality delivery. Given this, do you think that the web has had a large influence on people’s lack of tolerance for bad desktop software, resulting in an increased pressure in the desktop software development arena?

James:

I believe both platforms have influenced each other, the rise of ajax & javascript is a response to the need to give desktop user experiences on the web. Of course a html browser is flawed application platform so we are now starting to see products like Silverlight and Flex address this need. The designers have made their mark on the web world and now customers expecting that influence to be on the desktop world, no longer is grey and blue UI acceptable.

MWNB:

With the increased focus of late on gestural interfaces, and now with even a mouse with a tactile interface, do you see these as becoming common place in the future or are they just going to remain on the fringe of the tech community like say the PC graphics tablet.

James:

The home PC is morphing and no doubt with it will be the interaction interface will change, the simplicity is the killer application feature. I am sure we will see better interaction methods than keyboards.

MWNB:

Still on the theme of gestural interfaces, there has been a lot of debate over the lack of any tactile feedback of the current crop of flat panel interface devices. I have heard there is some development going on with the use of soft touch surface devices that can provide tactile feedback. What’s your take on this?

James:

I personally never miss tactile feedback, but a lot of people do so I am sure when it works there will be a lot of rejoicing but I don’t really believe that its there or not influences heavily on peoples buying decisions.

MWNB:

Just when we have got out heads around the desktop, the web and the mobile platforms, we are now facing the prospect of a fourth player in the form of Augmented Reality (AR) entering the interface arena. I’ve always wanted one of those 3D holo-keyboards, so tell me am I going to get my dream, or am I going to be disappointed?

James:

The addition of a digital compass in devices has seen this space grow rapidly, it is a useful interface for a particular style of application … I don’t think you will be disappointed I think the next 12-24 months will see some great advances in this space.

MWNB:

With the market segment for smart phones still only being in the hands of the tech geeks, the under 30′s and the early adopters is there really a point in developing mobile web sites for a mainstream  audience, beyond the usual simple site? Particularly if you consider that the bulk of mobile phones used within Australia don’t support a reasonable user experience for web browsing. In that they are aging WAP handsets, with a screen resolution of around 128px x 128px.

James:

Yes the mobile web world is only for a small vocal part of the community, but its a growing one and yes it will become mainstream. It then of course becomes a business decision of being early and stake your turf or try and catchup at a later date. I think with the right architecture and design this doesn’t add a massive overhead and worth staking that early spot on the mobile web world.

MWNB:

Thanks James, See you at the Edge of the Web

Now that two big conferences are out of the way,  it’s back to the 5 x 5 interview series of presenters speaking at the Edge of the Web conference.  This time in my fourth interview I’m talking with Simon Pascal Klein, Pascal is presenting on Beautiful Web Typography at the Edge of the Web conference in Perth, Western Australia next month – eeep! is it that close, less that 4 weeks away!

He is a self confessed standardista front end and graphic designer, who is equally at home in the world of print.  He is currently based in Canberra.

MWNB:

It’s nothing new to most web designers that typography on the web just sucks.  With the cripplingly limited number of cross platform typefaces available and the different ways font render on the browsers, it’s enough to just make a designer give up in frustration.   Discounting the use of the CSS property “font-face” that only leaves the hacks from Cufón  and  sIFR to allow some alternative relief .   Would you recommend these as solutions to overcome this problem or do you have some secret designer “Foo” hidden up your sleave?

Pascal:

With no intention of being controversial right off the bat, I guess I would have to say I reject the premise of the question. I don’t really accept that web typography sucks; sure, it could certainly be a lot better, and I have good hopes for the future, however a lot can be done with what is available to us currently, even as a web standards-devoted designer. We have a number CSS Fonts options available to us, e.g. font-weight, font-style, font-variant, which combined with line-height, sizing, widths, and the actual font declared offer a lot of variety. Remember Jeff Croft’s words: “[t]ypography is not picking a ‘cool’ font”, or any font for that matter.

MWNB:

Personally I’m not a fan of the pre-rolled CSS grids that are now all the rage in some circles.   Sure I know that they help people layout a web page, and they assist with getting the rhythm on a page right.  But still I suspect that they maybe allowing some designers to be lazy and not think outside the square of the CSS grid.   What’s your view on the use of CSS grids especially from a typography slant?

Pascal:

A grid exists to help provide structure and rhythm, and so directly relates to typography. Figuring out a good grid and then turning it into versatile, good CSS is effort, and in that regard I like the pre-rolled grids — they are great for those of us who want a grid but have time constraints, or just don’t want to worry too much about them. I personally don’t use them — I use my own grids. This comes down to my enjoyment in actual coming up with one and building it (yes, I probably ought to be clinical tested for some sort of mental ailment) and finding that the pre-rolled ones don’t do things the way I want them to (usually they are over-kills for the projects I’ve worked on).

MWNB:

The debate on property font-face and the resultant licensing issues over EOT and OTF  has divided the typography community, especially the Type Foundries.   Recent upgrades of FireFox has allow for the use of @font-face, and with a few CSS tweak’s its has now effectively remove the browser incompatibility.   Personally I wasn’t a fan of the use of @font-face but I have learned to love it.  As a typeface guru how do you see this state of play?

Pascal:

Good generally. I see it as a step forward that we’ll have access to a larger range of fonts, but I am worried about their usage — again this reflects off Jeff’s earlier quote I noted. Many of the typefaces currently available for licensing from foundries are designed for print use, and differ from fonts that are designed and optimised for screen usage. There are a lot of fonts out there, and in relation only a small number of really good ones, and of that an even smaller number that have been optimised for screen use. Screen-optimised fonts need to cater for the lower resolutions of screens (apposed to printed material) and as such may feature thicker strokes and serifs (e.g. see Georgia) and good hinting tables to ensure readability at small sizes.

I am aware that Typotheque are investing in creating screen-optimised versions of some of their typefaces. I believe this may be less of a problem in fonts available for web font licensing from foundries as they will be aware of this issue and more of freely-licensed or unlicensed, lower-quality fonts that are used directly via @font-face.

MWNB:

Are the days of Type Foundries numbered for web industry (I’m excluding Print, here, ok)?  Do we really have to put up with the same old tired, font centralised ordering-distribution system?   What do you think of typographers that are shaking of shackles of the Type Foundries and marketing their works directly with designers via the likes of Typekit and League of Moveable Type?

Pascal:

I wrote on this topic in November last year and echoed my belief in the rise of hosting and licensing service. I think non-foundry controlled services like Typekit and Fontdeck who sub-license web fonts for foundries may distribute some of the centralised control that foundries historically possess. That said, I think the best way to give the foundries a run for their money and up the quality of type design all-round is for more high quality open source, freely-licensed typefaces to become available which may be freely distributed and hosted. Some in the type community see this venture as futile or even misguided but I believe it’s the best way to ‘democratise’ type and typography and educate folks about it — ‘Hey, have you heard about typography? Check out this awesome example website of good typography that features a really well-done font’ is a saying amongst non-designers I can’t imagine if ‘well-done font’ is preceded by a dollar sign and figures ranging in three digits before the decimal point (if not more).

MWNB:

Moving on further with groups like the League of Moveable Type popping up all over the place, what’s your take on the matter?   Are they providing for the service that designers need?  Do you see their product as a general benefit to fellow designers or are they simply ripping the bread and butter from the mouths of the typographers.

Pascal:

Yes, absolutely. Time to get a bit progressive and perhaps transgressive. Continuing on from the topics and organisations raised in the last question, I hold organisations, communities, and single type designers who provide considerable and usable parts of their work at no cost (gratis) and under licensing terms (libre) that make distribution and improvements viable in high regard. I think a simple comparison may be drawn here to the personal computer. The personal computer is largely responsible for many technological and general societal advancements due arguably to its increasing affordability. Likewise, the more affordable, or rather the more accessible typefaces and good typography becomes the better the state of typography will be — the more accessible something is the more attainable are the positives (and negatives) that that something provides. People, either individually, in commercial corporations or as self-structured communities who provide fonts, the means of making them, and educational material on the first two and their use for free will better the state of type, type design, and typography.

There is a common argument by critics who suggest that there is a lack of people to do this task or to do it well. I disagree; where there is a will there is a way — look at the many successful free and open source software (FOSS) projects that have bettered the world in one way or another. I think to suggest that type designers are in some fundamental economic way different to programmers, web developers or other smart people who render their time and knowledge in some form to create or better free software to be false. For proof look at organisations like the League of Movable Type and the type designers behind it or working individually: Linux Libertine by Philipp H. Poll, Gentium by Victor Gaultney, and a lot more. It is true that the number of skilled type designers who release freely-licensed works is limited; there are less FOSS type designers than FOSS programmers or web developers, yet compared to software development or web development, type design is a relative niche industry.

Continuing and concluding with economics, of course free typefaces, freely-licensed written material, and type design software will compete in quality and price with commercially available equivalents. The better the quality and variety of these free things, the cheaper and/or higher in quality the equivalent or related commercial products will be need to be. Who benefits? ‘Consumers’ — we do.

MWNB:

Thanks Pascal, see you in few weeks.

This is part three of the 5 x 5 interview series of the speakers presenting at the Edge of the Web conference in Perth next month. This time I’m interviewing Ruth Ellison, she will be presenting on Guerrilla user & design research: undertaking research on a shoestring at the Edge of the Web.

Ruth is a user experience practitioner originally from Perth, who has been lured over to the not so bright lights of Canberra, she has a wealth of experience in Information Architecture with a passion for accessibility and usability. Ruth also has this thing for Robots.

MWNB:

Ruth you have a bit of an eclectic background, you aren’t traditional trained in design. How do you think your background has contributed to moulding your unique skill set into what it is today?

Ruth:

Having an eclectic background has certainly made life interesting! Although my background did not involve the ‘traditional’ design professions, design is essentially about solving a problem. As designers, we have to identify the problem, strive to come up with the optimum solution and communicate the plan for solving the problem. I come from a formal background in information technology, information systems and human factors and I’m particularly interested in sustainable and inclusive design. I’ve found that having an eclectic and diverse background helps to provide alternate perspectives and approaches to solving the design problem. Being a designer is about having a curious mindset and approach to how we view the world and the way we go about solving design problems.

MWNB:

You have been working in the user experience area for a while now. What advice would you give to someone that isn’t that familiar with the user experience field and its various techniques but they would to learn more and maybe more into this area?

Ruth:

As cliché as it sounds, it’s really important to be passionate, have an overly curious mind (preferably your own) and a penchant for coffee meetings. Working in the user experience field may be a challenge but it is extremely rewarding. People seem a bit surprised that our work crosses over such a large number of domains, from traditional design professions, cognitive science, psychology, project management, usability engineering, understanding of technology…the list goes on. It’s this meld of knowledge that makes our UX work really exciting.

One of the best ways to learn more about the field is to get involved with your user experience community through events such as the UX Bookclub, UPA meetings, IA Cocktail Hours (we have a fantastic group in Canberra) and attend conferences. These types of events provide great opportunity to find out what’s happening in the field, learn from personal experiences and find out what blogs, books and twitter streams to follow.  What I find most valuable is the personal relationships and friendships that you establish at these gatherings. I love the satisfying and often mind-blowing discussions we always seem to have every time we get together.

MWNB:

There has been a lot of discussion of late indicating that maybe the field of information architecture (IA) is in fact a dying art. And that generalist user experience practitioner is slowly making the role of an IA especially redundant. As an IA specialist in this area what is your ground level take on this?

Ruth:

I don’t believe that information architecture (IA) is a dying art. IA is  about the “organisation and construction of shared information spaces” - Information Architecture Institute . While IA has been ‘traditionally’ undertaken by information architects, the actual process of organising, structuring and labelling information still needs to be carried out no matter what label you’ve given to yourself while undertaking this process. Ultimately, we’re solving a design problem, whether it’s at the screen level, a business flow or designing for a specific experience. This doesn’t mean that the IA speciality is redundant but that IA is a specific set of skills that we use at the appropriate point in time.

I like Eric Reiss’s recent comment on twitter about UX and IA: “Pitting UX against IA is like having your toolbox pick a fight with your wrench. UX is a cognitive container for a variety of skills”.

MWNB:

Accessibility is bit of the hobby-horse of yours, do you see the slow adoption of WCAG 2 within Australia as a major stumbling block to its general community acceptance and the elimination of the WCAG1 checkbox tickers.

Ruth:

The problem with WCAG 1 or 2 isn’t the slow adoption and acceptance by the general community. Rather, it’s our general perception and understanding of accessibility. I frequently come across people who have some level of  awareness of accessibility but there’s often this slightly-negative attitude of “doing accessibility because you have to”. There are still many project teams who focus on the perceived negative aspects of accessibility. I rather see the Australian community adopt a more holistic and inclusive approach to design, instead of treating accessibility as a series of checkboxes.

MWNB:

User research in web design is one of my passions; I know it is yours too. All too often we have to deal with projects, particularly in Perth where there is no budget at all for any user research. As a UX practitioner what methods and techniques would you use to overcome this major stumbling block?

Ruth:

It still amazes me to this day to see the number of web projects where no budget and time has been allocated to the user and design research of the product. There are misconceptions that undertaking user and design research will significantly slow down the project or cause it to go over budget. What people forget is the ongoing costs of having to redevelop the product or the costs associated with cross channel support of the product (such as increased contact points with the organisation) when our designs don’t meet the user and business needs.

To overcome this ‘no budget’ stumbling block, we may have to resort to guerrilla user and design research. The key principle is grasp any opportunity to do some design research! This often involve informal methods and techniques such as very quick iterative usability testing (I love testing in cafes, lunch rooms etc), short sharp interviews with key stakeholders and users, surveys and heuristic reviews.

The idea of investing more money into research is a big leap for many of the decision makers. We need to make the business case for user and design research by doing and showing – doing the research and showing the results to help influence the decision makers.

MWNB:

Thanks Ruth I’ll see you on the Edge

It’s time for part two of the 5 x 5 interview series, covering a range of speakers from the upcoming Perth web conference the Edge of the Web. Next I caught up with Ash Donaldson.

Ash Donaldson is one of those old school User Experience Designers that are the main stay of our industry. He’s the type of person that just extrudes knowledge and a passion for his craft . It’s well worth having a chat over a beer or two with Ash, you’ll come away with your head spinning, and not from the beer.

Ash is presenting on Designing to persuade: Shaping the User Experience at the Edge of the Web.

MWNB:

You have an extensive background in Human Centred Design, and not just from a theoretical viewpoint, but also from a practical standpoint as well. In this digital age of computerisation; we as designers often forget the base human element of design. How do you believe we can reinforce the “human” element of the design process.

Ash:

Pick up a pen and paper, walk out the door, and involve your users.

Contrary to popular belief, they enjoy being involved. People like that someone is willing to listen to them. At the end of the day, not only do they think you, as a designer, are the best thing since sliced bread for actually involving them, they also feel a bit of ownership for what they contributed to the end product. If you did your work right, that end product is also a joy for them to use. It’s a win-win when you make humans the centre of your design strategy.

MWNB:

I know you have been a little busy of late with various volunteer and human interaction design projects. You are the representative Australian expert for the human-centred design International standards; also you’re involved in OZCHI and CHISIG. For people that aren’t in the know, what do all these groups entail and why are they so relevant?

Ash:

The International Organisation for Standards (ISO) recruits the services of experts from all over the world to develop thousands of standards that ensure products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely. Most people in Australia don’t realise that there are quite a number of ISO standards in human-centred design, human factors, usability, and software engineering.

Since 2004 I’ve been working with a range of amazing experts on standards for software quality, usability reporting, and the human-centred design process. These experts generally come from large organisations (Microsoft, Sun, IBM, etc), national standards bodies, or Universities. For me, it’s important to provide a voice representative of the smaller operator – people who don’t have the luxury of expansive time and budgets on their projects – to help make the ISO standards more pragmatic and accessible for everyone.

The Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group (CHISIG) provides a forum for people working on all aspects of interactive technology to bounce ideas off each other and seek guidance. In the past, I’ve acted as the Queensland and ACT representative, and helped out in NSW because, with the explosion of the user experience industry came a bevy of new faces with no idea where to turn for training, mentoring, and advice. Back then, it felt like there were only a precious few of us trying to help everyone by giving presentations, answering questions, and pointing people in the right direction when they were first starting out. These days, it’s great to see many more groups springing up to help fill those niche support roles for the industry, like: the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA), Interaction Designers’ Assocation (IxDA), and more recently (and rampantly), UX Bookclubs – all over the world!

OZCHI is the Australian conference for Computer-Human Interaction. There’s always been a bit of a disconnect between academics and practitioners in our industry. Many practitioners don’t have the benefit of a formal education in Computer-Human Interaction or Human Factors. This lack of theoretical underpinnings of our techniques can lead to the development of bad habits. On the other side of the fence, academics without access to industry tend to research esoteric topics – missing opportunities to make real advances for our industry. As someone who wore both academic and practitioner hats, I whinged about this quite loudly to the OZCHI committee in 2004 (OZCHI was purely an academic conference back then). They simply put it back on me and told me to fix it. The next year, I was the Chair of OZCHI and we had an industry track alongside the academic track. Despite many speed bumps, more and more industry practitioners are coming along to OZCHI these days. The cross-over between academics and practitioners is rewarding for everyone. (Pssst. For anyone who’s interested, OZCHI is in Melbourne this year: 23 – 27 November www.ozchi.org – Bill Moggridge (co-founder of IDEO) is one of the keynotes!)

MWNB:

The application of user research, iterative design and usability testing play a big role in your design process. These techniques could be seen to be only relevant to larger projects with endless budgets. Do you see a place for them across the entire design project spectrum, regardless of budget?

Ash:

Designing a product, service, or environment without involving the people that are going to end up using it is a bit like driving with your eyes closed: You might know how to drive and the general direction you need to go when you start, but you’ll probably veer off, cause untold damage to your car, and get lost along the way – then have to just put up with where you end up when you run out of fuel.

Involving users is not and should not be expensive. I say “is not” because most of the time, if you’re designing something for someone, they LOVE being involved and it doesn’t take much time or effort to get some great insights. I say “should not” because unless I’m making tiny refinements to a mature product, or really need to convince managers/developers of the need to fix something, I’m not a big fan of lab studies. It’s an artificial environment, the users are stressed, and the things you can reliably discover are quite narrow compared to if you did a little ‘guerilla research and testing’ in the field.

When gathering requirements, people are notoriously bad at telling you how they do stuff (due to a whole list of cognitive and perceptual biases). Managers or user representatives are even worse. Observing people as they work in their own environment provides much richer and more accurate insights. Not only do you get to see the constraints they actually work under, there’s also a whole heap of value-added opportunities you can discover when you watch them work: From something as simple as adding a quick lookup calendar for users who constantly refer to their desktop calendars; to something as complex as combining parts of multiple applications into a common workflow with a new interface. This can be the difference between a functional application, and one that’s a joy to use.

The same goes for testing your product. If you’re designing something from scratch, it’s more the high-level stuff you want to concentrate on (like how well someone understands a label or how a process matches the way the users think of it) than the nitty-gritty (like how many fractions of a second will moving a button 12 pixels closer to the final form field save users?). You can get more realistic feedback by spending 5 minutes walking through a paper prototype at a few people’s desks, or loading up a functional prototype on their screens to see how they would actually use it ‘in context’. No matter how many times I do this, I always discover a number of the assumptions I made while designing the screens and workflows were wrong. This is why it’s essential to keep testing small, focussed, and iterative. Your users will keep steering you in the right direction.

MWNB:

Is there any truth to your 300,000+ km that you have travelled in recent years? It seems that you are constantly on the go, be it attending or speaking at international conferences. Come on you are among friends here, what’s your secret?

Ash:

Recent years? That’s just since last May, isn’t it?

Some great conferences are overseas, so yes, I spend a good part of my year in the US and Europe. Also, working with ISO means going to a new city for every meeting. I tend to work a few months on, then take some time off for conferences and meetings. To let you in on a little secret: I’ve only ever been overseas four times in my whole life for pleasure. All the hundreds of other trips have been industry-related. Jet-lag sucks too much to waste a holiday suffering it.

MWNB:

Ash you must be one of the most physically active geeks that I know. With our occupations often requiring extremely long hours at the keyboard, do you have any suggestions for how people can get out from behind the computer, and improve their physical well-being. Also what’s with these crazy frog shoes?

Ash:

If I didn’t exercise, I wouldn’t get half the things that I wanted to do, done. I learned years ago is that if you’re not physically active, you’re not mentally active. If you start your day with 30 minutes to an hour of exercise, you’ll more than compensate for it by knocking over much more work in less time than if you just grabbed a coffee and sat and stared at your computer all day. It’s amazing what a good kick of endorphins can do to help you whistle through the piles of work.

I find the best time for me to exercise is early in the morning. I used to be a late-night worker, but that was because I couldn’t concentrate earlier in the day, and I’d end up making little progress until the sun went down – then work late into the night. These days I’m up at 5:30am and I’m working efficiently by 8am. What used to take 14 hours to do now takes only 7 and I have the evening to read, research, and relax.

The crazy shoes are my Vibram Fivefingers. It’s kind of an anti-shoe. Wearing them is like being barefoot, but with thick skin on the soles of your feet. I run in them because, well, against what people tend to believe, running shoes cause injuries. Don’t take my word for it though, search the medical literature of running barefoot versus shod (with shoes). If you’re interested, I even wrote a blog post about it recently.

MWNB:

Thank you Ash, looking forward to chatting some more at the Edge of the Web.