SXSW Interactive Conference 2008

http://2008.sxsw.com/interactive/

I attended the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX March 8-11. Here are a few notes from the sessions I attended that may be of interest.

Session: AJAX and Flash Mistakes

• Showed examples of common mistakes made when designing rich client applications and websites
• A copy of the presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/jboutelle
• Recommends the book "AJAX Design Patterns"
• Minimize the use of animation. Since rich client technologies support many types of animation, designers tend to overuse it making the app very busy and confusing.
• AJAX messes up website metrics. Google Analytics will be adding events to address this.
• Flash gives you access to system resources such as speakers and the microphone.
• One of the main advantages of rich client interfaces are to make the UI more responsive and efficient to use. One way to take advantage of this is to display information in place and reduce the number of pages the user must navigate through.

Session: 10 Things We've Learned at 37 Signals

• Err on the side of simple. In addition to making your product usable, you should limit the number of features. Provide only the most important and frequently used features. This simplicity makes the product easy to develop, easy to support, and easy to use. Let someone else built the big complicated products for the small percentage of customers who need that complexity.
• Target areas with little competition. Big companies typically aren't interested in small markets so they are underserved.
• 37 Signals has over a million customers for their simple, low feature products like Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, and Campfire.
• Provide a great work environment and you will be able to attract great people, retain them, and motivate them.
• Keep your product release cycle short. People are most productive when working on something new and exciting. They lose enthusiasm on long projects.
• Build by sharing. Use and contribute to open source. Find ways to get your customers involved in developing your products. You gain more by sharing than you would by trying to keep things secret.
• Interruption is the enemy of productivity. At 37 Signals, they encourage employees to work as if they are remote even if they are in the same office. For example, send email rather than hold a meeting. This reduces interruptions and helps to document decisions. Four hours uninterrupted is far more product than the same amount of time broken into 15 minutes chunks between interruptions.
• Be responsive to your customers. If you solve a problem for a customer, they will typically be more satisfied than customers who never had a problem.
• Celebrate little launches. Morale feeds progress.
• Make lots of tiny decisions. If you make tiny decisions, you don't make big mistakes.
• Focus on the things that matter and feel free to ignore the rest.

Session: Social Influence Marketing

• Know how your customers think and design your website accordingly. For example, buying furniture typically involves comparing multiple products and fabrics and getting opinions from your spouse and perhaps friends or relatives. Most furniture websites are designed as if they think one person just looks at a couch and immediately buys it.
• Customers today are more influenced by social factors than by brands.
• Customer reviews are very important to purchase decisions. People look at sites like epinions to see what the experiences of others have been before making a purchase.
• It is wise to let customers get this information on your website rather than go somewhere else. For example, the Sheraton hotel website lets customers post reviews of their experiences at a location. Companies should not fear this unless they don't have confidence in their products.
• Everyone in a company should be talking to customers. Not just the marketing folks. Design teams, in particular, need to be getting customer requirements and feedback in order to produce better designs.
• Communication needs to be two-way even on your website. A company website is not just a way to publish, but a way to hold a conversation between the company and its customers.

Session: Life After iPhone

• The iPhone has dramatically changed the mobile device landscape.
• It was previously very difficult to create mobile apps because there were so many devices with so many different screen resolutions running so many different browsers.
• iPhone is one of the first mobile devices to provide a full featured browser. Most any website designed for a desktop client will run fine on an iPhone although it is also possible to optimize websites and web apps specifically for the iPhone.
• A VC fund (iFund) is offering $100 million to fund development of iPhone apps.
• The iPhone is an example of a disruptive device. It doesn't follow existing standards of interaction and thus requires fresh thinking. Design groups may need to change their deliverables. They will need to do more experimentation and prototyping. More disruptive devices are likely to follow.

Miscellaneous Musings

• After a big dip in attendance in the early 90s, conference attendance continues to grow.
• There have always been more Mac than Windows laptops at the conference, but this year the ratio was much more lopsided. It looked to me to be about 90% Macs. This seems like an indication of how much Apple has captured the hearts (and pocketbooks) of the design community.
• Lots more small mobile devies too, particularly iPhones. Many people seem to be finding a small mobile device to be a viable alternative to a laptop now for things like taking notes at a conference.
• In several sessions, speakers talked about how their websites became businesses by accident. They would start something as a hobby or from personal need and it suddenly took off. There still seems to be plenty of opportunity on the web, but it is difficult to predict what will be successful.