Our Project Manager Rainy Day is attending most of the business and technology panels this week at SXSW. We will have an article on what she learned in an upcoming issue of our monthly e-newsletter, but we thought you might like to catch some of the takeaways she's jotted down so far at SXSW.

Kathy Sierra Keynote

Key takeaways:

• Enable users to get together with one another (offline)
• Shape computer interactions in our software to feel more human face to face matters.
• Encourage offline community
• How to make our apps feel more human? Canyon of Pain: between what they want to do and how to do it
• 80/20 solution: We can capture and have a short dialogue with our users and go far to get the computer to appear to understand them.
• Get the user to the right context
• Give them an understandable set of questions

Stop Designing Products

Adaptive path gave this presentation on the user experience pyramid. The next step up on the pyramid from technology is features. Pile features on technology, then the experience is at the top of the pyramid. However, you want to start with the experience first, and then figure out what it'll take to get there. Products can be considered as people, too. They have personalities. People get emotionally attached to their products.

What is the experience we want to deliver? Determine this, then figure out the tech and featuers to support that. The experience is the product we deliver. It is the only thing the costumers care about.

Ruining the User Experience

What is good user experience?

1. Understand your user in a deep way
2. Take that information and designing/implementing and demonstrating your understanding. Think more about the context.

Levels of service are:

1. No frills: Make content accessible. no distractions, clean markup, light/fast downloads. straightforward, basic, no css. functional & that's about it.
2. Dress it up: styled with css, refined visual design, simple interactivity, some Flash, cross-browser compatible, styles for alternate media. color, images, readability. Laid out better, readable, scannable, easy on the eyes. Nicer looking.
3. Add interactive experience. Responsive interface elements, predictive data delivery (Ajax), more customizable interactions. Google maps, kayak.

High and Low Class Web Design

Key factors are:

• Education
• Economic power
• Cultural literacy
• Social standing- political clout, pull in social circles, etc.

Economically, speaking, you have consider three general categories: upper/middle/lower

When marketing also consider demographics and SocioEconomic Status. SES is a numerical measure of your class, cross referencing your career, where you live, income, etc. This is often used in advertising.

Sociologically speaking you should consider these categories are from the book "Class"

• Top out-of-sight: super wealthy behind gates, hiding since the Depression
• Upper Class
• Upper-Middle Class
• Middle Class
• High Prole
• Mid Prole
• Low Prole
• Bottom out-of-sight: homeless, destitute, society tries to hide.

Few people want to be perceived as being above upper-middle class, because they don't want to be perceived as being uppity and out of touch.

How does this affect design?

Look at how different companies talk to their audiences. Many use a design aesthetic of the upper end: simplicity & elegance.

Example: Apple is a high class brand. The store is designed to look like Cartier or Tiffany, not Best Buy. This also translates into their web sites.

The best way to learn about audiences is through user research. Spend lots of time with potential users, watching them use the product and their reactions.

One way of approaching design is to try five or six different things, and the one with the most click throughs wins.

Holy Trinity of Web Design

A site fails because one of the three portions is out of balance or two large.

• Business
• Users and needs
• Developers

The key here is to balance the three things out.

As more people specialize, generalists become more important.

With small teams it is good to have one person from each discipline.

Example: At Yahoo, every day the group gets together for a 15 minute standing meeting- quick update, discusses issues.