I only learned one thing at UX Australia this year.
No, that’s not a complaint. UX Australia 2011 was one of the conferences I’ve most enjoyed attending, ever. It’s just that I never really learn anything at a conference. Not that I’m all super smart and know it all already, it’s just that learning takes time. If it was your first time at a UX conference, what someone said in 45 minutes on stage may have been a revelation, and the half-day workshops I attended (especially Whitney Quesenbery’s storytelling workshop) introduced me to new and exciting concepts, but to really learn these things, I’ll need to do them, preferably with someone much smarter than me looking over my shoulder.
What I learned, or more accurately was reminded of, is the value of people.
Chats in Bars
The theme of people came up a lot this year.
At the after-party, I spent some time chatting with a young interaction designer from Germany named Susi. She was happy to meet someone who spoke German, and I was amazed she’d come so far for our little Aussie get-together. And she was taken aback by how nice everyone was. She thought there was a bit of an in-crowd, but everyone she got up the courage to speak to (and she knew no one when she arrived) was friendly, interested and welcoming. Her surprise surprised me at first.
On the way to a pub one night, I finally met the charming and funny Joe Sokohl. We discovered we had both lived in Hamburg Germany at the same time (not sure if Susi met him too, but his German’s pretty good) and shared some memories. We got on to how conferences work, and he mentioned how much he enjoyed coming over to Australia. My memory’s not nearly good enough to try and quote him directly, but he said he enjoyed our lack of rockstars; that there are plenty of great UX people in Australia, but that there’s little to none of the ego parading in-crowd mentality here.
The Cool Kids
Every conference has what Robert Hoekman Jr. called a “cool kids table” - that group of people who know each other from speaking at and attending conferences around the world. It’s unavoidable that when a group of people do something together that other people don’t do, that a bit of a clique develops, and we’ve got that in Australia too, of course. I’m more or less part of that group now too. Considering I feel I’m well and truly a part of this community, even though I’ve only been in this country three years, have only ever worked directly with one person in the UX community, and was accepted to speak at the first UX Australia although hardly anyone knew me and no one had ever heard me speak is proof enough that, in Australia, the “cool kids table” is mostly a concept in the heads of those who think they’re on the outside looking in. The cool kids don’t seem to know they are.
As Joe noted, Aussies tend to have their feet on the ground, and have a low tolerance for arrogance. I explained the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” to him: that Aussies tend to tear down anyone they see getting too far above the norm. But on second thought, I don’t think that’s what keeps our UX community grounded. We’re just lucky enough to have so many people who are genuinely friendly, don’t take themselves too seriously, and just want to make stuff that improves people’s lives and have a good time while they’re doing it.
That is worth a lot. Talk to most people about their jobs.
What Counts
Considering my recent Facebook cull, and compounded by reading “Big Deal” last weekend, I’ve obviously been thinking a lot about friends lately. And it may seem obvious, but that’s what really matters at conferences, and in anything we do: the people. It’s interesting to hear what people are working on and what an awesome process they followed to achieve the result, but the real value is inspiration, and that comes from the chats, usually in bars, where you find out why people really did what they did, what really turns them on and why they do what they do, in work and beyond. I can’t really say that I’m close with that many people in our community, but I’m surprised every time we get together by how many lovely people I’m lucky enough to call colleagues, and I’d really like to come to call more of them friends.
Sappy? Naive? Unprofessional? Well, this is a love letter.
I love you UX Australia.
Generally I’d try and summarise the great presos I saw at a conference, but that’s obviously not what was on my mind this time. Luckily, some smart people have done that for us:
I’m a bit behind on this, but I’ve got to admit I was pretty disappointed with how iPad sketchnoting worked out at TEDx, so I guess I’ve had a little aversion to the whole topic.
What went wrong? Well, a few things. Firstly, most sessions at TEDx were completely dark except for the stage, and I was a bit too self-conscious to sit there with my iPad glowing in the dark & irritating everyone within metres. Secondly, although the iPad charcoal stylus is a nice idea and does work as it should, I quickly realised that I couldn’t write worth a damn with it, and sketchnotes are as much about the notes as they are the sketches. And lastly, I don’t have enough practice with Sketchbook Pro to make anything worth seeing at the speed that sketchnotes demand.
Good thing I took my trusty pen & Moleskine with me.
I can’t say I made any sketchnotes I’m super excited about (mood influences these things heavily, and I was pretty bummed about the iPad thing not working out) but I can say I enjoyed TEDx and look forward to attending again next year. After watching so many absolutely brain-bursting TED talks, I’d set my expectations pretty high, and a local TEDx could never have fulfilled them completely, but it was an interesting & enjoyable day. If I had one wish for next year it would be that speakers should speak more about big ideas they want to share, and less about products they want us to buy and use.
You can see all of my TEDx Sydney sketchnnotes here. I’ll be practicing with the iPad charcoal stylus & Sketchbook Pro, and with any luck I’ll post some sexy scribbles here soon.
Having not sketched a single note since Web Directions in October (and let’s not even go into how long it’s been since I wrote anything here… ahem), and after being interviewed on sketchnoting recently (super sekrit, more on that later), my fingers have started itching. I’m lucky enough to have an invite for TEDxSydney in two days, and if you add that to the new iPad sitting on my desk what do you get? iPad TEDx sketchnotes of course!
Sketchnoting is usually pretty simple: open sketchbook, click pen, get started. An iPad’s a computer, and they’re always more complicated than the anologue world, so this will need a little more preparation. Firstly, the software: there are a few drawing apps out there for the iPad, but the hands-down, knock-down-drag-out winner is Sketchbook Pro from Autodesk. At AU $9.99 it may seem pretty expensive for people used to piddly little iPhone apps that cost $1.99 and do next to nothing, but this is another beast entirely. It does layers à la Photoshop, creates smooth & soft lines and has a simple, smart interface. And the results are often stunning. So no contest there. You can also get the iPhone version, but the small screen always felt cramped to me – the lovely large iPad screen is perfect for it.
The only downside is the iPad wants a finger as input, but only monkeys draw with their fingers (ewwwwww!). Like any other more advanced primate, I want to draw with a pen. I ordered a Pogo Sketch, a pen designed to simulate a finger, but they’re back-ordered two weeks in Australia. Sigh. What to do? The inimitable Stepehan Cox saved the day and gave me a tip. Instead of me prattling on about it, watch it yourself:
So off I enthusiastically went to buy a cheap ballpoint, some copper wire and a chunk of conductive foam (did you even know there was such a thing?)
After following the instructions, I now have two very DIY looking iPad styluses.
I wound the copper wire a bit tighter than in the video, and taped it all down with some grippy black gaffer tape, and voila! They’re done!
Am I excited? Well, no actually, I’m not.
It’s possibly a side-effect of them being DIY, the thickness of the copper wire, how well wrapped in wire the bits of foam are or somethigng else I’m unaware of, but these things react sloooow, and sometimes not at all. I know it’s not an app problem, as Sketchbook Pro reacts with hardly any lag at all when I use my finger, but the lag these styluses introduce makes it almost impossible to draw anything, as you can see…
TEDx is tomorrow (not today as it says in my sketchnote, silly me), so it looks like I’ll be drawing with my finger after all. With any luck the Pogo Sketch will be much more responsive when it arrives in two weeks.
Maybe the ol’ trusty Moleskine & gel pen are the way to draw after all? I will take them along, just in case.
For all you non-Aussies out there, “grouse” usually means either a bird with feathered feet, or “to complain” in British army slang, but in Australian slang it means “awesome!” No one seems to know why.
Now that Web Directions is over, and now that I’ve had a weekend to sleep it off, I’ve got to say it was excellent! As you’d expect of a conference with three tracks and 670 attendees, it was two days of agonising over what to see, rushing from room to room and sketchnoting ‘til my hand was sore. This was all well balanced by the best conference wifi I’ve experienced yet, highly drinkable free coffee, and relaxing, drinking and laughing at the great after-parties.
The information was pretty dense in almost every presentation so I didn’t manage to sketchnote everything I saw, but here are a few of my favourites. You can see all of my Web Directions sketchnotes here.
Mark Boulton
Having had a slightly too big night the day before, I missed Matt Webb’s keynote (which I’ve heard was pretty damned grouse) so Mark Boulton started my Web Directions. Mark’s a designer of note and author & publisher who’s worked at the BBC, recently redesigned Drupal and runs a small agency in South Wales. His talk on typography was broad, and in places deep, going from typographic basics to a structure for type thinking to the challenges of embeddable fonts. He inspired some grumbling, but echoed my thoughts, when he said:
I don’t think Comic Sans really is that bad. There are no bad tools, just bad designers.
And his take on embeddable fonts was interesting: he said working within constraints and concentrating on structure makes for good typography, and warned that “opening the flood gates” with @font-face, Typekit and the like will lead to an extremely ugly, chaotic web. I strongly agree with the former, and fear the latter may be spot on. You can see his slides here.
Suze Ingram
Suze introduced us all to service design, something I’ve been hearing murmurings about for a while, but couldn’t have really said exactly what it was. Suze has obviously been paying a little more attention than I have, and gave a clear and concise introduction to the topic. Thanks Suze! She’s also obviously keen for service design to grow and flourish in Australia and has started the Service Design Hub to encourage that growth, and is working on “Service Design Camp” in 2010. Suze is keen to collaborate and drive service design forward—let her know what you think.
The web designers and information architects of five years ago are now calling themselves user experience designers, and a cynic joked after Suze’s presentation that we’ll all be service designers next year. Considering how much most service experiences suck today, I can certainly imagine worse outcomes. Check out Suze’s slides here.
Donna Spencer
As always, my friend Donna was charming & smart as she presented the basic information seeking behaviours that all users exhibit.
This was a list presentation, so no mind-bending new insights, but it went a long way to shake the accepted “people either search or navigate” myth out of my head. She showed that people explore, refine & narrow, compare, discover and more, depending on how much they know, what they’re looking for and how goal oriented they are at that moment. The bit that really made me sit up and think was when Donna quoted Cheryl Gledhill, who said in her presentation:
Recently I’ve been searching less, but finding more.
I’m hoping Donna’s next presentation on information seeking behaviours will deal with exactly this “bubbling up” behaviour we’re seeing more and more of on Twitter and other social networks. Have a look at Donna’s presentation here.
Christian Crumlish
Christian gets my vote for best presentation of the conference, and not just because I got to get up on stage and introduce him. He was very clearly passionate about his subject, got quite a few laughs out of his audience, and backed it all up with rock solid information and examples.
The self-described “Pattern Detective” of Yahoo’s Pattern Library (and ukulele virtuoso) gave us the five principles of social interface design:
pave the cowpaths
talk like a person
play well with others
learn from games
respect
The rest of his talk revolved around a fascinating diagram, showing the various elements of the social ecosystem, designed by Erin Malone, the co-author with Christian of the recently published “Designing Social Interfaces”. After his high-energy, insightful talk, I’ll definitely be buying the book.
I was also pleased to get to know Christian and his charming wife during their stay here in Sydney, and look forward to visiting them in San Francisco! That’s hands down the best bit of any good conference!
Grouse!
Writing a wrap-up like this can’t really capture the atmosphere of exchange, sharing and inspiration, nor the jokes shared over a beer or the intense discussion at dinner. Due to these, as well as the smart & generous presenters, Web Directions was indeed grouse! Some of my other favourite moments:
Elliot Jay Stocks:
Beauty is the experience’s visual layer.
Dan Hill:
IT is too important for the IT department.
Mark Boulton:
The fundamental flaw in Jesse James Garrett’s model is that he relegates typography to the surface.
Kelly Goto:
Hybrid designer / coders are magic people.
I’m now very sorry I arrived too late for Web Directions last year, and I’m already looking forward to seeing everyone again in 2010!
Now that the audio’s available, here are the slides from my UX Australia presentation.
Any stack of paper can be printed with words which, when read, convey insightful, interesting & exciting thoughts to the reader. The same words can be posted on a web site and have the same effect. But when we present our ideas, it’s a completely different kind of communication, far closer to theater than it is to writing. Presenters who subject their audience to slide after slide of text are where the term “death by powerpoint” comes from, and the most ground-breaking ideas can induce catatonia when delivered by a monotone speaker who sounds anything but passionate about his subject. The best presentations I’ve ever seen were dominated by images, contained no more than a few (if any) words on each slide, and were presented by a speaker who knew his material backwards and delivered it with confidence, passion and humour. When I present, I try to be that guy.
This style always causes the same dilemma: should I share slides which make no sense at all without me talking & waving my arms in front of them? Luckily, Donna Spencer organised excellent recording for all of the presentations at UX Australia, and Slideshare makes it possible to sync audio to slides.
But most presentations on Slideshare don’t have any audio. I’m curious: when you put together a slide deck, do you keep Slideshare in mind and try and make your slides readable, or do you concentrate on the event, and try and put on a great show?
