Vote on:
Speaker from: -
Location: Austin Convention Center Ballroom C
Time: 9:30am
Description:
Description:
- Long After the Thrill: Sustaining Passionate Users
Suffering from "game fatigue" yet? While many sites have slapped on badges and points to make things more engaging, the companies that "get it" have a better understanding of the psychology behind motivation. They know how to design sites that keep people coming back again and again. So what are the secrets? What actually motivates people online? How do you create sustained interest in your product or service? We'll look at everything from game design to learning theories to neuroscience to understand what motivates--and demotivates--people over the long haul. NOTE: This is a follow-up to the 2010 SXSW presentation "Seductive Interactions" where I focused primarily on initial engagement. Where that presentation discussed "getting to first base" with our users, this one looks much farther out at how to create "lifelong love and devotion."
- How Social Applications SCORE in the Cloud
To effectively bring a social app to the market, companies must focus not only on design and marketing, but also on the underlying – and often unglamorous – job of managing their IT infrastructure. The hope, if not the expectation – is to achieve rapid and massive popularity across the world. But many compute infrastructures are not capable of handling unpredictable growth and scaling, much less support fast, day-to-day development cycles. In the fast paced social app industry, development teams must have the technology agility to stay ahead of the curve. The audience will learn best practices for launching apps in the cloud and discover how industry leaders including Zynga, Playfish, and Crowdstar are using cloud computing to manage and grow their infrastructure. This session will also discuss the use of cloud computing throughout the entire application lifecycle -- from concept and development to end-of-life.
- Unwritten Rules: Brands, Social Psychology and Social Media
When a friend invites you to dinner, you bring wine or flowers – not $100 cash – as a gesture of thanks. That goes without saying. But if a brand comes to dinner, what should they bring? When it comes to social media, there are unwritten rules for how to behave that many brands simply aren't getting. Brands are grappling with social media as they try to find a place at our virtual dinner table. Some brands get it, some gaffe it. The rules, it turns out, are hidden in basic social psychology. The established behaviors of friendship are the prevailing rules of the road in social media: sharing valuable information, entertaining one another, support in a crisis, celebration of a personal achievement. But the established behaviors of transactions (the way we historically interact with brands) can feel awkward and forced in social media. So how can brands build trust with their networks while being social like a friend? This session will look at social media behavior and what brands can do to become a delightful guest and valuable contributor at our virtual dinner party.
- Beyond Wordclouds: Analyzing Trends with Social Media APIs
Speaker from: -
Location: Austin Convention Center Ballroom C
Time: 11:00am
Description:
There are many services that will generate wordclouds and simple graphs from the conversations on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. These services use Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) to access the data on the platforms then perform various analysis on that data. These tools are often very limited in their functionality, or are very expensive to use for large-scale ongoing analysis and even then they often don't cover all the needs of a dynamic organization. This presentation will demonstrate how to programmatically access the APIs of several social media platforms to pull out specific data, store it in a database, and perform custom analysis on it to meet the needs of various business cases. We'll take a look at how different social media platforms are better suited for gleaning different kinds of data. This includes Twitter and Facebook as well as various blog and location-based platforms. Specific business cases will be shown around marketing, communications, competitive intelligence, crisis management, and return on investment analysis. Attendees of this presentation will leave with a better understanding of how looking at the universe of online conversation as a whole can provide valuable insight into what consumers are thinking and interested in at any given moment.
There are many services that will generate wordclouds and simple graphs from the conversations on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. These services use Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) to access the data on the platforms then perform various analysis on that data. These tools are often very limited in their functionality, or are very expensive to use for large-scale ongoing analysis and even then they often don't cover all the needs of a dynamic organization. This presentation will demonstrate how to programmatically access the APIs of several social media platforms to pull out specific data, store it in a database, and perform custom analysis on it to meet the needs of various business cases. We'll take a look at how different social media platforms are better suited for gleaning different kinds of data. This includes Twitter and Facebook as well as various blog and location-based platforms. Specific business cases will be shown around marketing, communications, competitive intelligence, crisis management, and return on investment analysis. Attendees of this presentation will leave with a better understanding of how looking at the universe of online conversation as a whole can provide valuable insight into what consumers are thinking and interested in at any given moment.
- Real Tech Rockstars: Engineers or Designers?
Speaker from: -
Location: Austin Convention Center Ballroom B
Time: 11:00am
Description:
User interface (UI) and design are crucial to any software’s success. But, many startups ignore UI, relying fully on back end development. But UI is more than just a pretty face; it can instill consumer confidence in your startup and differentiate you from the competitors. Such was the case with leading online personal finance site Mint.com. Though founded by an algorithms engineer with expertise in the deepest technology, from the early stages of development, the Mint team designed easy to understand charts and graphical representations of people’s finances, making the previously intimidating and frustrating task of money management quick and painless. Early challenges included bringing meaning to an unknown brand in a security-sensitive industry, differentiating from the dullness and palette of banking sites while respecting the seriousness of people’s money, and creating an experience free of negative emotions often associated with budgeting and financial management. Each decision has been intentional, down to the hue of the logo (which was lightened in order appeal more strongly to female users). This dual presentation will feature Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit Personal Finance Group and Founder of Mint.com, an algorithms engineer with several patents at the core of his product who also recognizes the value that perfectly pixilated, easy-to-understand charts and graphics brought to Mint. Along with web design expert Jason Putorti and moderated by Fortune Magazine's Jessi Hemple, the presentation will discuss the value of design to both early stage startups and developed companies, how to successfully merge front end and back end development and specific design advice.
User interface (UI) and design are crucial to any software’s success. But, many startups ignore UI, relying fully on back end development. But UI is more than just a pretty face; it can instill consumer confidence in your startup and differentiate you from the competitors. Such was the case with leading online personal finance site Mint.com. Though founded by an algorithms engineer with expertise in the deepest technology, from the early stages of development, the Mint team designed easy to understand charts and graphical representations of people’s finances, making the previously intimidating and frustrating task of money management quick and painless. Early challenges included bringing meaning to an unknown brand in a security-sensitive industry, differentiating from the dullness and palette of banking sites while respecting the seriousness of people’s money, and creating an experience free of negative emotions often associated with budgeting and financial management. Each decision has been intentional, down to the hue of the logo (which was lightened in order appeal more strongly to female users). This dual presentation will feature Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit Personal Finance Group and Founder of Mint.com, an algorithms engineer with several patents at the core of his product who also recognizes the value that perfectly pixilated, easy-to-understand charts and graphics brought to Mint. Along with web design expert Jason Putorti and moderated by Fortune Magazine's Jessi Hemple, the presentation will discuss the value of design to both early stage startups and developed companies, how to successfully merge front end and back end development and specific design advice.
- Lean UX: Getting Out of the Deliverables Business
Speaker from: -
Location: Austin Convention Center Ballroom B
Time: 3:30pm
Description:
Traditionally User Experience Design has been a deliverables practice. Wireframes, sitemaps, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies and "The Spec" defined the practice of UX Designers (IxD, UX Design, whatever, etc). While this work has helped define what UX Designers do and the value our work brings to the business, it has also put us in the deliverables business - measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of our deliverables (instead of the quality and success of the experiences we design). Enter Lean UX. Inspired by Lean Product and Agile development theories, Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed. This talk will explore how Lean UX manifests in terms of process, communication, documentation and team interaction. In addition, we'll take a look at how this philosophical shift can take root in any environment from large corporation to interactive agencies to startups.
Traditionally User Experience Design has been a deliverables practice. Wireframes, sitemaps, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies and "The Spec" defined the practice of UX Designers (IxD, UX Design, whatever, etc). While this work has helped define what UX Designers do and the value our work brings to the business, it has also put us in the deliverables business - measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of our deliverables (instead of the quality and success of the experiences we design). Enter Lean UX. Inspired by Lean Product and Agile development theories, Lean UX is the practice of bringing the true nature of our work to light faster, with less emphasis on deliverables and greater focus on the actual experience being designed. This talk will explore how Lean UX manifests in terms of process, communication, documentation and team interaction. In addition, we'll take a look at how this philosophical shift can take root in any environment from large corporation to interactive agencies to startups.
Vote on:
Speaker from: -
Location: Austin Convention Center Ballroom C
Time: 5:00pm
Description:
- Curb Your Experience: Pushing the UX to Extreme
“You have to start with the most complex, and find a simple solution. Then you have to make it work.” – IM Pei The critical path to excellent usability design begins with a fundamental understanding of how an application or interface is broken. In a variety of ways, UX designers take their cues from organizations like Consumer Reports which for example, use machines and robotics to repeatedly pound luggage to test for durability with the overall objective to try to make it rip, tear or break. UX engineers persistently attempt to ‘break’ the application, by often pushing it to its most extreme edges in order to find a solution for the fix. This presentation will extend beyond the physical design, Web or digital application interface and venture out into the world of human interactions and interpersonal communications, the original source where all interaction is based and inspired. The presentation will use video clips from the comedic series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry David, the protagonist of the show is shown to persistently test, provoke and extreme push society and conventional behavior to humorously illustrate where human interactions are broken and ways that they can or (why bother?) be fixed.
- Voices From The HTML5 Trenches: Browser Wars IV
The term HTML5 now refers to the much-hyped kitchen sink of the web. It covers *everything* including things not officially part of the HTML5 specification. Yet "HTML5" is now the catch phrase to describe the new wave of platform competition on the web, and browser vendors vie to outdo each other on benchmark tests touting compliance and performance. Every major browser vendor -- Apple, Opera, IE, Chrome, and Firefox -- will have a significant browser release by SxSW 2011. Microsoft's recent IE9 press event suggests that they are "all in for HTML5." So if all of us browser vendors are "all in" for HTML5, what does this mean for web developers? And what's up with the dirty marketing buzz around tests and demo pages? This panel will expose the areas where we browser vendors cooperate as well as compete, and will push on the painful spots where we seem to disagree. We'll bring every major browser vendor to the table, and talk about open video on the web (and video codecs), what this all means to Flash, APIs (including contentious ones, like databases), CSS (including once hot areas like fonts) graphics, SVG vs. Canvas, WebGL, Device APIs, and security. This browser wars panel will be less like Inside Baseball, and more about the practical issues confronting web developers today. We'll poke at the raw spots that browser vendors need to discuss. As always, audience participation will account for a substantial chunk of time.
