Terry's Thoughts About Things

Monday at #sxsw #sxswi

I initially tried to see Jay Rosen speak at the Hilton, but it was overcrowded and I couldn't get in. So I went back over to the Convention Center to see Stephen Anderson's session. It was actually one I had seen at the IS conference in July '09, but I enjoyed it... plus there were other PetRelocation folk there.  His speaking was a little flat, and I wonder if maybe it was because the room was so huge. In Houston, it was a smaller venue and he was a lot more engaging. The presentation itself was still pretty interesting, though.

11am Wired Magazine, on tablet and mobile platforms

This wasn't so much an educational session, as just some cool information about how Wired Mag is porting its print magazine over to mobile devices.  It was pretty cool to see the thought and detail that went into the process, and then see the end result.  They were able to keep a lot of the "look" of the magazine and the "beauty" of print on the mobile devices, and even add elements to make it even cooler. Even things  like switching from landscape to portrait mode were seemless, and in one example the picture even changed when the device was turned.  Their support for small form mobile devices is still a bit lacking, as they don't have a way to zoom in to read the text... but they're working on it.

12:30pm Slow Twitter

This was a fun session, focused on the idea of crafting your twitter messages and not using Twitter as just a way to tell people what kind of sandwich you ate. Most of the people on the panel were more humorous, but one was @momku who does all her tweets in haiku format. They also talked a bit about some people who did micro-stories using Twitter.

One interesting thing was how self-absorbed these people are. They bemoaned the end of the site Favrd, because it meant they couldn't check and see how popular their tweets were. And they don't like similar sites like Favotter because they don't filter out people like the Jonas Brothers. It's both interesting and a bit sad that they seem to only use Twitter as a way to gain acceptance and praise. But I guess that tends to be the same with all comedians and funny people.

2pm Tapworthy: Designing iPhone interfaces

My favorite and most educational of the talks of the day. The guy was focusing on iPhone design but it really work across all mobile platforms. Things like the minimum size for buttons should be 44px... and the smallest dimension should ever be 27px x 44px. And this is because of extensive usability testing done by Apple. Also, it's possible to create buttons that look smaller, but you need to increase the hit state to be at least that size. This way you minimize missed and incorrect taps.

He also talked about how on mobile platforms, you need to simplify the operation of the app as much as possible.  Instead of creating an app that does a thousand things, make it do ONE thing really well. And make it look nice.

A couple of quotes/ summaries:

• Simple tasks that operate in a toy-like manner, playful
• Three reasons for apps: work (get something done) / local (find something, where to go, information ghosts all around) / bored (games, distraction)
• bottom-left of screen is most important area
• incorporate "boredom busters" - keep people coming back to your app
• small interfaces need big elements - clarity over density
• be skeptical of scrolling - make scrollable elements clear
• secondary controls behind "hidden" door can alleviate scrolling

This was a highly educational session.  Unfortunately he tried to fit way too much into his short time.  He started off good with examples of Obj C and how similar statements look in javascript.  This was beneficial to me, because I've got a lot of experience in javascript and it helps to see the similarities.  But he ended up glossing over it so quickly. 

Then he went into a couple of different apps that he actually created. This was cool, but not very informative. He showed his code, but it seemed like he wanted to show everything he did instead of explaining in more detail various parts of the code. Less is more. About 35 minutes into the session, I enjoyed watching everything he was doing, was it was going by so fast, I stopped trying to take notes and learn something.

5pm iPhone apps using HTML5, CSS and javascript

To be honest, I ended up walking out because they didn't go over anything I didn't already know.  But they did show some cool sites that used these technologies and it was neat.   HTML5 is definitely something I need to get more educated on, as it could be the way to deliver rich content to multiple mobile platforms.

8pm

dinner/appetizers at Roy's with the PetRelocation folk.  Good food, drinks and good conversation.