In this post, I’m going to share what I saw and learned from SXSW 2012 Interactive.
These subjects are not organized in a specific way. They’re various ideas that I gathered from attending the various sessions, seeing demos, talking to other attendees, and my own observations.
Digital vs Physical
A big discussion on the dynamic between the two. The current trend is to digitize everything that can be digitized. The next trend will be to bring digital objects to the physical world. This has started with all the location-based apps.
Multi sensory experience
As the digital and physical worlds merge, more interactions are needed between the two worlds which translates to more types of input (i.e. audio input with Siri) and feedback beyond visual (text, graphic, video). There were demos of device that could produce scent and 3D printer for the mass among other new technologies that attempt to do this.
Social media
The social media space is becoming too saturated. Everybody wants you to follow them, like them and tweet using their hashtag. What’s going to happen next is social media becomes a fact of life (not a trend anymore) and we learn how to use it in a way that benefits our “non-digital” life. As UX designers, we need to ask the question “why would the user like/tweet/follow/[insert social interaction] us?” In most of discussion on social media, the focus has been too much on the relationship between a brand and its customers/users, while the main reason why users use social media is for their relationships with other users.
Native vs Web App strategy
Web app has the advantage of instant update and deployment while native app has advantage in performance, particularly in UI/graphics.
For UX designer, don’t try to copy native app UI for web app because to make that work you need to spend a considerable amount of effort on the graphic performance and most likely it will result in a bad copy of the native app UI.
Decision making
>Reptilian brain. Part of the brain that makes subconscious decision related to our primal urges and survival. It actually controls the decisions that we make. We make decision based on our primal urges then rationalize it to justify it. In other words, we don’t choose to buy the shirt because it makes sense, but because it makes us feel more confident.
>Non-decision decision. Make it easy for users to get additional benefits without having to make an extra decision/effort. For example, by buying Tom’s shoes, you donate one pair to people who need shoes. You just need to make one real decision: to purchase the shoes, then you get the “bonus” of feeling good for helping people in need of shoes without having to do anything. Another example, a toilet by Toto in Japan that can measure blood sugar in urine. If the user’s blood sugar reaches a dangerous level, it would send the information to local hospital.
Documentation
Use interactive documentation to improve efficiency. For example, a form that allows developer to input the info about what he’s trying to do and then the form gives him the code that he can easily copy and paste to his project.
Engagement
The best way to engage users is to get them take part in your movement. This means businesses need to create the movement: a cause that allow users to be part of something that’s bigger than them. People will gladly use a not-so-perfect product/service if they believed in your vision.
Social marketing
>Don’t get friends or family. Focus on your core audience who actually care about your product
>Design the product for people has the problem you’re trying to solve, not for people who might use or could use your product.
>Build strong (personal) relationships with your customers and make them feel important – they become your advocates
>Make people wonder
Technology as art medium
Everybody is a technologist today. It’d be very hard to find somebody we know who has never received an email or sent a text message. Especially among the younger generation, the adoption of new technology is impressive. Little kids know how to play with ipads and iphones before they know how to talk, teenagers converse on twitter as if it’s their native language.
Art is nothing if it’s not relevant. Therefor artists need to embrace technology and treat it just like the media they’re used to. In fact, in art history we can see artists using cutting edge technology in their work (i.e. Vermeer with Camera Obscura).
In SXSW 2012, this is evident in how many musicians and film maker try to use technology to engage their audience more (i.e. Location-based music, interactive film). I wonder how this applies to visual artists (i.e painter, sculptor).
UX-related principles
>Value > Pain : cardinal rule of UX
>Create more value than you capture : O’Reilly
>Make what people want (product) instead of interrupt what they do (ad) : a trend in ad agencies in creating product or product-like objects instead of ads
>Creativity happens where there’s room for chaos
>Culture = brand : Zappos’ internal culture defines how they deal with their customers, which essentially defines their brand.
Mobile apps
>Just-in-time interaction. Instead of a feature-rich app, a throw-away object that user can use then discard. It just needs to be useful enough (value) and easy enough to use (pain low enough) so user doesn’t think twice.
>New way to access “apps”. Current apps model is not scalable. It’s similar to the way Yahoo! listed links in the early WWW then replaced by Google search engine.
