SXSW Live: Design Eye for Southby
This is one of the few panels I’ve attended more for the people up on there than the content. It’s supposed to be about the future of the SXSW site. But I really couldn’t care less about what they do with their site.
I’m here to hear how the panelists, two of whom are from Apple, are approaching the problem and designing solutions to UX situations.
Everything is quiet. It’s 3:34. Someone with a microphone should start talking…
Okay, so we’re staring with a recap of all the design eyes from years past.
The woman on the panel, whose name I can’t see is sharp as a tack. God bless her. A little personality off the cuff at these things goes a long way.
Don’t want to get too deep into the process technically, so they’re going to introduce themselves…
Andrei is the strategist
Bronwyn Jones is a senior writer at Apple.
Keith Robinson is the Information designer
Ryan Sims is the collateral designer.
Paul Nixon worked on the layout design.
The evolution of design eye (again).
A little more strategic this year, it was more pushing pixels, and now more about problem solving.
Wanting to showcase how they’ve all evolved as designers in going after problems, not just aesthetics.
The big trend now is social networking. So they started thinking about the experience. It’s not about the content or the technology.
We all come to party, drink, and meet people.
When you get down to all these things, it’s all about the experience of being here.
So they initially started looking at the registrants directory. At the start — how can we make this more usable? Then we decided to do something more.
A big idea: people interacting, meeting people: PIMP
They wanted to do something that used the registrants directory, get out there, and make connections. They didn’t want to do social networking, they wanted to enable face-to-face interactions.
Looking at the registrants screen, it doesn’t reflect SXSW. What does it have to start with if we have to end with a Web app that works. It’s not representative of the people.
Once they knew where they’d start they came up with goals:
Make the process more useful
Help to plan the trip, set up contacts
A way to record your experiences and have a lasting artifact, like a scrapbook.
How do people do this?
How do you figure out the plan, where to go next, etc.
So what you really need is a cruise director.
They wanted something they could quickly access that would show you what’s going on all the time. Get a quick read and go.
How do you create that?
The attendees point of view:
How do you identify yourself? I’m here to enjoy myself and take in the week.
SXSW.com is forced to put these things into the three boxes of festivals. But we don’t think of ourselves that way.
So to reorg, it was less about the depth of content in the three boxes, and more about the breadth. Meeting people, going to events, going to parties.
You have to get out there, and that’s where the redesign comes in.
Portable Social Networking
As players in the space, we have these virtual communities, they’ve naturally carved out a nice community for themselves.
As the content owners, SXSW, wants you to engage with content, your photos, etc.
But instead, let’s make the value about the interaction. Those are artifacts, they’ll have a life that lasts a bit longer. What’s happening right now.
Who’s speaking, who’s attending, but where’s a real place to go to see all the info together.
We appreciate that SXSW owns all this great content, then how do we make this work for attendees.
So in the same way they focused on usability, a similar approach applies. They want to save people time so they’re not taking you away from the f2f interaction.
Basically, time, and your ability to keep it free, trumps everything.
So it’s just about capturing all the right parts of the social media world and showing it back in the right way.
How do you make personalization happen and still respect people’s time?
Real-life interaction.
SXSW is in a unique position. It’s not just a tool you use for a year. It’s a little bit in the moment, happening in real time.
This gets us back to the scrapbook metaphor they’re starting to beat down.
So no wireframing and all the tech specs. But it will be available on designeye.org.
The big reveal!
First, instead of the interactive, film, music at the top nave, they’re doing People, events, and parties.
And they’ve got some visual cues to see what events relates to which festival.
They didn’t touch the brand, because that’s working well.
But more and more on these top sites, it looks like a sheel of a print vehicle.
they’ve got friend boxes, twittter updates, shout-outs. Everything’s being pulled off the sites you’re already using.
Events page
an object, like a person, but with specifics for events like mapping. And there’s event video, you don’t have to search it out. If you attended it, it will appear here.
The great british booze-up?
You can see all the people who are going to that party. Then after, you can see the video and photos from the party.
The idea again, being that this is another slice of a take on things. Someone was saying that a good 20% of all iPhones are here in Austin this week.
They don’t have to design the next great SN tool, but take advantage of what all the attendies are using, and put it in one place.
When you consider what this site can really be, where are you gonna go? What are you gonna do? With all the info and content in one place, it helps you ramp up, enjoy it more, and then relive it.
They also talked about how great it was with all this functionality out there, if someone tied all this jazz together.
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