IDEA2009 had the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners converge on Toronto’s MaRS Convention Center to share the big ideas that inspire, along with practical solutions for the ways people’s lives and systems are converging to affect society. Listen and learn from experts in a variety of fields as we all continue the exploration of Social Experience Design.
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Innovation Parkour – Matthew Milan
Insight is one of the most widely used and poorly understood concepts in the creative process. Insight is what drives the big idea, validates the crazy hunch, and frames both problem and solution in one fell swoop. Without the right perspective, knowledge, and grounding, generating insight can be unpredictable, wildly unreliable, and completely inconsistent in application.
Matthew Milan, Principal and Design Director with Normative, helps us understand how to generate, identify, frame and use insight effectively. This poorly understood practice is an increasingly a critical skill to have when working on solving complex problems. As an information architect, insight is one of the best tools you can use to unpack difficult challenges and turn them into effective solutions.
Social experiences online might benefit from an alternative venue, but standard human dynamics, modes of kinship/friendship, etc. still apply. Furthermore, we have a rich history of examination to mine, and a range of metaphors to apply that allow us to shift our perspective and enjoy more innovative thinking. The techo-geeky thing is old news, Lisa applies some human thinking.
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The Art and Science of Seductive Interactions – Stephen Anderson
Remember that “percentage complete” feature that LinkedIn implemented a few years ago, and how quickly this accelerated people filling out their profiles? It wasn’t a clever interface, IA, or technical prowess that made this a successful feature—it was basic human psychology. To be good UX professionals we need to crack open some psych 101 textbooks, learn what motivates people, and then bake these ideas into our designs.
Independent consultant Stephen P. Anderson looks at specific examples of sites who’ve designed serendipity, arousal, rewards and other seductive elements into their application, especially during the post sign-up process when it is so easy to lose people. Regardless of your current project, the principles behind these examples (from disciplines like social sciences, psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science) can be applied universally. Best of all, attendees will receive a special gift that makes it easy to bridge theory with tomorrow’s deadline.
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Social Design Patterns Mini-Workshop – Christian Crumlish & Erin Malone
Principal at Tangible UX Erin Malone, and Curator at Yahoo! Design Patter Library Christian Crumlish present a family of social web design principles and interaction patterns to help user experience designers and strategists grapple with the social dimensions of their products and services. The family of patterns, principles, and practices provides a framework and starting point for the conceptual modeling of any interactive digital social experience.
Erin and Christian have observed and codified 96 patterns thus far, capturing user-experience best practices and emerging social web customs for practitioners; introducing the conceptual clusters of patterns, delve deeply into some of the most interesting patterns, and share fundamental principles and deceptively appealing anti-patterns in context through discussion of illustrative scenarios.
Editors Note: The second half of their presentation involved participants playing the Social Mania card game. I’ve included a few pictures of attendees learning the game the evening before to assist Erin and Christian during their presentation. Thanks to Denise Philipsen (@theguigirl) for posting these and other photos from the conference up on Flickr.
If You Build It (Using Social Media), They Will Come – Mari Luangrath
Mari Luangrath is currently starting up her third entrepreneurial venture, Foiled Cupcakes. Without a traditional “cupcakery” storefront but choosing instead to focus on online order and personal delivery, Mari has gone completely non-traditional: she’s used Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to build relationships with Chicago’s most active and vocal influencers and more than double sales targets in month 1 and 2. As a result, 90 percent of the word-of-mouth business she’s received since May 2009 can be tied directly to social media.
While social media is constantly evolving from one medium to the next, it’s absolutely one of the most immediate ways to interact with potential consumers, influencers and connectors in your target market. Of course, there’s no one “right way” to do things in this dynamic environment. Mari shares insightful information regarding the real-time challenges she has faced to stay present in the lives of potential consumers amid all of the fluidity. She also discusses her targeted marketing action plan (what worked, what flopped, and how she’s used roadblocks to her advantage); suggest ways to identify which social media applications will work best for the results you desire; how to develop a plan to connect with targeted consumers; and ways to continue that relationship to provide consumers with an enhanced experience, leading to conversion and sales.
The Dawn of Perfect Products – Tim Queenan
There is a potential upside in social media besides encouraging more dynamic communications and facilitating human networks: the end of bad products. Sure, “bad” is subjective but so is why we buy or don’t buy certain products. Could one of the effects of social media be that we see fewer and fewer inferior products existing in market?
Executive Director of Draftfcb NY’s Digital Practice Tim Queenan, explores what happens when a commodity driven market is regulated by the “crowd” and what types of products and experience start to emerge.
These podcasts are sponsored by:
Information Architecture Institute: Through education, advocacy, services and social networking, the IAI has 1400 members from 80 countries demonstrating the value of Information Architecture to the world at large.
IDEA brings together the worlds foremost thinkers and practitioners. Sharing the big ideas that inspire, along with practical solutions for the ways peoples lives and systems are converging to affect society.
Visit boxesandarrows.com/about/participate to be a part of your peer written journal.
Axure RP is the leading tool for rapidly creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites.
Morae is the premier software for deeply understanding customer experiences…and sharing those insights clearly and powerfully.
iRise enterprise visualization solutions give companies a powerful way to fully experience application before development.
Where are transcripts?? If those sponsors could sponsor podcasts, can they also sponsor transcripts, too?? Thanks.