UX London 2010

First, we’ve announced our programme for UX London 2010, which features (amongst others) Jesse James Garrett, Scott McCloud, Whitney Hess and Bill Moggridge.

Once again we were delighted with how much of our Christmas wishlist came true. The north wall of the office has been awash with post-its of names and topics for several weeks now, and there’s a certain Machiavellian joy in seeing it come together into a coherent programme. I’m particularly happy to see some names I pressed especially strongly for.

Bands always say their difficult second album will surpass their first, but I think it’s true this time. Not a prog-rock bass solo in sight. It’s happening 19–21 May 2010, and tickets are on sale on 1 December.

Spring internship

We’re taking on a User Experience intern early next year. It’s the first time this is a dedicated UX position – our previous interns have come from across the whole web spectrum. It’s a paid position lasting ten weeks, and would suit anyone with a talent and love for good user experience design. More details are on the Clearleft site – drop us a line or talk to me if you’re interested.

The book

Finally, my big news is that I’m writing a book with James. Several daunting but hopefully inspiring months lie ahead. More details will follow when we confirm them.

One

The devil is in the details. With such a discerning audience, we had to offer something well run and as seamless as possible. We succeeded, thanks to accurate estimation of various factors including no shows, time between sessions, budgets, and the apparently inevitable delay caused by a GPS-less taxi driver. This attention to detail was entirely down to the commitment of our wonderful volunteers, upon whom I relied to orchestrate the minutiae. Delegation was my preferred tactic, as noted by Johanna in her closing notes.

Two

You can’t live blog a conference you’re running.

Three

There’s something about user experience designers. We took an early decision that UXCampLondon would be a one-dayer since the field is generally slightly older, more interested in spending a Sunday with their family than slumming it on an office floor. This upset a few purists (“It’s not a BarCamp if you don’t stay over!”) but was indisputably the right choice.

Many people commented that UXCampLondon had a unique atmosphere: enthusiastic, yet mature and urbane compared with the (admittedly enjoyable) rough bluster of most BarCamps. It further convinced me that user experience folk are my people: highly likeable but intelligent and well balanced; opinionated yet open to alternative views.

Four

Free alcohol cures all ills.

Five

The best lessons are often hidden. In some ways, I didn’t get that much from UXCampLondon because my mind was always elsewhere and I attended few sessions. But that overlooks the other benefits I took from the day. In particularly, I got further proof of the growing strength of our community (look at the quality of some of these sessions!), and further experience in handling difficult situations (we had plenty).

A couple of people have asked if I’m planning a sequel. It’s possible, but not for a while. I’m taking some time off, and I’m sure there are many other people well suited to running UXCampLondon2.

Thanks to our volunteers, our supporters and of course all the attendees for making UXCampLondon a success.

Photos: Rob Enslin and Adam Charnock.

South By Southwest voting.

I’m sure it’s a system that works excellently for the organisers. The pleas for votes market the conference, and those who plead well are likely to fill a room easily. Most importantly, it reduces the numbers from 2,000 to something considerably more manageable.

On one hand, I’m unsure how a conference with such sprawling breadth can be relevant to many professionals. I’m also not convinced a global desert get-together at which the alcohol takes centre stage is a Good Thing during a recession.

On the other hand, like Glastonbury, perhaps everyone should go once. So let’s make this quick. I’d appreciate your backing for my two proposals:

• Beauty In Web Design (solo)
• Design Perfect Site Navigation (panel member)

While you’re at it, feel free to have a poke around at The .net Awards. Clearleft have been nominated for Agency Of The Year, and our work for the WWF has been put forward for Redesign Of The Year.

Please start from the beginning… with Cennydd Bowles from Ryan Taylor on Vimeo.

The synopsis of my session isn’t on the EuroIA site yet, but you can read it on the Reboot website (sadly I was unable to make arrangements to present it there). As you’d expect, I’m currently deep in research. Happily, wayfinding is a fascinating topic; part architecture, part psychology, part semiotics. The timing is also fortuitous, given the growing interest in wayfinding and augmented reality on mobiles. Plenty of case studies and conjecture to examine. It also ties in with this year’s dConstruct theme, so I’m hoping to pick up a few nuances. The main challenge will be doing justice to such an engrossing field.

My work is used by millions.

When the thought first struck the numbers were lower, but I was stunned. I quickly surmised the only way I could retain objectivity and impartiality was to bury this thought, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m hoping that I can now make sense of it by voicing it.

Of course the scale of the web excites me; I’m delighted and humbled that my work can communicate with so many people. Very few roles have such scale. Architecture, perhaps. Journalism. Politics too, although I’m hardly comfortable with that comparison.

While I admit that it’s something of an egocentric thrill, I’m no household name and nor do I wish to be. Web design is far less important than, say, teaching or healthcare. What matters more to me is that I do great work, and having a large canvas provides me with fascinating ways to achieve this.

However, while the web makes it easier for one person to reach millions, it doesn’t make the relationship easier to comprehend. My excitement is tempered by vertiginous apprehension. From these millions, there will be thousands who love my work. There will also be thousands who hate it: people who relied on the old site, who appreciated a section I removed, whose needs I’ve overlooked in the hurry to get the job done.

With such scale, these users are anonymous to me, just as I am to them. While I work hard to understand them and design to support their needs, there’s no way I can know I’ve improved things for an individual user. I hope I’ve done right by them.

The angst of the user experience designer.

In a previous life I juggled a role that was equal parts information architecture and knowledge management. The fields are closer than you may think, both revolving around codifying, transferring and assimilating information.

Knowledge managers strive for the ‘watercooler moment’, where a colleague mentions in passing something that saves you weeks of work. There’s plenty of thought on how to engender this culture – even interior design has a role – but it can only ever come about by getting people talking. Sometimes, particularly in a fledgling community, this can be achieved via a social object.

My post last week (“Complex inferiority – user experience in the UK”) certainly generated the discussion I hoped for, with opinion split on whether I had a valid point and even whether my points were helpful or harmful. To that end it served its purpose, but I would like to clarify a couple of points.

I am not writing off the UK user experience scene. Far from it. I see UX as my calling, not just my career, and I’ll work as hard as I can to help it thrive here. And we are clearly on an exciting upward swing. However, I’m convinced that we need to be honest about where we must improve, and until we have (amongst other things) widespread mentoring, closer ties between academia and industry, more vocal discussion and a body of excellent work I will always see room for improvement.

Let me also be clear that I don’t advocate empty self-promotion. We don’t need rockstars. We need excellent people contributing to the community. My definition of a leader is someone who goes first, and encourages others to follow. Obviously I hope to contribute in whatever small way I can, but I urge anyone who cares about this scene to take the reins and try out new things to help our nascent community.

For many residents, it was the epicentre of the city’s music scene, which continually punched above its weight. Bands formed from accidental meetings, gigs were posted, albums were bought on impulse, hipster haircuts were admired. For me, it was something of a spiritual home, where even the aloof staff couldn’t detract from the pleasures of rifling through the New Releases with a modest paycheque burning a hole in my pocket.

But these were the days before bandwidth, when even a dial-up shriek was still a rare luxury. The world doesn’t need record shops any more, and Selectadisc wasn’t in the happy position of receiving a government bail-out to cover its outdated business model.

Still, we can look back and pour a 40 on the kerb in honour of our fallen heroes. Farewell Selectadisc, and farewell to the idea of record shop as social object.

I also have a huge love for the stadiums and they remain one of the reasons I prefer to follow Cardiff at away games.

Stadium architecture has a clear effect on the physical presence of the club and atmosphere at games. The psychological effects on fans, referees and players are well-documented, but home advantage is also believed to give a genuine physical edge, hypothesised to be caused by testosterone increases in players. This effect is especially strong in defenders and goalkeepers, for whom the battle is particularly territorial.

Stadiums must also have logistics and facilities for up to 80,000 visitors (around the population of Shrewsbury), hundreds of police, stewards and officials, media and players. The range of requirements is pretty astonishing.

Clubs are known by the reputation of their grounds and the atmosphere they inspire. Some teams are known for poor support and quiet games (the “prawn sandwich” brigade). Cardiff, on the other hand, have a reputation as a very intimidating club. There are many reasons for this: passionate fans, unfortunate hooliganism, and the constant battle to be noticed against Wales’ supposed national sport of rugby. However, the stadium plays a huge part too.

Ninian Park is a classic ‘old style’ stadium, well beyond its useful life yet still possessing the hallmarks of bygone eras: terracing, woeful facilities, and some intangible ‘character’. High among Cardiff fans’ many concerns for the future is the worry that atmosphere and indeed a piece of the club’s identity will be lost as we move into our new stadium (at top) in May.

On my travels with Cardiff I’ve been to some dismal grounds, and loved them all (a foggy January week night in Mansfield where you couldn’t even see the other end of the pitch comes to mind). Below, Watford’s stadium: ugly and an easy target for ridicule, but possessing far more character than many other grounds I’ve visited.

And then there’s always the rare occasion when your team performs and suddenly you find yourselves part of something huge:

This is my best shot from last year’s FA Cup Final, which Cardiff pretty much fluked our way into. Wembley is of course enormous, and again the atmosphere is shaped by the architecture. Expensive facilities and location make for expensive tickets. This (and the sponsorship derived from TV coverage) means money spare for banners, flags and other paraphenalia. Huge crowds make for huge expectations, high ceremony and lengthy big build-ups, but they also make co-ordinating singing impossible. Many Cardiff fans said they didn’t get the same sense of atmosphere as at a traditional away game, since the noisiest fans were spread across the ground rather than, as is common, concentrated in a group.

The nosebleed-inducing height also changes one’s experience of the match. From here you can see the sweep of the game, like a general, but not the blood and sweat of the touchline.

This post is clearly an excuse for me to indulge a slight stadium fetish; however, I do think they provide great examples for how our identities, attitudes and actions can be shaped by the built environment. A branding exercise writ large in brick, if you will.

One may ask why this tipping point has happened first in the UK, rather than the States or elsewhere. One possible explanation is that a small number of influential celebrity types have hastened this outcome, and it’d be easy to fall into a daft sociocultural analysis of Britain the country and Britain the network. Stephen Fry as the powerful Gladwellian connector, uniting the geeks and the unwashed, previously so suspicious of each other!

My money’s on random chance. The initial conditions were set, after which chaos theory is the dominant force (yes, perhaps I have been listening to Jeremy too much).

The practical upshot is plenty of new users, including several of my real-life friends. They’re perhaps still on the early adopter side of mainstream but they’re not the type to, for instance, write blog posts about why people are joining Twitter. While it’s great to have them on Twitter, I have my own selfish concern: will I be able to cope?

I’ve previously mentioned that I have an approximate following threshold of 250. My workload and lifestyle enforce that personal limit, and I can’t realistically keep up to date with more people. So if my less geeky friends continue to join, whom do I drop? The model’s different from Facebook, where I can simply accumulate “friends” (a virtual notch on the bedpost) and then largely ignore them. So do I drop existing Twitterers, many whom I’ve never met but still give me a wealth of inspiration and knowledge, or friends whom I miss and am always eager to hear from? Ambient intimacy or friendship?

It’s a quandary. I’ve been trying to convince friends to join Twitter for a long time and it would be an irony if, once they join, I admit I don’t want to follow them. Yet I’m already operating a one-in-one-out policy, and something will have to give. My likely approach will be to take a much more relaxed and liberal approach to unfollowing people. Just as I’ll go and talk to various people at a party, so my attention will shift around a bit online. It’s either that or I face a cacophony in which I can hear no one.

However, I’m aware that people have very different attitudes to being unfollowed, so I’ll treat this post as a prophylactic excuse. Seriously, it’s not you, it’s me.