So many wonderful presentations at the Big Design Conference (#bigd12)! Here are my key takeaways:
Scaling Scrum with UX - Caleb Jenkins
- Developing UX - agile consulting
- principle = (be) Agile
- process = (do) SCRUM;
- framework = test-driven design, continuous delivery, technical debt
- How to manage a set of teams who support the same product?
- Product Owner Team must quarterback all architecture
- PO Team must include POs, BAs, UXs, and (multiple) architects
- Give each team a BA to serve as PO (must be trusted to make final decisions)
- Run PO Team as a "coordination team", responsible for all interdependencies
- NO ONE on a team can dedicate less than 75%; otherwise, they are consulting
- How to pace sprints?
- best: 17-day sprint with 3-day gap (yes, a gap)
- management: aim for efficiency (speed) over productivity (filling every hour)
- no gaps = traffic jam: it works like highway traffic, where the gaps between cars allow them to move at the fastest rate
- gaps are for being able to handle the problems that always surface, without slowing down!
Surviving CSS by Thriving with SAS - Ken Tabor
- SASS = "Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets", .scss
- bones = HTML; brains = javascript; clothes = CSS
- Single-source/reuse style elements, then compile to minified output
- "mixins" = reusable snippets that expand out at compile time
- parameters, variables, functions
- hierarchical nesting
- color math (very exciting!)
- file fragments (partials)
- logical conditions
- Ex.: shadows, gradients, browser tags; put mixin into partial and include [@include gradient(red,blue)]
- Variable: $shadow-color, $small-text-size, $max-width
- Function: returns calculated result: convert artist's pixels to percentages/math
- Logical Conditions: @if, @for, @each, @while
- All-in-one tool for designers: mhs.github.com/scout-app/
- Link to slides
Big Umbrella of Inclusive Design - Sharron Rush
- Great design doesn't just help the disabled, it can transform disabilities
- See YouTube : The Blind Film Critic, using iPhone gestures for blind
- Crowdsourcing design/problem-solving = OpenIDEO
- Crowdsourcing funding = Kickstarter
- "Designing with Progressive Enhancement"
- Whole New Mind = the shift to creativity and empathy
UX Principles of Jim Henson - Russ Unger
Great design is
- invisible to users
- dynamically researched and constantly monitored
- sketched out
- made from adaptible/recombinable patterns
- endlessly hacked, improvised, improved
Myth of Paying Attention - Brad Nunally
- Psychology reveals why users fail (why our UI designs fail)
- change blindness (if too similar, can't notice difference)
- brain filters out "noise", easy to miss what we're not hunting for
- we perceive faster than we understand
- reality is only one third based on UI (sensory): the rest is dynamically constructed of memory (past) and expectation (future)
- command attention by judicious use of choice (but limit number of choices)
- books: Traffic, Brain Rules, Free Will
Designing for Real-Time Marketing - Tyler Travitz
- Problem: marketing opportunities are ever more time-critical, so how to spin a social media campaign in an hour, not a day?
- Goal: publish opportunistically and spontaneously, to ride the wave of news cycles
- Ex.: Audi's 4-circle logo hacked into 2-circle logo (wedding rings), to express support for marriage equality -- spread like wildfire
- Ex.: Follow "National Whatever Day" to find opportunity for campaign for organization
- Tools are critical for real-time analysis, such as Buzzbee; monitor conversations and events
- Infographics = core of many effective JIT campaigns
- How to go fast? just-in-time disposable quality; keep legal resource in loop; avoid email (delays) -- use tool like Concept Share
Stop Designing, Start Developing- Aaron Hursman
- How to get to good-enough design?
- Do the hardest stuff early, but grab low-hanging fruit to get moving if you're stuck
- Choose tools based on speed: Basalmiq, paper, keynote, screenshots
- Stay always ready to present on demand
- tip: Don't push for feedback quickly, or people manufacture positions, which they then defend
- Get over yourself, and realize perfectionism is your enemy
- It's never good enough for you; rather, is it good enough for the stakeholder?
- @theloudninja
- Note: See IASummit.org for tutorial on sketch-noting
From Information to Understanding - Stephen Anderson
- Data visualization is money well spent: "information is cheap; understanding is expensive"
- #1: Infographics = most powerful because we're wired mostly for visual processing
- #2: Interactions (conversation, manipulation, movement) = thinking thru doing, learning by doing
- #3: Pattern recognition: metaphors and relationships work, as they offload working memory
Ex.: visual metaphor of iceberg, to instantly communicate known/seen vs. unknown/hidden
Is the Cloud Almighty? - Adam Hansen
- The good:
- avoid capital investment
- supports agility: scales up and scales out
- can hybridize: cloud for load-balancing, connected to dedicated clusters, such as payment processing
- The bad:
- forces you to stay on current, standard software/platforms; limited OS support
- dependence on third party and service agreement
- vendor lock-in: How do I move?
- Recommended: OpenStack open-source cloud software, common API, to blend vendors, approaches
Content Strategy, Design Framework - Rahel Anne Bailie
- Most useful persona: "Frustrated Frank"
- data ("12") + context ("months of the year") = content ("December")
- content + context = information
- information + context = knowledge
- content strategy = repeatable mgmt across lifecycle (e.g., how to retire content)
- content is expensive, so goal is to reuse
- Recommended: migrate as little legacy content as possible to reach goal
Translate & Localize Made Easy - Angelos Tzelepis
- GILT: globalization - g11n > internationalization - i18n > localization - l10n > translation - x11n
- "transcreation": have in-country writer figure out a way to convey the new term/concept
- Note: specific industry may allow terms to stay in English
- segmentation = strings maintained in translation memory, to reuse translation
- Tip to find global-friendly font: apply to test page that has text in all of your languages
- Recommended:
- Move to OpenType Pro fonts, which will have full character sets (free fonts won't)
- MemoQ, but will it survive, with all the consolidation in translation tools?
- Ask your translator which tool they prefer you to use
- HTML5 is the Flash replacement; iPhone friendly
- Offers rich media + mobile support + geo locations + browser compatible + drag & drop
- ID tags for rich (structured) content are crawled by Google, affect page ranking
- Offers lighter bandwidth usage, fewer HTTP requests; Google rates lighter sites higher
- Structure tags = article, section, header, hgroup, footer, nav, aside, video, summary, details, time
- HTML5 includes SQL DB API, for local data storage
- Adoption: 34% HTML5, 46% XHTML
- Tools: HTML5rocks.com (Google)
One Site Fits All: Responsive UX - Kirk Ballou
- Avoid redirecting to alternate sites: huge drop-off
- Load time improvement critical for mobile
- CSS tricks to speed up loading: start loading mobile, blur, then load desktop images
- test cross-platform: Blaze
- 85%: Android + iPhone
- Detect screen and orientation
- Warning: event though iPad3 does HD, load time is bad
- Fluid grid, 12 columns. See CSS Grid.
- Good example: Boston Globe: goes from 4 > 2 > 1 column as needed, focuses on search, links large enough to tap
- Can have layout-specific javascript (don't use in-line, ever!)
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