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The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web? at #SXSW2012

Tuesday, March 13, 2012 at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas #sxsw #righttool
Panel discussion by Buzz Andersen (Dir of Mobile – Tumblr), Jacob Bijani (Prod Engineer – Tumblr), Majd Taby (Software Engineer – Facebook), Matthew Delaney (WebKit Engineer), and Tom Dale (Sr Software Engineer – Ember.js)

Apps are much easier to monetize than websites, because you can charge up front.

for Tumblr T-shirt Contest / 01 (Photo credit: albyantoniazzi)

The browser rendering engine does a lot of the heavy work that native developers have to contend with. The web browser is a highly evolved medium for content delivery and rich layout.

Read the rest of The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web? at #SXSW2012

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Killer App Design with Javascript and HTML 5

HTML5 and Complex Web Apps

Web 2.0 vs HTML5 apps

Web 2.0

  • Dynamic content
  • Database driven
  • Social applications
  • Stupid name
  • “The Internet is more than lame dancing genies and hit counters!”

HTML5 Apps

  • Interactive content
  • Real-time
  • Task-oriented
  • Cool logo
  • “You can have a desktop experience in your browser”
  • Not trying to replicate a desktop software experience.

HTML5 – New Markup (separating functionality and presentation in the DOM with data-* attributes)

Amazing JavaScript APIs

Application Architecture

Lots of tools available that will allow for a more robust application development process.

  • Moving state to the client
  • Wep app Kool-Aid: MVC/MVVM, pub/sub and the module pattern
  • Your application as an API

Don’t do it alone

Toolkits, precompilers, boilerplates, and more

For the enterprise-y among you

Testing, IDEs and other developer tools

Read the rest of Killer App Design with Javascript and HTML 5

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Jared Spool – Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

 

h2. Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm

Session 1 – Jared Spool

The UX aspect of mobile has really exploded recently.

Examples:

My Coke Rewards – mobile site had to have Flash. Excluded all iPhone users.

Fox Weather “Alternate content should be placed here.”

MikePanetta.com – QR code on sign, but no mobile site.

Mariott Hotel – connect to wifi via mobile

h3. Sturgeon’s Law

Theodore Sturgeon “90% of everything is crap!”

United airlines email link to 404 page

Coke has fixed the flash problem, but shows the entire site when user is trying to input a code.

You would think by now that we now how to show sites on mobile now, but companies still have issues: verizon wireless, att, apple, air canada

Read the rest of Jared Spool – Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm

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Jared Spool – The Essential Principles behind Great Design Principles

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Jared Spool, CEO & Founding Principal of User Interface Engineering and co-author of Web Anatomy, started the session by showing examples of web sites that had serious usabilities. Some of the designs were attractive, but did not serve the users needs. In most examples, the user had to click multiple items or jump back and forth between pages or flyouts (a process he referred to as “pogo-sticking”) to find the information that would help them make the decision they were supposed to make to allow them to continue with the process. The takeaway was that when we encounter a problem in our application that hinders users, we should strive to help people make a choice in the easiest way possible.

Dieter Rams

Dieter Rams was the first person to create a standardized set of design principles, which are as follows:

Read the rest of Jared Spool – The Essential Principles behind Great Design Principles

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Luke Wroblewski – Designing Mobile Web Experiences

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Convincing Clients to Care

Luke Wroblewski - Designing Mobile Web Experiences

Luke Wroblewski - Designing Mobile Web Experiences

Prediction in 2009 that smartphones would outsell PCs in 2012, it happened in 2010.

Home usage of PC since 2008 has decreased 20%

November 2010 – visits to web-based email sites decreased 7% and people accessing email on mobile devices increased 36%

Twitter – 40% of all tweets are sent via mobile; 16% of new users start on mobile. Top 2 Twitter mobile clients – twitter.com, m.twitter.com, sms

Facebook – 33% of users use mobile via Facebook mobile website, and clients on phones

Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013

Shift from what was the personal computer (PC) to what is the personal computer (smart phone).

Capabilities & Constraints

Capabilities

Location Systems: GPS, WiFi, Cell Tower Triangulation

Read the rest of Luke Wroblewski – Designing Mobile Web Experiences

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Kate Brigham – PatientsLikeMe: Adventures with Data Visualizations

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Kate Brigham - PatientsLikeMe - Adventures with Data Visualizations

Kate Brigham - Adventures with Data Visualizations

8 in 10 internet users have looked online for health information

patientslikeme helps patients track chronic conditions and learn from the experience from other people who are experiencing the same symptoms, medications and conditions

People share stories as part of a typical conversation. PatientsLikeMe tracks all data about members by translating stories into data.

Given my status, what is the best outcome I can hope to achieve and how do I get there? – establish a baseline for member engagement

Make it easy for people to create data

If you’re asking people to invest time and energy to give you the data, let them know how it will benefit them.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Make forms easy

Start with questions that are easy to answer and don’t use jargon…

Read the rest of Kate Brigham – PatientsLikeMe: Adventures with Data Visualizations

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Steve Portigal – Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 24, 2011

Steve Portigal - Design Fieldwork - Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In

Steve Portigal - Design Fieldwork

Main Topics

  1. How insights from users can impact our designs
  2. How to gather those insights

Be a methods-polygamist

Choose, mash-up or create methodology based on the problem, integrate (Triangulate) with other methods, Create a library of methods and artifacts (screeners, interview guides, stimulit, storyboards, etc.) You can even create new ones and make it up as you go.

Different methods work together.

Innovation means getting beyond pain points

Users may not actually know what is causing the problem.

Pain points may not really be that painful anyway

Satisficing (Herbert Simon – 1956) refers to our acceptance of good enough solutions.

thereifixedit.com

Fieldwork leads to refined beliefs about customers

“You are not your user.” It’s good to realize that you are different than your users/clients, but it’s also necessary to realize similarities and commonality.

Read the rest of Steve Portigal – Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In

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Bill Scott – Designing for Mice and Men

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

Bill Scott from Netflix – Designing for Mice and Men

Bill Scott, Netflix – Designing for Mice and Men

Bill has been in the industry for a long time, at Sabre, Yahoo! and now Netflix.

Challenge is designing across devices: web, mobile, tablets & TV. Iteration changes based on devices. In Canada, they don’t even have a queue.

People like to make lists.

Chaos – 400 SKUs (devices) can run Netflix. Different manufacturers can create different NetFlix experiences. Using HTML5 for all platforms. Using Webkit (QT Webkit, Skia Webkit, iOS Webkit) Takes advantage of the same engineering team to create for most devices.

Server-driven dynamic UI

Webstyle release vs CE firmware updates

Support A/B Testing

Controlled Variances

Managing Across Platforms

Read the rest of Bill Scott – Designing for Mice and Men

  • portability layer (html5)
  • vary the experience across platforms
  • design for user posture, input capabilities, navigation styles and display capabilities

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