Archive for March, 2009
|SXSW Notes pt. 5 – Presenting Straight to the Brain
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
- the brain has lots of distractions
- peple have different learning styles that need to be looked at
Research
- there’s no research that says using templates & bullet points are the best way to present
- Book: Multimedia Learning
- we have assumptions about communications that we can send info and someone will receive it without a problem
Types of learning
- no learning
- fragmented learning
- meaningful learning
- usually stuck in fragmented learning
Memory
- sensory memory (unlimited)
- long term memory (unlimited)
- working memory (3-4 chunks of information retained in working memory)
- sync both visual and verbal channels of communication in a presentation
- the speed the brain processes verbal and visual are different
- need effective information design
- present a story in a way that slims it down enough to where people can process it all
What turns the brain on
- meeting the brain, not just on conscious mind.
- the mind thinks something is important, but the brain disagrees
- how does the brain know what to let through it’s spam filter?
- brain cares about chemestry
- anything that sends a little chemical signal (weird things, shocking/novel things)
- talking to a person’s instincts, eliciting a reaction to toggle memory
What the brain doesn’t care about:
- boring dude with a computer
- code
- adding in a strong image to code to get a reaction
- talk to the brain, not the mind
Retention
- combining the audio and visual toggle much better memory
- showing interaction with action, sound and animation
Mistakes people make in presentations
- using speaker notes (use the screen and images for speaking queues )
- Focusing on the tool, rather than what you want to do with it
- talking over text
- having too much text
- putting text on a page forces the brain to decide between listening to you or reading the text
- bullet points are not always your best option (ask: when is it appropriate to put bullet points in a film, or put the script on the screen? — it’s not)
- listing technique doesn’t hold up against a story approach
- don’t read the bullet point
- if a bullet point is wrapping on the next line, it’s too long
- Book: evaluating training methods
How can we make actual changes to someone’s behavior? not just cheap tricks.
- how you view the audience, as a presenter is important
- don’t make a presentation of [x] better, try and make a better user of [x]
- don’t focus on the presentation, focus on the user and how they can use the information
Tips
- never use templates or themes
- use pop culture (star wars example)
- ask yourself if every slide has a pulse
- use puppies
Notes from other people
Tags: notes, presentation, sxsw
Posted in Life | 1 Comment »
SXSW Notes pt. 4 – Managing “Expert” Clients
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Making your clients feel good
- they call this the honeymoon phase
- meeting the team
- making a good 1st impression
- spend time outside the office
- finding out how they like to work
- bonding with the client
Refining you approach
- how do you like to work
- how do the like to work?
- staying flexible
Setting the ground rules
- establish a baseline relationship
- make sure you’re clear about what’s happening with the work
- listing business & team objectives – with team member names
Kicking off the project right
- motivating your team with clear roles and responsibilities (client and team)
- Educating clients
- inform without talking down (don’t talk to them like children)
- myth busters and industry standards
- project life cycles
- setting expectations
- communicate escalation paths
- set up regular check points
- have your analytics in place to defend decisions
- urging using comments on a blog if they have a quality product
Managing the project scope
- clear up any questions
- assign duties to key stakeholders
- review project schedule
- clarify the impact of missing deadlines
- explain the purpose of each deliverable
- maintain ad consistent review of a project
Defining the process
- Key documentation
- project plan
- weekly status notes
- functional design spec documentation
- test plans
- using pictures in documentation
- the more documentation you can hand off to the client, the better
Gaining trust
- proving by performing
- putting yourself in your clients shoes
- not all your decisions should benefit you
- be honest
- differentiating between personal & professional knowledge
What if we disagree?
- handling scope creep
- a new creative brief, letting them know consequences to when work gets off track
- change of direction halfway through
- budget increase, make the client understand that actions have reactions
- team conflict
- be creative and flexible
- sometimes you have to say “enough is enough”
Compromise after a tough change on the project
- keeping your team motivated
- ending a project properly
- tie up loose ended
- fixing bugs
- stabilization period
- smoothing things over so you can work together again
- lessons learned
- check analytics after a while to see if the project was successful
- celebrate the launch with your team
- assess good and bad things in the project
Referrals will spur new business
- they’ll remember the team they worked with, not the company.
- establish a good relationship
Tags: project managment, sxsw
Posted in Life | 1 Comment »
SXSW Notes pt. 3 – CSS3
Friday, March 20th, 2009
This panel had representitives from each vendor (not apple) and they each took turns showcasing the upcoming CSS3 support in their browser.
MOZ
- nth-child selector
- color module [opacity, rbga]
- border-image
- border-radius
- box-shadow
- * word-wrap:break-word
- * font-adjust
- @font-face
- @media queries ( @media(width:22em){blah}
- -moz-transform: skewX(20deg);
- -webkit-transform: skewX(20deg);
Future from MOZ
- width calculations
- new layout systems for user interface
Microsoft – IE and CSS
- implementing 2.1
- 1st complete implementation on 2.1
In IE8
- no new CSS3 properties
Future of CSS in IE
- opacity
- backgrounds
- web fonts
- media queries
- mutil-column
Opera
- text-shadow (css2)
- webfonts (css2)
CSS3
- backgrounds and borders
- border-radius: 150px / 50px;
- box-shadows, blur, inset
- border-image
- a box css3 style
- css transitions (animations)
Tags: CSS, sxsw
Posted in Browsers, Life | 3 Comments »
SXSW Notes pt. 2 – Web Typography
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
Why do web designers complain about typography?
- web fonts are limiting
- SIFR
- Font stacks
- complexity
- consistency across platforms
Where do you find inspiration?
- print design
- thebookcoverarchive.com
- the content itself
Current implementation?
- Don’t pretend the Web is a book
- Cambria adoption is around 40%
- questionablecharacters.com
- Try to make the design work with the fonts you have
The future of Web typography?
- @font-face{ font-family:barf; src: url(barf.otf/eot); } <–need IE if statement for IE .eot font files
- font linking
- .eot as an open format for protection of font files
- loading problems with @font-face since the font has to load
- using an .htaccess file to protect the font from download.
- webfonts.info [available font with open licensing]
Closing Tips:
- webtypography.net
- pick a normal font and make it good. Don’t dwell on what you can’t do
- realize the creative potential
- use letter spacing, text decoration, etc to dress up a standard font
- CSS3 fonts module
- Look up ARC90
- Arial has cross browser weight (bolding) issues, because it’s an old forgotten font
Tags: sxsw, typography
Posted in Life | No Comments »
SXSW Notes pt. 1- Feedback & Social Architecture
Monday, March 16th, 2009
How to Respond to Feedback
step 1
Appreciation – “Thank you”
step 2
Acknowledgment
- understanding before you act. ask further questions if you don’t understand
- words matter (being blunt isn’t an excuse)
step 3
Consideration
- finding the value in feedback, how you can apply it
- strip away the negative
- isn’t always actionable
- be honest (if you can’t do it, need to think about it, etc.)
- give accurate expectations
- don’t say the word “no”, soften it up
Social Architecture by Christina Wodtke (Day Stage) – boxesandarrows.com
- slides on slideshare.net
- behavior is a function of the person + the environment
- you can only control the environments
- Gene Smith’s model
- A group is it’s own worst enemy – shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
- need to have visitor identities
- make the default avatar ugly so people want to change it
- identity is context based
- presence (status, history, signs of life [last logged in])
- reputation system can be insulting to a small group
- it’s good for large groups like amazon
- there must be a cost to join (from registration form to monthly fee)
- building relationships (groups of some kind)
- ways to track people you’re interested in
- facilitating conversation between users
- sharing information
- segregating a social site by demographic if you’re trying to cover a wide audience
- look for a real-world equivalent and try to mimic the behavior on your site
Tags: feedback, social, sxsw
Posted in Life | No Comments »
Replacing an old Flame
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009
Earlier this week (this morning) I had a sorted break up with long-time-used FireFox add-on TwitterFox. Admittedly, I didn’t really plan for it – it just happened one day. Then there I was using the Web interface to update my Tweets. Which is fine, I actually prefer the Web interface over all the desktop apps that have been built.
Breaking up is like knocking over a coke machine. You can’t do it in one push, you’ve got to rock it back and forth a few times, and then it goes over. - Jerry Seinfeld
I had been unhappy with TwitterFox for a while (almost since the beginning), I was just using it because I needed something, it was the best I found, and I didn’t feel like doing more research on it.
Overall, it was an OK experience because I feel like I know exactly what I want in a Twitter updater. I know what I liked about TwitterFox, and, most importantly, what I hated about it.
TwitterFox Pros and Cons
Pros
- Presence – I have a browser open all day, and it’s right there, very fast to update, not a separate app eating up all my RAM
- @replies – It usually caught my @replies even when I wasn’t the 1st @ listed in a tweet
Cons
- Pop ups – I hate the intermittent pop ups of tweet. I’m sure it can be turned off, but I hated it
- Pop up interval – on the off chance that I wanted to read a tweet as it popped up, if the text was long, it didn’t stay popped up long enough to read. Then I’d have to stop and go read the tweet
- Lazy – it stopped catching all my @replies (the last month or so).
- Replying – the way replies functioned bothered the crap out of me
- I just didn’t like it.
Researching replacements
Just by looking at some people I follow on Twitter, I came up with a pretty good list of TwitterFox alternatives to investigate.
Apps
I don’t like the external apps for Twitter updates, but I’m going to give them all a try and see if I can get into it:
In-browser options
That’s what I’m planning to look in to right now. Are there any I missed? I’m open to pretty much anything right now. I was with TwitterFox for a while (maybe a year?) and generally not pleased with it, so I want to make sure to find something that really fits.
Tags: twitter
Posted in social | 10 Comments »
For a Beautiful Web
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
Every so often as I meander around the internet I find little bits of geek-dome brilliance in the markup of a site.
This morning, I was reading For A Beautiful Web, a site put out by Andy Clarke. This site, by itself is a great resource, but that’s not why I’m writing this.
I left a comment on a recent blog post, and since I had also just written a custom style for this site with Stylish, I noticed that the comment I left looked a little funny. It looked like the style I just wrote for a blockquote. So I investigated.
Sure enough:
Not only a blockquote, but a dash-o-microformatting too.
Anyway, I thought this was a brilliant addition to blog comments, and it makes perfect semantic sense, and I really hope it catches on. I love it, great job Andy!
P.S. If anyone wants to meet up at SXSW next week DM me (or e-mail me), I’ll be there for all of the Interactive and some of the movies.
Tags: comments, microformats
Posted in Web Standards | 5 Comments »