Fresh

What are we even talking about?

Web Typography: Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On was a popular panel that discussed limitations of web typography, myths about web typography and how to dispel them, and talked about overcoming constraints on the web to create typographically beautiful websites.

What is all the fuss about fonts on the web?

The first question the panelists were asked was, “Why are designers still bitching about typography?” After the giggles subsided, the top reasons they gave were:

• frustration stemming from having such a limited palette of available fonts
• the complexity and consistency involved in getting your type to render as intended

Basically, type on the web can be a pain in the ass. There are a decent amount of web fonts, but not all are attractive (Papyrus, anyone?), sometimes you have to use the corporate font specified in a client’s brand guidelines, and regardless what you do, everything can still shift around. A user could increase their font size or have a different default font specified for their system and throw off your whole groove.

Are there solutions?

There are several. Many people make their fancy titles into images, which does work, but then you’re faced with how to keep that text on the page for SEO; others use an image-replacement method like SIFR, but that involves Flash and can get pretty tricky in terms of line-height and making sure it doesn’t do something funky with punctuation or line wrapping. The “new” thing on the scene is to try out @font-face.
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One of the best panels I saw at SXSW was “UX Team of One”, presented by Leah Buley of Adaptive Path. Buley delivered a fast paced, info-packed presentation on how to deliver kick-ass UX design with limited resources.  While a lot of panels at SXSW are more esoteric and high-level, “UX Team of One” was all about being in the trenches and getting design work done.  Throughout the whole talk I was furiously scribbling notes on practical tools and techniques for generating ideas quickly and efficiently.  But you won’t need to read my chicken scratch notes, she has all the resources, worksheets, slides and inspiration collected on her website.  Best of all you can see a video of her whole presentation, recorded by an audience member.  Sync it up with the Slideshare slides and it’ll feel like you were there.

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This panel at SXSW was really interesting for a couple reasons. Jared Spool from UIE is such an engaging presenter! He had us all laughing; I was thoroughly engrossed the whole time. Also, the panel was really awesome because it challenged a few ideas that I generally don’t think twice about.

One of the primary points from the panel was that there is no evidence that user centered design has ever worked. I was really surprised to hear this! One of the anecdotes that he used was based on Apple and Microsoft. Spool claimed that apple hardly does any usability tests, while Microsoft does them constantly. (and we all know whose designs are better!) He didn’t have any numbers behind this, so I’m not sure of the validity. But really interesting none-the-less!

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After an inspiring trip to Austin for SXSW, I’m finally getting a chance to look back at all of the notes and ideas from throughout the week. One of the standout panels for me, was the talk entitled “Design for the Wisdom of Crowds”. The speaker, Derek Powazek began his talk by referencing several social experiments such as the one conducted by Francis Galton, in which a crowd was asked to guess the weight of the cow. Everyone guessed wrong, but the average of the guesses was very close. Similar results were found when applying this to a change jar. So the question he poses is: How can we, as the creators of the web, allow for this wisdom to take place in our communities online? In his panel he discussed some simple ways to think about tweaking interfaces to facilitate better user experiences online.

Some basic rules for making this happen.

1. Diversity - Organize a group of diverse individuals with a wide range of opinions

2. Independence – Encourage the group to contribute for their own selfish reasons

3. Decentralization - There’s nobody in charge

4. Aggregation - Tallying the results and doing something with it

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I attended an awful lot of panels at SXSW, but one that really stuck with me was called “Are Women Taken More Seriously on the Web?” The premise the panel operated under was that women are not generally taken very seriously, and they touched on a lot of interesting points.

The panelists were FASCINATING. I loved hearing their experiences being a woman in tech and how they have dealt with being taken seriously in a dude-centric environment. I didn’t really come away with a lot of concrete notes from that session, but here are some points I wanted to highlight:

Do you come off as a woman online?

One panelist talked about how her mother frequented a college football forum and noticed that the women’s opinions on that forum were never taken that seriously or were mocked. Her mother created a profile on the forum that was deliberately androgynous. She did not state her name; her picture was of something innocuous like a football; her username wasn’t indicative of her gender; and when asked about herself, all she would say was that she had “a son who plays college football.”

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Last week I was lucky enough to play a small, but fun, part in cool project. To enhance a video that was created for a promotional piece for a client, I was recruited to produce some audio effects and voice-over editing. This is extremely exciting as most of my job entails fishing for leads and writing content for bait.

So, the video in question consists of several frames of copy, explaining the process of creating a community website. It was decided that the video could have a greater impact if a voice was saying the words as they appeared, but finding the right voice was a challenge. We wanted to convey an air of sophistication, mystique, and intrigue, which would compel the reader/listener to wonder what exactly this site was all about. We also wanted them to feel special that they were among the elite artists selected to be a part of it.

Charles and I met with Mary McDonald, a renowned voice actor, at her home studio to be the voice of the project. Mary is best known as the voice of On*Star, and also as Lady Jaye from the GI Joe cartoon. After giving her some direction, Mary laid down 8 takes in about 30 minutes. She gave us a couple conversational takes, a couple British-flavored takes, and a couple mysterious espionage-flavored takes.

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A big group of us went to a PAF workshop with On Your Feet today. It focused on how to use improv theater techniques to help teams create fresh ideas. It also seemed really beneficial for anyone who needs to think quickly on their feet (presentations!)

One of their key points was that people doing improv need to be really good at going with the flow. It is detrimental to discourage ideas. When someone throws an idea out at you, instead of saying “no, that’s a bad idea” think how you can use it, play off of it, include it into the flow. They spoke about not being too attached to your “shadow story”, which is your pre-conceived notion of what something should be. Instead, be open to new interpretations of a concept. They talked a lot about turning off your “inner censor” and letting ideas flow regardless of whether you think they are good or not.

Another key idea was to look at things from a different angle than you usually do. If you are stuck, get someone who is not used to thinking about the issue to help you come up with solutions.

They taught us three games/techniques that were really fun, too!

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What a blast. Friday night a bunch of us went to the “Pasties and Pastries, A Burlesque Cupcake Cookoff!” party at Emos. There were cupcakes. There was burlesque. There was Lone Star Beer. Good times!

There was a french horn player in the opening band!

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SXSW is not complete without swag. At eROI, we decided to go the sticker route this year. Big kudos to Stephen who designed this set. The stickers are designed so that they form a seamless tile when put together. More pictures to come. Great work everyone!

The NYC sticker is still missing from Ryan’s computer in this shot

Pardon the glare from the flash on this one.
This is the eROI Wars stickers used as a patch on Noel’s sleeve. People are sporting this look all over.

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Checking in last night (Friday) we went to pick up our badges. It was pretty seamless, except that the photos we had uploaded online were lost. So they had to take new ones on the spot. Except… Meggan’s badge had her name and Mai’s picture!! The situation was quickly resolved, but funny none-the-less. Check it out: