So I attended @media 2010 down on London’s South Bank this year. As always it was inspirational, interesting and informative. An ideal way to start a new blog. What follows are my random thoughts and notes from the 2 days.
Speakers
@BrendanEich
Predictions
- Webkit will fork (more so than currently) – Apple and Google to go down different paths
- Native code will be used more but won’t overtake JavaScript
@mediajunkie, http://www.mediajunk.ie/
http://www.slideshare.net/xian/designing-for-play-at-web-directions-media
Play
- Childsplay
- Play acting
- Identity
- Masks
- Computer screen
- Online identity / profile
- Avatar
- Be someone else
- Make believe
- Behave differently
Gameplay
- Start game
- Rules
- Community guidelines
- Norms / standards
- Goals
- Collecting behaviour
- Primitive
- Adds delight / fun
- Competition
- Points system
- Be careful about what points are scored for
- Leaderboard
- Establishes winners + losers
- Highly competitive environments
Playing music
- Can be challenging
- Tuning
- Fine tuning
- Varying degrees of complexity
- Enable users to make mistakes but still have a good experience
- Mechanical engineering
- ‘Play’ in movement – room to maneuver
“Signs of life”
- Establish that you’re in company
“Open” design
- Create framework where users can make choices and co-create their experience
Curation
- Currently hard for users to take a number of objects from the web and assemble them as another creative object
- Easy to gather stuff and push back out
Flow state
- Stop thinking about what you’re doing
- Play
- Alpha state of mind
@jeresig
“Golden age of mobile development – 3 years from now”
- Symbian (Nokia handsets) – 3x as many phones sold than iPhone or Blackberry
Mobile browsers
- Opera – Opera Mini most prevalent not Opera Mobile
- iPhone
- Nokia
- Working on mobile graded browser support matrix
- Yahoo to release mobile browser usage info soon
- “TestSwarm” – automated testing
- “TouchScroll” – Fixed position in Safari mobile
- Windows Mobile 6.5 – IE6 rendering engine
- Windows Mobile 7.0 – IE7 rendering engine
- Web OS – HP (formerly Palm) – Webkit
- MeeGo – Linux based – Gecko – Tablet / Netbook
- Fennec – Firefox mobile
Test devices
| Device |
OS |
| iPhone 4 |
iOS 4 |
| iPhone 3GS |
iPhone OS 2, iPhone OS 3.1, iOS 4 |
| iPad |
iPhone OS 3.2, iOS 4 |
| Nokia E71 |
S60v3 |
| Nokia N96 |
S60v3 |
| Nokia N97 |
S60v5 |
| Palm Pre |
1.4 |
| HTC Magic |
Android 1.5, Android 1.6 |
| HTC Dream / T-Mobile G1 |
Android 1.6 |
| HTC Incredible |
Android 2.1 |
| HTC HD2 |
Windows Mobile 6.5 |
| Blackberry Curve 8900 |
Blackberry OS 4.6 |
| Blackberry Storm 2 9500 |
Blackberry OS 5.0 |
@simonw
Crowdsourcing
- Has to have some benefit for the user
- Or make them curious
- Or be fun
Examples
- 90-9-1 rule crops up again
- Incentives don’t have to be big to get people to participate
@jonathanstark, http://jonathanstark.com/wdx
- Eases creation of iPhone web apps using iPhone OS UE patterns
- iPhone browser can be instructed to display in full screen mode without the address bar
- Use offline storage to speed up app
- Don’t lock users into the mobile version of your app/site
- E.G. GMail sends you to their optimised mobile site automatically but gives you the option of using their regular site – preference should be remembered for next visit.
@Malarkey, @itshardboiled, http://forabeautifulweb.com/blog/about/walls_come_tumbling_down_presentation_slides_and_transcript/
Design top down
- Best browsers first – provide the best possible experience and adapt for less capable browsers
“Get excited”
“Make things”
- Not about browser age – about browser capabilities
Useful stuff
@mattb
- Devices are connected – a node on a network
- Personal – interface with you and the internet
- “Bridge between the internet and the real world”
- Devices are aware of where they are
“Checking in”
- Contributing small bits of data – E.G. “I’m here”
- Micro-updates
“Place”
- Not lat/long
- Place is human + meaningful
- Combine location api’s to build rich information about the persons location
“Direction”
- Growing number of devices can determine the direction you’re facing
- Walkman – first mobile augmented reality device
Realtime
“Your app isn’t the centre of everyone’s world”
- Mobile device usage tends to be short bursts – dip in and out
- Eyes typically not on the device for lengthy periods (exceptions are commuting/travel)
- Possiblity of interruptions – need to be able to immediately stop what you’re doing, deal with whatever’s going on in the real world and come back to your device later
@Han
Storytelling
- Draw
- HTML
- Anything – Use simplest tool
- Conversation – dialogue
- Boeing 747 – “Design Decision Memorandum” – Note of design changs sent to all involved to keep everyone updated of changes
“Think like a film crew”
- Define the plot
- Write a script
- Script must serve the plot – if it doesn’t then something’s wrong
@rem, http://www.slideshare.net/remy.sharp/browsers-with-wings
Media API
Canvas
SVG
- Can mix SVG + Canvas
- Add support in IE
- Silverlight bridge or excanvas.js (slow performance with these solutions)
Storage – key/value pair api
- Values are strings
- Need to use JSON to encode/decode
IndexedDB – future
- To be supported by Firefox/IE
Sockets
@aral, http://aralbalkan.com/
“The differentiating factor is the user experience”
“Bad user experience is easier to define”
“Don’t infuriate the user”
- Worry about the users needs, not yours
“Does it give me joy to use?”
- Empathy
- oAuth not secure
- xAuth – best of Basic Auth + oAuth
“The experience is only as good as the weakest link”
@berkun, http://www.scottberkun.com/
Creation
“Ideas are made from other ideas”
- Combination + re-combination of other smaller ideas
- Remove inhibitions – don’t apply self-imposed constraints
- Fears – prevent you from trying stuff out
Creative thinking hacks
- Keep a journal – write ideas down whenever and wherever they occur
- Escape – subconscious mind needs to be allowed to surface stuff
- Inversion – Solve the opposite problem from the one you are trying to solve
- Partner – work with another person
- Fail – take enough risks so that you are bound to fail sometimes
“First draft of anything is shit” – Ernest Hemingway
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