Anthony Milner

Mark Cohen recently blogged about a very cool web application called animoto which let’s you build video animations very quickly. It was timely because we wanted to produce a short animation to showcase our recent work and this allowed us to knock one up in minutes. We could have spent $$ doing this professionally and may still do so but this is a very cool and easy way to proof of concept the idea. This was produced in 15 minutes…

Thanks Mark (and animoto)

Aaah creative beer ads, you gotta love em….

www.stubbysymphony.com.au

George Oates is our very own Flickr co-founder and designer originally from South Australia. I was really interested in going to this talk because Flickr practically created what is now summed up in the overused and misunderstood term – web 2.0. Her talk gave us an awesome insight into how Flickr flourished.

Here is a snapshot of history, ideas and experiences that George shared with us…

What is Flickr…

It’s a great place to be a photo

It used to be a game called gameneverending [MMRPG] objective – pick paper off a tree, find/trade items, chat – funny charming game that pulled people in. Deepy social, conversational, collaborative. The core engine of this game was used for Flickr. Photo sharing in 2003 was being done by huge brands such as Kodak… there was a growing demand to host photos online. Camera phones had just started appearing.

1.5 billion photos – 3000 new photos every minute – 10 million members

Naiveté can be charming and productive. Naiveté applies to usability. Many people that arrive at a site know nothing

Didn’t sweat the technique – just designed stuff – made a ton of mistakes but learnt from this

There was a shared understanding of netiquette amongst the user base of GNEr’s and Bloggers

There was an appreciation of experimentation

A lot of web natives who knew the boundaries of trust, membership began to grow. Comments from users were absorbed and acted upon quickly through Flickr ideas

The Gamma release “a state of continuous improvement” – Improved search, nav and layouts.

Removing rules of engagement around people makes the space more co-operative

Tried to mirror the offline experience of photos

Metadata associated with photos mimics offline i.e writing on the back

Use personas with care – If you don’t know who you’re dealing with it forces you to bring your own creativity to the product

Design for zero data – i.e for people that are new to the site and have not yet uploaded anything e.g groups page on Flickr.

Sensible defaults for software – lots of options does not mean more choice – it makes it harder to use and is lazy design – keep it simple simple simple

Experience “gates” – instead of a lockstep process you could have a branching tree

Show activity – this is important e.g. facebook – The activity/dynamism is what makes it successful

Go UTF-8

Support structures – not everyone is comfortable. Supporting the community need to be addressed.

Organic growth – need to be hands on and have human contact. Welcome people in give them beer ask them if they’re comfy.

Community guidelines – give people boundaries (not rules).

Mantra – “Don’t be creepy” German translation – “You know what you’re doing – don’t do that” [J]

Provide excellent customer care – have humans answer emails and manage forums. Good measurement of this is whether or not you received a reply to your assistance

Maintain a neutral POV – with great power comes great resp. Let users negotiate the space on their own

Remember to keep calm and carry on i.e in the face of negativity

Be open – nobody like surprises – e.g. be open (and creative) about downtime

When the community gives you you’re wealth I have a strong belief that you give it back. Anita Roddick

Recommendations…

Book – Abstracting Craft by Malcolm McCullough
Website – http://Futurefarmers.com
Cool photo – The face of Sydney project

Scott delivered a hugely valuable commentary on innovation. I think his comments about 3M summarises beautifully the main take away for people working in the corporate world who are trying to encourage innovation…

3M stands for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. How then did they end up with such hugely successful products such as the post it note? A persistent inventor at 3M, Richard Drew, came up with an idea [Sandpaper], his manager William McKnight tried to kill the idea/product four times. Drew’s product eventually came to fruition and it outstripped sales of all other product lines. This led McKnight to declare…

As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way. Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs. Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And it’s essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow” – William McKnight, 3M chairman, 1948

And this style of management led to other inventions such as the postie.

So in summary, how to innovate in the workplace…

1. Delegate
2. Take risks / make mistakes
3. Reward initiative

And an interesting final comment…

The more you use the word innovation the less likely you are to actually innovate

I was about to go to the Google Mashups, Web Apps and API’s talk and then got a recommendation from Michael Kordahi to go see Andy Clarke’s talk.

Andy spoke about and demonstrated the parallels between comic book and webpage design and layout.  Comic books like websites have a limited amount of space to convey a message.

Comic books use panel size to emphasise the amount of attention you should be giving to it. Using size and shape of panels in an ecommerce store can give the user more time to digest the offering.

Use of alternating content blocks with either backrounds or borders to draw emphasis to regions of the page.

Another interesting technique is using text contrast in various panels to help the user to flow through site more effectively.

Do we need to have a another look at splash pages? Not old school splash pages on the home page but rather a device to help someone new to understand where they are. E.G apple.com – iphone launch “Welcome to iPhone”

Drama is important in web design. Tell a story. Through design we should help the reader flow through the site/story we are trying to tell them. Too often we leave the user to their own devices.

Work on structure and page layout initially without colour. When colour is introduced it can dilute the message.

If you’re looking for the best TV drama around look no further than Channel Nine. I don’t mean CSI, CSI NY or CSI Miami, I’m talking about Channel 9, the company previously owned by PBL. The former 60 Minutes Executive Producer and Bulletin Editor-in-Chief, Gerald Stone recently published a tell all of how “they stuffed the place up”. It’s called “Who killed Channel 9?” and it’s quite a revealing insight into the nepotism, management decay and breakdown of trust which has left Nine a shadow of its former self. The “Missing Magic: Then and Now” chapter attempted to explain the reason for the creative vacuum.

“The creative flame burns best when given plenty of air to breathe. In suffocating surroundings, hemmed in by over-supervision and second guessing, with constant emphasis on the price rather than the merit of the proposition, there’s soon likely to be nothing left but ash.” Page 155

This creative suffocation if often caused by well intentioned managers trying to cut costs and speed up delivery but sometimes we need to remember that with appropriate time, space and physical surroundings, creativity will flourish, resulting in solutions we never dreamed possible.