PANEL: VIRTUAL BLOGGING IN ONLINE WORLDS
* Wagner James Au - author, SecondLife
* Ludlow - SecondLife Herald, kicked off the Sims by EA by talking about
* Tony Walsh - writes about online stuff for various magazines, suggested
virtual protest against
* Jane Pinckard - gamegirladvance.com, also a staff writer for GamePro magazine
* Au:
-- Second Life is an online world
-- fully streamed, all the objects are created by the residents themselves
-- developers had no idea what the residents were going to do
-- brought him in as a journalist to be a resident (Hamlet Linden)
-- considers this to be real journalism, perhaps even more than when he wrote
for Salon
-- he's been doing two types of journalism in there:
1) Catalyst for real-world journalism
2) Micro-cosm for real world issues
-- various examples on his site in blog entries (go look!)
-- disadvantages:
- "objective truth is a server-side element"
- difficult to tell what is real, since everything is virtual
- reporting on disputes etc sometimes gets hairy
-- it's actually in the terms of service that you can't identify people by
their name (!!)
-- he's hoping to be more of a blogger than a journalist
-- there's real life money to be had - you can exchange Lindendollars for real
dollars
* Walsh:
-- he's been gaming for 25 yrs (incl tabletop, LARP, online, electronic...)
-- slight divergence into whether LARP is the bottom of the geek hierarchy
(Jane says that furries are lower!)
-- MMOGS, 3D social spaces, MUDs, any computer-mediated space
-- figures that chat isn't really the same (IRC, AIM, etc)
-- inworld journalism is becoming really interesting
-- "turn on the news in Everquest and see what's happening in the world... Orcs
rampaging"
-- virtual world population is in the millions and growing!
-- "the view from outside"
- mainstream media usually only covering the weird stories, the freaky shit
- "is it making people rich" or "are they getting dumped/fired/kicked outta
school"
- limited coverage at a distance -> better stories from within
- online communities are as sensitive as real-life communities (or more so)
- people in Second Life are feeling jilted by the outside reporters
- snubbing of sources
-- fact-checking can be very difficult
-- "Actual vs Virtual Freedom"
- online world freedom is not guaranteed
- online worlds run by companies
- press don't have any rights either -> there's no virtual constitution
- corporate laws used to limit speech (they're a company, you're a customer)
-- complex worlds are the best ones to cover
-- there are various granularities of coverage (macro- vs micro-coverage)
-- there's also very micro personal coverage - LJ, blogs, etc
* Ludlow:
-- different approach to the two others
-- thinks of himself as a guy roleplaying as a tabloid journalist
-- try to cover all sorts of things, from weddings to mafia wars
-- in keeping with the tabloid angle, they also have "Post 6" girls (think
page3)
-- they still cover EA "because we hate them"
-- someone from Germany was building either a Nazi death or training camp
-- she was banned because of the hate speech/hate design
-- "The Second Life Herald - Always Fairly Unbalanced"
-- someone else banned for Hentai child porn
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PANEL: HOW TO INFORM DESIGN
* Presentation available on nickfinck.com/presentations/sxsw2005/
* Nick Finck, Jeffrey Veen, Kat Seeborg
* There is too much information to be had
-- need to prioritise what is important
--
* Jeff used to do a lot of the quantitative stuff
-- even usability testing done this way!
-- found he was measuring mistakes that people were making
-- but you end up fixing the problems people find
-- surely better to anticipate the problems and design for intuitivity
-- who are the people visiting your website?
-- more qualitative methods may be more useful for starting design
-- Hay Net :: Need Hay? Have Hay? (versions for eBay, Microsoft)
-- find people who might be your audience
- talk to them
- write down what they say
- put the interesting stuff on post-it notes!
-- end result is that users will be all "Ah Ha!"
- they'll just get it
-- there are loads of qualitative techniques
* Finck:
-- you learn more by watching users use your site than anything else
- where do they think info is?
* Seeborg:
-- "tell me where the money trail is?"
- that informs the design
- tells you who the stakeholder who makes the decisions is
-- making decisions on server log info (where the server burped) is stoopid!
- site stats are just about the utilisation
- it's not about the users at all!!
* Jeff's been working on blogging a lot
-- what makes a blog good?
-- what is the measure of good?
-- you need to get a baseline -> find out where you are now
-- look at basic stuff (pageviews, visitors per day, etc)
-- what you learn is limited to your domain!
- genre matters
* Why do research?
-- graph from the ROI of Usability white paper
-- why do research when you should be getting to market?
- take all the design possibilities and narrowing them down to the one you
choose
- you cut down a lot of possibilities during the process
- user research helps you kill the right possibilites
- more upfront research means the wrong options are weeded out earlier
-- research influences the design most at the outset
-- it's WAY cheaper to change things early on -> cost of changing your mind
only goes up
* Surveymonkey.com is a great tool
-- lets you do a survey real easily
-- helps you do analysis afterwards really easily
* Need to look at what people say, but also at what they do
* One problem with surveys is that it's SO easy to do it wrong
-- qualitative is so much easier to do right
... and much more likely to be useful!
-- you can get addicted to numbers very easily
- need to keep it real
- winnow down what really matters
- don't get caught up in trivia
-- be aware of what you're doing and why
* Users Needs & Business Needs
-- there's a gap where perhaps these don't overlap
- sometimes user needs haven't even been identified!
-- how do you identify user needs?
- "I ask them" ... but in a specific way
- task analysis
- but keep it away from the implementation you're planning!
* Assigning a Value to the Metric
-- how do you put value on the information available
-- it's all down to the context
-- e.g. where do people fall off the Blogger registration process?
-- identify the bleeding and get triage there!
* Not everyone is working on sites that are selling products
-- there are service sites, community sites
-- the value assigned to a particular metric is domain-dependent
-- work out what success looks like
-- intangible things have great value sometimes as well
* Amazon have loads of A-B tests
-- two versions, serving up diff ones to people and then analysing what works
-- but they're a disaster! slight improvements but needs an overhaul
-- good process, but how come the product pages are such a disaster??
* Adequate Tools
-- what should people be looking?
-- Jeff says the tracking isn't important at all -> the design process matters
-- Excel & OmniGraffle (?)
* Run for the Quick Win
-- they're great for team morale and looks good for progress
-- huge credibility builder to throw numbers out
* Enterprise software all tries to be incredibly powerful for everyone
-- every possible tool you ever need
-- all you end up with is a platform where you need to build your own tool on
top
-- amazing that there's no web analysis tools for specific domains
* "I hate research as a an event"
-- should be "research as culture"
-- usability testing should be real cheap so you can do it all the time
-- XP approach -> usability tests every two weeks
* RSS Tracking
-- some tools claim to track readers (but they're a bit crap based on IP etc)
-- few people track RSS vs pageviews (unique sessions RSS vs website)
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PANEL: WHERE ARE THE WOMEN OF WEB DESIGN?
* Tiffany Brown - web author & freelance web designer, tiffanybbrown.com
* Min Jung Kim - freelance writer
* Maxine Sherrin - company director for WestCiv, standards design (Sydney), Web
Essentials
* Eric Meyer - meyerweb.com, CSS writer
* Nancy Massey - >20 yrs of experience, accessible web design since 94
* Molly Holzschlag - molly.com, 5 years under the world "blog"
* Why are we doing this? Where did it come from?
-- interested in the discourse - conversation is the point
-- there are more women at sxsw
-- issue came up on StopDesign about 2 years ago
- he was looking for women (guys smell when you get them all in a room!)
-- Molly was brought into the issue by Eric
- he asked for someone to write a CSS book that he couldn't do
- only 2 women in the top 10 most mentioned for the book
-- there are definitely women around, why aren't they known?
* Molly:
-- striking moment when a young black man asked her whether she really felt
that he could do this (meaning web design. The reason he didn't think he
could was because he thought you had to look like Bill Gates to be in tech
* Massey:
-- since she's been around longer, she really was the only woman in the room!
-- there were no female role models, so she had to use the men available as
role models
- she became stronger, more authoritative, etc and did well
- one day she woke up and realised she wasn't happy
-- got involved around 1994 with web design & was out on the bleeding edge
-- at the time, there were more and more women, but in small businesses
-- she became VP of Technology at one point
- couldn't find women to give jobs to (been there almost 13 yrs)
- wanted someone who would value it as much to take over
-- there's almost a shift backwards in terms of diversity
-- some of this is because the hours that you have to put in are prohibitive
* Eric:
-- went to college in 1988 to a traditionally science-oriented school
- M:F ratio was about 5:1 which was worrying
- that ratio dropped to 2:1 because nursing school opened up!
-- there aren't the women around to hire which is a major issue
* Maxine:
-- really needed famous people to get the Web Essentials conference going
-- about 6 weeks into it, someone noticed that there were no female speakers
-- message is that high profile web developers are men (not good!)
* Min Jung:
-- works at a cable company where there's a 50:1 ratio
-- recently promoted, now has a coach
- was looking at where she'd exhibited leadership
- everything was to do with being Asian or female!
- never ventured outside of her own environment
- fear of exposure was holding her back
-- grew up in mid-West in Detroit (auto-land!) when people were getting laid
off bcs Japan
* Tiffany:
-- women tend to be a little less confident in our skills
-- women often feel like frauds when they succeed
- being scared when they're applying that they can't tick every box
-- no self-promotion (putting ourselves out as being skilled)
-- not taught to be confident, to talk trash, etc
-- she tends not to think about how she got where she did (can't articulate it)
-- "we get caught up in the day-to-day and forget how dire it is"
Questions:
1) Are the women that are high profile bad role-models? (e.g. aggressive,
butch)
2) Can we fix the problem at this level or is there a snap-judgement at a
school level?
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PANEL: HOW TO TRICK OUT YOUR BLOG
* Tantek, Jay Allen, Matt Mullenweg & Dunstan Orchard
* Jay -- The Basics
-- Why?
- sense of self (identity)
- tinkerers/experimenters
- ease of use (sometimes admin)
-- Basics:
- good content (follow your passions, consume to find out what you love)
- personalise (get away from default templates; keep your default templates)
-> try to personalise w CSS so you can still upgrade without too much hassle
- consumption ready
-> keep it readable & accessible
-> search engine friendly URLs!
-> clean semantic markup
- highlight activity
-> RSS feeds
-> recent comment lists & comment subscription
-> try create a community around each post
-> keep things simple
* Google loves meaningful "post slug" URLs -- dashes better than underscores, apparently
* Matt:
-- linking is the essence of the web
-- links roll now does XFN too (in Wordpress at least)
-- "rel = met" is good for everyone you've met
-- Wordpress already does RSS enclosures for podcasting etc
-> "So wait a minute, you just have to add the link? And Wordpress works it out?"
Tantek in infomercial host mode
* Dunstan:
-- started off w no programming knowledge but still did some cool stuff
-- all you really have to do is be a conscientious user of blogs (look @ lots for a while)
-- see things that don't work, make notes
-- write down what annoys you or you think is especially cool and DO IT
-- the how should never drive the goal
-- don't just do what you can, start with what you wanted to change
* Jay says be a good connector for people
* Matt's cool plugins:
-- Blogtimes (little graph at bottom of PhotoMatt)
-- FancyTooltips (shows title etc of link)
-- Gravatar (centrally hosted avatars)
* Dunstan:
-- "Progressive enhancements vs Graceful degradation"