| Notes Apart, Day 1 |
| Monday, 23 June 2008 | ||
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Note: The latest post is at the top of this page. It's recommended to start from the beginning if you want to see how the day unfolds in chronological order... :) 6:27PM - Adobe sponsor recommends visiting microformats.org.  Jared taking questions post-presentation 6:10PM - Spool is done! Awesome presentation. Time to drink (sponsored by MediaTemple). 6:05PM - Staples the #2 e-commerce website because of the amount of scent. Most of their homepage is dedicated to categories.  Jared's Enthusiastic Presentation 5:59PM - The Content page is the most important page. Who cares about the Home page. People only care about what they are looking for. Jared gives an analogy: You just got back from a trip from hell and you arrive at your hotel. Where is the first place you want to go in the hotel? Obviously, not the lobby. Bamm, Ingenius! 5:57PM - Multi-category lists work the best on e-commerce sites. 5:49PM - See All Products link is something Old Navy started using. Pagination of products wasn't as efficient. If there are too many products on the See All Products page, try windowing (i.e. Departments page). "Links to links". Reduce the number of items in the gallery pages by creating department pages. Good gallery pages are accompanied by good department pages. The department page prevents the need to have to pogostick between the category page and the content page (which kills sales %age). 5:40PM - Best gallery pages are the pages that do not promote pogosticking, back buttoning, and search. Make sure to disseminate all necessary information on the gallery pages to allow users to make the best decision possible. 7-12 words in a link suggested. Include product features in the title of products to enhance findability of the products via search (i.e. Amazon). 5:31PM - More pogosticking = less success. Pogosticking is when a user goes back and forth between the content page and the galleries (aka category) page mulitple times. 5:27PM - "The back button is the button of doom", the crowd recites in unison, but he insists that this line is only applicable when links are giving off the right scent. 5:24PM - "Trigger Words attract user's attention" 5:21PM - "E-commerce makes a great laboratory rat" - Jared 5:16PM - Users get to their target page through the 'scent' released by links. The Designing Web Navigation book touches on this topic. Navigation pushes users, scent pulls users. 5:00PM - Jared Spool, user interface engineering genius steps on stage. Oh, and the red velvet cake they served was awesome. The sugar needed to get me through the next two presentations. 4:44PM - Make a wish. Here are some inspirational sites: Chris Cloninger, Design Meltdown, Net Diver, Smashing Magazine... just keep on surfing the web! 4:41PM - Yay, Chris mentions moodboarding! and sketching prior to creating hi-fidelity wireframes. 4:39PM - Check out Chris Messina's Flickr page for design patterns. 4:33PM - Inductive + Deductive = Abductive Reasoning - Observation, Hypothesis, Build Model, Validation (not confirmation). I'm guessing this is something like quick failure. Build, test, improve? 4:30PM - "We try to be one or the other" - Fahey. Do we? Nah... 4:26PM - Jan Tschichold made rules, which were then broken during his time at Pelican/Penguin books by various art directors. Make the rules to break the rules. *Highly* recommends The Architecture of Happiness. 4:14PM - When you give something style, it will become obsolete. 3:55PM - Everyone's got style, even YOU! Chris references pictures from http://www.exactitudes.com demoing how anyone and everyone has style and the variants within each of those individual styles... even the guy with the flannel shirt.  There will be cake! to celebrate 10 years of ALA and JSM's bday 3:49PM - Christopher Fahey arrives. Let's talk about style! I need to get me some nice fashiony, stylish glasses like that of Mr. Fahey's. Not a big fan of his sneakers though.  Presenter on Deck, Christopher Fahey  Doug Wrapping Up 3:27PM - Doug's wrap up: Open the floodgates / The hidden interface / Free your mind / Tomorrow, the world / Leave an Impression 3:20PM - Summarization: An idea is a concept only when it can be expanded and scaled. 3:09PM - Enlarge the text size on this site: http://www.dougandcam.com/. Font base size of 62.5%. The rest of the structural elements of the site are built on EMs and convert nicely into even pixels. 2:59PM - "Engage beginners and attract experts" (GUEP) 2:55PM - "Simplicity of Powerful" (GUEP) - Kill the 'chrome!' 2:52PM - "Delight the eye without distracting the mind" (GUEP) - Not going over the edge with design, but to make a product feel like one's own. 2:51PM - Success rate tripled after Blogger's signup redesign from a 5-step process to a 3-step process. What's the bare minimum for user sign up? 2:46PM - IKEA'S Commander's Intent: Provide functional, well-designed furniture at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them. 2:41PM - McDonald's business model succeeds because it repeats its successful business patterns. Besides selling burgers and fries, they also have their hands in other industries like real estate. Other companies to consider, Starbucks & IKEA. How can we bring this model from the brick and mortar world to the web? 2:30PM - Doug takes stage. The most creative opening to a presentation so far. An entertaining iChat conversation about Bowman's "scale" among Zeldman, Meyer, Bowman, and Marcotte ensues. Guess what, his presentation is about scale and design. 1:45PM - Had lunch with Doug Bowman from StopDesign. Cool! Mentioned him at 9:25AM. 1:13PM - To summarize Luke's presenation: Visual Communication, Visual Organization, Visual Hiearchy, Visual Weight, Visual Relationships, Meaning. Yay lunch break! 12:58PM - Make sure to design the article page first rather than home page. This makes good for users that are accessing the page via RSS feeds / search engines / etc. 12:52PM - If you are introducing a new web service, make sure to explain what it does/is. Luke references http://www.patientslikeme.com. 12:41PM - "When there is no hierarchy, you're all over the place"  4 Slides per Page  Luke sort of looks like his logo... sorta 12:16PM - Luke Wroblewski enters the stage. He's going to talk up on site structure design. Sort of parallel to JSM's presentation minus the design. Oh, he's got a new book out called Web Form Design.  Jason Santa Maria takes on some questions 11:47AM - "I left a lot of doors and windows opened" - JSM in regards to quick art direction to articles referenced from 11:36AM entry. 11:36AM - Regretably checked my work email. Updated Flash file for client. Sent! Meanwhile, JSM references http://wetellstories.co.uk/. He then goes to his newly redesigned site. JSM suggests having a generic barebone CSS setup. When a new article is added, there would be minor CSS tweaks made to help feature the latest article more. Quick Tweaks! 11:32AM - JSM references http://www.fray.com/. Simple illustrations, simple stories, all cohesive to form an intriguing experience. 11:11AM - JSM brings up the question of content being distilled when transferring from print to online. He then goes to a slide with web2.0 logos. "Do any of them jump out? What kind of stories are these logos telling?"  JSM prepping for his presentation 11:02AM - Crowd sings happy birthday to Jason Santa Maria. He turns 30. Jason opens up with Storytelling... 10:40AM - Coming to a close with Eric Meyer: 1) directory structure 2) linked styles - for caching 3) layout files (not classes) - point to a css file containing the type of structure you'd want to use 4) naming conventions 5) resets - zeroing stuff out, duh 6) default text sizes 7) default colors 8) bullets and icons - "I'd probably turn these off" and 9) debug styles 10:29AM - Using attribute selectors, links that link to PDFs, display a PDF icon; external link icon for external links, etc. Downside: IE6 does not support it along with mobile phones except for the 'Jesus Phone'. 10:23AM - Importing all CSS stylesheets with import @ is bad because all the styles do not get cached. 10:19AM - For Yahoo! to have all their style sheets embedded in their sites, it reduces the amount of hits to the server. At Yahoo!-like traffic, this is more critical than the amount users download. 10:10AM - Meyer unveils the "Perfect Heading Sizes", aka the ratio between line-height and font-sizes > H1 2.33, H2 1.8, H3 1.45, H4 1.25, H5 1.11, H6 1.05  The Audience  Wifi Booth  Eric Meyer takes the stage 9:46AM - Eric Meyer takes the stage. CSS Frameworks... 960, Blueprint, Content with Style, Elements, That Standards Guy, doh, he changed the slide. It's okay because according to Meyer, "None of them are right for you". 9:40AM - Coffee Break, yay! Spilled boiling contents on hand, boo! 9:30AM - Empathetic Web Design instead of User Centered Design 9:25AM - Douglas Bowman's last template for Blogger is a template called Minima. A site that uses the template, the Leukemia Letters. 9:15AM - Zeldman references http://www.commarts.com/interactive. The design annual is based solely on graphic design. It's not based on web strategy. For example, the Coke site, the first thing you get is a pop-up survey. Nothing noteworthy about that. 8:50AM - According to Zman, If you are 50, you probably didn't study web design, but instead studied candlemaking 8:45AM - Zeldman is concerned about the fact that a lot of schools aren't promoting web strategy. Supposedly we should be seeing something from SVA next year... 8:30 AM - Zeldman is on stage talking about Empathy... slide 1. Insufficiency of Empathy.  Zeldman vs Meyer  8AM, Justin straddles An Event Apart Skyscraper Banner 6:43 AM - <YAWN> Just woke up from a crappy night of sleep. Damn these ultra-thick pillows at the Best Western Roundhouse Hotel!
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