Now that I’ve had a night of good sober sleep, I’m able to take a step back and reflect on the past few days and what I learned. There was certainly a lot to take in at SXSW, but I’d like to focus on one of the key things that stood out and how I think applies to the trip itself.
The most informative and engaging talk of the week was Jared Spool’s presentation about the different types of user experience design and how and when to use them. He sprinkled just the right amount of humor throughout his deep look at the design types, and he wasn’t afraid to share his knowledge with the audience.
My biggest complaint about the content of the conference is that there were far too many presentations focused on “what we did” and far to few that were brave enough to show “how we did it.” Spool was the best example of a ‘how’ focused talk, and he was the only presenter I saw that offered to send out their deck afterwards. Bravo to you, Mr. Spool. But the quote from his talk that had me thinking was this one: Experience focused design seeks to fill the space between activities.
We often think of online experiences as holistic things. You can’t break them down into pieces – everything counts as part of the experience. And yet when he said it, it made sense. Maybe our brains don’t distinguish between the experiences of filling out a registration form on one site from another. The connective tissue of an experience – the transitions between tasks and the creative layer on top of them – make the biggest impact on our impression. I know that was true for me at SXSW. Sure, there were several great presentations, but when I think back about it weeks, months and years from now, my memory of the experience will be defined by connective tissue just as much as the speeches. It was the first conference where I saw more iPads (and iPad2s, which launched on the first day of the conference) than laptops in the audience. I’ll remember how miserable I was with my app-lacking blackberry. I’ll remember getting to know several bright and talented fellow CMers for the first time, bumping into old friends and colleagues from past jobs, meeting new people from interesting companies, waiting for the shuttle, getting food from a truck, eating in a parking lot, and marveling at the spectacle of all the rest.
A very unique food truck at SxSW
One morning I shared a cab with a stranger from my hotel to the convention center. He worked at Google, and he was just as curious about my thoughts on where digital marketing is heading as I was about his. It wasn’t on my carefully selected program of talks that day, but it was a great 20-minute conversation and one that couldn’t have happened anywhere else.
