Stephanie's October Conference Tour: Web 2.0 Expo Europe [en]

[fr] Après Lisbonne, direction Berlin pour la conférence Web 2.0 Expo, dont j'assure (avec Suw Charman-Anderson et Nicole Simon) la gestion des accréditations blogueurs.


Web 2.0 Expo Europe 2008
After speaking at SHiFT, I will head over to Berlin for the next stop in my October Conference Tour. Second conference:

Web 2.0 Expo Europe, 21-23 October 2008, Berlin

I attended Web 2.0 Expo Europe last year, taking notes (go to the beginning of the month) and giving one of my Babel Fish talks at Web2Open. At the height of my conference burn-out after FoWA, I was pretty cranky and critical of the conference (particularly the infrastructure), and it’s where I decided to start a company to organize my own events.

This year, I’m co-heading the Blogging Web 2.0 Expo Europe programme with Suw and Nicole (French post). I’ll be going to the event to have a chance to meet all the participating bloggers we’ve been working with over the last month (they’re listed in the Web 2.0 Expo blog sidebar) — and Janetti, who initiated this outreach programme.

If you haven’t registered yet, go and visit these blogs — all bloggers have 35% discount codes to distribute, so if you know one of them, ask! Here’s a short video of Suw and I where we tell you why you should come to the conference :-).

Setting up and running this programme has been a fascinating experience, and you can expect some blogging about what we did once the event is over. (Note: I’m doing something similar in spirit, though a little different in form, with blogger accreditations for LeWeb in Paris — we have more than enough French- and English-language bloggers but are still looking for people to cover the conference in other languages.)

While I’m at it, I will be taking part in Suw Charman-Anderson’s discussion about Gender Issues in Web 2.0 Careers as a panelist. Neither of us are fans of “women in technology” discussions, as you can see from the title of the discussion, and I’m really looking forward to see where we’ll take these issues.

As an aside, when I organised Going Solo, I did not put tons of effort into “involving women”, and it turns out over half the speaker roster was female. Does it have anything to do with the fact I’m a woman?

So, see you in Berlin?

Cory Doctorow: Europe's Copyright Wars – Do We Have to Repeat the American Mistake? (Web 2.0 Expo, Berlin) [en]

My live notes of Cory’s talk. Might be a bit messy because I have trouble wrapping my head around some of these issues, and Cory does indeed talk rather fast. Plus, as you probably know by now, I’m in a frightening state of exhaustion.

Europe and America: harmonization escalation.

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It’s easy to laugh at US copyright policies from Europe.

Inducing infringing of media copyright: should be held liable. If your technology might be used to infringe copyright… arghl… you’ll be held liable.

So if you develop your technology with the idea of infringing copyright, you will be held liable (thought crime!) for any subsequent copyright infringement.

With this kind of stuff, the VCR would never have seen the light, because one of the main ideas behind it was “time-shifting” and “librarying” (watch something later, or collect your favorite shows). The court ruled that time-shifting was legal, but never ruled on librarying.

FCC.

Guy who gave a talk explaining how Adobe’s DRM was evil, arrested at the end of the talk by the FBI for talking about the wrong type of maths.

DMCA takedown notice. No need for proof. Routinely abused to silence critics, etc.

Viacom abuse, searching YouTube for keywords, thousands of DMCA takedown notices, for things as innocuous as people talking at a part who happened to have the names of their characters, etc.

Viacom says that by allowing private videos, Google and YouTube are inducing infringement.

Lawsuits against music fans in the USA. Suing fans does not convince them to go back to the record store! Hard to believe that the record companies’ best response to file-sharing is suing enough college students hoping the rest get the message.

Europe is by no means inculpable. DMCA started as a proposal shown to Al Gore who said it was bad, then presented to Europe where it got positive response and became the EUCD and back to the US as DMCA. steph-note: maybe the difference in perception, if the laws are similar, has to do with the suing culture?

IPRD 2 : probably the worst. Copyright infringement, historically, has to be dealt with in court. This criminalizes copyright infringement. And turns over dealing with it to the public police. steph-note: I’m afraid I don’t understand all this, a bit over my head.

e.g. Sweden, whole server farm taken down by the police (servers in police van), including legitimate sites of legitimate business, just disappeared into the van.

The sophisticated “cyber criminals”, this kind of thing doesn’t stop them. It just can be the end of it, however, for innocent people who aren’t very tech-savvy. Police cordoning off area for 6 months, 70% of businesses hosted there failed within those six months.

DVD CPCM: Europe-wide thing, all devices reading DVDs required to be compliant. CPCM can individually shut down certain classes of users, based on content producers’ decisions, even if you have the legal right e.g. to show something in school, you wouldn’t be allowed to break the CPCM.

Disturbing CPCM flags: DVD flagged so it can only be used by one household. (What is and what is not a household? huge problem. They have a very “conservative” concept of what a household is, which doesn’t include children and parents scattered through continents, old dads entering retiring homes, kids with divorced parents…)

Restricted playback systems. Goodbye interoperability. We didn’t need permission from Vauxhall to plug in your Nokia phone, or permission from Microsoft for Keynote to open ppts, or film company for playing their DVD on a Toshiba player…

All this is turning interoperability into a crime! You need keys to interoperate, and you’re not allowed to reverse-engineer keys.

steph-note: quite scary, all this.

Some of your sound systems won’t play certain types of audio, etc.

US smart enough to stay away from things like the Database Directive. In Europe, a collection of facts in a DB is protected for 50 years! Economist’s opinion on this: the DB directive is not good for Europe. They also asked the incumbents if the directive if it was good or bad, and of course they said yes. So the commission concluded: “opinions are divided! some people say it’s good, others say it’s bad! let’s leave things how they are!”

What can we do? Get involved in the EFF. steph-note: or ORG

Problem now: hearings for copyright stuff attract copyright holders, not technologists, geeks, economists.

Keith Richards isn’t going to go hungry if he doesn’t get another 40 years of copyright protection for his recordings.

First time in copyright history that the government turned its back on a proposal, and said “no, copyright extension is not a good thing”.

What Cory thinks the BBC should be doing. Streaming with DRM. Excuse: “we don’t have a choice, the right holders dictate the terms.” Why does a corporation funded by the public, for the public, come and tell the public that it has to adapt to the right holders demands, and not the opposite? Here, the BBC is not acting in public interest, but there is a history of the BBC doing so.

At one point, rights holders wanted use-by-use payment for the radio. e.g. each time the DJ want to play something, he has to call and ask permission. They turned that down. Found another solution, other music. Finally rights holders backed out and asked the radios to license their music (instead of the stupid conditions they were putting previously).

So Cory’s advice: look the rights holders in the eye, and go off to find other content, artists, etc which will agree to their terms, and give them a place they have been denied until now.

Problem: nobody is offering collective licensing schemes to the internet. Nobody is offering ISPs a blanket license for music or television shows.

It is not good for society that average people are criminalized for accessing culture.

The EFF is about copyright reform, not copyright abolitionism — not is Cory.

ThePirateBay weren’t abolitionists in Cory’s opinion, at the start.

Useful for copyright reformers that there are copyright abolitionists, because allows to say “if you don’t negotiate with us, you might end up having to deal with them”.

Lars Trieloff: i18n for Web 2.0 (Web 2.0 Expo, Berlin) [en]

steph-note: incomplete notes. I was very disappointed by this session, mainly because I’m exhausted and I was expecting something else, I suppose. I should have read the description of the talk, it’s quite true to what was delivered. Please see my work on multilingualism to get an idea where I come from.

Why internationalize? You have to speak in the language of your user.

e.g. DE rip-offs of popular EN apps like Facebook. CN version of Facebook, and RU, and turkish.

What is different in Web 2.0 internationalization? Much more complicated than normal software i18n, but some things are easier.

More difficult:

  • sites -> apps
  • web as platform
  • JS, Flash, etc…

The i18n challenge is multiplied by the different technologies.

Solution: consolidate i18n technology. Need a common framework for all.

steph-note: OK, this looks like more of a developer track. A little less disappointed.

Keep the i18n data in one place, extract the strings, etc. then pull them back into the application once localized.

Example of how things were done in Mindquarry.

steph-note: oh, this is in the Fundamentals track :-/ — this is way too tech-oriented for a Fundamentals track in my opinion.

steph-note: insert a whole bunch of technical stuff I’m skipping, because I can’t presently wrap my brain around it and it is not what interests me the most, to be honest.

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Ankur Shah & Gi Fernando: (Facebook API) Disrupting the Platform (Web 2.0 Expo, Berlin) [en]

*Here are my notes of this session. Usual disclaimers apply.*

Harnessing social analytics and other musings on the Facebook API

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In the lights of OpenSocial, tough week to be talking about Facebook.

Ankur and Gi are going to talk about a variety of good things that they’ve done with the Facebook platform.

Understanding human relationships.

Facebook is a truly social platform, which allows to create truly social applications. Engage with your friends directly. Ability for a company to respond to the social content inside the platform.

Questions:

– where were they? (Facebook)
– where we are? (developers)
– what’s everyone doing?
– where’s it all going?

Geek + pizza = Facebook.

7000 applications. SuperWall, Slide, Top Friends, iLike, Flixter, Likeness — successful!

*steph-note: Ankur is speaking a little fast for me and I have a headache, so I’m not following this very well, sorry*

Applications kept in a controlled environment. The back-end to all those applications is the same.

Doesn’t depend where your engaging with your users as long as you are.

Standardised facebook functions => very compact code. Homogenous look (avoids the “MySpace effect”)

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Bob Dylan application.

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PHP. API easy to use. *steph-note: maybe I should build a Facebook app… not sure about what though!*

Standardised component set.

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Big question: does the platform really break? Facebook’s innovation is so quick that things break.

A short note on viral-ness. A phenomenon, from 50 friends to 50’000 users in a week. It can happen… but. The Dylan application allows you to share something with others. Individuals make applications spread more than other users.

Facebook allows users to spam their friends with applications.

My Questions: 450’000 daily active users.

Socialistics. Information about your friends.

*steph-note: ew, sorry, I’m passing out. Nothing to do with the content of this session, quite interesting.*

Little Facebook API vs. OpenSocial moment.

Jesse James Garrett: Delivering Rich Experiences (Web 2.0 Expo, Berlin) [en]

Here are my notes of the end of Jesse James Garrett’s keynote. There might be bits and pieces missing and I may have misunderstood things. Thanks for bearing with me.

steph-note: missed the beginning, sorry.

MS Word Displaying All Toolbars!

Word Toolbars all turned on sends the following message:

“Word processing is complicated. In fact, it’s so complicated that we, the developers of this tool, haven’t figured it out. So, we’re outsourcing that job (figuring it out) to you, our users.”

Look at video cassette recorders. They’ve come a long way these last 30 years, lots of buttons but… nobody seems to be able to set the clock, still now.

Mentions something Steve Jobs said in 1984.

Beautiful, elegant solution that works.

The product has aesthetic appeal (beautiful), maximises simplicity (elegant), has to address a genuine need/desire (solution) — many startups out there fail because they don’t address a real need — and can be used by its users, not just by us, its creators (that works).

Even MS word has started to get this. They’ve moved beyond toolbars. More simplicity. Not there yet maybe, but real progress. The new interface is much cleaner and simpler.

Last generation of video cassette recorders. Now, we have TiVo. But TiVo was only made possible by really taking a step back. Look at TiVo users: passionate. Users develop an emotional attachment to products which deliver on those four points.

Research seems to show that there is something different happening in our brains when we interact with complex technological tools. steph-note: some variety of pets? Like our interactions with other people, same mechanisms in our brains. We respond to these products as if they were people. We imagine they have personalities, moods… 12-year-old girl who kissed her iPod goodnight before going to bed on the day she got it. Or adults whose iPod breaks, go out and buy a new one, but can’t open the box for two days, because it would mean they have to say good-bye to their old, broken, companion.

iPod case “iGuy”. TiVo logo that has arms and legs.

Products who know who they are, and reflect a consistency in their behaviour.

Experiment: have users try software and evaluate it. One group, user same computer for both tasks. Group 2, different computer. Group 1 were nicer with their feedback, almost as if they didn’t want to hurt the computer’s feelings.

Diamond Rio, first mp3 player commercially available. Looked like a transformative product, so much that the record industries went to court to have it banned in the US. But nobody remembers it! Everybody remembers the iPod as the first mp3 player. Met with a lot of skepticism. (ipod = “idiots price our devices”). Too expensive, not enough features. But actually, it’s a beautiful elegant solution that works.

Developing software applications: we talk about them as data, wrapped in logic, and a user interface. User interface = shell.

But in the minds of our users: there is the user interface, and magic inside.

When we make choices about our products based on things that our users cannot see, we’re going in the wrong direction.

But this is changing. The web (2.0) is leading the way. We make decisions about the user interface first, and allow those decisions to drive technological choices. “Designing from the outside in.” (O’Reilly)

Web 2.0 companies are not being driven by a business or technology strategy, but by an experience strategy.

The experience is the product.

Any technological choices that do not reinforce the experience that we want the users to have of the product are the wrong decision.

Jeremy Keith: The Beauty in Standards and Accessibility (Web2.0Expo, Berlin) [en]

Here are my notes of Jeremy Keith‘s session. He’s somebody I always appreciate listening to, and he also happens to be the creator (and provider) of Buzzword Bingo. Play with your neighbour when keynotes or sessions go down the buzzword path.

My notes are as correct as I can make them, but they may be missing bits and pieces and I might even have misunderstood stuff.

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First define. Who knows about beauty? The poets.

John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

William Blake: Auguries of Innocence. “To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour.”

Looking deep beneath the surface. Close-up sketch of a flea. Micrographia. Beautiful. Viewing source. This is how we see the beauty of things.

This whole web2.0 stuff is not about details. We’re not using microscopes, but telescopes, looking at the “big picture”. Telescopes can be good: think “Galileo”.

He brought upon the world an a priori change. A new way of looking at the world, though the world had not changed. The earth revolves around the sun, and not the opposite.

Darwin: the world didn’t change from one day to the next when The Origin of Species was published, but our view of the world did.

We want to think about structure. How is the house built? It’s when you understand the structure that you can build solid houses. Same with web pages. This is where web standards come in.

Separation. Before: all mixed up (html, css, js). Now: separate. (cf. http://nataliejost.com) Progressive enhancement. An a priori change to how you design websites.

a) begin with your content
b) structure it (HTML)
c) think about how it’s going to look (CSS)
d) think about the behaviour (DOM Scripting)

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If you remove any of these layers, it will still work. It won’t look pretty, it won’t behave as well, but it will still “work”.

CSS

  # in a separate document!
 p { }
 #foo { }

Then, add rules using selectors. From general to specific.

DOM

Very similar approach. Make it external. You don’t put it in the document. The vocabulary is different, but you also reference elements in the page pretty easily

 document.getElementsByTagName("p")
 documnet.getElementById("foo")

School of thought called “unobtrusive scripting”, “unobtrusive javascript”

Beware

First structure, then presentation. If you catch yourself doing this…

 <a href="..."> # wrong!

If you put behaviour in here, you’ve wasted a hyperlink.

Slightly better… but still bad

 <a href="#"> # JS equivalent of using the style attribute

steph-note: I’m learning stuff about JS! yay!

Bandwidth benefits in doing things the right way. Process benefits, you can separate the work. And also… the beauty of it. Flexibility. See how it reacts in situations you haven’t accounted for? It won’t fall apart if somebody accesses with no CSS, no JS, no images…

So, is this about making site accessible? Kind of. Note: go to the talk on accessibility Thursday morning.

Jeremy is talking more about universality. You’re not shutting out devices. Mobile. Search bots. Screen readers.

W.B. Yeats (April 1916) “All is changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

Ajax

Wonderful, beautiful, but can be terrible depending on how it’s used. steph-note: reminds me of what we said of JS in 99-00

The key to Ajax is about asynchronous communication with the server. XmlHttpRequest.

Jeremy’s definition: “A way of communicating with the server without refreshing the whole page.” Just part of the page.

Buzzword Hijax.

Here is how Jeremy thinks we should build an ajax application.

a) build a website in the old-fashioned way — buttons, links, for interaction with the server
b) then, come along with ajax — which parts of this page benefit from just being refreshed separately, and intercept the links/events. Hijack the requests. Bypass the whole page interaction.

Progressive enhancement rather than a terrible beauty that locks people out. Switch off JS, and everything still works.

Where? When?

Patterns: when I click a link/form, and when I submit it, I return to the same page with almost nothing changed.

  • registration forms (specially for user name availability)
  • comments on a blog/forum
  • add to cart
  • steph-note: sign in links

“Web 2.0” is not about web applications versus documents in the old “Web 2.0”. It’s a sliding scale. Most sites are somewhere in between documents and application. Applications work with documents! It’s not an either… or thing.

This kind of Ajax is more on the document side of the scale, roughly mid-way to the application end. Doesn’t scale to “more application”.

But at that point, why the hell are you building that with HTML, CSS and JS? The reason to use them is that they degrade gracefully. If you decide that all three are required, maybe you need to use another technology, like Flash. These technologies have their place for applications which cannot degrade gracefully. Flash is made for building web applications! But there is an insistance in building “2.0 Apps” in HTML/CSS/JS.

Maybe hesitancy because Flash isn’t a standard in the same way as HTML/CSS/JS?

Standards: you know your stuff will work, you know there’ll be support there. The best thing that Adobe could ever do in Jeremy’s opinion is to open it up truly (steph-note: if I understood that correctly).

History of standards.

ISO, ECMA, W3C…

Open data. API. RSS. XHTML.

If you’re going to release and API, look at what Google and Yahoo are doing and copy. Build upon existing conventions. Your own format is not going to make it.

If you allow people to access your data like that, you start to see emerging patterns.

Microformats! steph-note: yay!

Machine tags! steph-note: yay again! There is a machine tags wiki.

Jeremy, like many of us, really hates the “Web 2.0” label/buzzword. It had its place a few years ago, but now it’s really putting us in a box. Ajax is a good buzzword, because it allows to talk about a certain technology in a snappy way. Whereas Web2.0… ask ten people, and you’ll get 10 explanations.

Web2.0: people.

But we don’t need a buzzword for that. We already have a word for “leveraging collective intelligence”: the WEB!

Combine looking through the microscope and looking through the telescope.

Kathy Sierra: Keynote (Web2.0Expo, Berlin) [en]

[fr] Mes notes de la keynote de Kathy Sierra.

Here are my notes of Kathy Sierra’s keynote, quite different from yesterday’s workshop, which I also blogged. My notes are probably incomplete in some spots and may contain mistakes.

Finding Web 2.0 Opportunities (Kathy Sierra)

1) reduce guilt and fear

most of the time, people feel like they suck, like it’s their fault. Sometimes, making the product easier is not always the answer. We need to reduce that kind of feeling/face. How about using facial recognition to see when users are pulling a face? Or even simpler, have a WTF?! button.

Help, FAQ and user manuals do not solve WTF faces. People writing help and FAQ think you’re happy to use the softwa
re and a bit intellectually curious about using the software. Not true! Assume that most of the time, our users feel in WTF mode. Even if your software is easy to use, it might be they’re pulling that face because of what they’re trying to do with your tool.

FAQ/Help aren’t wrong, they’re written for the wrong place of the curve.

Recognise that people are miserable, feel they suck at what they’re trying to learn. Let people off the hook for feeling bad that it’s their fault. Books teaching something shouldn’t make people think they’re stupid.

“Appartments for rent: dog required.” In the US, so hard to find a place to live when you have a dog.

“Please walk on the grass, hug the trees, smell the roses.”

“What kind of genius? young, early, or late bloomer (Doc Searls).”

A lot of 2.0 stuff (like Twitter) increases the guilt, because you have to keep up. steph-note: I realise I’ve been letting myself off the hook quite a lot regarding that.

Being an expert is generally just a matter of focus, not a matter of natural talent.

How to write a bestseller? Choose a title that lets people off the hook. “The perfect mess” or “Everything bad is good for you.”

2) Don’t “bait and switch” on the relationship

Don’t start out all nice and interested and seductive, and in the end push away. How do you treat your ongoing users vs. the users you want to capture? The difference between how sales reps treat customers or prospects is often huge and the wrong way around. Documentation quality.

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Take the marketing budget and throw it into user learning. It’s not always a problem to not have a marketing budget: teach your users to kick ass.

Every time you think of something that you might do for marketing, think about what would happen if you applied that to user learning. Huge example: camera brochures and material. Glossy brochures that are all about taking great photos — which is the reason people buy cameras! — and afterwards, manuals that teach me to be a tool expert, which is not what I want!

Serendipity Curve. Introduce randomness. Excessive customisation and tailoring strips out the delight of discovering something unusual and unexpected. Encourage people to make connections between your stuff and seemingly unrelated things.

Roger von Oech’s “Creative Whack Pack” (steph-note: looks really good!)

3) Make it real/Make it important

Why are we here? We still need physical presence despite all our technology. A huge part of our brain is devoted to our hands and mouth.

Smell is really important steph-note: shows cup of coffee on slide, it does something to our brain but not just smell. Skin was meant to be used.

A real present trumps a virtual gift (not that the latter isn’t meaningful!!) Think about how you can give something in the real world to your users, related to your product. In the US, the UPS guy is a hero. He’s a sex-symbol. Physically impossible to not smile when you see the Amazon box on your doorstep.

Philosophy of Electric Rain:

  • users should do something kick ass within 20 minutes
  • the process of buying, downloading and installing feel like you’re getting a special present. E.g. a real human answers the tech support. We don’t expect that!

Unboxing! “geek unpacking porn” Look at pictures of other people unpacking their new geek toy. steph-note: I almost did that with a Flickr photo of my new macbook and roomba.

People are actually coming up with ways to make those pictures more seductive. These things matter!!

Even if you’re working in bits, and all “virtual”, find something you can send to your users offline. People always care about the t-shirts.

T-shirt First Development. ThinkGeek. It’s not enough to send it to them, give them a way to show that they’re wearing the t-shirt.

Don’t make this mistake:

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There are women or smaller men in your audience. They won’t feel like they kick ass in an XXL t-shirt. Yes, even if it’s not cost-effective.

Remember we’re not ready to leave our bodies behind just yet. “Real” sex still trumps the “virtual” kind…

Reminder: Speaking Tuesday at Web2Open, Berlin [en]

[fr] Je présente une session sur le multilinguisme ici à Berlin, à l'occasion de Web2Open, mardi (demain!) à 10h10.

Just a reminder: I’ll be giving my talk Waiting for the Babel Fish: Languages and Multilingualism Tuesday (tomorrow as of writing) at 10:10 during Web2Open at the Web2.0Expo in Berlin.

I also put together (for the occasion, but I’d been wanting to do it for a long time) a page entirely devoted to my work about languages and multilingualism on the internet. This is the first page of the Focus series which will showcase some of my work and the areas I’m currently active in.

For those of you who’ve been intrigued by this twitter of mine I’m going to make you wait a little more — but if we bump into each other at Web2.0Expo, don’t be shy to ask me about it!

Update: here’s the slideshow! Slightly upgraded since the last incarnation of this talk at Google:

Thanks to all those of you who came. I got lost on the way so arrived late — my apologies to any of you who might have been there on time and left before I arrived.

Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users (Web2.0Expo, Berlin) [en]

[fr] Workshop de 3 heures animé par Kathy Sierra. Comment rendre ses utilisateurs passionnés.

Disclaimer: theses are just my live notes of Kathy Sierra‘s workshop. Though I try to be accurate, they may contain mistakes or be incomplete. Please don’t hesitate to link to other notes, reviews, or relevant material in the comments.

Not passion like being attached to your iPod, but more passion like how we invest energy into our hobbies.

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There are techniques we can use to achieve that…

Kathy is going to draw techniques from many domains, who all have a piece of the puzzle:

  • hollywood 🙂
  • cognitive science
  • neurobiology
  • psychology
  • learning theory
  • design
  • game design
  • advertising

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Passion: music, photography… that level of passion. Think of something that you have a passion for, or have had a passion for. Here’s how to tell if it was: you want to keep getting better, you want to learn more, practice more… that’s a real passion.

People with a passion:

  • show off
  • learn
  • continuously improve
  • spend time

Reverse-engineering passion. Look at common attributes of things people have a passion about (e.g. people want to keep learning and getting better). How can we drive passion rather than wait for it to happen?

Where there is passion… there is a user kicking ass. Nobody really get a passion about something they suck at. Challenge: what to do in the period where users still suck.

One of the reasons people pursue passions is that it gives them a higher resolution experience. You see things differently when you’re passionate. You see more details, things that others don’t notice.

The Kick Ass Curve:

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Between the first time and the suck threshold is the real challenge, because that’s where we’ll lose people. Strategies to keep pushing our users up that curve, and not just when they get past the point where they no longer suck. The faster you can get your users past the Suck Threshold, the more likely you are to have passionate users.

So, how fast can we do that, and how?

But… the problem is that people don’t want to be experts at a tool, but experts at what they can do with the tool. They use the tools to do something. That explains why documentation is all wrong, because it focuses on teaching the tool.

Good example: photography site which focuses on the results people want, the photos they want to be able to take, instead of on the camera.

Kathy, seeing slow-shutter speed photo of waterfall, understands why she needs to ditch her point-and-shoot, because she needs control on the shutter speed to be able to take those kind of pictures. And that’s what she wants to be able to do.

We don’t want to be tool experts.

Before our customers buy, we treat them well with glossy brochures, and as soon as they buy they get an unpalatable tech manual for their camera.

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What if your product isn’t something people can use to do really cool things? (Showing a picture of Coldplay.) If we look, we can see what people might be able to use it for that they’ll get excited about. So, Chris Martin of Coldplay is very interested in fair trade. He helps people get involved in the cause. (Oxfam.) A band can help people become passionate about their work, their music.

Another example: Red Bull. Kathy likes Red Bull, but she doesn’t want to become an expert at what’s in it! So Red Bull are helping people become passionate about other stuff, not the drink — music, for example.

Bottom line: whatever you have, whatever your business is, you can have passionate users. They don’t have to be passionate about your product.

Imagine Nikon sets up a really cool site to teach people about photography. Learning is a drug for the brain, so this feel-good feeling is going to be linked to Nikon, who is behind the site. Passion spills back to the tool/brand. (That was a bit of psychology…)

THE important question: what do (or can) you help your users kick ass at? (answers are not: the tool, the interface). The stuff your tool allows to do.

What if you make trash bags? Well, you can sponsor a festival, do something completely unrelated. But you could have little films with creative use of trash bags, and then you create tutorials to teach people to make kick-ass films with those trash bags. (steph-note: sounds way more lame when I write it than when Kathy says it.)

Big question: how do we actually make that happen?

It all starts in the user’s head, and the user’s brain is not our friend.

Our brain has a little logic, and lots of emotion. Our brain thinks we’re still cavemen. Our brain has a big crap filter, and not much gets through. Your brain cares about that which you feel. Chemistry! Mind has one agenda, but brain has another. Imagine, trying to learn from a dry textbook even though committed to studies and the test… but the brain isn’t into it. Any moment though, something could wake the brain up (smell of pizza, cute guy).

What does the brain care about?

  • things that are just a little weird, that are just out of expectations
  • scary things
  • sex
  • little young helpless innocent things (baby, puppy)
  • play, joy
  • humour (bunny suicides…)
  • faces
  • things that are not quite resolved, some mystery, want to know the rest of the story (hand hiding face)

To keep people reading, you need to make sure their brain stays awake.

The brain doesn’t care about

  • generic clichés (bride and groom kissing, no-no, whereas groom biting bride’s shoulder…)

Trick the brain!

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Conversational beats formal every time. It can be subtle!! steph-note: this what I try to explain to people about writing in “blog style”.

Leading theory about that: the brain can’t tell the difference between a real conversation and something written in conversational tone. “God, a conversation, I have to keep up my end, pay attention.”

Rule: talk to the brain, not to the mind.

To read: “A mind of its own” by Cordelia Fine (How your Brain Distorts and Decieves)

Prepare the brain so that when people see this they think “ew, bad”:

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Hey… all this was just about getting people’s attention! We still need to get past the Suck Threshold.

Where are my users on the suck / kick ass curve? If your tool is easy to learn, can they spend a lifetime getting better at what they do with it?

Who do snowboarders go back the second day? The first is so awful! Because there is this picture in their mind of what it’ll be like to kick ass at it. People persevere because they have an idea in their head of what it will be to be really good at it. Another reason is that they see a path, a series of steps to getting there.

People stick at something that’s stuff because there is:

  • compelling picture
  • clear path
  • easy first step

How easy depends on how much value they perceive they’ll get. Sometimes just giving an e-mail address is too big a step.

Who is describing this “compelling picture” for your users?

Why? Who cares? So what? If people are to learn something, they have to keep turning the pages of the book. We need to get past the brain’s crap filter when we’re explaining.

It’s an exercise:

  • My tool does X
  • So what?
  • Well, if you can do X, then it means you can do Y
  • And so what?
  • etc…

(when you feel like killing the other for being so thick, you’re getting close t the meaningful stuff: “you’ll never have sex again”, “you’ll lose your job”)

Keep asking why.

Now, we need to get users to learn.

Learning increases resolution.

“RTFM” expresses how we feel about our users. If you want them to RTFM, make a better FM!

All the money goes to enticing, sexy, motivating, advertising brochures. And after… when it’s time to learn, nothing left.

Learning Theory

Facts — information — understanding. Need more understanding. We tend to teach too many facts. steph-note: cutlery noise from outside coming in through open door is really annoying me

The more they understand, the less they need to memorize.

Because a choice is asked, our brain starts doing more processing.

Smackdown Model: throw two equally compelling, strong, arguments at somebody, and the brain is forced to start processing.

Words + pictures > words. Even drawing a picture on a napkin and taking a photograph of it.

Look for “oh crap!” and “oh cool” moments.

steph-note: tiring

“just in time” is more effective than “just in case” learning. But be careful, you don’t want to always prevent them from scraping their knees.

Who can help you help your users learn? Where are the resources? steph-note: other users! Kathy: “community” 😉

However, nothing of that matters unless you manage to keep your users engaged.

steph-note: break-time, good!

Should read the book “Flow, The Psychology of Optimal Experience”.

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What is it like to be in the flow state? You don’t really notice that time is passing. If you have lost time, either you were abducted by aliens, or you were in the flow state. You just keep going. For people to be in the flow state, a very delicate balance needs to be achieved:

  • knowledge and skill
  • challenge

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What turns the brain on?

  • discovery
  • challenge
  • narrative
  • self-expression
  • social framework
  • cognitive arousal
  • thrill
  • sensation
  • triumph
  • accomplishment
  • fantasy
  • fun (?)

Fun does not have to mean funny.

What breaks flow state, state of enchantment? Think of the user as under a spell. Suddenly realising that they’re using this tool to achieve what they’re doing. (Oh, crap, where’s that button?)

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Don’t make me think about the wrong thing. Just make me think about the interesting stuff. Make it hard to do the wrong thing, and easy and natural to do the right thing.

Techniques to make the flow state happen and remain there. How do we keep them coming back?

Nobody does this better than game developers. Video games! Always trying to get to the next level.

User experience Spiral:

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Motivational milestones. Make sure the users know where they’re going.

Differences between girls and boys and video games:

  • boys: getting to the next level is the aim
  • girls: getting to the next level, but what for?

Are there any new superpowers that I’ll get at the next level? If done right, the payoff gets bigger for each level. Gives you a chance to paint the next compelling picture of what they’ll be able to do.

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Levels have to be small at the start.

What are levels for web development?
Online communities?
Flickr users?

What are your level superpowers?

Frequent rewards. Lots of small benefits. User as hero. Who/what is the helpful sidekick/mentor? How will the hero be changed?

The Tribe…

e.g. 37 signals: “getting real” — so people who are into 37 signals products identify with this “getting real” attitude. Mac: “think different”.

Music video, shot just in living-room and shows what all the money that could have gone into making it could be used for in the third world:

What part of your product is (or could be) part of a user’s identity? (meaning)

Site where people photograph their iPod in various settings. People holding one company’s book in various locations.

So, how can your users show that they belong to the tribe?

If you want them to talk… give them something to talk about. LOTR stuff in calendar OSX (steph-note: dig around that).

e.g. on cover of one of Kathy’s series books, same girl as on this site— lots of talk!

Figuring things out (insider info) is social currency (whuffie). Everyone loves to be the one to tell you about… X.

Find interesting stories. Give users treats. Things that they can talk about. Give them social currency that they can use elsewhere. Legends, stories, people. Where there is passion, there are people.

Once you get to a certain level, people start trying to figure out who will play you in the movies 😉

founder/creation stories, user-as-hero stories? You don’t want to make it about you… people are passionate about themselves. First thing to look at: testimonials. They should be about how great these users are as a result of using the products. People want to see themselves reflected in the testimonials.(Not about the product of the founders.) The more first person language in reviews (about a book, eg.), the better. What’s important is if something good happened to the user, not what they think about you.

Community

  • forums?
  • study groups?

at the least, a blog with comments…

Javaranch registration terms of service: “Be nice”. Users have to agree to that. If people aren’t nice, how do you get them to answer and ask questions? How quickly can you make it possible for people to ask and answer questions?

No dumb questions. Don’t allow people to say “that’s already been answered 50 times”. It’s OK to ask a question again. Never shun somebody for asking a question.

But the most important factor is actually no dumb answers. Try to get people to convert to answerers as fast as possible. Information on “how to answer questions”. When people answer a question, make sure they feel encouraged because they’ve done it.

Tutorials on how to make tutorials.

How to know you’ve got passionate users

When people stop criticising you, but criticise your users. A bit unsettling, but that means you have passionate users. “Cult?” “Sheep?”

Then, give your users some sort of defensive weapon.

If you try to satisfy everybody, you delight and inspire nobody.

Tips and trouble on the road to passionate users

Levelled products (iMovie is free, FinalCut isn’t — so you start with iMovie thinking you’ll never need more, and at some point you’ll outgrow it; problem though: big gap between the two from a usability point of view). Good strategy, however.

“Dignity is Deadly”

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Startup: individuals
Corporate: consensus

Apes become smarter as they work together. Humans become dumber as they work together. (“Wisdom of Crowds”)

We tend to think our ideas are amazing, but our users think they’re tolerable.

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Listening to users: what they say is not what they want.

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User priorities

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When you ask them to prioritize, and when you ask them to also explain, you get very different results.

The greatest cause of user pain:

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Making things better can in fact make them worse. If a simple thing is nice and flow-inducing… No need to improve it by adding tons of features.

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The Secret…

It doesn’t matter what they think about you… (It’s not about you, and it’s not about what you do). All that matters is how they feel about themselves as a result of their interaction with you, your product, your company… steph-note: thinking that Lush testimonials are spot-on, they really have passionate users and I’m one of them.

The user must have an “I rule!” experience.

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Remember: your users are real people.

Thank you, Kathy. It was great to have a chance to see you.

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