So I'm at d.construct the community focused conference from the guys at Clearleft. BBC Backstage are official sponsors and all the mens's Tshirts have gone within a hour of opening. In the dome, the venue is large and cool enough. The wireless seems to be operating pretty well even with 600+ people. These are my notes from D.construct.
The Dawning of the Age of Experience by Jared Spool. Talks about how the ipod is technically inferear but the experience of owning a ipod blows the rest out of the water. Jarad points out that everyone is watching the rise of Apple's experience product. Blockbuster vs Netflix. 85% of new subscribers say an existing subscriber recommended them. 93% evangelise Netflix to friends and family. Its been their success and they have done little advertising. Boardrooms have taken noticed.
Changing the experience can be good and can be bad if it doesn't intergrate the user and the business. Jared, talks about the chicken sexing phenomena as an example of something people just do but can't really explain the process of. Just like Midwives estimating baby weight and sex. Sushi chef's also don't know how to make
No one mentions Netflix as a pioneer of social networking or information archeture. Good experience design is Invisible! Hard to show good design.
Experience design applies to everything, even the terms and conditions which people should read but often gets over looked.
Experience design is cultural, need to understand both the audience and business cultures. Need a culture of failure. celebrate failures because people learn from their mistakes. www.uie.com/brainsparks – blog and podcast
Experience Strategies by Peter Merholz. Its all about the experience, even Microsoft in Office 2007 started back at scratch. Tivo could have just done another video recorder but they decided to rethink the whole experience. The Wii decided not to do the technology and feature battle.
I didn't make notes during the rest of d.construct because I was in and out of the main conference quite a bit. But it was a great conference and I look forward to next year. Well done to Andy Budd and the rest of the clearleft team who put on d.construct with the community in the forefront of their minds. It was well attended, had some great speakers and some up and coming new speakers. For example Tom Coates was fantatstic as the last speaker of the conference. He's really pulled things together and will be showing up in more expensive conferences soon.
This year like last year d.construct had an after party. This time it was sponsored by BBC Backstage and Yahoo. And this time there was plenty of food and drink for everyone. At one point the venue (Above Audio) was so busy we had just over the limit of people. Lucky that was quickly sorted out and people still had an excellent time. The proper food meant few people left the bar till it was time to go home. I don't know when the Yahoo sponsored drinks ran out but it seemed to last about 3 hours which was great. The BBC Backstage sponsored food lasted long enough for about 95 percent of people to get a decent amount of food. Food, Drink, great venue and not bad music. Yep I think everyone had a great time. Fantastic end to a excellent day.