Whew! It’s been quite a time at South By Southwest Interactive–lots of panels, parties, and good eating! Since there are a multitude of people who have taken amazing notes during the panels and core conversations, I’ll spare you those details, but just as important as what’s said during the panels is what you can take away from it! Here is a list of the “take-aways:” the twitter usernames, the Web sites and the books. Here are some ideas and resources you can use right away!
Overarching Themes:
Collaboration within companies, collaboration between client & web team, collaboration between web teams
Openness with coworkers and with clients
Don’t do work for the sake of doing work; create deliverables that have applicable value
Some clients (and even workers) respond better to many lo-fidelity steps (sketching, collage, mood boards) to buy into the design process before seeing a polished design
Agile development! Working in quick phases to roll out a product. Everyone’s talking about it, but it may not be good for every team or every client
Web Typography: Quit Bitchin’ and Get Your Glyph On
Ditch the concept of the “singular genius designer.” The designer is the person who takes everyone’s ideas and creates a cohesive solution to the problem
Always sketch out at least six layout ideas!
Get as many people (developers, clients, shareholders) involved as early as possible
A good fit is achieved by every team member having the same core values
Always remain passionate about what you’re doing. Even if you find yourself in a situation you don’t like, find a small thing to focus on and remain passionate
Show your clients a variety of mood board concepts; This is the stage for back-and-forth conversations and for feedback. Take this knowledge and deliver one cohesive design mock-up. Delivering several designs diminishes your expertise in finding the right solution.
Educate your clients on the value of your product; don’t work to meet unreasonable deadlines
Don’t let a single designer get too involved in the “ownership” of his/her design. Take it away and let someone else work on it.
Don’t design behind closed doors, open up the conversation!
Global poptart, Bono according to msnbc.com, “said Wednesday that next week’s presidential election provides a great opportunity to “relaunch Brand USA” amid worldwide scrutiny”. One could question if Bono is now an official “design critic” or has simply come up with a clever messaging point to persuade the caffeinated throngs to saddle up to the polls on November 4th.
theMechanism worked closely with the Ansari X PRIZE Foundation right up until Burt Rutan won back in October of 2004. We continue to support X PRIZE Founder, Dr. Peter Diamandis’ recent efforts, including the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE and the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, which will help the world to both live and travel more efficiently in the near future. The reason I mention this is because I accidentally stumbled on Peter featured in an excellent (and Freely downloadable) series at iTunes called TED Talks.
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started in 1984 as a conference to bring together people from those three worlds, and is an “invite only” event.
Dr. Peter Diamandis speaks about Stephen Hawking experiencing Zero Gravity. To hear him speak so vividly and excitedly about this unusual event is inspiring and encouraging.
As designers and thinkers, it’s our duty to try to learn how to apply ourselves to helping the planet. Taking some time to watch and be inspired by Peter, Philippe Stark and John Maeda (to name only a few) at the TED Conference, is a great start.
Dave Fletcher is a Founder and Creative Director at theMechanism, a multi-disciplinary design agency with offices in New York, London and Durban, South Africa. Dave’s still trying to figure out how to get an invite to TED, but he’s getting closer…
Jeffrey Barke is senior developer and information architect at theMechanism, a multimedia firm with offices in New York, London and Durban, South Africa.
