South By Saturday

I just finished the first of many more long days at my inaugural visit to Austin & SXSW Interactive. I saw lots of interactive design celebrities, some great panels, some not-so-great panels and tons of stuff in between. Here’s my report.

My bus riding skills aren’t quite what they are at home, so I missed the 10am panel I wanted to see, A Decade of Style with Molly Holzschlag, Doug Bowman, et al. But, I was able to make it in time to see the superstar pairing of Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert in After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration which, despite the lack of Cameron Moll, was probably the most enjoyable panel of the day.

One thing is very clear after hearing these guys speak: they and their friends have lots of fun being creative together. From 48-hour movie production to birthday parties with accompanying posters, logos, merch & even movie trailers, Rob & Jason & friends certainly go all out. The other thing I learned? I need more designer friends.

Seriously, though, it was an excellent panel that reinforced a lot of things for me:

  • design is pervasive in my life, and I should do a better job cultivating it… even when I’m watching a movie, doing a crossword, or staring at billboards on the freeway
  • that pile of “inspiration” I’ve been meaning to scan? I should do it soon and often
  • constraints can often be more freeing than they are limiting—limitations breed creativity
  • if you see something “ugly,” redesign it for fun

After taking a lunch break to watch my BC Eagles get slaughtered in the first half by North Carolina, I trekked back to the convention center to my second panel of the day: Tag, You’re It, a look at folksonomies in various forms, how people are using them, etc. It wasn’t particularly enlightening, but the discussion was worthwhile for the questions it raised:

  • How can we combine machine-readable and human-readable tagging structures?
  • Is tagging better off as folksonomy, taxonomy, or some combination thereof?

I really think tagging is quite powerful and could be even more important as we move even farther into a future where metadata is king. The better we can describe these files, photos, links, music, etc, the better we can find them, interact with them, and make use of them for other tasks.

Next up was the ultra-short (and worthy of more time) Grids are Good and How to Design With Them starring Khoi Vinh and the “cranky” Mark Boulton. The fact that this was only 25 minutes long was probably the biggest crime of the day, as this was the most practical of panels I attended. Khoi and Mark redesigned (and renamed) Yahoo!‘s home page as the new Yeeaahh.com. It ws fascinating to see not only the initial creation of the grid, but how they mastered it in this design. As someone who basically designs two- or three column layouts without much thought of the underlying grid structure, this opened up a lot of ideas for me.

After stopping by the Screenburn Arcade for a little Madden 07 on Xbox 360, I hit up probably the most controversial of Saturday’s panels: Christopher Fahey’s look at High Class and Low Class Web Design. I say controversial because it seems even some of the people on the panel (Khoi Vinh & Liz Danzico) didn’t agree with much of what he proposed at all. That’s not a problem per se, but when the moderator tries to stir up a debate and everyone’s on the same side, it makes for a less interesting discussion.

And yet I think this was a seriously thought-provoking topic: is there a “class sytem” in design? Is there anything to be said about “bad design” versus “good design”? A few of the web examples brought up for “bad” or “low class” design were MySpace, eBay & Craigslist. At first glance, yes, these sites are good examples of “bad” design. Yet, as the post-panel Q&A bore out, those first impressions don’t tell the whole story. The story’s even good enough for its own post, which will follow shortly.