The second keynote was by Josh Ulm, Head of User Experience Designer at Vodafone. He is renowned User Experience Design professional with 15+ years of experience in interaction design, software development, rich media production and ubiquitous computing. You can view more about him

The central theme of his talk was “Swipe is the New Swoosh – How interaction design is changing the role of brand”.
He illustrated the changing role of brand in interaction design. According to him in today’s time the branding goes deeper and is no longer successful just by standing out. The user experience becomes the deeper tool to create the required impact.

Josh talked about the three most important things which becomes one of the definitive factors to stand out in a world flooded with endless brands and experiences. These were explained in the 3 sections of his talk…

Values
To stand out, the Experience of a device should be in synch with the core values of the brand it represents. According to him by linking the experience of interaction with the values of the brand there is emotional element which is added to the experience. This link should ensures that the emotional element is in synch with the values of the brand it represents. To explain this he gave an example of Puma Phone.

Integrity
This section of his talk was exemplified through Facebook.
According to him, facebook is designed with detail in mind. No matter which channel(desktop, smart phone, mobile apps, etc) we view it in, facebook is always recognizable. And this happens because facebook has successfully managed to maintain the integrity of its experience and brand.
He said this integrity can be preserved if we can identify the part we own and the parts which we want others others to control. This is possible when we go into the details; hence he emphasized – Details matter.

Differentiation
Without standing out one cannot be successful in a market place was the message given by Josh. He felt that many companies don’t innovate to avoid risk. And to explain what he meant by standing out, he gave an example of Windows phone 7. It would be quite interesting to follow and see how Windows fair with this new armor in their bucket. Atleast the initial reviews have been quite encouraging.

The whole keynote (now when I think) is an industry perspective of the whole landscape of User Experience design.

In this post I would cover the first keynote from Patrick Baudisch.

He is a professor in Computer Science at Hasso Plattner Institute in Berlin/Potsdam and chair of the Human Computer Interaction Lab. His research focuses on the miniaturization of mobile devices and touch input.

The general theme of his keynote was about small devices and the interactions outside the device. He stated that the software instead of hardware is the solution of addressing the precision problem of touch screen and the ergonomic limitation of ‘fat finger’ problem. This was followed by a number of examples of some of his work at Microsoft and HPI about invisible interactions (and interfaces), non-visual interaction methods, etc. You can have look at the work he shared on his site.

To me the most interesting part of his talk was about the things he applied in Interaction though some usual things done in theatre. Some of them are…

Elements on stage are set in such a way that the audience always creates an imaginary whole out of just a part on the stage. For example to depict a boat only a beginning or end would be shown. To set the directionality of the stage there is a set point of entry and exit on the stage. This is similar to the transition effects and the navigation patterns in a UI; they are always constant unless a dramatic change has to be depicted. The direction in which the actors see and speaks gives the clue of where and to whom they are speaking. These examples were quite interesting and made me realize that Interaction can learn a lot from theatre especially when the interaction is translating into real world gestures, actions or expressions.

It was also inspiring to find out how he actually pushes his students beyond the obvious. In one of the examples, his students had to design a mobile device of a size of a 1 Euro coin. This exercise resulted in device, which were more of wearable accessories than just a gadget to talk on phone.

In all it was an engaging keynote that set the right pace for the start of the conference.

Everyone wants to achieve the results of what Apple has achieved. They want to be at the top of the innovation pyramid. And it’s a classical paradox. If everyone is equally innovative, the novelty or the pyramid in itself will not exist.

Nevertheless the urge of striving for the best never dies as long as the pyramid exists. Now the question is: how do we reach the pinnacle of the pyramid? Is there a specific right way of reaching there?

Well they (the fruit company  ) practise and keep innovation intact by integrating design as not just a superficial form-improving exercise but more than that. In fact, this brings to my mind the visualization floating around about the design maturity of an organization.

Well the above mentioned visualization advocates that design maturity is not only an individual phenomenon but an organizational aspect too. Each and every organization is at a different level of maturity in the

1. Understanding of design
2. Practice of design, and
3. The awareness of design (in and outside design teams)

It is interesting to observe the ways in which organizations can function. I can give you two extreme examples of organizational behavior.

1. The wolf style: In a pack of wolf there is an alpha male. This alpha male is head of the pack. He is the one who influences the behavior of the pack to the maximum. All the other wolves in the pack are just followers and do as directed by this alpha male.
2. The ant style: A colony of ants functions in a completely different manner. Although the ant colony has a head, the Queen ant, all the residents of the colony are given specific types of task. Now, no one worker in the group has an upper hand; the outcome is always an emergent behavior due to the simultaneous effort of so many individuals. The structure on a superficial level just represents chaos. But only the outcome gives the idea of the impact of the force of an ‘ant army’. Everything in the way of an ant army succumbs to its force. The ants, although not aware of this, are independent thinkers… just that they are motivated by a common goal.

I am sure there will be many such complex organizational behaviors. It is interesting to see that even if we consider just the above two types, we can never say decisively which one is the right approach. There can never be a cook book or a best practice to it.

Each and every organization has its own unique needs apart from unique characteristic ways of responding to the environmental changes. It is very important for the people who work and lead the organization to identify it.

Perhaps a startup would need to be organized as a loners (like the way leopards do). Who must have told the wolves to behave the way they do or the ants to attack the way they do? They have just evolved.

As a conclusion, I think to have a perfect organizational attitude, it is very important for the organization to go through that process of evolution. And identify areas or ways that suit it best.

It was one of the interesting basic principles of design taught in my early introductions to the world of design. And today this very statement comes back to me while being introduced to the “Agile methods” of the software world. A Full circle of life

On a philosophical approach…

Synergy

The fundamental of working in an agile mode is achieving a Synergy… a state of perfect synch; each member of the team knows about the current status and capabilities of his teammates apart from being aware of their own self. It’s an interesting emergent behavior that result in this synergy.

An individual behavior that has enough impact in molding the best results but is timed so perfectly that it never hinders or deters other members.

Although it is impressive to see a musician play her instrument fast, it is expected out of her to constantly play it at a correct tempo (pace).  A task completed in hast is no good if its not aligned in the general direction of the team. There is well known saying in Hindi – “Jaldi ka kaam Shetan ka kaam” which translates to - “Haste in task is like devil’s task” or “Only a devil can do a task in haste”.
Ya…  and who would want a devil called hast in his or her team!!

A perfect synch within the team is possible when we know ourselves well; at a different level, know the strengths of our team members. It becomes important to know our own limitations and ways in which it can be supplemented by other’s strength.

Coming back to a more practical approach…

The agile method will only be a success only if the following things are always kept in mind as the guiding principles of working…

• Team work – It’s not about being able to deliver, but it’s the ability to deliver as a team. And as said commonly… team is an entity, which follows one motto… “Together we stand and together we fall”

• Detailed planning – As said by a famous person… “ Half of the battle is fought in a General’s mind”, details and minute details are the key to success. Man has been bestowed by this unique ability to simulate different situation without being in one. This ability of mental simulation helps us to confront the situation and be prepared for it in a better way. The more details we have the closer we go to reality.
  Agile demands quick response and it becomes easier to react if the right details are worked out. Again, the key here is that we should know the right level detail needed at that particular moment.

• Awareness of the commitments – Once the details are in place, and the team is in synch, this is the easiest state to achieve. As agile advocates a democratic work-style, being aware of the promises and commitments made helps to set a realist and achievable targets.

All the things mentioned above are definitely applicable on other processes too, but agile surfaces these key ingredients of succeeding as a team.

1. Translation – Language specific conversion of textual elements of the screen keep the context intact. There are broadly three types of languages
   1. directional – right to left(Arabic) / left to right (English)
   2. double bit – larger height(Japanese)
   3. lengthy – ocupies relatively more number of characters (Russian)
2. Localization – Display of data(currency, date, time, etc  in locale specific format)
3. Time Zone – Ability to show user specific time zones and use different Calendars followed.

But as usual humans are never satisfied. And naturally i am also not satisfied.

I am happy that i am informed about the purchase and the amount, but as an individual, i am more interested in get a pattern out of my purchases.

To make it clearer i will give you some examples.

In the evening i went to the mall close to my house and purchased a cool T-shirt and a pair of jeans. This purchase triggered the service to identify what category of item i purchased and sends me a message saying that it is just 3rd week of the month and you are about to exceed your regular allocated personal budget for clothes.

Or at the same time, i get a message saying that you have under utilized the allocated personal budget for personal cosmetics and then with it ,you get some related promotional material like a link to the latest designer perfume in the market.

To do slide bar for mobile apps

Everyone from development team, functional guys to management starts a very risky practice of stepping in the shoes of the end-user. Now these people while doing so forget to take off their own bad smelling socks.

And these bad smelling socks are… personal prejudices, biases, previous personal experiences, individual likes/dislikes.

Now the BIG question is how do we stop these individually foul smells from entering the end user’s shoes.