WebVisions and Portland

Portland

What a great town. Living in land-locked states all my life, I'm always happy at the chance to get to, or even near the ocean. The seafood is better, I like the weight in the air, and how the clouds move so much faster at lower altitudes.

My wife and I experienced the Saturday Market, the Chinese Gardens, the view from the Portland City Grille (must go during happy hour, the food menu is cheap and fantastic!), eating at the Newport Bay on the river, 23rd street shopping district, and the brunch at Papa Haydn's (not to be missed). We packed a lot into our 3 day adventure, and it was well worth it.

WebVisions 2004

Of course, I didn't go to see Portland (though it was wonderful to tour the city), I came to see some of my favorite authors and web visionaries speak about user experience, brand experience, tools for and the business value of the web.

First I have to say that this conference is great. Its supported by volunteer efforts of designers and companies in Portland and it gives the conference a unique, genuine feel. There is camaraderie everywhere, little to no egos, and a great community feeling. Without a doubt I will be returning next year.

Now, for the conference itself. I won't do a play by play (if you would like one, Elaine Nelson has written up her great notes at epersonae), instead I will just walk through the sessions I attended and the highlight the main points I got from them:

Why Designers Need to Care About ROI by Ernest Kim

• It was memorable that Ernest used music, low in the background during different stages in his presentation. It was a style I hadn't seen before, and it filet like watching an old silent movie with the band playing in the background
• First mention I heard that day about the need to learn the language of business and apply it to design
• Learn to differentiate between useful (increase % of visitors clicking in beyond the homepage) and useless metrics (enhance look and feel or increase branding)
• Business speaks in terms of objectives, while designers speak in terms of attributes. Learn to speak business
• Covered much of the same principals of user experience, talking to the audience and balancing that off of the business objectives to make sure your creating value for the site

How Measuring Business Value Changes Web Development by Scott Hirsch

• Business and Design (Big "D") are beginning to merge. There are growing paths and classes in business schools focused on design
• Characteristics of businesses that value design:
  1. Quick wins for evangelism
  2. Transparent project selection process
  3. Centralized design competence
  4. C-level understanding of user experience
  5. Smarter Investments
• Couple of Ebay's levers for decision making on development or design changes (I'm missing one because my handwriting sucks so bad and I can't decipher it):
  1. Does it make it easier to bid?
  2. Easier to pay for item?
• Some commonalties between Scott's talk and Ernest's:
  • Focus on opportunity to increase metrics (instead on costs of related to work involved)
  • Use this focus to get approval for projects
  • Constantly be measuring to show success or failure

Weblogs as a Technology Platform by Anil Dash

• We (the web community at large) are doing a bad job of informing the world about what weblogs are, why one would want a weblog, and how one can get a weblog
• Opportunities for weblogs:
  • Publishers and Communications
  • Business and Organizations
  • Individuals
• B2B Marketing opportunities:
  • RSS Feeds replacing email?
  • Building a customer community
  • Targeting leads and customers you want to
  • News searches on company name

Brand Experience and the Web by Dirk Knemeyer

Dirk covered a lot of what was in his Digital Web article and his slides are available online, so I'll only cover a few things that stood out to me:

• The web has changed the way we think, the way we behave
• Globalization and Internationalization has led to global companies operating locally
• Marketing Pollution and Information Smog are creating more choices so its harder to decide, while also creating more stimuli so experiences are less memorable. The challenge is to make it memorable and gain and hold mind share
• Successful companies gain involvement of the employees & input by creating a shared vision
• These companies are invested in there company's culture, and as a result their employees are brand passionate
• Brand experience is the application of a holistic business approach. Principal Designer interacts with:
  • Business Strategist
  • Researcher
  • Brand Strategist
  • Design Strategist
  • Content Strategist
• Design must address the needs and desires of the people, and it must affect the both their intellect and emotion

Experience Design Unplugged by Peter Morville

I was getting tired by now, and my note-taking started to slow down dramatically so I only have some limited notes, but shortly after the conference Peter wrote an article titled Ambient Findability that covers a lot of his presentation (which he also put his slides up online). Here's what I took away:

• "The future of web design lies in a bottle of scotch." - Peter Morville
• How can we solve the information overload?
• Ambient Findability: Find anyone, anything, anywhere, anytime
• Find the intersection of people and content
• "Can they find our content despite our website?"

Whew, all done. I could write more, but this entry is already too long. To everyone I met, and all those who provided me with great recommendations of what to do in Portland, and all of those I had great conversations with I say thank you. I'll be back next year, and I hope you are too.