2011 marked my fifth consecutive year of travelling to Austin for SXSW Interactive. Southby (as it’s affectionately known) has been, and arguably still is the single biggest design, technology and media conference in the world with nearly 25,000 people in attendance this year, a number which significantly surpassed 2010’s exponential growth.

Here’s the thing though—with more than 2500 panels to choose from this year, the quality of the conference sessions hasn’t exactly kept up with the pace of growth. A paradox of choice has resulted from the need for additional locations and sessions. What to see? Which talks will ultimately prove worthwhile?

Finding those winners has always been hit or miss. I’ve found it was sometimes better not to choose at all and instead go with the flow and instead engage with friends, peers and the design community at large over coffee or some chocolate bacon.

Nevertheless with solo talks and group panels covering design and branding, content strategy, user experience, entrepreneurship, communications and social media, along with project management and much more, there are always a handful of gems. In the case of 2011, a few choice picks were:

• Jeffrey Zeldman’s Awesome Internet Design Panel
• Your Meetings Suck and It’s Your Fault.
• Not My Job: the Ultimate Content Strategy Smackdown
• How Print Design is the Future of Interactiion
• Stop Listening to Your Customers
• Collaboration Nation: How Side Projects Can Keep You Relevant
• Ordering Disorder: Grid Design for the New World
• No Excuse: Web Designers Who Can’t Code
• Where Web Typography Goes To Next
• Critical Thinking for UX Designers
• My Title is Web Designer, Now What?
• Anatomy of a Design Decision
• Project Management for Humans
• Company Culture: It’s All Your Fault

Aside from the conference sessions themselves, the social aspect of being there in Austin, surrounded by many of the “best of the best” in their respective fields is a significant draw, proven by the rise in attendees foregoing a conference badge entirely and instead travelling to Austin solely to participate in the grassroots and social activities often arranged by small groups of like-minded peers. A perfect example being the annual Found Type Photowalk, started three years ago by my friend, designer, Dan Rubin, and which has otherwise been coordinated by fellow type nerds Grant Hutchinson, Luke Dorny and myself the last two years.

Since I started attending I’ve made countless friends, and the opportunity to see them in person every year, if only at this one event, is inspiring and invaluable. Every year more friendships are forged, ideas are bounced around and breakthroughs happen.

Will I go again next year? Almost certainly. But will it be more for the value of the community aspects of the conference or for the conference itself — that remains the question.

Although some may say Apple's innovative iAd platform is off to a slow start, their release of the iAd Producer software in December should help change that.

To-date, much of the burden in producing the ads has been entirely on Apple's own design shoulders. Now that the platform has matured to the point where Apple is allowing designers and developers to build on it and "get in the game", experience designers need some resources to plan and design iAds, and so we've produced a set of OmniGraffle Stencils and Illustrator templates that can be used to do exactly that.

Keep in mind that these templates, although formatted for 320x480 resolution (remember, the iPhone 4's retina display is 640x960 at 326ppi) are designed to scale up to full size using the magic of vector shapes.

If you like them, find them useful, we'd appreciate any assistance in getting the word out about them. And if you've got suggestions for improvements - we're all ears.

Download the iAd Wireframe Stencils here (11.1MB zip file)

“Business success is always defined by the quality of the overall customer experience.”
— Forrester Research, 2001

The best consumer experiences are designed to empathize with consumers, allowing them to complete tasks efficiently and get them out of the way – whether they involve interacting with physical objects or digital interfaces such as a website or mobile application.

Experiences that put user needs first are useful, usable and desirable. They not only solve problems but make it easy in the process. By using research to impart the right affordances, they increase consumer propensity to engage, respond and recommend. Ultimately, this leads to solving business needs while addressing their own in the process. User-first experiences are designed to turn casual users into valuable advocates.

But how do you develop these types of experiences while balancing business objectives? In practice it’s not really that difficult but requires a clear vision and a more nuanced approach in communicating value to pull it off completely.

What constitutes a great experience?

The first step to understanding how to develop great user-first experiences is to answer the question of “what constitutes a great experience?” Although the specifics can be quite subjective, they’re most often qualified by three main characteristics:

• Usefulness
• Usability
• Desirability

Although there are no universal rules that fit every case, the overarching principle is that great experiences deliver on user needs by striking a balance between how something works and how it looks. From there, the key is to constantly iterate around those themes.

“Websites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue and erode brands.”
— Forrester Research, 1998

Great user-first experiences require time, careful consideration and prioritize tasks over features in their execution. They recognize that getting the basics right, doing the right thing by default, and not attempting to be everything to everyone is critical. User-first experiences often do less, but what they do, they do better. Everything else strengthens the base while increasing value and desirability.

Like all truly great design, a hallmark of user-first experiences is that they’re better for things deliberately removed than for those added. Just ask Dieter Rams or Steve Jobs.

Opinionated to the Core

I’d be willing to bet nearly everyone can name at least one or two companies whose products or services fall into the realm of user-first experiences. For example, Dyson, Zappos, Amazon, Google and of course, Apple to name just a few. Their products and services surprise and delight consumers around the world and are more than just “lipstick on a pig” solutions.

In many cases, products from these companies themselves are not wholly new or revolutionary — vacuum cleaner, online shoe and book retailers, web-based applications and computer software/hardware. Rather it’s the unique, almost singular point of view, voice and user-focused approach they apply that make them great.

These companies take every opportunity to reinforce the three key characteristics of a great user-first experience throughout a customer’s lifecycle, whether online or offline. To that point, another example of a company that understands great user experiences is Disney.

The Disney experience is one where every minute experience is connected — their movies, theme parks, merchandise and shopping experiences are designed to create a world that you can’t help but be engaged with. They vigorously carry the company’s vision through every interaction. People of all ages love them for it, just as people do for companies such as Apple.

Practical Tips

Ok, so how about some practical suggestions? As I mentioned, getting the basics right is the best place to start — so here are a few high level and tactical starting points to consider.

• Know and understand your audience(s) needs and motivations to find an optimal balance that addresses their pain points while still being able to achieve often competing business objectives.
• Test and iterate on concepts with real users using simple low-cost paper or wireframe prototypes.
• Figure out how something should work and look like before building anything.
• Use research to facilitate design decisions around navigation and information architecture, layout, typography, accessibility controls, etc.
• Follow common interface and interaction paradigms to help lower learning curves.
• Set expectations by using direct and appropriate language to explain how something works.
• Ease users into an experience by making tasks as simple as possible.
• Make completing forms painless by requesting only information that is absolutely necessary for a task.
• Break complex interactions into multiple steps and guide users through the entire process.
• Eliminate anything unnecessary and utilize progressive disclosure to provide a focused experience.
• Avoid alienating customers by utilizing progressive enhancement to ensure that content is accessible to everyone first.

Where Next?

Great user experiences take time, involve clear objective prioritization, and require businesses to empathize with customers, thereby putting their needs first. By starting from a strong foundation, businesses save time and money, which in turn reduces the risk of large-scale redesigns later. An offshoot benefit of great experiences is that they’re designed to help develop strong communities of engaged customers that will advocate on the business’ behalf. And who doesn’t want that?