I presented a workshop, Big Ideas, Focused Action, Problem Solved, on 11.1.11 with my friend Cynthia Rolfe at the Oklahoma Creativity Forum (#OKCF2011). I was blown away by a number of things about the event (not the least of which is the fact that there is an entire organization, Creative Oklahoma, dedicated to promoting creativity in the state, with the aptly chosen website address www.stateofcreativity.com). What struck me most of all was the design and delivery of the conference experience. I have been chatting with friends and colleagues who attended the recent Service Design Conference in San Francisco and their insights coupled with my own reflections about being both a conference producer and consumer got me wondering about what it takes to design a memorable and satisfying conference experience.

Thus I arrive at the conference-as-dating metaphor and my desire to anthropomorphize the service experience of large scale events. A conference, like a potential date, must attract, entice, and engage if it wishes to become adored by the object(s) of its affection. A conference, like a date, runs the risk of being a waste of time (punctuated by free food and drink) unless it establishes a meaningful connection and lays the groundwork for deeper interactions.  A conference, like a date, creates dynamic tension. To use an oft-appropriated quote by JFK “When written in Chinese, the word “crisis” is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”

To help avoid the dangerous pitfalls of conference design crises (and perhaps some dating fiascos) here are a few suggestions for optimizing various conference experience ‘touch points’:

• Eye contact (aka Deliver seductive visual and interpersonal communication from beginning to end)

OKCF2011 has a clear mission and a solid brand to support it. The conference logo and PR elements (like videos) were pretty and clever and, most importantly, they reinforced the mission of the event to catalyze creativity & innovation in education, commerce & culture (i.e. get people thinking outside the box).

• Flirting (aka Pique prospective interest with digestible doses of self-disclosure)

OKFC2011 speakers and breakout sessions were revealed in the weeks leading up to the conference. This created anticipation, similar to what has been done with User Experience Lisbon (aka a hot date with many of the finest minds in UX like, ahem, Steve!)

• Foreplay (aka Set the stage and help participants warm up until they find it irresistible)

House music pumping out of the main ballroom had heads nodding while we sipped coffee and looked for seats. In lieu of a standard emcee welcome, we were consumed by a cross-cultural multi-media musical collaboration that included dancers, violins, native American flute, images from Africa via the Wishing Well program, and laser light show. Sounds cacophonous, right? It was flawless and I was smiling with my whole head before a single person stepped up to the microphone.

•  The Main Event (aka Overdeliver on expectations and attention to the, um, details)

OKCF2011 rocked out their mission and the venue was palpably packed with creativity including collaborative sculpture, young artists gallery, random and delightful antics by youth improv troupes, musical performance, photo booths and book store (to name a few).  Organizers found opportunities to weave local creative talent throughout the event. My favorites were performance poet Lauren Zuniga  (whose way with words made me drool) and the local youth from Louder Than A Bomb (whose courage and cleverness made my creativity blush!)

• Post-Coital Bliss (aka Reflect on the good times and stay connected)

The OKFC2011 event included plenary sessions with individual speakers and panels plus two breakout sessions with ample options to choose from. The fastidious documentation means I can go back and experience whatever I missed or wish to revisit. Silly sidenote: OKFC2011 had great shwag- the bags were great, but I am talking about the interactive souvenir stations. There was a dedicated photographer with a conference background and props who would take whatever pictures you wanted and print them on the spot. My personal favorite was the Picstories booth where 7 seconds of silliness were instantly transformed into a personalized flip book.

• Keeping the Fires Burning (aka Amplify the good and commit to continuous improvement)

OKCF2011 waited exactly two days to follow up with all presenters and attendees to request feedback (who doesn’t appreciate a good feedback loop when establishing committed relationships?) and offer encouragement for bringing the learning back into our daily lives. They alert me to when the site has been updated with images and video triggering a trip down memory lane that takes me to the future (of possibilities) through the past. Sadly, I can’t say that about most of the conferences I have broken up with, er, attended.

Presentation, in its entirety, is below and beckons your comments and feedback (in an “oops! I dropped my handkerchief” sort of way).

Join me for Immersive Field Research Techniques coming up November 7 in Boston at User Interface 16.

My session will be pretty similar to the recent Rosenfeld Media workshop in Seattle, which was pretty well received






If you haven’t registered yet, you can use the code STEVEP for $300 off the whole conference, or $50 of a single day.

I hope to see you there!

I’ll be presenting a full-day workshop on Immersive Field Research Techniques at User Interface 16 this November in Boston.

Registration gives you

• Two full-day workshops: The UI16 experts will dive deep and get to the nitty-gritty details that make any designer into a pro.
• One day of short talks: This is where you’ll discover the latest UX ideas and techniques from each of our expert speakers. Don’t forget Jared Spool’s entertaining and educational keynote.
• Complete conference materials: We’ll send you the PDFs of every session and workshop just before you leave for the conference. Then you can focus on insights and not note-taking.
• Recordings of the short talks: The benefits keeping coming after the conference. Through the recordings, you can relive every short talk at your office with your entire team.

Right now they are offering 100 registrations at a sneak-preview price of $1349. They are (as of this posting) down to 79 sneak-spots, after that it goes up $300.

I hope to see you there!

I’ll be presenting Design Fieldwork: Uncovering Innovation From The Outside In as part of the two-day UIE Web App Masters Tour, in Seattle on May 23/24. The whole agenda (which is jam packed with some smart folks talking about interesting things) is here.

Register now and use speaker code SPKSEATTLE to get $100 off the price. If you register by May 6 you’ll get the recordings of last year’s event for free.

Yesterday I spoke at Lift 11, giving a 20-minute presentation. Here’s all the goodies

Video
Slides

Graphic recording (click to see larger)

More pictures

I’m very excited to have been invited to speak at Lift11 (with the tagline “What can the future do for you?). My talk is titled Discover and act on insights about people. I was interviewed by Nicolas Nova about our approach to understanding people in order to drive innovation.

I’ve got one free registration to share with a reader here.
If you think you might be in Geneva in early February (the conference runs Feb 2-4), let me know you’re interested via the comments.

Hope to see you there!

• [from steve_portigal] Steve Portigal on "Discovering and acting on new insights about how people innovate" [Lift11 Conference] – [Nicolas Nova interviews me in advance of my presentation at Lift11 in Geneva in February. Thrilled to be part of it!] Q: I am always fascinated by people's creativity and their tendency to find solutions for their own needs. Is this something you A: I think the phrase “their own needs” is a crucial part of your question. Often we are asked to study people where we’ve been given a basic hypothesis of what people’s problems are, or even what the solution is going to be. Often what we end bringing back is some perspective about where our client’s products and services fit – or don’t – into people’s lives. Our clients are trying to innovate in spaces where people aren’t paying much attention, and while that’s challenging, it does help focus the problem a great deal! I’m continually fascinated by two different archetypes with people’s own solutions: the first is a massive tolerance for a non-optimized situations..The second archetype is a massive investment for a customized solution.

• [from steve_portigal] UX Hong Kong 2011: Q&A with Daniel Szuc [Core77] – UX Hong Kong 2011 will be held at the Innocenter in Kowloon Tong (Hong Kong) on Friday 18 Feb 2011. The program has been deliberately designed to be intimate and give attendees plenty of opportunity to talk with other people and get one on one time with the invited speakers, including Steve Baty and Janna DeVyler on UX strategy; Steve Portigal on design research, Rachel Hinman on mobile design, and Gerry Gaffney on the UX Toolkit. On the day after the conference the fun continues as we all plan to go out and experience Hong Kong with the speakers including the harbour, a ferry ride, walking the streets, a dim sum and perhaps a visit to the Big Buddah on Lantau island (weather allowing) so we get out of the confines of the conference facility.
• [from julienorvaisas] Trends "unlock" consumer needs [trendwatching.com] – {Reverse-engineering consumer needs via trends?] Here's our definition of what constitutes a (consumer) trend (we came up with this years ago and it still holds pretty well): "A novel manifestation of something that has unlocked or serviced an existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need,desire, want, or value." At the core of this statement is the assumption that human beings, and thus consumers, don't change that much. Their deep needs remain the same, yet can be unlocked in new ways; these 'unlockers' can be anything from changes in societal norms and values, to a breakthrough in technology, to a rise in prosperity.

Yesterday, I was on a panel (When not to use User Centered Design techniques) at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. My badge (showing my country as United States ates) was too wide for my badge holder. Sure, it’s a cliche to bash design conferences for their poor usability, but really?!

Also: see the slides from my presentation here.

I’m thrilled to be invited to speak at the first User Experience Hong Kong, taking place next February. Organized by my good friends at Apogee, the event also features a number of super smart (and super nice!) folks: Steve Baty, Janna DeVylder, Rachel Hinman, and Gerry Gaffney.

I’ll be leading a workshop entitled “Well, we’ve done all this research, now what?”

One of the most persistent factors limiting the impact of user research in business is that projects often stop with a cataloging findings and implications rather than generating opportunities that directly enable the findings. As designers increasingly become involved in using contextual research to inform their design work, they may find themselves holding onto a trove of raw data but with little awareness of how to turn it into design. How can designers and researchers work with user research data to create new things for business to do?

Almost related: Pictures from my last Hong Kong trip (2006)

At UPA2010 in Munich last month, I presented Culture: You’re Soaking In It

Culture is everywhere we look, and (perhaps more importantly) everywhere we don’t look. It informs our work, our purchases, our usage, our expectations, our comfort, and our communications (indeed, if you aren’t familiar with a specific geographic and historical set of experiences, the presumably clever title for this talk will instead be perhaps bland). In this presentation, Steve will explore the ways we can experience, observe, and understand diverse cultures to foster successful collaborations, usable products, and desirable experiences.

Here are the slides and audio:

Listen to audio:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

Also see: Rachel Hinman’s wonderful opening keynote Technology as a Cultural Practice

• RIT Future of Reading Conference – This three-day symposium will be organized around a central question: How will reading change in the coming decade? Evolving technologies and habits of information exchange have profound effects on how societies (their thinkers, writers, scientists, and citizens) envision, create, articulate, distribute, absorb, remember, and assimilate content. Commercial competition and technical innovation, as well as the perpetual desire to create and share, are reshaping the information systems on which reading depends: the private act of writing, the interpretive act of typography, and the social act of publishing. The aim of this symposium is to foresee where and how new modes of reading will take us—socially, politically, economically and aesthetically—in the coming decade, and will feature provocative and challenging presentations by experts in writing systems, content creation, vision and cognition, typography, visual media, digital publishing and display technology.

At SXSW last month, I presented UX Process Improved: Integrating User Insight with Aviva Rosenstein. I’m posting the slides and audio here.

Listen to audio:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

To download the audio Right-Click and Save As… (Windows) or Ctrl-Click (Mac)

As David Armano writes about SXSW “Hundreds of vendors, brands and companies vie for your attention.” This was certainly one of my big surprises from the recent SXSW event (my first time attending). From the huge attendee bag o’ crap with every kind of sticker, sample beverage, light-up pen, button, pamphlet, coupon, invite, brochure, and screen cleaner imaginable, to the half-dressed-skinny-girls inviting us to try a WiFi cafe, I was struck how by showing up in Austin I was essentially a captive audience to be marketed to. There was free food-and-drink (the Ice Cream Man on 6th street hands ice cream to passerby, with a Nokia napkin; the Sobe people were giving out psych-ward-meds-sized portions), free electricity (via Belkin and Chevy), and on and on.

Pepsi had large area with several zones, including tents for…I guess…video conferencing. I saw people hanging out at the bar drinking small portions of Pepsi, but not many making use of this service.

Bing had a fleet of Town Cars, as well as hostess-y types that would offer you a free ride.

This bus was promoting the new book from Tony Hsieh (of Zappos). I just saw it driving around, or worse, idling. I never saw anyone get on, or off. Was it an eco-nightmare billboard? Or some sort of service? I think it’s kind of creepy!

Sidewalk advertising, of course. Let’s hope they cleaned it up after, or that the city was prepared to fine them. I haven’t checked out this URL, but feel free to and let us know in the comments. Or, really, why bother?

There are three concurrent/adjacent festivals: Interactive, Film, and Music. Each of them serves up an insane range of options, well beyond what we normally encounter in our choice-flooded lives. The net effect (and my theme here) is that content creators are expected to shout louder (or more interestingly) to create awareness for their product. Here are ads for all sorts of things, including a cryptic phrase about a hurting vagina (which turned out to be from a movie).

Those posters don’t go up by themselves. It takes work.

As Austin reached beyond-critical-mass, 6th Street, the live music area, was closed to traffic. People were passing out more pamphlets and flyers promoting their events. And here’s where many of them ended up.

Just because.

Drawing attention to yourself to promote an event.

iPad guy was the triggering noticing event that led to this post. On my second-to-last night I saw this guy walk by, with a cardboard iPad around his neck (yes, kids, this was before the iPad was actually available). I yelled out “Hey, iPad guy!” and he stopped and let me take his picture. We introduced ourselves, and I asked him why he was wearing an iPad around his neck (see, that ethnography experience comes in handy!!!). His answer? So people will talk to him, like I did (turns out he works for a Search Engine Optimization firm, so…). While SXSW is a hyper-condensed environment, it represents some early-adopter aspects of typical daily life, and so I was struck to see the continuum between the promotion of Pepsi, Sobe, Bing, an indie film, an indie band, and an individual.

I’ve had my experience with guerrilla methods of promoting myself (from wearing a giant sombrero when campaigning for student government, with the slogan “the little guy in the big hat” to wearing a very loud SpiderMan tie when interviewing for jobs at a CHI conference long ago…only to be upstaged by the guy with a resume-dispensing-box with an embedded recording of him giving his elevator pitch) but the past seemed quainter, where the extreme needs (getting elected, getting a job) permitted extreme norms. But at SXSW it seems like everything is a promotion for something and I feel just a little bad seeing us take our lessons on how to connect with each other from big brands. Is this an exception or an emergent norm?

My favorite content from SXSW:

• The Parking Lot Movie
• Life 2.0
• AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story
• World’s Largest – A Documentary About Small Towns with BIG THINGS
• Cherry
• Devo, the Internet, and You
• Jeffrey Tambor’s Acting Workshop

Check out more of my SXSW pictures here.

Slides and audio from Integrating User Insight, my presentation with Aviva Rosenstein, are here.

You may also like License to Shill, a FreshMeat column from 2004.

• IxDA SF presents Interaction’10 redUX – Steve will be kicking off this Saturday's session with a 30-minute teaser of his Interaction|10 workshop, "Well, we've done all this research…now what?" (The info isn't yet up on the site as of this writing, but Steve will be the first presenter, at 2:00)