I went to the Designing for Freedom panel at SXSWi 2008 and liveblogged it. Here are my notes:
Jo is streaming video of this talk. But not any more as the battery in her phone died. We should have audio later.
Loop is intro-ing
ICanHasCheezburger is a community site.
The perils for preferences. Evil dialogue boxes with too many prefs. What do you do when you give users too much choice. Being brave enough to make decisions for users.
Why does MySpace look so bad? Why is it so popular? Allows customisation but wasn’t designed for it.
David Warner from NING. Like a word processor. A tool to allow others to acomplish what they want to do.
Kowitz from Google. Designer. Build products that are multi-tasking. EG a knife. Eg, email. Can make mistakes with email but freedom to create.
Brett Simmonds, Newsgator / NetNewsWire. Allowing users to do stuff with their data. Allow scripting within app.
Anil Dash, Six Apart. Said something really interesting. Will have to check recording.
Anil. Evangelisism. Constraint makes design possible. IE debate lacked understanding of constraints of design.
How do you filter user feedback?
Brett: Mostly gut reaction, informed by repeat feedback. Take feature requests, interpret what they actually want to do.
When do you stop designing for freedom?
Linux designed for nerds. Too much freedom for most.
To much freedom?
Initially Gmail didn’t have a delete button. Eventually message got through.
Offer users basic tools for design, etc, but also tools to go further if they want.
Anil disagrees with notion that MySpace design is bad. Some people have bad taste and they’re the majority. Contradition between encouraging freedom and dictating what is good results from that.
Anil: Why is SXSW getting more male dominated? LJ and MySpace used by majority female and denigrated here. Populism is dirty business. MySpace is wonderful for who it’s targeting.
Kowitz: The more freedom you give user the less you can do with the interface. MySpace is stuck.
Anil: Distinction between app and content. Deliberated prevented editing of content in templates.
Design value judgement. Warner: Let them start with good taste and then screw it up later. Give them a head start.
Loop: Problem is Ning is it’s branded Ning. Should be retreating into background. Anil: Number 1 request is for own domain name. But MySpace not so much bothered by URL.
Sweet spot on amount of decisions? Simmonds – when there’s nothing to do.
Anil: Freedom can be over rated. Example of marriage.
Typepad – originally option to totally customise everything. But people wanted picture of theme they could click on. Too still there but people don’t use it.
Google’s failure? Profile pictures. Anil: Lots of failure associated with assuming people are good and kindhearted.
Cool stuff:
Simmons – people using Javascript to add features to NNW. Never occurred to him. Plugin-style.
Question time!
Anil: Feedback by giving users a blog. ;)
Versioning should be backward compatible. Add but don’t remove. Has to work all the way back. “fantastic constraint” as you have to live with it forever.
Ning will be releasing something that will break users content. Changing width of some columns. Narrowing it so will break stuff. Very open so it won’t be a surprise. (Unlike Facebook beacons).
Apple make getting an API approved very hard because they know they’ll have to support it forever.
RIM sell taking features off your phone. Broken business model. Need one that supports you making a choice.
Subverting social restrictions – excel users who don’t think they’re programmers.
Give people exploratory path.
Play game called Portal.
User freedom impacting on brand.
Anil: Arms dealers for jerks. Selling megaphones to assholes.
Populism is ugly. Accept that and work with it.
Ning: Users are smarter than developers. Try not to second guess them.
Anil: Read “How Buildings Learn”
What do you do if KKK use Ning?
Encourage opponents to use tools to respond.
And we’re done! Tidy up to come.
