Stephen Shaw has already succinctly summarised the main themes and ideas of the festival but perhaps these sketches can provide another view of the nuggets we took away from an enlightening short stay in Austin, Texas.

So we’ve made it back at last after a marathon journey to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest Interactive. Two of us had previously been out in 2010, so this was a good opportunity see which new trends and ideas are coming through and those that are still on recycle. Now that we’ve soaked it all in, talked, debated and mulled it over, four clear themes emerged from SXSW 2012 that offer insight into the current and future state of digital/tech/interactive.

The Rise and Rise of Gaming

Jane McGonigal, author of “Reality is Broken” and poster girl for gaming research, kicked things off with a scene-setting keynote. If you’re familiar with her work, you’ll be well aware of her zeal in promoting gaming as an often overlooked and misunderstood aspect of human behavior. She rattled off fact after fact, citing multiple studies, to underline her message that games, and particularly gamification of all kinds of tasks, engage, motivate and connect people; even to the extent that there are measurable health benefits. This thinking permeated all the way through SXSW, shooting off into topics like geolocation, augmented reality and peer to peer learning, and was officially rubber stamped by the announcement that SXSW 2013 will have its very own Gaming conference.

Convergence & IPTV

This isn’t exactly a new idea, but it’s one that’s finally coming of age, and that was readily apparent across talks, panel discussions and product demonstrations – from big players like Samsung through to start ups like Clik. Film makers and broadcasters lined up to talk about the creative opportunities offered by HTML5 and the associated open source approach to development.  The audience-building power of interactive content coupled with the capacity to create real legacy in it was highlighted by the producers of the BBC transmedia project “The Code“. It’s broadcast figures were significantly boosted with iPlayer views inspired by their online code-cracking games. Meanwhile, as Samsung’s latest generation of Smart TVs showed off their built in Kinect-style gesture control, App Store and web browsing tech, it was clear that they are putting their money on device convergence – almost a return to single-screening.

Content Curation

Social isn’t being heralded with quite the enthusiam as it was in 2010. The feeling is, perhaps, that it’s too often taken for granted or bolted on without thought. Soundcloud founder David Haynes underlined the importance of curation in maintaining a passionate user base, and this was echoed by many others who pointed to the noise in social media that can create what Amber Case called ‘information jet lag’. Steven Levy extolled the virtues of good journalism in the digital age, and Instagram was often cited as a best-in-class example of both UX and well managed content curation.

The future of human/computer interaction

Perhaps most grandiose of the themes that connected speakers and debates at SXSW is the the idea that we are on the verge of a new era in human / computer interaction. Ray Kurzweil, tech culture’s very own Yoda, spoke with barely disguised excitement about the exponential rate of development across all fields of science, bringing forward the predicted date for his ‘Singularity’ milestone (when computers are as smart as people) to 2029. In her keynote, Amber Case posited that we are moving from Liquid (touchscreen-based) interfaces to Air Interfaces which we control with gesture, voice and even our physical location. She showed some of her research into Invisible Buttons – real-world places marked out by digital, geolocated perimeters – that react as users pass through them. Other, more immediately tangible, examples of new thinking in these areas came through in discussions about the death of the skeuomorph and many references to the iOS app ‘Clear‘ as a landmark in progressive user interface design.

At times funny and reflective, The Shore draws you in. It struck me on seeing it for the first time, that it’s perhaps the best depiction of the Northern Ireland attitude, I’ve ever seen on the big screen. Displaying equal parts of warmth, wit and stubbornness, the film’s characters leave out the usual clichéd quips and thankfully, cringeworthy accents.

We were asked by our friends at Lough Shore — the film’s executive producers — to build a website to assist The Shore’s promotional effort. The simple single-page site went live at the end of 2011 with a trailer, information on cast and crew and short bios of the producers. As the film set off on tour, it’s successful run on the international festival circuit was reflected on the site with tweets, news updates and new content building momentum, culminating in its Academy nomination and Oscar for best short film. Regarding the online campaign, more to follow on that front with development and updates planned for the coming days and weeks.

The thing about The Shore is that it’s not just a great story, it’s a triumph for Northern Ireland. In our world, ‘place branding’ is a big subject debated in agencies and tourism offices the world over. There’s lots of noise in Northern Ireland this year, with the centenary of that ship, a minor sporting event in London spinning out the ‘Cultural Olympiad’ and news that it’s ‘our time, our place’. But much more than logos and marketing speak; in my view, place brands are better defined by character, unique environments, compelling stories.

The Shore has it all in bagfuls. With its virtuoso character acting, stunning cinematography and on-the-money soundtrack, I don’t think I’ve seen a better advertisement for brand Northern Ireland.

And if you’ve ever experienced confusion about your Northern Irish friend’s talk of ‘the craic’ – The Shore’s final scene breaks it down beautifully: a lazy summer evening of singsong, seafood, beer and banter.  So I’ve just added the HD version of The Store to my iTunes movie account. If you’re living away from home or if you’d like a piece of homegrown film you can be proud of, get on over and bag yourself a copy of brand Northern Ireland’s first big success of 2012.

Congratulations to The Shore.

Recently we’ve been engaged in a number of contracts where the challenge of branding technology is central to our brief. It’s a point that cuts to the quick of user experience design. For the tech enterprise, user experience is often the most potent interface between business and customer: user experience reframed as brand experience.

There’s a scene in the final episode of the glorious first season of Mad Men where the usually whip-tongued, always poetic Donald Draper — the ad-man mongrel of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby and Conrad’s Kurtz — steps forth in the ubiquitous client pitch. Duck Philips the new Account Director, having chased a lead with Kodak, has set up a meeting with the company’s marketing execs to pitch a creative solution for their new product. The ‘Wheel’ was Eastman Kodak’s new mechanical toy — a relatively uninspired innovation that allowed its owner to remote control projected slide film. How far we’ve come!

The client team assemble and Don takes the stage. ‘Technology is a glittering lure’ he begins ‘… but there is a rare occasion when the public can be engaged beyond Flash. If they have a sentimental bond with the product.’

Sterling Cooper’s Creative Director goes on to recall his first job when Teddy the Greek Copywriter ‘… talked about a deeper bond (with) a product. Nostalgia. It’s delicate but potent.’

Salvatore Romano kills the lights, the sound of Lucky Strikes sparking fills the room. Draper proceeds in melancholy reflection, demonstrating Kodak’s ‘wheel’ with his own selection of cherished memories, slides of a happier Don and young family. The scene is punctuated by Harry Crane — the series’ portly do-gooder — excusing himself, handkerchief in hand, overcome by emotion.

Teddy told me that in Greek, Nostalgia means literally, “the pain from an old wound”. It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This is not a spaceship, it’s a time machine… It’s not called “the Wheel”, it’s called “The Carousel”. It lets us travel the way a child travels. Around and around and back home again. A place where we know we are loved. 

The predictable logo reveal displays the proposed brand name in fitting fairground typography and Don’s work is all but done. A final slide showing Don and Betty his wife with their newborn, sends the blubbering Harry running for cover. Duck Philips offers a stinging verbal smackdown; “Good luck at your next meeting” - as if to solidify the agency’s mastery of their art.

It’s a classic scene made all the more great by show creator’s Matthew Weiner’s spot on writing. I can think of few better lessons from pop culture on how to market or indeed brand technology. The branding process is about balancing the brand formula of function versus form; rational versus emotional; benefits versus values.  Technology’s ‘glittering lure’ dominates enterprise sales and marketing teams, borne of a virtuous pride in performance, innovation, capability. But we’re well past trying to ‘out-innovate’ the competition. Everyone in the automotive industry ‘gets’ emotion. Tech is playing catch-up.

The job of brand management is to communicate why all this speed and performance really matters to people, to make a promise to users or reach them on an emotional level. The scene from Mad Men, sums this up perfectly. For ‘Spaceship’ versus ‘Time Machine’, read rational versus emotional.

There is of course one other master of emotional branding. In 1997, Steve Jobs delivered a monologue to his top team about the imminent launch of their latest campaign. This is by far my favourite video of the great man as it provides a rare peek behind the curtain. The machinations of Oz in all its glory.

‘Marketing is about values…’ he begins. ‘Even the greatest brands need caring…’ Jobs tells his executives that it’s ‘… going to be hard to get people to remember us in the future. We need to bring it back. The way to do that…’ he maintains, ‘… is not to talk about speed. It’s not to talk about bits and megahertz. It’s not to talk about why we’re better than Windows.’

He sums up Apple’s new approach to branding technology… ‘We’re not about making boxes to help people get their jobs done. At our core (we believe that) people with passion can change the world.’

This was a key moment in Apple’s history, marking the triumphant return of the prodigal son. Chiat/Day’s Think Different campaign changed the game of how big tech companies marketed themselves. The Mad Men scene brings Jobs’ original insight back up to date with a little more poetry… but it’s a valuable lesson that to this day, only an inspired few have learned.

Damian Cranney

Yesterday a few of us made the trip to Nottingham to attend New Adventures in Web Design, a conference that tries to appeal to both designers and project managers (a goal I can categorically say they achieved).

Created by Simon Collison, New Adventures offers something new, fresh and unique and affordably priced. It was clear from entering the artistic surroundings of the Albert Hall Conference Centre that this gig is orchestrated by people who really care for their craft.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t recognise some of the speakers in the line-up, but what really impressed me was the breadth and depth of topics up for discussion. From hardcore process, to storytelling; User Experience to the relationships we have with machines.

Dan Mall was first up and gave an energetic talk about process, the need to love clients and collaborate at each milestone along the project journey. An Art Director from Brooklyn’s Big Spaceship, Mall gave a compelling insight into the outputs that go unseen by clients: the little details that make a project come together and the same things that make projects and people work a bit better.

Another standout for me was Robbie Manson — a Scottish-based designer who creates interfaces at Free Agent. Robbie was inspirational in his approach to the creative process, highlighting Seth Godin’s idea that we all need to experience more failures, but make fewer mistakes.

Robbie’s take on making the most of the team around us and opening up the creative process at an early stage is something FRANK has been rebooting of late. Looking hard at process is a topical subject for our own creative team. More on that later.

All in all, New Adventures was very much a flying visit, but extremely insightful and so relevant. Bursting with inspired contributions, it’s must see for anyone with a passing interest in design for the web.

Well worth the price-tag and the early start, if only to hear Dan Mall’s definition of ABY stands for in relation to his work on starwars.com — I guess you had to be there!

A few weeks ago, I was sent a letter from the bank containing the access code I needed to activate my online account. Having loaded the website to set it up, the link I was supposed to click wasn’t there. There were so many other options, and it all looked so complicated, that I klutzed around, tried a few other options and, in the end, did what presumably all of their customers must do: called the helpline.

The whole palaver really brought home that classic brand rhetoric; any effort requiring consumer engagement should either be useful or entertaining. (Preferably both).

Holding this thought as a benchmark against ideas in the brand development process brings real focus. It highlights the fact that we judge brands by how they make us feel, as much as by how they look or what they say. And what I felt about the bank was that they were disorganised, disinterested and frustrating. I was pretty much ready to lay the blame for the global financial crisis at the door of the fool who had designed this.

The notion that customers should have positive experiences when interacting with brands is hardly a new idea, the bank in question have put a lot of time and money into the design of their retail environments and advertising. Yet they, like many others, still neglect what is becoming the principal point of interaction with their customers.

Brands have an opportunity here to meaningfully express their values and reinforce in their customers’ minds what really differentiates them. How a brand behaves in this context is highly effective in building loyalty and generating referrals. And it goes so much deeper than just visual style – all interactions can be refined to build on key messages and support positive interpretations of the brand’s wider communications.

The choice of medium, channel and platform can further underpin brand expression. Credit Suisse, for example, have sponsored digital editions of magazines such as the Economist’s quarterly Intelligent Life, while Volkswagen have sponsored a free version of the iOS driving game Real Racing. These aren’t improving functional interactions between customer and brand, but allow the brands to align themselves with great content and enriched user experiences.

Meanwhile, UK retail trading figures from 2011/12 are reporting growth only in online sales. Media consumption habits are being reshaped by Video On Demand, IPTV and digital publishing. As a result of this rapidly evolving business environment, brands should be prepared to flip their entire marketing model to focus on user experience design. It’s in this avenue that their customers are most engaged and most able to interact.

My experience with the online banking service genuinely knocked my confidence in the bank. No amount of positive marketing can win that back now – only a serious improvement in their system. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. People regularly use social media to share their grievances about brands they feel have let them down and, as savvy tech users, their expectations are high. It’s time for brands to take a hard look at user experience – there is a real opportunity here to secure (or win back) customers’ trust.

Change is the only constant when it comes to user interface design. Platforms, devices and context are always shifting, but some design principles hold true, perhaps having even greater importance in the face of this progress.

Rewind a few years, (more than I’d care to mention) and the potential for innovation in user interface design for the web was exploding. Flash was becoming widely adopted and the web was suddenly freed from the table-hacked layouts of old HTML. This provided an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine how we interact with screen content and designers forged ahead with ever more creative navigation systems and content relationship models. Often taking our cues from sci-fi and gaming culture we built interfaces that moved and spun and clicked and bleeped. We laughed in the face of the nav bar and rigged in vector-based 3D. We built soundscapes for websites and implored users to turn on their speakers. Designers’ toolkits expanded to include multitudes of stock button sounds and looping ambient background audio. This was a golden era for experimentation.

It was also a period of growing confusion, frustration and ultimately rebellion amongst users and developers alike. It turned out that people didn’t want to always have to relearn how to use websites, and that, mostly, interface audio was a distraction. What they really wanted was usable interfaces leading to useful content and, as broadband speeds increased, video content. With emergence of social media, user-generated content and Google’s dominance of search, Web 2.0 brought an emphasis of function over form.

With the arrival of touchscreens and the mobile app, we’ve seen this whole process acted out again, only much faster. Product designers worried that users would need button-like responses to their tapping, so haptics had phones buzzing on every keystroke. Early apps were like old Flash websites with button clicks and screen transition whooshes, and games had virtual joysticks overlaying the screen. But things have moved on. People get it. You tap the screen, the thing works.

So, while designers need to adapt and innovate, we need to remind ourselves of the  key issues. How is the user accessing the content – what kind of device are they using, what are their expectations? Where are they doing this – at home, on the bus, in the office, how long have they got? Why are they using the interface – for fact checking, because they’re killing time or to communicate?

The near future will bring new challenges for designers as speech and gesture control become more prevalent. But as always, the most successful user interfaces will be almost invisible. Pared back to focused elegance and in tune with the users’ needs, context and interests.

In many ways, this year’s conference didn’t have an intrinsic theme, it was more a series of thought threads that bound themselves more tightly as the week progressed, culminating in some of the most powerful and thought provoking conference talks I’ve ever experienced.

Craft and personal enlightenment

The Standardistas, featuring our very own Nicklas Persson, kicked things off in superb style. They perfectly captured the importance of learning one’s craft, seeking mentorship and finding new ways in which an enquiring mind can be fuelled and ultimately satisfied.

This was complimented by Simon Collison‘s reflections on craftsmanship and playing to one’s strengths.  Simon rounded off the day perfectly with his honest and open style and set the tone for reflection on our craft, imploring all web workers to build the best websites they possibly can.

Convention and heritage

Craig Mod spoke extensively about publishing and the lessons we can learn from books and their long established conventions. I was left excited about what is around the corner with epub3 (HTML5 and CSS3) and more capable devices (300ppi e-ink screens).

Our digital heritage was the focus of Jeremy Keith‘s call to arms. The web isn’t known for its longevity, but dead links and lost resources are a blight on the digital landscape. Besides taking more care with our data, we should be self publishing, self hosting and thinking about the future with every project we place online. If history has taught us anything, we can’t rely on third parties to preserve our history.

Stealing the show

Wilson Miner gave a hugely personal account of what shapes us as designers. Everything we choose to surround ourselves with, the vessels we fill with memories.  It’s difficult to explain exactly what happened during Wilson’s talk, it was something that really had to be experienced.  The entire audience was truly transfixed on the message, the tone and the perfect delivery.

“When we build, let us think that we build for ever.” — John Ruskin

All of the conference was recorded, I would urge you to visit Build’s Vimeo page and await their publication.

OpenUlster is an innovative way of offering emerging technologies for licensing to business.  For only £1, the OpenUlster team will arrange an exclusive evaluation with the interested party.

The team at Frank worked closely with Innovation Ulster on producing a strong brand identity for OpenUlster.  Frank’s interactive team crafted an attractive, easy to use content managed solution which facilitates the download of information packs and allows the OpenUlster team to engage with licensees.

Frank is extremely proud to be part of 26 Treasures, launching later today at the Ulster Museum and running until the 29th.

Our brief was to create a response to the figurine piece, Prisoner of Love. The piece reflects huge amounts of skill and craftsmanship by the Belleek potters. It is reported that only three or four of the original pieces were ever manufactured, due to the complexity and work involved in the slip casting process.

The loss of this craftsmanship was at the forefront of Frank’s complimentary piece to Paul Muldoon’s writing.

Our process

To achieve this, our crack team of developers wrote a bespoke piece of software. The program analyses images and mathematically and logically degrades them over time. Each pixel is analysed and compressed before being rendered as a GIF with a suitable colour palette. In total, the process took approximately 380 hours of processing time, split across 4 cores.

The mathematical degradation and systemic destruction of information is something which presents a very real threat to our digital lifestyles.

We need to protect our knowledge. Lets create a high resolution snapshot of life for the future generations.

Visit Prisoner of Love