Took me a little while to prepare my notes for the second day of The Web Is… conference, mainly due to an ‘orrible cold that developed over the last week. I hope I haven’t given it to the lovely people I spoke to over the last few days!
Thank you once again to Craig and Amie Lockwood and all their helpers for a fantastic conference. I know they had a lot of trouble getting the conference organised, but the end result was very definitely worth it.
Craig — please keep organising more conferences! You have a rare skill in finding and curating talks that connect at many different levels —- and that challenge us to do better and improve the world.
Here are my notes for day two, complete with the additional Creative Morning session.
Creative Mornings: Crossover
- creative mornings: 99 cities around the world
- meeting once a month with a common theme across all
- this month, the theme is Crossover
David Hieatt, Hiut Denim @davidhieatt
- co-founded Howies
- runs the Do Lectures
- entrepreneurs fall in love with things so they don’t quit
- have to choose something that you’re interested in
- it will get tough and test you
- vision: what have I seen that others haven’t
- intersection of skill, interest & vision
- where you’re most alive
- fight a battle you can win
- denim factory in wales used to be biggest jeans factory in UK
- employed 400 people, made 35K pairs of jeans a week for decades
- tried to be cheapest — not the right battle
- in UK have to use our creativity
- dreams should not be logical or sensible
- should scare you!
- currently employing 14 people — quite a way to go
- but everyone in the town has decades of experience making jeans
- there are people in the factory who have 50,000 hours of experience
- the elite makers club
- but quality isn’t enough
- need to find ideas to act as multipliers
- hiut denim: an ideas company that makes jeans
- Richard Seymour: the more you operate in the future, the less competition you will have
- lots of small experiments
- small company — move fast
- jeans have history tags on them
- 6 photos of them being made
- plus you can upload new photos for their history
- when the jeans get handed down, you can see their history
- 80% of environmental impact is the washing, not the making
- hence no wash club
- people doing crazy things to not wash for 6 months or more
- people want to wear used jeans
- so sent out jeans to people to break in
- they would get their deposit back when returned
- then receive 20% of resulting sale
- facetime store
- will create a custom fit for you from a facetime call
- instagram is going to change stores
- your best project is the one that’s in front of you now
The Web Is… Like Water
Scott Jenson @scottjenson http://google.github.io/physical-web/
- standardising pull to refresh, just like the steering wheel…?
- but steering wheels started as tillers with rear wheel steering
- User Unfriendly, Joseph J Corn
- people preferred the tiller at the time
- needed irreversible steering to prevent too much feedback from potholes
- browsers have a DOS prompt on the top…
- the browser needs a browser
- the web = Loki — proud, vs iPhone = the Hulk
- “I am a God, you dull creature. I will not be bullied”
- …body slam…
- the web is currently following native, not driving the future
- we have app myopia
- “thin crust of effort” around apps
- people will only install them if they’re important
- apps are our technology tiller…
- Apple iBeacons are per-app at the moment
- go into a mall — install one app for each store…
- then delete them all afterwards as they’re all crap
- the web is good at the long tail
- break down the internet of things into several layers
- coordination
- devices talking to each other
- toast automatically ready when you come down for breakfast
- cool but will take a while
- control
- where we are right now
- discovery
- commonly ignored — usually “download our app”
- coordination
- think small — just a bit of information for each thing
- Bluetooth Low Energy beacons just broadcasting a URL
- like QR codes but without having to get so close
- URL with information
- bus stop
- URL that sends info back to the device
- vending machine
- GSM modems are really cheap
- Sigfox offers $1/year plans
- URL with javascript talking BLE direct to object
- object can make use of all the capabilities of the phone
- so much cheaper per device
- Chrome already has Bluetooth library but behind Chrome apps
- but creating a proposal with Mozilla to put into web sandbox
- two kinds of ideas:
- truck ideas — products
- road ideas — infrastructure
- Malcolm McLean — invented container shipping
- created lots of patents then gave them away
- realised he would make more by having a smaller percentage of larger market
- physical web beacon
- currently no security etc — just for testing
- configure it by pressing the button
- the Google Chrome team is staffed by boy scouts
- just want more URLs in the world
The Web Is… Still Young
Benjamin Hollway @benjaminhollway
Slides available at http://nothingrandom.com/says/thewebis/young
- how can we support young coders under 18?
- cheap/free tickets for conferences
- opportunities to speak
- unique perspective
- alternative after party venues
- accessible to people who can’t drink or are too young
- help introduce kids to computing
- join or set up a Code Club
- mentoring
- work experience
- paid internships — 2-3 weeks during summer holiday
- deeper insight into how the industry works
- future
- inclusivity
- < 5% use IE, but at least that or more have disabilities
The Web Is… Turning Difficulties Into Opportunities
Robin Christopherson, @USA2DAY
- AbilityNet: leading experts in technology & disability
- also do assessments: one of first was Prof. Stephen Hawking
- technology can really help people with disabilities
- light detector
- helps to see if lights/indicators are on or off
- especially for enabling oven light (they don’t make speaking ovens)
- talking goggles
- reads any text from camera
- also recognises some images
- word lens
- translates and can then read out using voiceover
- TABs — temporarily able bodied
- it’s likely everyone will have some kind of some kind of disability eventually in their lives
- also mobile use cases are often very similar to accessibility cases
- a blind date with an iPhone
- woman prepares all her responses before the date…
- google glass captioned audio
- speak into Android phone, see captioned audio on glass screen
- FaceXpress
- identifies emotions from faces
- live facial recognition
- identify people coming to your door if you’re bed-bound
- directions in maps apps
- audio directions are very powerful
- Moto Hint
- Google Now as an earbud
- IBM Watson now has a developer kit
- self-driving cars
- 30% of city driving is looking for a space
- eliminating human error accidents
- need to have speech output
- otherwise can’t tell if arrived or just stopped at a traffic light!
- direct brain interface
- completely paralysed woman able to move a robot arm
- technology4good lifetime award given to Prof. Hawking
- acceptance speech worth listening to
- 73% of people with a vision impairment are out of work
- there’s no longer any reason why they can’t work
The Web Is… Too Slow
Andy Davies @AndyDavies
- shopdirect (run littlewoods brand):
- on average, each purchase is across 2.4 devices
- Tammy Everts: only 12% of top 100 US retail sites render feature content under 3 seconds
- we perceive delays around the 1s mark
- 100ms appears instantaneous
- 200-300ms fast enough
- 1s start to feel it
- > 1s we start to task switch
- the web is for everybody …but only if we make it that way
- Chris Zachariah: made youtube pages faster
- but time to view video went down
- turns out they were reaching new audiences
- that hadn’t been able to use the site at all before
- Guardian’s new design:
- speed was a feature in the press release
- Walmart have released conversion rate vs load time
- all conversions concentrated in first 4 secs of load time
- Staples increased conversions by 10%
- cut 1s from median home page
- 6s from 98th percentile
- we’re more tolerant of slow experiences in some cases
- when we’re more committed, e.g. further into conversion funnel
- when we’re used to it
- kayak study: we don’t trust comparison sites that are too quick…
- Matias Duarte: “design is finding solutions within constraints .. if no constraints, it’s not design but art”
- need to set a performance design constraint
- e.g. an event that matters to the user happens within a certain time under certain network conditions
- doesn’t mean anything to measure page sizes or number of objects
- Etsy: have lots of feature flags
- all staff see a performance bar at the top of the page
- indicates if the page has met requirements
- PerfBar
- plugins for different browsers and sites
- WebPageTest
- can run tests & set a budget based on competitor sites
- speedcurve
- used by the guardian
- have a performance chart outside the financial director’s office
- performance budget lines coming in November
- headline network speed doesn’t include latency
- often matters more than bandwidth
- network connection closer to a bucket brigade than a pipe
- TCP has a slow start algorithm that directly affects initial page latency
- more modern operating systems increase the initial congestion window
- this increases the number of segments that can be sent without an acknowledgement
- rendering:
- CSS Object Model blocks Javascript execution
- Javascript blocks DOM construction
- complex CSS can really slow the initial rendering
- dealing with fonts
- Ilya Gregorik suggested new font-timeout & font-desirability properties
- would allow us to choose to render the page without the font
- HTTP/2 has server push
- server can push additional files that it knows the browser will want
- if the browser has a cached version, it can reject the push
Slides will be available at http://www.slideshare.net/andydavies (eventually)
The Web Is… Our Responsibility
Sally Jenkinson @sjenkinson http://recordssoundthesame.com
- concept keyboards provided touch-based input to BBC Micros back in 1984
- symbiotic relationship between technology and experiences
- remember it’s as much about people as it is about development
- all the roles need to work together
- e.g. performance cuts through all layers
- responsive design mostly seen to be to do with screen widths
- but there’s much more (especially in CSS level 4 draft)
- whether the device supports hover affordances
- the current ambient light level
- invisible requirements
- the technical choices that we make underpinning everthing
- e.g http://offlinefirst.org/
- Open Data Institute guest book
- iPad with keyboard
- can sign in with touch or typing
- or can add an existing RFID card (e.g. Oyster or bank card) to check-in in future
- GE Healthcare adventure series
- MRI scanner dressed up as spaceship
- children can imagine the spaceship rumbling through space
- much less scary
- be aware of the choices we make
- try to think beyond ourselves
- you are responsible for things you build
- if someone presents you with something that you don’t agree with, then question it
- even if it’s not officially your responsibility
- try and educate people as to why things should be done differently
- if you are in a big project that you disagree with, try and make little changes
The Web Is… Read/Write
Owen Gregory, editor @FullCreamMilk
- acts as a conduit between writer and reader
- the web has a closer relationship between writers and readers
- publishers & editors need to be advocates in their community
- jason santamaria: where is the cultural and aesthetic discourse on web design
- writing is mostly about the new techniques and looking forward
- where does a common language for web design discourse start?
- jakob nielsen: we should accept that the web is too fast moving for big picture description
- book: nicely said: writing for the web with style and purpose
- nicole fenton & kate kiefer lee
- Sir Thomas Browne: The Garden of Cyrus
- drawing parallels between lots of different fields
- W G Sebald: The Rings of Saturn
- new style of writing, referring to the author
- tracking Thomas Browne’s work
- deploying a text can be a continuous process — Mandy Brown
- comments, talks, reframing, etc.
The Web Is… Progress
Mr Bingo, @mr_bingo
instagram: mr_bingstagram
- apparently the web is blue…
- D&AD brief: put the fun back in to the web
- hand-drawn aesthetic — much easier in flash…
- 2010 selling prints of drawings for £5 each for Haiti earthquake
- internet commenting is like toilet graffiti
- worried that if I die, when my life flashes before my eyes, all I will see is square pictures of food
- weird stock photography… (just watch the talk!)
- opened a service for sending people insults on postcards
- HATE Mail — and now a book
The Web Is… Progress
Brad Frost @brad_frost
- web enabled linking to anything we want (was a radical change…)
- open by default
- the most sharing community in the world
- e.g. css-tricks license
- “I want the web to get better and being all Johnny Protective over everything doesn’t get us there”
- pittsburgh food bank
- designed and built a new web site for them
- did the entire process in the open
- http://foodbank.bradfrostweb.com/timeline/
- why share?
- because we can — it’s cheap
- but it can be really uncomfortable
- other people can contribute
- trying to solve everyone’s problem is in some cases easier to solve just your own
- an idea can snowball into a plugin just a few hours later
- our first drafts can have their own value
- in some cases they can have more value than the finished work
- the web is for everyone — but that means all the violence, hate and anger as well…
- guardian, bbc and gov.uk designing in the open
- other companies and even other countries can use this as a blueprint for their own work
- each of us is individual and has unique different experiences
- knowledge is an iterative and cumulative process
- depending on sharing and combining our different perspectives
- designopen.org
- even if lots of people contribute similar things, they still contribute
- e.g. 162,000 youtube videos on how to re-wire a plug
- your post might not be the most original, but it might be the one that tips over the scales
- it has never been easier in the history of the world to contribute to the knowledge of the world
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