Presenter(s)

Mike Arauz

Bud Caddell

Date

16 March 2010

Tags

#webvideothunderdome

Sites

web video thunderdome tumblr

Internet fame is a social phenomenon, not a magic trick or a viral, purchasable service. Brands suck at making web video. But they’ve come a long way in the past year. There’s nothing “in” the video that will guarantee something will be spread across the internet. It’s whether or not someone will choose to pass it along, purely social, not viral.

So why do we share? 1) To strengthen my bond with a group of people, 2) define our collective identity between insiders and outsiders (the stuff we think is funny is the reason we are “in”), 3) give me status in my community.

The Lessons

The internet is not like any other media. Each individual decides what their internet experience is going to be. The web wasn’t built with advertising in mind. No commercial breaks. Every click you make on the internet is a vote for a brand. Brands have to earn their place on the internet.

Be remarkable

If you are going to do something, do it VERY well. “What is going to work” is absolutely unpredictable, so you must be doing something special.

Play on past successes

Look at what spiked on the web and do something new with it.

Use the web to tell more complex stories

You can use the web to tell stories that couldn’t fit inside a 30 second commercial. The best advertisers tell really great stories. Tricks can catch people’s attention. When you combine those two things, magic happens.

Collect your fans

Use the web to grab an audience and keep talking to them without having to put together another buy. Don’t stop talking! It’s a commitment to open a channel and keep the conversation going. This takes time, but the exchange is a solid foundation. The moment you have people caring about what you are doing next is critical.

Invite participation

The ability to remix, mashup, and recut videos is becoming more ubiquitous. Viewing, rating, commenting, sharing, copying, and performing.

Start small riots

Find communities that feel passionate about something and build content for them (e.g., people who like to watch really bad auditions for American Idol). Court communities like constituencies: recognize who they are, understand what they care about, their motives and interests, and what their social currency is.

The Awards

Does a brand idea pass the “i’d rather be looking at kittens / porn test”?

Spokesman

Gingers do have souls v. The man your man could smell like

Cute kid tricks

The “I’m Yours” ukulele kid v. Evian roller babies

Instant Smiles

Surprised little kitten v. VW piano staircase

Song Parody

college humor: I gotta feeling parody v. The muppets: bohemian rhapsody

Lifetime Achievement

Hitler reacts to …

Video of the Year

epic beard man v. pants on the ground

holy crap, it’s mark trammell.

usability testing and user research should be at the beginning, middle, and end of of a project. regularly scheduled user research sessions can start interweaving user research into the entire process.

Presenters

Mark Trammell (Digg)

Juliette Melton (User Experience Mgr, Lumos Labs)

Nate Bolt (Bolt|Peters)

Carla Borsoi (VP Research & Analytics, Ask.com)

Andy Budd (Clearleft Ltd)

Date

Monday, March 16

Tools

• Most useful user research tools from the panel include direct questioning, interviews, and observation, Beginning–ethnographic/one-on-one interviews, Middle–analytics, a/b/multivariate testing, End–customer service feedback/surveys. Behaviors over opinions (one on one observations) or feedback in the course of using a tool. Surveys are a great way to access overall sentiment and demographic patterns. Task analysis.
• Least useful/helpful user research tools include eye-tracking (smoke and mirrors and problems with analyzing the results), focus groups cause too much groupthink that gets in the way of the detail you really need and are about opinions.

Culture of Genius

Requires that everyone is aligned toward the same goal. Can get into a situation where you assume that you know enough about usability that you can keep on knowing how your users are changing. Companies who do not rely on user research as heavily as others often iterate much more. So user research is for the rest of us.

Innovation in technology comes from a process of consuming feedback or iterating until its right. User research can help move your business model toward your user base.

Remote Testing

Remote testing is how you observe someone from another location (screen sharing, data tracking, etc.). Observation in the user’s native environment can be extremely more valuable than a theoretical lab test where usability testing isn’t being handled well. However, the location of the user’s environment may not impact usability itself, more the desires and sophistication of the user.

Getting the Team Involved

Show them! Tying user research into the organization can be difficult when people think everything is fine with a product. Silverback is a way to record the user as they are using the website. Sharing snippets of actual observed behavior can help prove that there is something wrong with an app.

Make it part of the development process! The more people who get to participate early in the usability testing the more integrated it will be into your process. Show a success you had from a decision made based on usability results. Market and become known in the organization as a researcher about user behavior. Be pro-active about letting people know what is going on. Find the person who cares and show them that area of the app and get them to champion your work.

Share the numbers! Repeat the statistics that make an impact until it becomes common knowledge.

Introducing User Research

Just go out and do it! Time can make it difficult to introduce user research, so just guerrilla test and get the testing done. Convince people that it is important (“we should care whether or not we’re building good shit”) and that you should use user research to drive the creation of the product, not just validate the success of a project.

Quantitative vs. Qualitative

A four week a/b test (retention, frequency, task completion) produces very utile information about the “what”. However, quantitative requires a high level of statistical complexity. Qualitative testing gives you the why (insight) behind the what, provides the story behind the data (satisfaction). The weight given to one or another depends on the culture of the organization. What is valued more, what can be used to make decisions that the company can get behind?

Cost

Qualitative testing can be cheaper to start with and can get the ball rolling (Silverback, SurveyMonkey). Guerilla research can be easier to keep going throughout a development process. Do just enough research to make decisions.

These are notes from a session at sxsw interactive. My own take on topics are mixed in with what the presenters were actually saying, so do not assume all of this content is my own.

Presenters

Brian Oberkirch, small good thing

DL Byron, textura design

Amit Gupta, photojojo

Kristina Halvorson, Brain Traffic

Lane Becker, Get Satisfaction / Adaptive Path

Date

Friday, March 13

Site

podcast

How do you do interesting work?

• Find some people who care as much about their work as you want to care about your work. Get to know their work (“apprentice yourself to great work”) and get inspired.
• Side projects deserve time (“front and center”).
• Base your growth on doing the small things right that have huge benefits (“the delicious details”).
• Dedicate yourself to a long-term time horizon (“go long”).
• Generate more value than you consume (“share”).

DL Byron

Aggregating the cool stuff you are doing into one place (read: feeds) can help keep momentum going.

Lane Becker

Started out with solid core principles: people want to connect to other people in the context of shared ownership/interaction with objects/products. Teach people how to build crowd-sourced relationships with customers. “Redefine the situation.” Get the community to work for others in the community.

Kristina Halvorson

People have great ideas. They want to take their connections to a product or service, and make something out of it. However, getting the content out there in the content space isn’t enough. You need a content strategy to sustain your content across the horizon. Plan before you create, prepare yourself to govern after you publish (“the care and feeding of your epic shit”). [Plan, Create, Publish, Govern] What happens next? What should you think about?

• The goods – know what you are talking about, and believe in your offering
• New goals – keep finding new ways to inspire yourself once you’ve met your previous goals
• Self knowledge – what are your known limits, who are your known resources, and how can you prevent those things from obscuring your own potential?
• Courage – stay focused on why you started this, on what you love, know, and how you plan to grow

Amit Gupta

Experiment. Don’t wait to do something until you know that it will succeed. See what works and run with success. Successes will turn into something.

These are notes from a session at sxsw interactive. My own take on topics are mixed in with what the presenters were actually saying, so do not assume all of this content is my own.