So I’m here! Blogging live from the Future of Web Apps Conference in Miami.
First things first – the weather is amazing. I had a taxi driver complain about how cold it was last night; it was 65 degrees. I wish I had brought my bermuda shorts.
The conference started around 9AM this morning with a session on “Creating Passionate Users” presented by Kathy Sierra (Sun Microsystems). The former game developer spoke about providing users with an experience that stretches beyond just playing with cool online tools.
Kathy spoke about the user experience in the alpha/beta phase, arguing that developers should actually watch the facial expressions of testers as opposed to reacting to the written reports. She made a very strong case in saying that you can tell so much more from one’s face than you can from a survey. Kathy suggested videotaping the faces of these testers to show a development team.
She also recommended building in a “WTF?!” button into online destinations. How many times have you logged in to a brand new site to find yourself completely lost? With more and more complex tools launching each day, it’s easy to get confused and lose yourself along the way. Therefore, Kathy suggested that a menu option like “What do I do now” or “I’m lost” offers a different level of understanding to the user than a “FAQ/Help” button. I’m a big fan of the whole idea.
Matt Mullenweg (WordPress) is speaking right now. He just said “It’s amazing to look at the numbers and see that on the night of a big democratic or republican debate, there’s a site called ‘Icanhazcheezburger.com‘ that gets more traffic than the political blogs.” I’m not sure of the context in which he said this, but I do love me some LOLcats.
I’m going to sign off for a little bit because this laptop is searing the tops of my thighs.
Here’s the view I had this morning when I walked out of my hotel:
