Back in October, I tagged along with Adam, Brian, and Michele for AIGA’s Make/Think design conference in Memphis, Tenn. The experience was packed with stimulating conversation and inspiring work (including some great projects designed on the fly by our former intern, Ryan Fitzgibbon, who kicked butt in the conference’s Command X competition). After three days, our heads were stuffed with provocative ideas like our bellies were stuffed with barbecue. (Check out Adam’s slick info graphic for a complete summary the the conference and partial review of the Memphis dining scene.)
This was my first AIGA conference. My first professional conference of any kind, really. Even so, I couldn’t avoid making this sweeping generalization: No matter the sponsoring organization—TED, Gel, AIGA, you name it—conference attendees bring their own agendas to these experiences. You know how you can hold an idea in your head, open any book at random, and find something on that page which seems to speak to your idea? It’s kind of like that.
In the days leading up to Make/Think, I’d been thinking a lot about the power of social media, crowdsourcing, and what it all means to the work we do. I left Memphis with even more to think about.
In the affinity session “Facebook Design: An Inside Look,” Ben Blumenfeld, Communications Design Manager for Facebook outlined three principles that guide design decisions inside social networking’s pacesetter.
1) Ship and iterate. Facebook doesn’t build wire frames. There’s no time. They don’t optimize for perfection; they optimize for feedback. They design new features and put them out there to let users react, then they iterate on them.
2) Be data-informed (not just data-driven). A simple change in the Facebook deactivation page helped retain more than 1 million accounts every year.
3) Use existing tools for huge impact (or create new ones). Blumenfeld talked about Oscar Morales and his wildly successful Facebook group, “1 Million Voices Against the FARC,” which tapped into Facebook’s power to build a worldwide protest against terrorism in Colombia. Inside Facebook, Blumenfeld’s team created a tool that allows them to share screen grabs of projects they’re working on. (Online tools you can use to do similar sharing include Skitch.com.)
The most enlightening moment during Blumenfeld’s Q&A: Danny DeVito’s Facebook fan page was the best example Blumenfeld could come up with when asked how designers might help clients use social media more effectively. It’s all about authenticity, and DeVito’s fan page reveals an authentic (sometimes even shirtless) glimpse into the daily life of the actor/director/producer.
Actively extending the community theme, I selected another affinity session titled “Wisdom of Communities.” This Liz Danzico-facilitated discussion featured a panel of individuals (Jim Coudal, Jane Mount, and Derek Powazek) dedicated to building/inspiring online communities. The conversation illuminated some important truths:
· Communities excel at sorting.
· Access what people know. Local knowledge is especially valuable.
· Treat people like experts and they’ll act like experts.
· People will vote on stuff they don’t necessarily want to buy.
· The community owns the community. You don’t own the community, even if you built it.
· You can’t “use” communities. You can only ask them for things, and they will either help you out or not.
The community theme carried into the general sessions as well, which on the afternoon of Day 2 opened with memorable performance by a musical community—the Colonial Middle School CAPA choir. My recording of this performance accidentally went off in my pocket during Marissa Mayer’s Q&A later that afternoon (sorry, Marissa). So in a fit of embarrassment, I accidentally deleted it. No harm done, however. It lives online here.
Mayer spoke about Google users as a community—a powerful community that the search giant leveraged to translate the Google interface into more than 125 languages (including Bork, Bork, Bork, the dialect spoken by the Swedish Chef).
Google’s reputation for continuously testing new features comes from a belief that Google users have preferences they either don’t or can’t articulate. So Google regularly makes subtle changes to their home page, like the shade of blue used for links or the size of the search box, then observes how the community responds. Mayer pins Google’s success largely on the company’s commitment to observing and responding to the crowd.
On another level, I also was struck by the power of the AIGA community, its established and rising stars, its mission, its future. I half expected to feel a little like an outsider, coming from a different discipline. (“Who let the writer in?”) That expectation was not met. Writers, designers, creative directors, strategists, managers: We are all makers and thinkers, working together to solve the same communications problems for our clients and improve the experiences of their customers.
Thanks, we’re fans of the book also – and the company!
A lot of what you mentioned about Google and Facebook making changes and reacting to user input reminded me of this great book on building software (or anything?) efficiently.
Check out Getting Real, by 37 Signals: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php