WebSG

WebSG Meetup, 4th August 2010

2010-07-26T10:44:23Z

Hey folks,

Our next meetup is on:

Date: Wednesday, 4th August 2010
Time: 7:30pm (we’ve booked the room from 7pm, so feel free to come by early)
Place: Seminar Room 4.1 @ School of Economics & Social Sciences, SMU (it’s the building nearer the National Museum)

Speakers and Topics

Andy Croll, who along with Arun has recently launched the amazing online sports organiser Gameplan will be handing out tips on how to run a web business without going certifiably bonkers.
Kevin (Doctor Kevin Lim, my apologies), will be delving into the more psychological topic of game mechanics — probably most easily explained by the question: “can we make productive work fun?” The abstract of his presentation:

Traditional mass media has typically portrayed video games in a negative light for generating social undesirable or unproductive behavior. However, by harnessing the addictive elements of video games and embedding these game mechanics into traditional labor, can we make work fun? How about steering users towards socially beneficial ends?

In the everyday, we are subconsciously performing micro-tasks as part of larger systems, as observed on social networking services such as Facebook and LinkedIn. On either of these services, you’ll see the number of friends implicitly considered as a scoreboard, while the profile completion progress meter would look like feedback in the leveling process, all of which are game mechanics that tease our psychological urges.

Kevin Lim has been experimenting with the concept of productive games in the classroom environment, by using Amy Jo Kim’s game mechanics as a means of steering user motivations. His experience would be useful for fellow web developers.
To round off the night, Yuhui will be demonstrating some of his adventures with the HTML5

So there, 3 great presentations, 1 night.

Registration

As places are limited, would appreciate it if you could leave a comment here if you’re coming.

Thanks, and see you guys there!

Why Websites Suck

2010-05-10T08:49:54Z

I’ve been working on the web for a long time and from many different angles: as client, vendor, manager, designer, and user for both private and public-sector organisations. Internet use has increased exponentially since Sir TBL first introduced it, but it’s astounding how bad web design permeates so much of our online experience. Why are clients so ready to scrimp on online user experience, when there is so much emphasis placed on service delivery in the physical world? You would be hard-pressed to find a restaurant owner who allows cockroaches to roam the dining area and insists the only important work is done in the kitchen.

Yet this is the state we live in. And this has got to stop.

Finding the Pressure Point

There are a great number of reasons for the prevalence of terrible websites. We could start off with education, and how most curriculum is extremely backward and centred around proprietary products. There are a myriad of courses for aspiring web designers on the use of Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign; web developer courses in schools often concentrate on specific languages. The software lobbyists work hard to make sure their products are entrenched in the minds of students, inadvertently (I’m being charitable here) crippling these future designers and developers to work only in the prescribed ways these tools provide.

Maybe the fault lies with the vendors out there. Many of them still code interfaces that work only in IE6, or push aesthetically-heavy designs made exclusively on Flash. They pay little attention to user-behaviour, and sell the illusion that branding hinges solely on visual design rather than a holistic user experience.

But my opinion is that all these industries are merely reacting to market demand, and it has become very evident that web managers cause most of our online frustrations.

Just think about it: what does it take to be a web manager? Don’t most job descriptions for the position ask for extremely generic things like “Project Management skills”? You see, people who have the technical skill became builders, and we’re left with those who don’t know enough to build, managing those who do.

This upside-down, counter-productive relationship can be found in many, many, many organisations and has spawned a great number of Dilbert and Oatmeal comic strips.

The Dichotomy between Usage and Ownership

It’s mystical, but most web managers have this huge mental wall between how they use websites and how they create websites. If you are to ask one of these special individuals, “do you use your most frequently-visited websites because of how colourful the masthead is?”, you would get an incredulous look and a quick “Of course not.” It is often accompanied by a rolling of the eyes. “Please. I’m not that shallow.”

But it is these same people who spend countless iterations on whether the right 25px by 25px photographs are up on the masthead. It is these same people who reject every design proposal not because they don’t work, but because they don’t feel right. The more experienced web managers have an even more advanced skill.

“I don’t think my boss will like it.”

This reduces design to a sad and sorry game of chance. As a designer you toss everything in the air and hopes it lands on all the right places. You work days and nights trying desperately to please the invisible, illogical whim of bosses so high up the chain you’ve never met them in any project meeting.

The result is not a compromise of good design. It is the intentional removal of design principles, because the brokers — these web managers — who act as the essential translators and middlemen of business and technological objectives have chosen the path of least resistance.

Rather than relating to what they know, even as an average end-user of online applications or interfaces, they cloud issues up by magnifying irrelevant factors such as the on-going politics within committee members or the favourite colour of the chairperson’s daughter.

Conclusion

If you’re reading this, it is highly likely that you’re working for one of these web managers I’ve mentioned. Or maybe you are, like me, a web manager yourself. It’s high time we understood with absolute clarity our role in all this. We are not meant to be an extra layer of bureaucracy. Most of the time, we are not meant to add to the complexity of things, we are here to simplify. We are here to stand up for our vendors so they can produce the best work. Our bosses should not be the ones that sign our paycheck; we are answerable to the masses that use the websites we put our names to.

We need to grow a pair and guide our paymasters to make business decisions, not technical or aesthetic ones they are ill-equipped to call.

Until then, the only delightful interfaces will continue to come out of small boutique endeavours who get it, while the majority of the web continues to stew in the sewage of mediocrity.

Why Post-Teens Use Twitter

2010-04-29T07:04:48Z

Singapore tech-blogger Xavier Lui wrote an insightful blog post entitled “Why Teens Don’t Use Twitter”. I would question some reasons he gives; for example teens sends enough SMSes to prove that the 140 character limit is not an obstacle for their communication. Most of their Facebook updates and statuses are often short and terse.

Xavier states that teens thrive on Facebook and not on Twitter because they would rather interact with friends, and makes the assumption that adults use Twitter for more journalistic and marketing purposes.

As a “post-teen”, I am extremely active on Twitter, but not because I rely on it for news or utilise it to sell any products I might have. The reason why post-teens use Twitter is because as you grow older, your social circle evolves and a new important group emerges:

Peers.

Peers are perhaps the most influential group within an individual’s social circle. Peers are people you think are like yourself. They need not be friends; they could be people you admire, visionaries in the same field of work or have similar tastes in fashion or art.

In short, peers are people you want to be associated with, and ultimately become.

Twitter allows us to dissect the universe of people out there and carve out a subset with whom we find an affinity with. Twitter does not require reciprocation, so one-way relationships are possible. For example, I want very much to think and design like Dan Cederholm, but he probably doesn’t give two hoots about who I am, so I’d naturally follow him on Twitter and not vice-versa. Friend-based social networks do not allow these relationships. The upside for Twitter is huge because the circle of peers is larger and more personally influential than the circle of friends.

Up till teenhood and perhaps college, we are largely homogenous. Our differences do not become apparent until we get jobs and settle down with a more stable sense of self-identity. At that stage, we find ourselves unlike the friends we grew up with, and we venture out to find others more like ourselves with whom we can share and communicate with.

That’s why we use Twitter.

And LinkedIn, Foursquare, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo and a host of other networking sites. Because our social networks have evolved numerous layers, each one different from the other.

WebSG Meetup, 31st March 2010

2010-03-24T16:25:19Z

Hey folks,

Apologies for not having a meetup in January. Was leaving my workplace of 4 years and stuff got a little hectic.

Anyway, our next meetup is on:

Date: Wednesday, 31st March 2010
Time: 730pm (we’ve booked the room from 7pm, so feel free to come by early)
Place: Seminar Room 4.1 @ School of Economics & Social Sciences, SMU (it’s the building nearer the National Museum)

Speakers and Topics

Claudia from the rather prolific social media consultancy 24seven will be sharing “The Needs and Wants of Social Media”: a comparison of what clients usually want but in reality what they could be focusing/ needing and how to bring them to reality.

Jussi from Supershapes, having stamped his design aesthetic all over prominent Singaporean websites such as Gothere.sg and HungryGoWhere, will delve into the often-critiqued but seldom-understood world of visual design.

I’ll update with more details as they unfold.

Registration

As places are limited, would appreciate it if you could leave a comment here if you’re coming.

Thanks, and see you guys there!

Summary of Gov 2.0 Presentation

2009-10-01T15:07:18Z

I had the privilege of attending the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC a few weeks ago, and the following is what I shared at the WebSG meetup last night in an attempt to summarise the ideas that are relevant to our local climate.

It was a difficult presentation to put together because it combines such a broad range of areas, from technology, culture and mindsets, and all the way to political ideology. This is accentuated by the fact I straddle both the role of citizen and civil servant. It is my hope, however that this duality help us understand both perspectives.

For the purposes of this presentation, there is a need to define the word “citizen”, a term which will come up often in any discussion of government and even more so in government 2.0. For the purpose of this presentation I’m going to define citizen as “anyone who has thrown their lot in with us”. I think it is as absurd, in this day and age of globalisation that we should continue to define people by where they were born, as it is to judge a person by the colour of their skin. Instead, citizens should be seen as the people who have decided to share a collective fate and a common destiny. People who look at Singapore simply as a stepping stone or springboard need not apply.

In order to understand what Gov 2.0 is, we must first define what Gov 1.0 was, in order to effectively move away from the old model.

]]> What Gov 1.0 Is

Andrew Krzmarzick described Gov 1.0 as an inaccessible storefront, a place that allowed you to see what the owner chose to display, but barred you from actually going in and interacting with the goods offered. I found this description extremely apt. The government works hard to present information in a manner and slant that influences citizen behaviour “positively”. This Gov 1.0 model does a decent job of providing information (albeit from the government’s point of view), but a terrible job at interaction.

And the Singapore government has pushed the same 1.0 mindset into the web 2.0 era, attempting to use the technology but never really changing the one-way communication paradigm (via @victortan). We’ve launched microsite after microsite, each one more ajaxified than the last. Interactivity, it seems, has been defined as moving visual elements upon mouseclick, rather than human-to-human communication.

The Government’s Perspective of Her Role Towards Citizens

The reason for the endless effort to provide citizens with “what they need” lies in the government’s parent-child perspective of her role towards her citizens. It’s not necessarily a bad perspective: the government feels a strong maternal urge to take care of her citizens, a strong need to safeguard the nation’s future.

The one problem is this: the child is growing up. Like any parent-child relationship, a rift grows when the expectations held by both parties differ. The “mothers knows best” and “the decision is for your own good” message doesn’t work on an older child. The efficiency of a dominant-government-subservient-citizenry was probably necessary for us to break out of poverty, but more is demanded of the government these days. The citizens have grown more mature, and with the change in media landscape, a lot more powerful.

So as citizens we’re protesting in all forms of new-fangled ways. We blogging, tweeting, submitting all manner of stupid to Stomp in a display of our new-found power, proclaiming that we are mature.

The Citizen’s Perspective of His Role Towards the Government

The thing about maturity is that change is required on both sides. Just as I need to accept the fact that my daughter isn’t a baby anymore, my daughter needs to do the same. She can no longer expect me to carry her in my arms all the time or feed her during meals. The Singaporean citizen’s perspective of what the government ought to be is mired in the concept that the goverment functions as a vending machine.

We pay our taxes, and therefore have the right to demand goods and services from the government such as education, healthcare, employment and infrastructure. This mindset has deeply permeated into many, many aspects of our lives: how we treat the street hawker we buy food from, the cleaner who sweeps the streets and even the beauty pageant winners we tear apart. There is this almost unbreakable sense of entitlement and self-centredness.

This sense of entitlement also paralyses us from action.

What Gov 2.0 Is

Gov 2.0, for the citizen, is a departure from “do it for me” to “do it ourselves”. It is not a giving up on the government, but a realisation that we possess more power now than ever in history. Where we once needed to ride many miles, blowing horns and banging cymbals in order to spur civic action, we can now reach thousands upon thousands through tweeting a powerful idea.

The Changing Role of Government

The traditional role of the government as sole provider of services and as a retailer of information needs to change. The government needs to transform into a facilitator, a platform for citizen action. One of the most important steps the government needs to look into is the providing of open, machine-readable data.

The government, however enthusiastic and well-funded, can never meet all of her citizen’s needs. Imagine the possibilities of MOE’s School Information Service mashed up with Gothere.sg maps and geotagged Flickr photos, made available on a location-aware app for the iPhone. You’d be able to instantly find and research schools within the vicinity of the condo you are currently viewing. Sure, we at the Ministry of Education could build that app, but it is limited to my imagination, knowledge, and my understanding of what citizens need, and a lot could be lost in the translation. If we opened the data sets, there would be so many more avenues for innovation.

A great example of what could be achieved with open data is Everyblock. The site pulls data from crime databases, business registration, news outlets, reports of facilities that need fixing and incorporates it into a hyperlocal context, in most cases your address. For the government to build something like that, it would require a massive multi-agency committee, which in all honesty, would spend more time managing egos than actually working on the solution.

Even in the absence of open data, there have been great attempts. Many of Singeo’s numerous maps were made without the provision of information by the government. Redsports does an amazing job covering sporting events at schools without having been given information on match fixtures. Imagine how much easier their lives would have been if the relevant parties had made the information easily available. Better yet, imagine how much more complete and robust their online offerings could have been for citizens.

Conclusion

The most startling thing I learned during my short time at Washington was this: despite our constant awe at the success stories emanating from the United States, our lack isn’t know-how. We have the technical skills. We have the media savvy. What we need is the guts to take the next step.

Citizens need the guts to grab the bull by its horns and to effect change. Even among the WebSG audience, there are many who are able to produce a website overnight. Communities can be created almost instantaneously around a common purpose. Problems can be addressed and solved, if we as citizens take the proactive step and try.

The government needs the guts to empower her citizens. She needs to understand that a mature citizenry is an important step in the development of society, and that she should no longer directly or indirectly sustain the parasitic infantilism that wedges an adversarial barrier between an increasingly vocal citizenry and the civil service. She needs to trust that citizens care enough about the country to nourish and improve it. And we all need to see that ultimately, a country is defined not by efficiency of governance, but the quality of her people.

Meetup on the 30th of September

2009-09-23T08:35:25Z

Latest Update: We’re holed up at room 4.3 instead. It’s just the next one.

Hey folks, it’s been a while, but we’re meeting up next week:

Date: Wednesday, 30th September 2009
Time: 7:30pm (we’ve booked the room from 7pm)
Place: Seminar Room 4.2 @ School of Economics & Social Sciences, SMU (it’s the building nearer the National Museum)

Speakers and Topics

Introduction to HTML5

There’s a lot that’s been said about HTML5, yet oddly enough everyone’s been so busy not many folks have actually kept up with what this new iteration of HTML means to those of us who are developers, or the potential it opens up to owners and managers of websites.

Singapore’s own user-interface wunderkind Sunny Wong (@draco) is one of the few blokes I know who’s actually used HTML5, and will be giving us the 101 on the topic.

Gleanings from the Gov2.0 Summit

Having just returned from Tim O’Reilly’s Gov2.0 Summit in Washington D.C., I’m hoping to give a summary of the event - learning points, case studies and possible applications for us here in Singapore.

Registration

We’ll need to know how many are coming so we can get a bigger room if necessary. Drop a comment if you’re coming!

WebSG Meetup: Process, 1st July 2009

2009-06-02T08:38:36Z

Hey folks,

Our next meetup:

Date: Wednesday, 1st July 2009
Time: 7:30pm (can come earlier to chit-chat, we’ve booked the room from 7pm)
Place: Seminar Room 4.2 @ School of Economics & Social Sciences, SMU (it’s the building nearer the National Museum)

Speakers and Topics

This meetup we’ll delve into processes: how we make things work.

Website Design and Development Processes

Singapore web standards pioneer Nick Pan (@nickpan) will be kicking off the session with a presentation on common methodologies used to bring concept through development and unto the launch of a website. Nick bring with him a huge amount of experience, and has traversed the journey to and from code monkey, entrepreneur and project manager.

This presentation will be an open one, so feel free to conjure up your own deck of slides and take the stage if you think your approach to web development is something you’d like to share with the rest of us.

Deconstructing MOE.gov.sg

Thanks to a request over Twitter, yours truly will try to give an insight on the learning experience of revamping the Ministry of Education’s website. It’ll be a glimpse of working within large organisations, and hopefully you’ll walk away with a few tips on how to deal with Galactica-sized setups.

See you guys there?

We’ll need to know how many are coming so we can get a bigger room if necessary. So drop a comment if you’ll come yah?

What the Singapore Government Can Do Better Online

2009-05-07T00:29:07Z

We took some time at the WebSG meetup to discuss possible avenues for improving the government’s online efforts. While Singapore has won accolades for its drive for eGovernment, participants at the meetup highlighted a few steps the Singapore government could do to improve her services. I will be passing these suggestions on to the relevant folks in the government.

]]> Open Data

A lot of public information is made available online, but few government agencies have made efforts to present their data in a reusable open format such as semantic XML or even a decent RSS feed, outside of the iron-clad press releases. Using open data formats could instantly open the floodgates for citizen collaboration. An example cited was the Campaign Against Dengue. Jon Peterson started the twitter feed (@sgdengue and had to rely on URL scrapers to pull relevant bits of information and redisseminates it via Twitter. He had previously created a Singapore Dengue Map, showing dengue hotspots via Googlemaps. Imagine what he could do if the National Environment Agency provided the necessary data.

The same can be done for traffic conditions to help the user make real time decisions. Open data formats or RSS feeds for the Government Electronic Business website would help potential vendors obtain instant updates relevant to their product offering.

There is a certain protectionistic mindset we need to overcome. Yes it is true that opening data sets probably means surrendering how the data is to be framed from a communications perspective, but it comes at the cost of allowing our developer base to create useful applications of the data the government might not have seen.

Duplication of Online Efforts

Microsites

The Singapore government probably has more websites than the majority of other governments. The launching of microsites probably occurs every other day. Just looking at the sidebar of the Land Transport Authority alone, you can find a microsite for every recent endeavour. A separate site for the MRT’s Circle Line, another for their transport masterplan and many, many more.

While microsites serve as promotion points, we need to ask ourselves if it should have been the job of the government agency’s main site. For the most part, an over-reliance on microsites dilutes the main brand of the agency. Jussi suggested that an overall brand be apparent to the user through the use of a consistent visual design.

The diversification of online assets affords different communication tones, as Victor Tan from the Health Promotion Board explained. HPB launches a variety of campaigns to promote good health, from anti-smoking campaigns to healthy lifestyles for youths. Each serves a different audience and employs a different tone to reach out to them.

Aggregators

The government is also extremely active in seeking out possible whole-of-government initiatives, normally resulting in some sort of information aggregator. Search engines that search all government websites, citizen portals or one-stop resource portals for business owners, the government has created a great number of repositories, pulling information from all government agencies.

Apart from the common problems of data integrity (which could be solved by using open data formats), the creation of these aggregators introduce confusion as the number of entry points has increased quite exponentially for the user. Do I now go to the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority or do I go to OneEnterprise? The overall information framework is not clear to the user - which sites are the aggregators and which sites are the actual agencies.

Isn’t Google the aggregator that we all use?

Identity

One extremely pertinent question that was raised: “Why are government agencies so afraid of being boring?”

A recent survey showed that users of government-agency websites do not expect the websites to be interesting or vibrant. They require the site to serve their information needs, answer their questions and solve their problems in as expedient a manner as possible. So why do government agencies keep trying to web 2.0-ise their websites, sometimes adding pointless games and heavy decorative graphics?

My own insights as a government employee and as a previous vendor for private-sector organisations is that clients often lose sight of the main objective. Sometimes the technology becomes the main objective, and this should never be. Even at recent social media seminars, one would always hear “Your organisation needs to be on Twitter / Youtube / Myspace / Facebook”. The adage “build it and they will come” might have fit organisations in a time when money was aplenty. In these days of recession, public-sector organisations who lose sight of the main purpose for existence and opt for “cool” could find themselves on the wrong end of a tweetdeck-frenzied public.

Engagement

As the government seeks to engage the public, the line between users’ feedback and eventual action taken needs to be clear and evident if engagement efforts are not to be perceived as a farce. The problem is that public policy takes a long time to craft and refine, whereas Zappos and Threadless are able to react almost instantaneously to feedback.

Useful examples cited included Whitehouse.gov and Number 10 as successful government engagement efforts. The leader of the country takes time to answer the questions of the everyday citizen. This is something the Prime Minister’s Office could definitely look into.

The non-Singaporean WebSG participants made a very interesting statement: Singapore has a greater proportion of bloggers compared to almost anywhere else in the world. Everyone and their mother has a blog. The suggestion was that greater efforts could be put by the government in listening to existing online conversations, whether blogs or twitter, and that in itself would yield an immense amount of feedback.

Meetup on the 29th April 2009

2009-04-20T02:34:52Z

We are having our next meetup!

Date: 29th April 2009
Time: 8pm (can come earlier to chit-chat, we’ve booked the room from 7pm)
Place: Seminar Room 4.2 @ School of Economics & Social Sciences, SMU

Speakers and Topics

Where Websites Go Wrong

Andy Croll (@andycroll) will be speaking on “Where Websites Go Wrong”, covering commonplace mistakes made by websites. Andy blogs at Deepcalm and has done spectacular work on Singaporean websites such as Epicurious and Bezurk (now known as Wego).

Developing for the Mobile Platform

Jon Peterson (@singeo) will be covering the in and outs of developing applications for the mobile platform. Jon has wowed many of us with his mad topographical skills on his blog Singeo, moved his mapping mojo to mobiles with iSingeo and most recently whetted our insatiable need for good food with the iPhone application buUuk.

What the Singapore Gahmen Could Do Better Online

We will also be having an open discussion on “What the Singapore Government could do better online”. While we encourage a spirited debate, there is a need to keep from becoming a slamming session (unless by slamming, you mean kickass, and by kickass, you mean awesome). So political tirades aside, let’s get cracking on how Singapore could move forward on making things happen.

Epic Fail

We’ve heard of your single claim to fame. Now regale us with tales of the many failures, missed opportunities and faceplants. We want to hear every sordid detail of how you took the wrong turn and ended up sitting next to the rest of us at the meetup instead of wining and dining with Silicon Valley’s finest. If you have such a story, bring it. Open mic, five minutes a piece, slides optional.

Because we’re sick of listening to the lucky few. This is the time for failure to shine.

Are you coming?

Due to the limited number of seats, I’d ask that you leave a comment below if you are coming. We’ll move to a larger room if necessary and available.

See you guys there.

Notes from SXSWi 2009

2009-03-18T07:13:08Z

A great summary of events.

Field Notes from SXSWi

View more presentations from John Moore.

The Value of the Printed Page

2009-01-02T08:30:30Z

It is sad news indeed that JPG Magazine is shutting down. I was a fan of JPG when Derek Powazek began it, and fell out of love with it when Derek was no longer part of it. The closure of JPG Magazine begs an important question:

Will people pay for a printed version of what could be made available online?

The answer of course, is yes. People still buy newspapers, although the numbers are dropping. Moleskines are the rage. It will be some time before we see the end of paper.

JPG Magazine was printed on high-end glossy paper. Its closure means that people, for the most part, are satisfied with online images, even though they provide no tactile satisfaction and are often constrained to small resolutions. The improvement in quality of the printed photo over the Flickr image isn’t worth paying for, making the business of JPG Magazine an unsustainable one.

So what would make you pay for something in print? These are a 2 of my own reasons, feel free to add your own. That I couldn’t think of any more makes me pessimistic about the print industry as a whole.

A substantial amount of information that has to be packaged as a whole (e.g. a book)
It is important for the info to be electricity-independent (e.g. first-aid manual)

Adieu to Two

2008-12-12T09:09:34Z

Deepak and Divya will be leaving for the States at the end of the month, so I thought we might as well use this excuse to have a short meal and meetup.

Date: Thursday, 18th December 2008
Time: 7pm
Place: Sketches, Bugis Junction

Please leave a comment if you’ll be attending.

Singapore and the Creative Spark

2008-10-13T08:31:29Z

Starting off the PSFK Asia Conference was a panel discussion about creativity in Singapore. The panel was made up of Graham Perkins from Elasticity, Chris Lee from Asylum, Jackson Tan from Phunk Studio and Tad Leckman from LucasArts Singapore.

When asked what it was about Singapore that inspired their creativity, Chris cited Singapore’s proximity to her neighbouring countries. Tad answered that he found inspiration in Singapore, mainly because it wasn’t San Francisco; that the difference in environment was a catalyst in itself. Jackson brought out an extremely interesting point that Singapore, being such a young nation, was a “blank canvas”.

It was apt to see a creative person find opportunity where many others couldn’t. Where most people viewed Singapore’s absence of a mature culture as a lack in inspiration, Jackson saw it as freedom for expression. He elaborated further that Singapore artists are able to design for the future unencumbered by their past.

While a blank canvas provides artistic freedom, Chris emphasised a need for Singaporeans to be confident in who they were as a person in order to solidify the idea of Singaporean design. Singaporeans are always trying to do things correctly, comparing themselves to standards set by other people, and this prohibited the development of a national identity. Jackson agreed and added that somewhere in our collective history, the Singapore brand became international before she could be national.

While Singapore’s diverse populace provided a rich source of inspiration, Tad commented that having too much input made it hard to solidify a culture, and that the attribute of one’s race was too explicit in Singapore. Graham raised the example of how our race was printed on our identity cards.

It is time perhaps, for Singapore to think about not holding on so tight to the cultures of our forebears and forge a way for ourselves. It may not win design awards; people may take a while to understand the English we speak; but we’d be creating an identity we own.

Initial Thoughts from PSFK Conference Asia 2008

2008-10-11T12:55:03Z

The PSFK Conference was easily one of the best conference I’ve ever attended. And that’s saying a lot, considering I’ve been to quite a number both here in Singapore and abroad.

Like it or not, there’s a natural divide between PR agencies, marketing folks, advertising executives and everyday folk. We know that the marketing guys are after our wallets, not our welfare. Advertisements are often crafted to sell something we don’t need, or make something crappy appear like angel’s wings. So when attending conferences organised by corporations, rather than guys on the ground, I often enter with my antennae fully raised. It sometimes feels like I’m privy to new innovative tricks these slick advertising people have come up with to fool us all.

Not so with this conference. It felt authentic. At the end of the conference, we went up to Piers Fawkes, founder and CEO of PSFK. We wanted to thank him for letting the bunch of us bloggers get in for free.

You’d have expected savvy ad guys to at least work the gratitude angle, maybe ask us to write good things of the conference on the blog. Not Piers.

“Write what you liked about the conference. Or write about what you don’t. Send me the link!”

It’s not rocket science or anything, but the realisation that you have control over your product and not what people say about it separates the ones who understand the media environment we live in and the ones who are still hitting their head on a world gone by.

I’ll be posting up more stuff gleaned from the individual sessions. It’s liberating to know that Piers won’t mind sharing the knowledge from the conference. He’ll be putting up video clips from the conference on the PSFK website once they’re done editing it.

That’s more generous than pretty much any conference I’ve ever been to.

Familiarity and Innovation in User Interface Design

2008-09-11T06:37:58Z

A small discussion ensued on my Friendfeed account when I tweeted “a large part of what people think is good UI is familiarity”. It was a response to Jeremiah Owyang’s tweet:

Everyone complains about MySpace’s user controlled”ugly” layouts, yet when we get a refined UI, many complain about FB’s changes

The point I wanted to make was that most negative feedback after a redesign comes from people who have gotten used to the older design. This is not to say that we should never redesign anything, but that we should pay a little less attention to people who just “liked it the way it was” and are unable to tell you why the new design isn’t working for them. Change is never easy for anybody; and change is what we designers do.

We are called to innovate, but keep things intuitive. While this seems somewhat of a contradiction, it is holds the secret to good design: Discipline.

I’m not a frequent visitor to MySpace because I cannot bear to look at the typical myspace webpage. While they showcase novel things that can be done on a webpage, they lacks the restraint of good design. All sorts of different media (audio, video, interactive polls) are thrown together mindlessly. It creates a mind-numbing drone in my skull just to think about it.

Discipline in design is a result of a lot of serious study. When Apple launched the iPod Touch and then later the iPhone, the interface was extremely innovative to mp3 players and mobile phones, but the interactive metaphors were tried and tested. The touch screen mimicked physical interaction - what you would experience if you pushed a piece of paper around with your finger. The zooming in and out interaction was similar to how you’d stretch and contract an elastic sheet of rubber. It is an amazing piece of work.

I’ve been keeping notes on how my daughter Anne interacts with our iMac at home. She finds it odd to move a third-party device (the mouse) rather than touching the screen directly. It requires user education (a compromise) to teach her that she has to double click on an icon to open it. She would rather speak its name loudly.

What is intuitive is different from what is learned. The time it has taken technology to evolve has taken us away from intuitive interfaces. It is only in recent times that technology is catching up, enabling us to control virtual objections with rules we inherently learn from the natural world.