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Live blogging Your Business Plan is Science Fiction presentation at Webstock 09 by American journalist Annalee Newitz:

Science Fiction is a public arena, where we talk about how science and technology will impact our lives. It can impact business in an inspiring way. It inspires people in the laboratory in terms of new creations online and offline.

Science Fiction is a public discussion and then they go into the lab with the idea – the area of innovation – so that is no longer public. This feedback loop can be represented as follows:

Sci Fi – public space

Laboratory – innovation, private space

Business – commerce space

Science Fiction is a kind of cultural baggage.  It’s heavy but you need it if you want to change your underwear.

The idea of the tri-corders in Star Trek is appealing to us. Like a smartphone. We are nearly there! So this is an example of how science fiction can impact future business products. William Gibson coined “cyberspace” in his book the Neuromancer. His notion of “cyberspace” is a metaphor, not a prediction. We now live in the vocabulary that Gibson and his contemporaries invented for us. This is crucial to undertanding the way we use the Internet.

The movie Tron from 1982 predicts today’s notion of cyberspace. The hero Tron is a security program that fights for the user in cyberspace. We are still living in that vocabulary. Similarly, The Matrix Movie from 1999 uses almost the same vocabulary as Tron, in that you have a version of yourself in the real world and a mini version in the Matrix and you need to be rescued by the hero. So we are still living in the same sci fi vocabulary as we were in the early 80′s but with better special effects.

A Tale of Two Androids

Cylons from Battlestar Galactica are working against humans.  Early on, the Android platform from Google was designed to replicate a cylon from Battlestar Galactica. The start up screen for Android was even the evil cylon red eye. So why did they abandon that metaphor and change it to the cute friendly droid that we see now for Android? First up, friendly droid is reminiscent of R2D2 from Star Wars, he is a happy, silly, approachable robot. He’s never an angry bot. You never imagine R2D2 will plot an uprising against humans.

So that’s an example of how a product coming to market was influenced by a sci fi myth.

Wearable computers are also packed inside a sci fi myth. Our language for describing wearable computers far outstrips the products available. E.g. Batman and IronMan movies show humans using wearable computers to give themselves special powers. So we have the notion that wearable computers can make us into super heroes. There are already technologies that are already available. Like the projected phone on hand revealed at TED and exoskeletons, which in a real sense give humans super powers and have military applications. So these type of technologies are already prompting the question: do they make me a superhero or a supervillain?

The Segway personal transporter failed in the marketplace because it wasn’t superpowered enough. It played into the idea of us wanting to be super powered, but it wasn’t very fast, didn’t do anything super exciting so ended up as kind of dorky.

Many wearable bluetooth devices default to protected mode as a safety feature to prevent evil hacking nasties. So it’s the traditional Super Villains vs Super Heroes scenario just like in a recent Dr Who episode. That’s another example of sci fi behind developing technologies.

Dollhouse is a brand new sci fi show on US television. The premise is about a new kind of computer interface – a brain computer interface. A rogue scientist has developed a technology to erase memories and re-program brains with new personalities. Ninjas and sex companions are the most requested personality types. This suggests more interest in neurotechnologies, which are already available e.g. BrainGate and the neuro pacemaker, which are both brain computer interface systems.

There are a lot of anxieties around this storyline and it’s a staple of sci fi stories e.g. Frankenstein. People fear new interfaces because it asks the question ” Can I be programmed like a computer?” We are comfortable with one-way interfaces but not two-way.  We see computers as the happy droid, not the angry cylon. But as long as we can control how the interface works, we are comfortable.

One of the absurd ways that interface designers deal with this fear, is to create a sense of privacy around networks where you provide information. For example, FaceBook takes a LOT of personal information and it tries to reassure you by giving you the ability to add *privacy* levels. You control the flow of data. Apparently.  It’s an illusory sense of control because there are many ways to get to the *private* data via hacks, other entities, etc. Yet another odd connection between sci fi and everyday technologies. You don’t fear that Facebook is going to suck your brain out. But maybe you should. Assumption of control is the key.

So how do you escape from science fiction if you’re designing stuff? [Here she showed an image from a sci fi horror comic instead of the usual cute puppy slide to break up the presentation. ] Here’s how:

1) Work within the narrative – build somethng into the product that people recognize and relate to.

2) Tell new stories that counteract the old ones – build stories that counteract the nasty sci fi stories e.g. the bluetooth default on phones is OFF now.

3) Pay attention to the fears expressed and address them – listen to the consumer trends, hear their fears. Watch, listen, learn and apply. Make sure your users don’t enter a Frankenstein story when trialling your products.

Live blogging a presentation at Webstock 09 by accessibility and web development expert Derek Featherstone:

Derek starts with an example of a blind user trying to call a website help line.

Blind User: “Hello? I need some help please”

Help desk staff: “What is your login password please?”

Blind User: “Just a moment”. (He starts JAWS screen reader that reads out his password login info that’s stored in notepad)

Help desk staff: “Is there someone in the room with you sir?”.

Blind User: “No, it’s my screenreader”.

Help desk staff: “Sorry sir, but my superviser says I have to hang up on you now”.

BEEEEEEEEEP

This actually happened. User experience encompasses EVERYTHING. Even the help desk phone manner. People need to think about this! User support etc. Accessibility is SO important

Derek then showed the example of an accessible door sign with white lettering on a black background, plus raised lettering underneath, plus braille on a raised angle. This equals excellent accessibility and it should be inspiration for what we do on the web. Can we do things on the web to help people with a disability? We can and we should.

Derek’s vision: “People with disabilities will have their preferences and needs always available so the web / environment could adapt to them for a change.” Imagine if we could walk into a bookstore and signs would adapt to your personal disabilities, flaws or needs?

Accessibility is not always inspiring or cool. Most people think of the W3C guidelines when they think of accessibility.  But we should think of progressive enhancement when we design accessible websites:

1) Content

2) Presentation

3) Behaviour

That is the baseline for an accessible web site. Let’s go beyond this.

Small barriers can become big ones for people with disabilities surfing the web. Derek gave an example of an Advanced Search form which is completely unusable. Showed another example where the word “news” was used for popular items on the site. This created false expectations in the user because the items were nothing to do with breaking news items. The web designers should have used “highlights” instead.

Just because something is technically compliant DOES NOT mean it’s going to be easy to use. He showed an example of a hugely complex and challenging wheelchair ramp. It may have been technically compliant, but it would have scared the crap out of wheelchair-bound users. Accessibility doesn’t have to be hard.

Derek then played a sound-bite example of tags on Amazon URL being interpreted by a screen reader – it took foreeeeevvveeeerrr. Accessibility FAIL. He then played example of Chapters URL interpreted by a screen reader – All layout is done with CSS, using JavaScript correctly, implemented web standards properly. BUT something gets lost. The pop-up comment box interrupted the navigation. ALL tags get read out. Result = confusion and the Amazon site was actually easier to use for a visually impaired visitor. Goes to prove that even the sites who try the hardest can get accessibility wrong.

Derek was born with a club foot. He wore a cast for the first year of life. He had a major operation to correct it at age 3. But sports were still impossible as a kid. NOW, he does triathalons. Between his first in 2006 and his latest in 2008 he got better and fitter. Like Nat said yesterday, he had successful failures and learnt from them. He pushed his limits and got better.

We should do this on the web in terms of accessibility. Let’s get better at this stuff and keep improving accessibility. Derek showed an example of Google Maps – zoom not accessible via tabbing for visually impaired visitors, so they must use grids. Ugh. For a voice recognition user, this is awful. Luckily, Google Maps API allows us to create our own accessible version of Maps.

Someone challenged Derek to make an online crossword puzzle accessible. They said it couldn’t be done! He did it by using labels on clues, using JavaScript to jump from one clue to the next. He created a field set in correct numerical order and then applied JavaScript to make the crosspoint easier to use.

This is the type of thing you can do if you think a bit harder about accessibility. Previous version was image-based. You can also do Inline Editing and hover navigation. In BaseCamp, there’s no way to navigate without a mouse. So he created a GreaseMonkey script that allows disabled users to use BaseCamp right now. 37Signals should address the accessibility issues but who knows when?

The Social Accessibility Project is a FireFox plugin that uses crowdsourcing to improve usability experience for disabled surfers. It provides and takes instant feedback from user community in real time.

On August 1 2001, a Mozilla Bug Report was filed about a major accessibility issue in FireFox when trying to view Flash movies. Nothing has been done about it! So Derek and others took the same approach they used with Google Maps and hacked a solutionto use tabs to control play/pause, mute/unmute, again using a GreaseMonkey script to add keyboard controls. Awesome.

Some people created Outfox, a GreaseMonkey script using Firefox that brings voice to Firefox using JavaScript. It reads out maps etc. and effectively creates a talking map. Is this helpful? He’s not sure but let’s push the limits and see. These are all just experiments.

Ubiquity for FireFox enables Derek to invoke granular data such as specific addresses, links etc. The web is so much more complicated now – people say “I wish I had a command line”. So Derek thought, what could we do with this? What if we could create a play command line using Ubiquity so that a user doesn’t have to tab 30 times to get to the control they want? There are lots of applications here.

This stuff is cool to Derek. It may not be as cool as online gaming, but if it improves the User Experience, it is cool to him. What type of functionality can we all build into the web to improve it? Let’s see.

Live blogging a Mashup Case Study presentation at Webstock 09 by EveryBlock.com founder Adrian Holovaty:

A mini Google Maps app was actually developed before Google did it by a NZ developer using the Google API. Got Adrian thinking and he developed ChicagoCrime.org which then morphed into EveryBlock.com.

ChicagoCrime.org was a mashup of crime data put together from the Chicago Police Dept’s web site and published together with Google Maps. Searchable via route, area, block or neighbourhood locations (e.g. barber shops, restaurants), even via mobster activity. Google’s rollout of Street View added even more data.

They then added Flickr data, user material etc. This eventually became EveryBlock.com, a news feed for your block. You can go to the site, select a city and choose your neighbourhood to see all news relating to your neighbourhood that has been written about in local media. The goal is to find the news that is very specific to you that may be buried on the major news sites by national or international media stories.

The data includes restaurant reviews, product launches, feel-good stories, lost and found stories etc. You can search via trends e.g. all restaurants with particular food safety violations e.g. vermin. You can search via RSS feeds in your neighbourhood, real estate listings, press releases etc.

How Does it Work?

Complex technology is used to pull all the data together. The site uses natural language processing including datafeeds from portals, search engines, media agencies, APIs like Flickr’s, geocoding API, Craiglist, Yelp, Valpak, Trulia. Government resources.

How to Best Make a Successful Mashup:

Lesson 1: Take advantage of existing data

Lesson 2: Sort by date – this adds value

Lesson 3: The more effort it takes, the higher the reward. Unlike Google. Google likes convenient, centralized, USA building-permits databases. Anything else is too much work. Be the anything else.

Lesson 4: Governments are opening up. Be nice and appeal to civil servants (and librarians!). Plot cities/agencies against each other. Governments shouldn’t build interfaces into their data, they should offer an API so others can pull out RAW data.

Lesson 5: Avoid using maps as a crutch. Google Maps is not the app. Use it as a tool to create an awesome app – push data, don’t pull.

Lesson 6: Permalink everything. Anything that can be a link should be a link. Used IMDB.com as example. There’s a special place in hell for session cookies.  EveryBlock gets a LOT of link love and rankings for long tail search queries from Google because of permalinks. Granular Permalinks future proofs a site.

Lesson 7: The simplest way to granulize URLs: Use attributed URLs E.g. Date / crime/dates Type: /crime/types/ Address: /crime/addresses/  Location: /crime/locations/  Then drill down further e.g. /crime/locations/hotels/  Flickr and Delicious use that. Use the Django databrowse to look at database schema and create a directory structure to suit!

Lesson 8: Move Beyond Points – web apps that use geo-spatial info should respect usability. Points aren’t everything. Bubbles aren’t everything. Use lines to make the maps more usable. Use polygons, use transparencies. Don’t overlay data on data. Use GeoRSS to geographically encode objects for RSS feeds.

Lesson 9: Roll your own maps – Google maps is great, BUT use it intelligently. Use colors, fonts, text size, behaviour at zoom levels, road widths, languages etc.

Lesson 10: Make a mashup!

Just a quickie to let you all know that I’m in Wellington for the next 3 days, attending Webstock 09 so won’t have much time to blog here.

But never fear, I’ll be making some live blog posts at SiteProNews about the event so stay tuned. Also hoping to see the Monet exhibition at Te Papa and do a spot of geocaching while I’m here.

Damian Conway is known as the “Mad Scientist of Perl” and he was my favorite speaker at Webstock 2008. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and until recently was an honorary Associate Professor with the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Monash University Australia.

A popular speaker and trainer, he is a former columnist for The Perl Journal and author of two books about Perl. He also runs an international IT training company which provides programmer training throughout Europe, North America, and Australasia.

Damian kicked off his presentation by revealing that his wife is responsible for him being at Webstock. A few months ago, she was trying to buy a DVD on the Internet and was yelling expletives. He went to help her and after several minutes of frustration he finally gave up. Her response was “Are they deliberately trying to make it impossible for non-geeks?” His reply was “Yes”. Damian’s impression is that mankind has evolved into two distinct species – typical web users / typical web designers.

Damian then showed the Irony Ahead symbol for the Americans in the audience. The sad truth, he says, is that the web designers are losing the battle to the masses. There are now normal humans who can almost use web sites on a daily basis! His sacred promise is to protect your web sites from infiltration by the terrible general public.

In reverse order, here are Damien’s top 22 web design ideas to fend off the non-geeks and prevent Web 2.0 from taking hold:

22) Use Zen: Confuse them with anime and odd artistic blobs that are a complete mystery. Is it a web site? Is it art? Is it impossible to enter?

21) Use yellow or black and yellow: This signals danger as in wasps and Star Trek uniforms.

20) Use xenophobia: Try geo-location as an instrument of torture. Show only products not available in their country or illegal in their country e.g. “show me products I can’t buy with a credit card issued in my country”.

19) Get a site that requires the “www” to work: This is known as a canonical URL to us normal people. Make the www necessary and confuse the heck out of them when they type in the domain name without the w’s and get shown an error page.

18) Use variable navigational layout (VNL): Use the previous and next links as people hate them. Let’s replicate it for the entire web!

17) Throw usability out the window: Navigability is the pre-requisite for usability. So let’s create navigation buttons that don’t go anywhere. The non-geeks will be occupied for at least half an hour. Use Javascript to turn the navigation into confusing shadowy arrows. Javascript your scrollbars so they don’t look anything like regular browser scrollbars. Use back buttons that embed links that take you up a level rather than actually taking you back. Your visitors will get lost in the hierarchy. Inconsistency is important.

16) Terrorize them with typography: Most non-geeks don’t care about typography. They don’t even have a favorite typeface! If they do, it’s comic sans. Or Impact! All they care about is whether they can read it. Therefore, typography DOES matter. Go with something unreadable! Go with Abduction 2 font or something just as annoying. Fonts are not toys people, fonts are weapons!

15) Make shipping a last minute surprise: Shipping is a powerful tool to dissuade purchasers. It delays their instant gratification. Don’t let them calculate the shipping cost in the cart otherwise they can go and comparison check on other sites. Instead, use the W3-recommended 34 step method and make all these fields compulsory:

• product selection
• shopping cart
• checkout
• purchaser address
• phone number
• fax number
• email address
• social security number
• payment method
• billing address
• shipping address
• shipping method
• shipping costs
• income bracket
• referral source
• etc.

With any luck, they’ll abandon the cart in total frustration.

14) Make them register and login before they purchase: They’ll be naturally terrified and run off. Even better, make them register before they can even view the web site!

13) Reduce the quality of site search results: How can you minimize the quality? Don’t provide site search facilities at all! Or make the options highly improbable. Don’t let them search for the product. Make them search by date of manufacture, or the name of the manufacturer. Or, make them search for the type of person that they are. Or what type of person YOU think they are. Pure genius.

12) Add pages ad infinitum: Don’t return more than 10 results for a search at one time, even if you have to list 250 pages of search results. God put the fold there for a reason. If you don’t follow this rule, it can result in scrolling! Protect the kids from scrolling!

13) Delay their gratification or their dis-gratification: Show items that aren’t in stock, services you used to provide, options that won’t work for them. Only tell them a product is not available AFTER they click through to the shopping cart total. This builds up a sense of hope so you can dash it immediately.

14) Don’t allow them to sort search results: This non-sortability of results preserves the natural social order. Sort things in random order. For example, don’t let them sort by product type, or price. Provide an alphabetical sorting option only. Or sort according to the web designer’s favorite items.

9) Use background music and lots of it: It’s a sure way to irritate your users. Your music choice probably sucks if you choose it carefully enough. Don’t provide a stop button. Make it restart again on every new page. They’ll soon leave.

8 ) The little things count: Like tiny little font. It’s the most effective deterrent for anyone over the age of 20. Damian finds size 4 or 3 point is pretty good. Government and news sites use it all the time to great effect. Some browsers have the ability to change text size. Thankfully, most web users Damian surveyed didn’t know this until it was pointed out to them. But it’s ok! Because 2 weeks later, they’d forgotten again. Tiny text is the web designer’s ally.

7) Use Cute Kitten Aversion Therapy: There are some web sites that you don’t want your kids to see, Damian says. One of these is the W3 HTML Validator. AAARGGGGHH! It means that solutions for non-valid HTML code could be discovered by anyone and you don’t want that. So spread the message, every time you validate, someone kills a kitten!

6) Use J-version therapy: The non-geeks have a strong aversion to the letter J and things like Jscript, Javascript etc. These J languages create fear in the non-geek. Online security companies have scared them into avoiding sites with Javascript or other items starting with J because hackers use them to distribute viruses. If you’re lucky, they’re so convinced by these fears that they’ve turned off Javascript in their browsers. This means that if your site uses Javascript menus, they can’t be navigated! Brilliant.

5) You can never use too many images: Encode your important data and text in an image so it can’t be cut and pasted and make the images huge and dark so that they can’t be printed out. Or they can be printed but they use up masses amounts of printer toner. It’s a great way to scare off even the most persistent of non-geeks.

4) Play hide and seek with your site visitors: They don’t like to wait, so make them. Information that is impossible to find is safe. Don’t use a sitemap and make sure there is no rational hierarchy to your site. Hide your most important data on a page that has no links pointing to it!

3) Use gray: It’s the new black and it goes so well with black or darker gray. When using gray, make it impossible to read. Use nano-text in gray or even gray text on white. The site visitors run away! Even better, use gray on darker gray – it’s the low contrast approach. This is even more effective for site visitors with a color impairment. If all else fails, use intestinal beige. It’s apparently the new gray.

2) Flash is very important in our defense against web-mortals: “Clocksucking Flash” they call it. Some non-geeks even have their Flash facilities turned off so make your site entirely in Flash. Once visitors arrive at your Flash page, they see – “loading 1%”. This is delayed gratification at it’s best! Also, don’t provide a “skip intro” button. Or if you do use it, make the link move away from the mouse. Over and over again. If the visitor persists, then make it disappear entirely. If the visitor without Flash is determined to view your Flash site, provide the “You Need Flash” link. Then make them download an enormous file that maxes out their bandwidth limits. Even better, use a Flash-based installer that requires them to have Flash installed first.

1) Combine all of the above for optimum effect: This is Damian’s number #1 best way to scare away non-geek visitors. His favorite example of this in action is the World Glaucoma Association. Scroll down and place your mouse over the eye for the full effect. [Editor note: My own personal favorite is Fred Frap and Friends where the pink text on the purple background asks you to click on the non-existent image to enter. Nice!]

But seriously folks, Damian says, the non-geek level is the SAME LEVEL as the MAJORITY OF YOUR WEB SITE USERS. Remember this. The typical experience for web-mortals is bad. He’s here to plead with us all to build software for how people really ARE. The non-geek users.

The Grandma Usability Metric

The single biggest mistake that web designers make is not doing accessibility testing on their grandparents. Your grandparents are the typical Internet users. Use the Grandma usability metric. It’s not about what your client wants. It’s about what your client’s customers want. It’s not about clever, it’s about comprehension. It’s not about style, it’s about usability. It’s not about searching. It’s about finding. It’s not about ambience it’s about the outcomes for people visiting your site.

Web 2.0 is Web 2.0verwhelming for most people. So make their experience measurably superior.