I had the pleasure of attending the FOWD 2010 conference and revisited an event i attended for the first time 3 years ago, the latest incarnation of which was bigger and broader, covering virtually every aspect of the business relevent today.

17th May 2010
Accelerating Creativity in ActionScript 3 using HYPE
Josh Davis – Josh Davis Studios (http://www.joshuadavis.com/)

Having a background programming flash, what appealed to me would be a framework that would take care of the general book keeping and repeated core tasks necessary for commerical work.

Attending the hype workshop with the eccentric Joshua Davis allowed me to find out more about this collection of behaviours, written from the past 10 years of his experience with flash, which makes visual sketching more accessible using AS3.

In his own words this is not an API. And although it’s supposedly easier for designers, because they don’t have to code the mathematics, you will still need to be confident in understanding AS3 objects and structure. There are a number of classes that perform a number of tasks from grid and shape layout, to timer rhythms and callbacks, wave ocillators and cool functions like png and targa export.

The closest thing i can approximate it to is Processing – but using Flash AS3. A visual sketch book with utilities for exporting between file formats for static work and tools to experiment with making animated/moving images. It this respect it didn’t meet my expectations to what it was, but it is an extension and simplification of the cool stuff that can be done in flash that would make sense to visual experimentors and animators who dont necessarily spend time in heavy code.

I spent the whole day actively using the framework and we covered a number of the tools in a series of tutorials. The framework is open source and Josh encouraged participation and development the project.

Find out more about the hype framework here:-
http://www.hypeframework.org/

18th May 2010
Play. Destroy. Create.
Brendan Dawes – Magnetic North (http://mnatwork.com/)

Probably the talk with the most heart as Brenden always relates to his own experiences and family, and its clear he still has a genuine passion despite being there at the birth of internet celebrity. He covered a number of topics that should help you to broaden and inspire your views as a designer and lucky for you i can spoil you with my notes.

1. Collect things
We now have a plethora of ways to document and record information from mobile devices, pen and paper, photography and Brenden was an advocate of a site called evernote – http://www.evernote.com/ which lets you store your notes and ideas and later print them off as a book. There was also a Mac only program called DEEP that allowed you to catalogue and tag images which can do some funky things like automatically create swatches based on the indexed images.

2. Ordinary Everyday
Observing things that are unnoticed was another heavy topic, and we were encouraged to look beyond the portals and top twenty lists. Brenden revealed a picture of the inside of his wife’s handbag and explained that every item in the bag from Christian Dior perfume to tissues and tictacs was there for a purpose and symbolises where we are as a society. So when we design we should be looking to solve a real world need, which is often overlooked.

3. Edit Everything
Brenden’s dad was a sports photographer and from a young age was in situations where he had to make instinctive decisions. The story goes that once the paper was going to press and he was called to produce a printable photo in 5 minutes. Now it takes 6 minutes to develop film naturally. So he had to dry 36 wet prints with a hairdryer and make a definitive call in seconds on the best shot and continue drying that. Newspaper and print have a different context to digital because they are throwaway, but desicion making principals were still encouraged to be done on instinct.

4. We don’t make sense
We were presented with a top down map city and it was noted that we don’t stick to the suggested routes but will take shortcuts. Brenden used an example of a bridge that was designed with this brief.

“Create a structure that provokes exploration and questioning of accepted practices and methods.”

The bridge’s final design had a kink in it. And rather going from A to B as all bridges work, you were encouraged to explore. Not only was it whimsically, the kink was neccessary engineering touch to aid support, but you potentially could’ve have bumped into your future wife or an old friend. A great example of illogical design.

5. Risk needs a partner
6. Give things a name
7. Contraints are Good

10 Tips for iPhone Interface Design
Sarah Parmenter – You Know Who (http://www.youknowwhodesign.com/)

Sarah Parmenter delivered a straightforward insight into her wireframing process and own experiences of the iphone app submission process throught 10 tips. A lot of it was broad design and process knowledge for anyone involved in the industry but what was most interesting for me as a developer involved the Apple UI rules and dimensions for touch screen hit areas, iconography, bevelling and spacing. (See photos) Anyone involved in iPhone/iPad Dev should definately do thier research work before developing an app as apple have stringent control and expectation on what is publishable, which was a good takeaway from this session.

19th May 2010
The Art of Emotional Design: A story of pleasure, joy, and delight.
Aral Balkan – http://aralbalkan.com/

This talk was a delight. Delight being the keyword with emphasis on designing experiences beyond usable, to stable, to something pleasurable, delightful and even magical. The ways this could be acheived is in the attention to details, and provoking emotional responses from these details.

Aral’s iPhone app feathers is a twitter posting app that could use special characters. It is essentially a very simple app but he achieved critical praise for embelishing interactions with visual feedback that was empathic to what the user was doing and thier needs and not the designer/developer. He had a clear understanding of what the user might do and treated them.

His other app was a barcode reader than would load up the ebook version if it could find it. If the search was taking ages to request he was engaging the user through his app’s emoticon character. The character would become glum and upset and eventually if it timed out it would apologise. Empathising with the users state of mind during this interaction made the wait more bearable and even made a plesurable experience.