Melbourne Geek night Nov 2013

Melbourne Geek night Nov 2013

It seems as the year draws to an end, we’re having some of the best talks! Damn Christmas…

Web for TV, Sam Buckley
Smart TV’s don’t do anything well. 33% of Australians have one only 5% browse the web on them, but a high amount for app type functionality.
Distance between viewer and device is an issue? Also interfaces are unattractive, lack of know how, not enough content, slow speed.
There’s a lack of UX on TV(!) and the Internet is still a very text input reliant, with input devices still needing a lot of thought and work It’s a lean back experience, with even more device sizing issues

Should we worry about it?

  • TV media type in media queries not even supported by most TV’s Feature queries are the future path, or dirty user agent sniffing
  • Still… Be prepared for it. Design for large screens, distance and vertical scrolling vs wide screen, especially with a remote. Bear in mind performance and use simple navigation
  • Look at Google TV design documents and BBC for more detail
  • Good examples apple TV, xbox 1, steam big picture
  • Prepare for new input devices -  gesture, voice, biometrics

 

A dose of CSS animations and transitions! Jayden Seric
Are animations relevant in a business sense, are they still a bit tacky?

Tools to make creating animations an transitions really easy:

The difference between animations and transitions (filling in vs keyframes)

Two other nuggets that came out of the talk and made me feel really old in Tech terms… Flash is now considered old?! and the phrase “It’s only a Google away”.

Where’s my jet pack, Nic Hodges
A fascinating talk that’s a little hard to summarise, so I might just whack in a bunch of links and points for thought…

The future we didn’t imagine From a cultural perspective.

  • Innovation doesn’t come in big leaps, but small steps. This is ok.
  • We’re not leaning into the future - creating a focus for innovation (space race, the year 2000)
  • Not much vision beyond now, determinate optimism
  • Were losing positive inefficiencies things that happened due to efficient restructuring, universities as an example, what’s the real benefit.
  • Be aware of disruption
  • We’re returning to a peer to peer culture from small to large and back again. Mobility and multiplicity
  • Freeman dyson
  • circa
  • Howard Aiken
  • Thomas pettitt
  • Douglas rushkoff