The other week I made the trek to Austin for South by SouthWest Interactive. Here is my writeup, and you can see photos, as usual, on Flickr.

Despite jetlag from being in Shenzhen a mere couple of days before, I managed to switch back thirteen hours in order to sync awakeness with the panels, presentations, and parties… with the assistance of the Starbucks, which was most conveniently built into the Courtyard Marriott.

(US Starbucks has an exceptional ‘perfect oatmeal’ food item, complete with perfectly measured bags of brown sugar and dried fruit. I will dearly miss it.)

David and I arrived a day early, which turned out to be wise: Austin was quiet, the line to Starbucks was short, and I had an extra day to adjust to a new timezone. Along with Vero we went to explore San Antonio to see the Alamo, where I was introduced to Texan/Mexican history. I also experienced my first “TexMex” meal, and learned that TexMex isn’t actually an American brand of fast food. All this was thanks to Kara, a lovely Austin local – thank you, Kara!

The conference was the next day. It really is a geek mecca. The conference was dotted with tech celebrities who existed previously only in my Google reader, and packed with geeks clustered around power sockets.

I’d already resigned myself that I wouldn’t be able to see everything: at any hour on any given day you were bound to be missing 3 excellent panels or presentations going on at the same time.

It was great to meet Ben and Vero, and catch up with others I met in Helsinki and at dConstruct back in September. I also felt quite privileged that I knew a number of people from Brighton who were there as well: it felt weirdly like a portion of the community from home had been transplanted into Austin.

Here’s a few of my personal highlights.

Apart, of course, from drinking margaritas on a sunny balcony, bashing shellfish with hammers at the Boiling Pot, seeing Robert Scoble “lathered” with women – as Ben Ward put it – at the Tumblr party, and 3am pancakes at IHOP (which we arrived at, bizarrely enough, by pedicab):

Gestural UI (the iPhone taught us to flick and pinch, what’s next?), by Gabriel White, Punchcut

I’m really glad I got to see Gabriel present: I’m a fan of Punchcut (and their baby, Typophile). See the slides here (currently without audio).

The presentation focused on a contentious, important new genre of human-computer interaction which is already affecting us with the widespread arrival of accelerometers and popular touch-screen devices. So what happens next and where do interaction designers stand?

The challenge for designers is how they can use gesture meaningfully. The presentation warned that just because gestures can be used does not mean they necessarily should be added in; the temptation, of course, is to get too excited about the technology. That, as with usual temptations of design extravagances, should be resisted.

Paul Annett asked whether touch interfaces are easier to use (which I don’t think was awkward, given the neutral tone of the presentation). I think it depends entirely on the context: touch is easier in some cases, but when should gestures be used?

Loren Britcher (Atebits, behind the wildly popular Tweetie) is harangued by his users to add “Shake-to-refresh” to the Twitter client, and gives his reasons why not in this blog post.

Being a UX Team of One, by Leah Buley, Adaptive Path

Leah Buley’s optimistic presentation (slides) was focused on equipping the designer with tactics for coming up with ideas, as well as drawing on the ingenuity of others in the company, from shareholders to developers.

Leah suggests sketching at least six layout ideas to start off with, and pushing yourself through inevitable barriers against being creative. Work through barriers: “aim to pull great ideas out of your brain” – not always easy. If you hit a wall, it is your responsibility (as the sole UX designer) to overcome that wall.

Nothing like your neck on the chopping block to get you motivated!

Another tactic Leah suggests is to kick out, get the rest of the team involved. Forget the idea of the “singular genius designer”: the designer is the person who takes everyone’s ideas, processes them, and ends up with a solution to the problem. She suggests getting as many people involved as possible in brainstorming ideas.

The formula seems simple:

1. Brainstorm a lot,
2. Assemble an ad hoc team,
3. Pick the best ideas.

Leah also directed attention towards other, practical guides for generating ideas on paper: spectrums, 2×2s, and grids (see slide 27/58 for an explanation). The primary goal is to use all resources at your disposal, generate ideas, and then pick the best idea. She seems to be of the Buxton school when it comes to sketching ideas.

Ah yes, and I have a badge proclaiming that I’m a “UX Team of One!” (which isn’t technically true anymore).

Making Breakthroughs Happen by Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra knows how to keep her audience’s attention: the presentation started with a music video, moved on to show snappy bullet points and humorous, attention-grabbing graphs, and ended with a video.

On top of that, Kathy was amazingly energetic. I’d guess that the attention span length throughout this presentation was far higher than average for presentations. (She’s probably aware she’s presenting to a community with high rates of ADD.)

Deeper than the presentation style, Kathy imparted advice relevant to designers, developers, service designers, and executives alike – anyone involved in creating something that people will use. Here’s what I jotted down.

The following should take its place as a timeless design mantra: “Make the RIGHT things to do EASY and the WRONG things DIFFICULT to do.”

And aim not for meagre “incremental improvements”, she suggests, but make breakthroughs.

How to know someone:

1. iPod playlist and…
2. Flight vs. invisibility (superpowers) — she used this to provoke an audience debate (chat with the person next to you).

Some of the ways Kathy Sierra suggests users can make breakthroughs:

Superset game. Think about something bigger and figure out what it is and go after the bigger superset.

Shortcuts. 10,000 hours to learn a skill well. To shrink it: learn the patterns, accelerate those hours. (Personally I’m deeply skeptical of this.)

Change your perspective. Don’t make a better X, make a better user of X.

Easy to use isn’t always better. Difficult and challenging can be OK.

Rethink deadness. Take another look at things that you sent to the dead pool.

Overall, Kathy’s presentation was probably a model for what presentations at SxSWi should aim to be. It was fun, entertaining, and immersed the audience in rapid-fire ideas.

Finally, I have to give a shout out to…

Not another social media panel (tagged #kebab on Twitter and Flickr).

A room was hijacked. The title: “Not another social media panel”. Mike Butcher wrote this up on Techcrunch UK. Paul Carr gave an amusing interpretation of it (it wasn’t packed at the end, really; but it was fairly full). This ad hoc unofficial panel was definitely one of the highlights for me.

The last few weeks have been quite a physical drain. I have been packing, unpacking, re-packing, unpacking, re-packing, realising I’ve forgetten stuff, anticipating new experiences, watching many in-flight movies. Dealing with jetlag. Finally, adjusting.

As Dopplr attests, I have just spent two weeks in Shenzhen, China, followed by a couple of days back in England… followed by a week in Texas, US.

I have not had time to process my visit to China, so I am going to clarify my thoughts and experiences here, and will follow up the US technology festival in another blog post. I’m writing this because I’m wide awake at 4am GMT, and still on Austin time. Probably with a bit of China-time thrown in.

This piece of photojournalism was the first thing I read about Shenzhen, which prepared me for quite a different place than I experienced. I’m not sure it is entirely fair. But here is how it starts:

Twin cities usually grow up together. For Hong Kong and its dark alter ego Shenzhen, the relationship is something more akin to step-twins. Shenzhen was virtually decreed into existence: in 1980 Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping clicked his fingers and invited the people of dynamic, British-owned Hong Kong to make something of the 3.5 sq km stretch of fishing villages and rice paddies just over the border. What arose was a kind of twisted sister, a town of skyscrapers and sweatshops, laissez-faire business and institutionalized lust.

Tempting though it is to reduce Shenzhen to sensationalist caricature, I wouldn’t call it a “twisted sister” to Hong Kong. They didn’t grow up together, for starters: Shenzhen is brand new, and Hong Kong has history.

Shenzhen. The buildings are tall, the air is chokingly warm, and it took me about a week to adjust to the smell. There are numerous construction sites sprawling all over the city. Photos from the 1980s reveal how quickly the town has changed, and how quickly it is changing.

The people I met in Shenzhen were warm and almost overwhelmingly curious, especially since tourists and foreigners are unusual sights in the city. A visit to a park got us stared at, and even photographed. Generally, wherever we went, people were more interested in talking than not.

I liked that: there was a patient, genuine, attentive curiosity in nearly everyone I met, even those busy at work – a Starbucks barista was keen to know what I was doing there, and how long I’d be there for. Even if it was just because they wanted to practise their English or discover some juicy gossip, it was nice to be surrounded by interested, friendly people.

Day by day it got easier to cope with the smell, easier to cope with the jetlag. China is eight hours ahead of GMT, and the entire landmass somehow gets by on just one timezone, despite the official times not really coinciding conveniently with sunrise and sunset. I woke up a few hours early every day, which wasn’t such a bad thing.

Food: with some exceptions, I wasn’t a fan. It’s not easy to be a vegetarian, and even pescetarians might have a challenging time. The Chinese seem to really like fish dishes with the fish head still on, and its mouth open in an expression of agony. It’s just a cultural difference. I also remember seeing fried seahorses on the menu, decorating the surface of another cooked sea-creature. Then again, two weeks isn’t really enough time to sample a range of cuisine in a city, or to overcome perhaps superficial cultural bias.

I didn’t travel far out of central Shenzhen. Partly because of time, partly because of fear.

I only spent about eight hours in Hong Kong. I really wish I’d had more time. Really, the mind boggles: everywhere I looked in Hong Kong I saw something interesting. A small, hidden market packed between two skyscrapers; something in a shop window, a Buddhist temple. What I did notice was that the people ignored you more often – a stark contrast from the friendliness and warmth of the people in Shenzhen.

Hong Kong is worn in, like old shoes, or any old British city – after all, most of the streets have British names, and from 1842—1997, it was a dependent territory of the United Kingdom. Shenzhen, on the other hand, has the feeling of being brand new, which is evident from the lack of pollution, the lack of detail, the feeling that everything just sort of sprung up over night. Which it had. Shenzhen is a baby, and I hope that its problems are solved as it (and China) grows up.

I intend to return at some point, and will visit Shanghai, Xi’an, Beijing, and revisit Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It’ll certainly be interesting to see Shenzhen in five years, or even a year from now, after all the new buildings have gone up.

I returned to the UK with a new layer of perspective to filter the world, and found that everything has shifted slightly.

But I will not miss the squat toilets.