Kathy Sierra at RailsConf Europe 2006

10:40 Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users

• If you saw a man drowning and you could either save him or photograph the event… how would you tag it in flickr?

• Not rational

• Help users have a higher resolution experience

• It’s not about the tools, its about what users do with them.

• Nikon website is all about taking better pictures, the user manual is all about battery. Cf. glossy brochure v. b&w user manual.

• Legacy brain

  • it thinks your still living in a cave
  • it has a crap filter
  • chemistry: fear, sex, babies, puppies, faces

• Conversational beats formal - increase retention, recall and ability to problem solve with what you learn by up to 40%.

• Talk to the brain not the mind

• Compelling picture

• Clear path

• Easy first step

• Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

• Don’t break the flow

• Don’t Make Me Think!, Steve Krug

• Make the right thing easy and the wrong thing hard

• UX Spiral: … Motivating benefit -> Interaction -> Payoff -> …

• The more they understand the less they need to memorise.

• Community - people with a passion want to connect and connecting builds passion.

• Be nice. There are no dumb questions, and no dumb answers.

• T-shirt first development

• Our brains are wired for stories… especially stories about people

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