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

---

Technorati tags:
railsconf,
railsconfeurope,
railsconfeurope2006,
kathysierra,
uxd