Highlights, Links and General Coolness :: Flashforward Boston 2007

Now that I'm all done geeking out, I decided to write up a summary of the sessions I attended as well as interesting pieces of information relating to things we do everyday at PBJS.



The PBJS brand was very well recieved at the Flashforward conference. I had people asking me for the cool Simon buttons (thanks Nick for bringing a bunch) and every time I handed out a business card I got a response similar to, "That's the coolest card I've seen." So well done.

Session Links Dump :: Flashforward Boston 2007

Visit the Links Dump page to see summaries of the session and get access to source files from those sessions.

General Design Thoughts:

Design is: inventive & reductive:
Keep in mind that when you deliver 3 options to a client, you're also not delivering the other 3000 options you, as the designer, already ruled out for whatever reason. You know how hard you worked, even if the client doesn't.

Simple is usually better, expecially when we're talking about user experience and interface design.

API, you've heard of it before, but what does it mean? Application Programing Interface. Scary huh? Now think about it with the Human element...
(H)API
...not so scary anymore is it? You can think of the computer like a person with senses. Your computer can hear (mic), see (camera), feel(macbooks, iPhones, zunes, xbox360s... all have motion sensors). Sensors just give you data, it's what you use the data for that's important. Check out these examples of the computer's senses being used to do something. Enter the site and then click on Labs to see it in action. Now there is a new part of the computer the USERFACE. The computer has senses.

Take a look at the Flashforward Film Festival Winners. A lot of them we've already passed around the office, but some of them ones we haven't seen yet. Great stuff.

Adobe Keynote :: Kevin Lynch

Useability approach to Accessibility

First of all, what is Accessibility? Accessibility is access for all regardless of hardware and software AND access for all users with a disbility. The thing to think about is that accessible is the opposite of inaccessible, which essentially means there is a barrier. The question that we, as designers and developers, need to ask is: What are these barriers, and how do we overcome them? In addition, how do avoid creating new barriers while we're designing to overcoming others?

Check out these resources for Accessibility Guidelines for the web.

Designing with Sound :: Dave Schroeder

Production Order for Sound:

Pick sounds early in the process. It can make or break a project. Music choices often guide the visual choices in projects. Sound is so powerful that even the most beautifully designed visual will suck if the sound is bad. It's important, and should never be a last minute addition to any project. Sound as an afterthought is usually does not add to the project.

Interface Approaches:

I bought a book Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman Jr. that lays out lots of strategies for successful web application design, both interface and functionality. If you're interested, and you should be, let me know and we'll pass it around the office. It's a pretty easy read. I got through half of it on the plane ride home, and still had time to write this web page. :)



The basic mantra is: "create an experience that makes the user feel confident."

Unless you're interesed in learning more about Flash Video and Web Video in general you can stop reading now.

Flash Video (FLV) factoids:

Flash and Flash video have some really cool features that can provide very powerful interactive experiences. Flash Player 9 has two new built in features: Captions and Full Screen. You can also take advantage of Cuepoints. They can trigger things to happen in a swf and obviously a swf can control the video. Flash Player 9 has lots of new effects/filters that can be rendered and manipulated in realtime at runtime. You don't have to render out that motion blur, color effect OR ALPHA KEY!!! You hear that Ryan,Mitzy,LeeAnn,Andrew...just saved you all some work.

Flash Video (FLV) Optimization

A couple of key things to consider when optimizing Flash video are bitrate, size, delivery mechanism, quality, accessibility (bandwith limitations). Each of these should be considered before the first bit of video is shot. Video for the web is it's own animal and it can look pretty good if you know how.

Another FLV factoid. The On2 VP6 codec works better if the width/height are divisible by 4. You can see up to a 10% file size/quality increase if you keep your dimensions divisible by 4. Flash Player 9 has some really good scaling abilities if they're needed at runtime.

Robert Reinhardt has created a Flash Video Project Checklist that has all the important questions to ask before you start a project. Give it a read. He also has a few books; book1 that have more detailed approach to using Flash Video.

Robert also created this really cool bitrate calculator that can help you get the most out of your video within bandwith limitations. Use this before you encode the video.

As was mentioned in the Adobe Keynote, Flash Video will soon have HD capabilities using the H.264 codec. There are some potential issues. The really cool thing is that this will bring Flash Video up to the quality level of WMA and MOV files but it's has all the benifits of being in flash.

In the next section I'm going to start off by talking about some of the things you can do with Flash and FLVs to make interactive videos. So if you're interested in that, go ahead and contiue reading. Don't worry about the Code stuff, just pick out the concepts.

Unless you're interested in learning about OOP, AS3.0, and other programing info you can stop reading now.

Flash video