Just catching-up after attending the Convey UX conference in Seattle a little over a week ago. Some of my key takeaways are listed below. Food for future thought, as well as some tried-and-true reminders.

More human-to-human instead of human-to-computer, please. One user, one computer, and one task just doesn’t work anymore. Usability testing needs to embrace an ever-increasingly inter-connected and social world. Dana Chisnell gave a nice presentation about how traditional testing isn’t necessarily equipped to handle everything that we need to learn around social (e.g., Privacy and ethics). It’s a bit too one-dimensional. 

She cited the Google Buzz disaster (I know! Remember that thing?!) and how lab testing didn’t uncover any of the underlying privacy concerns people had upon launch because exposure to real relationships was never tested. We need to start thinking about tasks more as activities such as sharing and interacting with others, as well as goals that change over time. Satisfaction and engagement aren't just about task completion. 

Moving forward, user research will need to embrace more of a mash-up approach and borrow more from areas like linguistics and the social sciences. Context matters and relationships evolve over time. We can't continue to ask users to play make-believe about that stuff anymore. 

Hypertext is dead. OK, that’s me projecting, but the future of HTML5 and browser-based experience possibilities is fascinating. Couple that with things like WebGL and you’ve got some wonderfully immersive opportunities on the horizon. 

Peter Lubbers from Google gave a solid talk and demoed some of the rich animation capabilities and input mechanisms (e.g., Touch for general navigation coupled with a mouse for precision; using a laptop's camera to capture motion gestures a la Kinect). Definitely check out Webplatform.org to learn more - and to contribute to the movement!

Big screens invite big gestures. Luke Wroblewski presented some insights from his work on mobile. In short, touch-enabled does not equal touch-optimized. The majority of sites out there now are swell if you have a baby-sized finger, let alone that of an actual fully-grown adult! 

Using people’s gestures as a sign of intent and then designing accordingly was really interesting. Gesture discoverability was also discussed. One way that tribal interaction knowledge - like pull to refresh - is passed around is through what Jared Spool calls “socially transmitted functionality.” Good stuff, but I suddenly had this urge to wash my hands. 

Content is not like the stuff you make sausages with. It’s much, much more. Erika Hall gave a great talk on how content strategy should be more about ‘composing’ content rather than simply 'creating' it. Writers and designers need to embrace cross-functional teams so as to answer things like what is valuable to whom and in what circumstance? Don't let the "content" be something that you don't question. Writing is interface design!  

And definitely avoid testing with lorem ipsum placeholder text. That’s a huge fail in terms of getting the most bang for your user testing buck. I think we all sometimes fall into that 'we'll just add the final copy later' trap. Good reminder.  

Embrace uncontrolled environments. John Dirks talked about how Blink tested the unboxing of the Xbox Kinect internationally. Because Microsoft was introducing a whole new interaction language, the initial set-up was crucial. 

He provided great insights on how the relationships between kids and parents, spouses - and even pets! - contributed to the findings around configuration. Of course, cultural differences and context totally matter. For example, there tends to be a fair amount of space in homes and apartments here in the United States, but not so much in places like Japan, where jumping up and down to set-up your Kinect means potentially pissing off your downstairs, high-rise neighbors. Also, ceiling fans can be problematic. Ouch. 

Lastly, Jared Spool prolly summed it all up best: Intuitive design is invisible. It's like good room temperature; you don't notice it unless you're hot or cold. That segued nicely into his advice on making incremental improvements, iterating, and measuring (like amazon does) instead of large-scale redesigns where users' acquired knowledge can sometimes get lost. When users have to relearn how to accomplish their goals and go from working knowledge to target knowledge, that sucks. 

And majority of real innovation out there happens by applying something that already exists to a new context. In other words, innovation basically means adding value to where there was none before. Pretty simple, eh?! (Kidding, of course). 

Lastly, yes; Rem Koolhaas’ Seattle Public Library is extraordinary. Given the cold materials used (i.e., lots of steel, glass, and the exposed imperfections in concrete), it was somehow inviting. It made me want to curl up and read in one of its many, naturally-lit nooks.

I also recommend the library tour, which highlights several of the project’s design challenges. No building is perfect and it was interesting to hear about some of the issues faced and the areas where the architect stood his ground. Overall, a pretty Coolhouse. (You see what I just did there? ;)

Marc