Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 about Mobile on Saturday 12th March

The iPad and its entourage of Android tablets have introduced a new style of computing, confronting designers with unfamiliar aches and pains. Learn the symptoms (and fixes) for a range of new-to-the-world iPad interface ailments, including Greedy Pixel Syndrome, the dreaded Frankeninterface, and the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter" bait and switch. Explore practical techniques and eye-opening gotchas of tablet interface design, all grounded in the ergonomics, context, psychology, and nascent culture of these new devices (both iOS and Android). The presentation inoculates you against common problems with close-up looks at successful iPad apps from early sketches to final design. Genial bedside manner is administered by Josh Clark, author of the O'Reilly books "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps" and "Best iPhone Apps: A Guide for Discriminating Downloaders."

LEVEL: Advanced

Mobile application design is a conversation that allows the developer to speak to the user. While manuals are able to guide this conversation, nothing is more immediate and enduring than the user interface of the application itself. The small size of mobile device screens requires developers to create user interfaces that communicate to users in ways that are concise yet easy to understand.

The comic book medium offers many design standards that mobile application developers can use to improve the effectiveness of their graphical user interface designs. Comic books have evolved through the years to maximize their ability to tell a story while confined to two dimensional static images. Comic book legend Will Eisner published “Comics and Sequential Art” in 1985 in order to document his mastery of using graphics to tell a story. This presentation will explore the design principles Eisner shared in his landmark book and specifically apply them to mobile application design. Scott McCloud’s book “Understanding Comics”, which built on top of the foundation laid by Eisner, will also be covered as well as McCloud’s later work “Reinventing Comics”.

Film makers have used comic books as the blueprint for blockbuster movies like “Spider Man” and “Batman Returns”. The comic book medium can provide a blueprint for blockbuster mobile applications as well. When attendees leave this session, they will know how to throw some Eisner onto their mobile application designs!

LEVEL: Advanced

That smartphone in our pocket has the power open up new worlds for people of all abilities in all environments. Whether you are visually impaired or just can't see or access the screen at the moment, turn on voice commands and your access is complete! Location services and navigation guide you in daily living or on great new adventures. Come find out what the state of accessibility is for the latest mobile devices. Learn how you can create mobile apps and mobile websites that are compelling AND usable by all audiences!

LEVEL: Intermediate

Josh Clark will be stopping by the SX Bookstore to meet registrants and sign copies of his latest book, "Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps."

Hispanics are significantly more likely than non-Hispanic whites to use their phones to engage with their peers by accessing the Internet, sharing pictures and videos, sending messages, and using social networking sites. As the Hispanic population grows within the United States, these behaviors present new opportunities for the government to interact with people. Laura Godfrey's presentation will explain how GobiernoUSA.gov is reaching out to mobile-enabled Hispanics by building a mobile friendly version of the site.

LEVEL: Beginner

A funny thing happened last spring: Netflix let me build the front end for their iPhone product. Yeah. Me. The punk-rock-API guy.

The initial conversation went something like this:

Netflix: "It's five weeks to WWDC. We've got Mobile Safari, our open APIs, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

Me: "Hit it."

LEVEL: Advanced

Explore an alternative approach to creating apps for iPhone and iPad. The free PhoneGap framework lets you build first-class native iPhone apps using just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - a technique that also lets you create Android, Nokia, and Blackberry apps from the very same code base. Explore the pros and cons of this approach as you learn to create native-looking animations with jQTouch, complex UI elements with Sencha Touch, and hook into advanced iPhone features (accelerometer, GPS, vibration, and sound) without ever touching Objective-C.

LEVEL: Beginner

A jaw dropping 80% of iPhone and Android apps have hardly any active users. Tens of thousands of developers and hundreds of thousands of mobile applications have gotten it wrong. But mobile apps done right can provide unprecedented value to users and rapid transformations of businesses. Gilt Groupe, USAA Bank and Pandora can attribute much of their recent success to their mobile applications.

The biggest barrier to success? More is absolutely less. As Mark Twain famously said, “It would have been shorter if I had more time.” With seemingly infinite options of features, ‘what’ and ‘how much’ is the hardest part of development.

This presentation will provide a detailed unbridled view into the strategy and creative process of creating a compelling, successful mobile app by finding the right balance between business objectives content, design, functionality, and concept.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Web apps, mobile phone apps, websites that work anywhere, SVG, HTML5, Widgets, location-aware sites, Media Queries. Beyond the buzzword assault is a revolution in the way sites are made, what they can do, and how they are accessed.

We're going to talk about what the buzzwords actually mean and how they all fit together. We'll explore different methodologies for making websites that users can access on mobile phones and other devices, and how to optimize your existing website for mobile. Then we'll put all the buzzwords together into a coherent vision that works now, with real code snippets that you can use right away.

Finally, we get out our crystal balls out and look at what's coming around the corner in HTML5 and the W3C APIs that allow websites to access native capabilities on devices.

LEVEL: Intermediate

Social Networking as we know it today may become a thing of the past. In fact, it may already be. Teens and young adults everywhere are turning to their mobile devices as their very own social network and merely using lightweight tools such as texting to network, hang out, and meet new people. Is Facebook already dead to them? Was it ever alive in the first place? The mobile industry has evolved Social networking as we know it today.

LEVEL: Beginner