Sessions at SXSW Interactive 2011 with liveblog on Saturday 12th March

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• How Progress Bars Change the Way We Live

  by Evan Jones

  Once upon a time slow connections begat the Progress Bar - bloated sites would taunt us with '15% loaded' screens. High-speed promised to kill the beast and free us from their tyranny but yet it lives! Progress bars are being used MORE lately to direct user actions. Look to Farmville and LinkedIn which push their users to collect 100% of their personal information. Incomplete progress bars are an itch that needs to be scratched. They carry the implicit language that declares 'You are here' but more importantly 'The end is in sight'. Game design motivates us through incremental, measurable progress towards a tangible goal but is this the way real life works? Is the progress bar's ubiquity in technology starting to affect the way we measure progress in meatspace? This panel will reach far across time and space to look at the story of progress bars, why they hypnotize us and what we need to do - slay the beast once and for all, or throw ourselves into its partially-complete embrace...

  LEVEL: Beginner

  • Game Design
  • Interaction Design
  • User Experience

  At 9:30am to 10:30am, Saturday 12th March

  In Salon K, Hilton Austin Downtown

  Coverage liveblog link slide deck audio clip write-up

• iPad Design Headaches (Take 2 Tablets, Call Me in the Morning)

  by Josh Clark

  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

  • Design
  • iPad
  • Mobile
  • Tablets
  • User Experience

  At 9:30am to 10:30am, Saturday 12th March

  In Salon J, Hilton Austin Downtown

  Coverage write-up note write-up liveblog slide deck write-up write-up write-up photo sketch note

• Dear Miss Manners: WTF with the Social Web?

  by Deborah Schultz

  The social web is now a teenager –awkward, arrogant, snarky, fearless, experimental and open. She is shaking things up and having a major impact on our culture, social dynamics and etiquette. What are the new social dynamics and cultural impacts of all these tools and technologies?

  This session will explore the emerging etiquette issues of our participatory hyper-connected world. What are the new rules? How are our relationships, culture and business assumptions changing? Do we understand the impact of this new relationship persistance?

  - Do I have to ask before I post a photo of a friend online? Who has editorial approval?

  - Am I required to respond to every inbound communication I receive or is “ignoring” an accepted response?

  - Where is the line between encouraging participation and being just plain annoying?

  - What are you doing mucking up my activity stream?

  - What the heck is a “friend” anyway?

  How do we design, build and manage these new spaces? What are the new rules of the online commons and the associated appropriate etiquette? This participatory session will ask attendees to contribute their own real world examples and will lay out a new framework for a new social contract. It’s our job to decide what we want our web teenager to be when she is all grown-up.

  LEVEL: Intermediate

  • Etiquette
  • Social Media
  • Social Web
  • User Experience

  At 12:30pm to 1:30pm, Saturday 12th March

  In Salon K, Hilton Austin Downtown

  Coverage liveblog audio clip

• Web Anywhere: Mobile Optimisation With HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript

  by Bruce Lawson

  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

  • CSS3
  • HTML5
  • JavaScript
  • Mobile

  At 5:00pm to 6:00pm, Saturday 12th March

  In Ballroom C, Austin Convention Center

  Coverage liveblog