Big-​​Picture

Craig Mod sees how digital affects books and publishing; Paula Bray is exploring the connected digital future; David Gravina chal­langes us to think; Tatham Oddie prac­tices web stan­dards in the large; Rob Manson shows us some­thing GOOD; Lisa Herrod brings us to the Age of Awareness; James Bridle is wran­gling time and books and Grant Young explores social inno­vation.

How digital affects books and publishing

Presenter: Craig Mod

We need to decouple the idea of ‘book’ from the mental image we carry around of ‘book.’ The inno­vation and benefit that digital brings to books and publishing lies less in how digital affects final arti­facts, and more in how digital affects the systems leading up to and extending beyond those arti­facts.

Design Thinking (and Doing)

From a digital to a world view.

Presenter: David Gravina

Many web profes­sionals practice creative, collab­o­rative and inclusive approaches to our work. As UX designers, infor­mation archi­tects, strate­gists, or programmers — we are all designers, and we are ready equipped with a way of problem solving that can be applied to chal­lenges that are not tradi­tionally those of web prac­ti­tioners.

From the perspective of the digital domain this session will take a look at what Design Thinking is and it’s potential to amplify creativity so that we may embrace and apply our skills to the messy problems that business, government and society face every day.

Connected digital initiatives and strategy

Driving change online and onsite at the Power­house Museum

Presenter: Paula Bray

The Power­house Museum has been working towards making its digital initia­tives widely acces­sible and to a broader audience, online and onsite, to enable a connected digital future. With a blos­soming of blogging, signif­icant Flickr and Facebook pres­ences the Museum has been devel­oping great connec­tions with a new audience that has led the insti­tution to rethink access with an emphasis on the impor­tance of community connec­tions and partic­i­pation. This thinking has had an impact on the Museum’s Strategic Plan and several digital initia­tives are now driving change within the organ­i­sation.

The Museum has expe­ri­enced incredible connec­tions, citizen research and inno­v­ative digital outcomes such as MOB’s augmented reality mobile app using geo-​​located historic images from the Tyrrell collection, Paul Hagon’s Google Street view mashup, Digital NZ’s inte­gration of related items from the Museum’s collection and the Power­house Museum’s collection download. Releasing data and images under a Creative Commons license has allowed the Museum to make the collection available for use and re-​​use. Social media initia­tives are being adopted and aligned to the right plat­forms for appro­priate audience effec­tiveness for exhi­bi­tions like ‘80s are back’ and ‘Trainspotting’ exhi­bi­tions. All these digital projects are allowing the Museum to evaluate, exper­iment, learn from and progress future initia­tives leading to a connected digital future — as well as change the DNA of the Museum itself.

The Age of Awareness

Presenter: Lisa Herrod

Inclusive design. It might sound like a rebranding exercise from the Web Acces­si­bility Marketing Team, but it isn’t. For years inclusive design and research prac­tices have been applied to a wide variety of disci­plines from indus­trial design to the arts, the built envi­ronment and more.

What can we learn from this? And how can we apply it to the digital envi­ronment in which we work?

Social inno­vation, service design and even augmented reality are now presenting real and inter­esting oppor­tu­nities for us as tradi­tional web prac­ti­tioners. Combined with inclusive design prac­tices, this opens up a fantastic world of change for both us and the people for whom we design.

So starting with the web, we’ll rein­vig­orate our passion for diversity and inclusion. Let’s declare this The Age of Awareness!

Practicing Web Standards in the Large

Presenter: Tatham Oddie

Web stan­dards might be second nature to all of us here, but they don’t always fly so easily in the enter­prise. Obscure browsers and CIOs watching their bottom line can often leave a passionate devel­opment team feeling stifled. In this session we’ll look at how a number of large scale websites success­fully adopted new stan­dards and opened their content to more audi­ences and devices than ever before. We’ll explore tech­niques for deciding what client tech­nologies to use on your projects, how to drive the adoption of newer tech­niques and how not to leave your audience behind. We’ll even talk about how to make all of this possible with Internet Explorer in the room.

GOOD: Graphical Object Oriented Design

Design once, use anywhere

Presenter: Rob Manson

“GUI/​Graphical Object Oriented Design” (good) elements are born as re-​​usable objects. Can you easily drop your design elements into a new context and have them “just work” — func­tionally, inter­ac­tively and visually? Can you easily adapt your objects subtly or even radi­cally for new types of devices? Does your under­lying API easily provide both data and POSH objects? This presen­tation will dissect some appli­ca­tions that do this and look at the amazing new world that opens up…

Wrangling Time: The Form and the Future of the Book

Presenter: James Bridle

The internet has been around long enough now that it has a proper history, and it has started to produce media and arte­facts that live in and comment on that history. James will be talking about his work with writing, books and wikipedia that hopes to explain and illu­minate this temporal depth.

Creating platforms for social innovation

Presenter: Grant Young

People are redefining the rela­tionship they have with the organ­i­sa­tions they interact with, empowered by social tech­nologies. They are seeking:

• Human-​​ness: as organ­i­sa­tions have grown in size and become more and more deper­son­alised, people are wanting more human inter­ac­tions and personal response
• Trust: from green­washing to the GFC, the market’s trust has been eroded — people are looking for organ­i­sa­tions to say what they mean and mean what they say
• Co-​​creation: people are taking a more active role in devel­oping the products and services that they use. And if they don’t find what they’re looking for, they will often create it them­selves
• Respon­si­bility: people want to engage with organ­i­sa­tions that are genuinely addressing the complex issues of sustain­ability and well­being

Building a brand, service or product offering that resonates in this new “economy of meaning” requires a rethinking of an organisation’s rela­tionship to the “market” — their customers, stake­holders and the envi­ronment.

In this presen­tation Grant Young will examine how inno­v­ative organ­i­sa­tions are using social tech­nologies and design methods to create multi-​​dimensional value — both for the organ­i­sa­tional and community — and will explore the themes that underpin the examples with a view to applying them in your context.