SXSW Interactive 2017 — Day 3
Netflix AB Testing, Web Accessibility, Pinterest House, and becoming an astronaut.
Day 3 Started With Accessibility
First talk of the day was ‘Designing for Visual Accessibility’ with Jordan Dunn. A UX designer who specialises in accessibility.
He gave a great value talk with some good (and bad) examples of accessibility from the likes of BBC, Reddit, Instagram and Lyft (Lyft are similar to Uber). 8 Million people in the US have difficulty seeing. He also covered other aspects of web design which limits some users from using the website. Some things suggested to improve things:
- Anything in golden/key path MUST be accessible
- Label buttons (alt text and aria). Popups/Modals are terrible for accessibility especially if labels are lacking, especially for screen readers
- Avoid colours to relay messaging (e.g. red for overdraft and no other indication)
- Utilise variances of opacity and have resizable text (and others)
He also covered the challenges Instagram has with accessibility, not being able to audio describe each photo. Facebook (who own Instagram) are now putting a lot of effort in to help improve accessibility using new techniques.
Netflix AB Testing
Last talk of the day was Design like a Scientist: A/B Testing UX at Netflix with Navin Iyenga, Product Designer at Netflix.
This was really interesting stuff. One of my favourite sessions so far. A key point resulting from testing is ‘Observe what people do not what they say’. For example, Netflix had surveyed what people want to know at sign up. The majority answered that they wanted to see the catalog of shows available before signing up (which actually makes sense you’d think?).
But during testing, Netflix found, it didn’t actually help the user sign up, they’d generally get lost in ‘window shopping’ - seeing what shows are available and the primary goal of sign up was diluted and the focus lost. Things actually performed better to not show the catalog of films before sign up, and let the free trial part be the ‘back out’ if the user decided after a short while to not commit. Lots of info gained from this session.
Another Day, Another House
Yesterday was Great Britain House, today was Pinterest House. Free BBQ and Ice Cream - nice.
SXSW Trade Show
Tons of companies were at the trade show today, lots going on there. Facebook were there talking about Facebook360 - their new standalone VR app launched in the last week. Nasa probably had the biggest space there highlighting their mission to Mars but I just wanted to be an astronaut.
More tomorrow for Day 4 of SXSW Interactive 2017. You can follow me @digitaltob or Red Spark Digital @redsparkdigital on twitter.
