Welcome

Join your new friends for an informal breakfast from 8:00-9:00

Dom Sagolla, DollarApp 

Why a Dollar?

Focus, focus, focus.  Then continue to focus.  In the freshest of emerging markets like iTunes App Store and Android Market, your team has to eliminate variables in order to succeed.  The first variable that we should collectively eliminate is: Price.  Start with the one thing that your app does better than any other app, and focus on polishing that feature until it shines at the $0.99 price point.

Charge a dollar because you can deliver that one feature faster, at a higher quality, to more people than if you'd waited to add things and charge more money later.  Your one-dollar-app will help you bootstrap your two-dollar-app, and on upwards over time.

Begin with a dollar because there are certain expectations that users have, once they pay just a little bit of money for something.  Don't charge too much, or expectations could be inflated.  Ship just enough software that your customers recognize value.  One dollar can get you valuable feedback and praise, where two or three dollars may get you wishful thinking and complaints.  In this talk, Dom will describe lessons learned from HP Labs, the MIT Media Lab, Twitter, and Adobe Systems about the value of simplicity and focus in the mobile market. A case study will be his company  DollarApp, a nimble iPhone startup in San Francisco fresh off of success at iPhoneDevCamp.

Timo Arnall, elasticpace 
Matt Cottam, Tellart

Visualization, Simulation and Evidence: 
The designer's role in shaping the way we'll experience tomorrow's "everyday" technologies

As the multi-touch iPhone, Nintendo Wii, Nike Plus and Nokia Sports Tracker all demonstrate, advanced 'ubiquitous' technology is increasingly being used as part of highly successful products and services. As this transition from 'raw' technology to user-application gets shorter, the interpretation and shaping of technology is an increasingly important part of the designer's role.

So how do designers approach emerging technologies? What is the role of the designer in shaping how these technologies are experienced and what kinds of tools and approaches do we have to achieve this?

As part of an international design research project we have been working with so called 'ubiquitous' technology: computing that is embedded in our everyday environment and objects. This 'material' is complex, obscure and often entirely defined by engineering practices.  Through collaborative design and research efforts we are creating a space for designers to work effectively with this technology.

In doing this we have developed a set of tools and approaches that should enable designers to create new interactive experiences with emerging technologies. We are using techniques such as sketching in hardware, visualisation, simulation and fictional evidence to explore the boundaries and opportunities of the space.

We will explore in detail some of the ways in which we have approached technology through visualisation and sketching as well as looking at other design practices such as Allan Chochinov's 'fictional products', Mike Kuniavsky's 'sketching in hardware' and Anab Jain's simulated experiences.

Break

Calling All Gamers

See how you stack up against some of the best in the biz

Keynote Speaker: Philip Holt, General Manager of EA-Tiburon

Lions, Tigers, Bears… Oh My! (picture Nittany Lions, Tiger Woods, and Chicago Bears)

Toto, we aren’t in Kansas anymore. The game industry is bigger than you think: over $10 billion in annual revenue in North America and $30 billion in annual revenue globally. Video and computer games run the gamut from casual, massively multiplayer games for 5 year olds (Webkinz) to bowling leagues in retirement homes and everything in between. This talk will provide a broad overview of the changing face of the games industry and how the biggest developer in the US adapts to changing trends in its core businesses of NCAA Football, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and Madden NFL titles.

George Pierson, Creative Mindflow 

Creative Mindflow Brainwave Technology: 
How to Catch Big Design Concepts 24/7

In this experiential half day workshop, George Pierson, founder of Creative Mindflow goes deeper the into the awakened mind brainwave pattern protocol to help you discover spontaneous creative solutions to a specific design issue or project. You'll learn how to bring creative insights back out into your waking state or drop them back into the delta frequency for additional insights. Discover how to catch "Big Ideas" all through the day (or at night).

Learn how the next generation games will incorporate this very same brainwave technology.

Pre-Register online NOW - limited seating !