frog's SXSW '12 Panel Picker Submissions

Summer is coming to a close, but the season for geeking out has just begun. It’s that time of year when the Technorati reveal their latest theories on the impact of social media, technology, and design on culture and business. That’s right: SXSW Interactive has published this year’s ‘panel picker’ submissions, asking the Internet to vote on their favorite panels and presentations they hope to see at the conference in March.

Several frogs are in the running this year, offering their perspective on everything from hiring creative people to why mobile apps must die. Take a look at our submissions and show some love by giving them a thumbs up on the panel picker page.

See you in Austin!

Why Mobile Apps Must Die
Presenter: frog Creative Director Scott Jenson

Mobile apps are on a clear trajectory for failure. It’s just not possible to have an app for every device in my house, every product I own and every store I enter. Much like Yahoos original hierarchy gave way to Google’s search. Applications have to give away to a ‘just in time’ approach to applications. This talk will explain how applications must give way to a more universal approach to application distribution, one based on the mobile web and cloud services. The problem of course, is that the mobile web has both hands tied behind its back. Any mobile app today is locked away behind a browser ghetto: in effect, a sub OS inside a larger mobile OS. This isn’t just an arbitrary technology debate. A just-in-time approach to application functionality can unleash entirely new sets of application, ones that are impossible with native apps. This talk will layout how this problem can be fixed, and what changes need to take place, outside of just HTML5, for it to happen.

The Science of Good Design: A Dangerous Idea
Presenter: frog Senior Strategist Ben McAllister

The business world is increasingly enamored with design. Business leaders look to designers for guidance on everything from product innovation to corporate strategy. While designers and business people may bring different perspectives to the table, they share one common language: research. But research can be dangerous. It often provides easy answers that go unquestioned because the research feels like science. What if we’ve put too much trust in research? What about the aspects of design and product development that are important, but hard to measure? Where does research end and design judgment begin?  In this talk, frog Associate Strategy Director Ben McAllister explores these questions and takes a hard look at the role of research in design. Drawing from not only design, but also economics and the philosophy of science, Ben confronts the conventional wisdom around design research, offering a new vision of how research can inspire creativity and guide decision-making.

Don’t Hire Creative People, You Already Have Them
Presenter: frog Creative Director Kate Canales

Creative thinkers are not the rare commodities that we tend to make them out to be. It is true that creative people can bring an organization much needed innovation and change. However, the notion that they need to come from the outside is not always right. Many of us don’t need to be taught creativity; we just need to be supported creatively at work. Creativity in the workplace requires context: it is not a personality trait; it is an ecosystem.

Prototype vs. Sim: Validating Software & UX Design
Presenters: frog Chief Architect Robert Tuttle, Senior Principal Design Technologist Jared Ficklin, and Principal Design Technologist Gregg Wygonik

How much smoke and how many mirrors does it take to validate interaction models in the software design process? At what point do you have to stop faking it and start making it? How do you handle the traps of realistic looking demos slipping into production or permanent betas? Labels like UX simulation, technical spike, proof-of-concept, interactive demo, functional prototype, and usability testing module get tossed around with loose definitions, fungible purposes, and often inflated expectations during the process of collaborative software design and realization. This workshop session will bring together design technology experts from frog who regularly push and pull on the boundaries of art and science to discuss and debate the challenges, opportunities, risks, and rewards of either going too far in real code on real hardware during design or not going far enough.

QR Codes, Technology, and a New Era of Fine Art
Presenter: Software Architect Jeff Wilson

Throughout history, technology has been responsible for artistic movements often influencing entire genres. Typically, these movements impacted styles, composition, or more subtle, conceptual meaning implied by the work. However, in recent years, a few, key technical improvements matched with a few, key social evolutionary steps have produced a surprising twist – altering art viewership and experience over its manufacturing process. This session will look at where the art industry is headed and what it means to “extract work off the gallery walls”. Comparisons may be made to music, film, and game development. We will cover what new ways art will be consumed, how it will be distributed and owned, and what it means to be both an artist and an art lover of the future.

Do Version Numbers Matter
Presenter: Senior Technologist Andy Couch

HTML5? CSS3? Do version numbers really matter? The technologies that power the World Wide Web started without version numbers, yet despite nearly 20 years of no one implementing a specification correctly, version numbers have been applied again and again over the years. What's the purpose? What's the benefit? Will version numbers matter in the future?