Bill Solominsky

After a week to digest SXSW 2010, these posts on the last 3 days will be more of a reflection and what stuck with me from the conference.

Augmenting Maps with Reality

Interesting session that discussed how maps and data will be used in future technologies now that precise location is ubiquitous. Maps are not the interesting parts, but what kind of data will be layered on top of the maps. Two questions that came up: How can maps make people more aware of their surroundings? and how can maps be used for utility? These are the questions that the companies presenting are trying to answer in the products that they create.

Gaming the Crowd: Turning Work into Play

Great session that talked about how nearly anything can be turned into a game, and how beneficial games are for getting routine work accomplished. The session started with examples of some video games that were created to basically make fun of other games. There was the real time marathon, real time driving of a tour bus through the desert, and games that gave awards and achievements for every little thing that was done. Next was Ribbon Hero, a game where you scored points for performing different types of tasks in Word. The takeaway for me was that any task can be turned into a game which people will enjoy playing. The game does not necessarily have to be about a high score, but just a sense of accomplishing all tasks for completeness.

Perfectly Irrational: Who Put the Monkey in the Driver’s Seat? Dan Ariely

I usually am fascinated with psychology, especially when it deal with behavior. Dan Ariely talked about some interesting studies and findings.

-durations does not matter when determining pleasure or pain
-people defer to the default option
-ugly wingmen that look similar to the friend make the friend more attractive
-people value their 1st decisions
-to give into intuition is expensive