zakiwarfel.com

Careful about using thumb drives as a solution to the program problem. Not sure how many are like me, but I can’t use unauthorized thumb drives on my work computer for security reasons.

As Chair of EuroIA (and as a leading supplier of lanyards for various UX/IA conferences through my company, FatDUX) I’m dying to see what you come up with.

A caveat:
I don’t have an iPhone. I don’t want another cheap thumb drive. Making me print out a program may save you money, but it doesn’t save the trees. Rather, I would like big signs that tell me what’s going on. I’ve never entirely understood why the program isn’t available on a big board – like the flight departures at an airport. But as an option, I’ve appreciated the mini programs that have been included with the badges at the past couple of IA Summits. But why does this information need to be part of the badge at all?

Bigger type for the name is critical. But place of work is interesting, too, as is location. As a 55-year-old with eyeglasses that focus well at distances and for reading, but are less useful in between, I have to strain to read most badges at conversational distances. One young woman actually told me to “stop staring at my tits” when in fact, I was trying to see which company she worked for (it was Playboy enterprises – I kid you not!).

Flipping around could be solved by printing the same info on both sides (and making sure it’s not obscured by other crap stuck into the badge holder). I honestly thought the first IxDA conference badge in Savannah, with two hanging points worked fairly well (and no pockets for cards). Unfortunately, the organizers muddled things up by tacking together a total of five cards with program info, plugs for Twitter and CrowdVine, plus an entire handbook on how to get the most out of a conference (Sample headline: “Climb the career ladder”). A lot of manual labor, beautifully executed – but to whose benefit?

European law now requires break-away lanyards (so folks don’t strangle themselves if the string gets caught in a car or elevator door). Hence, the string solution is both outdated and demonstrably unsafe. But since most promotional lanyards have a single point of contact with the badge, perhaps the badge needs a small string of its own, with two contact points (the double-pyramid model, if you’re into engineering – or check out the last five minutes of “The DaVinci Code”).

Even better, why make the damned badge do so many things (hold business cards, etc.) Honestly, if people need business cards, is it really our responsibility to supply them? Or to carry them? Gosh, what about a built-in cup holder? I could use that.

To be frank, I miss the old badges that you simply pinned to your chest. They were generally placed at a good height, never turned around, and were dead cheap to produce…ah, but the current business model encourages organizers to sell lanyard advertising.

So the question remains, what is the primary purpose of the conference badge? And having solved this problem once, why have we allowed the concept to get so screwed up by producing Swiss-Army badges?

Eric, some good points to ponder.

Actually, not printing the full program not only saves printing costs, but it does actually save trees—we don’t have to kill them to print a 10lb program that most people end up leaving behind. In doing research on conference scheduling/wayfinding, one of the things we found was that attendees don’t carry around the full printed programs. They’re too bulky and heavy. We also found that attendees often leave the swag bag and the printed program behind at the end of the conference. Who needs another swag bag anyway? Let’s cut the waste.

Displaying the schedule on large 42″ plasmas like they do in airports is part of the entire wayfinding system design we’re investigating. Great suggestion.

As I said being able to see the identity 10′ away is our bench mark. This should work for people with booth good and less than perfect (re: aging) eyesight .

While printing on both sides would address the flipping around issue, it ends up taking up space for something that could be more useful to attendees (e.g. the wayfinding map). We think a good conference badge/wayfinding system should be able to accommodate both.

Why make the badge be some many things? Well, frankly, we’re designing for behavior. While we were doing research, we identified a number of problems/questions: who are you, what’s going on here, and how do I get there?

The fact is that these are all behaviors that are common at conferences. Not only do people have problems identifying each other, but the other issues of “what’s going on now” and “how do I get there” are commonplace.

We like the airport terminal display idea, but that only solves the problem when you’re near one. Often times, the most interesting conversations happen in the hallways. We want to provide scheduling and wayfinding there as well. The badge/wayfinding system is the perfect opportunity for this.

I really agree with most of what you’re saying. But I would honestly appreciate purpose-built tools. For EuroIA, I’m considering a big, hand-lettered sign for the program – sorry, 42″ just ain’t big enough. And no one asked for plasma – they want info. Cardboard is cheap and doesn’t need electricity to run or molly bolts to hang up.

Regarding the program. Well, what exactly are we talking about here? Proceedings? (They’re heavy) Or a single sheet of paper to tell you where and when? (easy peasy). Yeah. A lot of swag bags get left behind because they’r filled with junk that has too little relevance after the conference or is filled with promotional crap. Personally, I hate them – FatDUX donated almost 50K Euros last year on promotion (mostly scholarships). And we’re incredibly proud that we didn’t have a single piece of printed swag anywhere.

I realize it’s no fun to do a design slam if someone criticizes the basic premise of the problem you set out to solve. But I do think you need to move away from the concept of a “badge” and over to “what do our attendees need”.

So change your premise. Fuck the badge. Fuck the bag. What are you doing to enhance my experience????

@eric that’s exactly what we’re doing—building a purpose built tool. We’re looking holistically here. if you look at the post, we’re actually looking at a number of design problems that attendees have at conferences (e.g. what’s going on, where am I, what’s up next, who are you, let’s keep in touch). These are typical design problems that happen during the conversations in the hall.

Our goal here is to design for that behavior rather than make attendees change their behavior, which we know won’t happen.

On your point about large cardboard signs for schedules. That’s a possible idea. However, we’re looking more at the overall experience and thinking of incorporating something richer like the schedule, sponsorship opportunities that are non-disruptive, and live twitter/flickr feeds. These aren’t possible with something like a poster. However, they are possible with some type of active panel display. Also, we’ve been finding that a three hour window for the schedule is all we need. An active display could easily provide that.

Oh, and we agree with the f*ck the badge. That’s why we’re redesigning it . We’re after the entire experience here. After all, it is a Design conference.

Can’t wait to see what you come up with. Sounds like several different purpose built tools are involved, which is exactly what I was hoping you’d come up with.

See you in Savannah!

Fantastic. Some great logic here. Looking forward to seeing pics of the prototypes.

How about a tshirt with a white space on the front where you can write your name in sharpie, and the schedule on the back.

Last year’s Interaction conference had a space to write your @twitter ID. Only thing is, I wouldn’t want people wearing that shirt every day. Especially not in Savannah. Also, printing the schedule on the back of the shirts is a little inconvenient if nobody in your group has the shirt on.