Just sitting here waiting for the keynote by Jeffery Zeldman. It’s really exciting finally being able to attend these events that I’d only dream and pout about just last year. They really go all-out with the venue and ambient. It’s at the Palace Hotel this year and it’s super ritzy.

I’m sure it’s been said before but, Zeldman is a lot shorter in person that I thought and he’s wearing pink Crocs today :). Also, Eric Meyer’s hair is super long…weird.

Ben Markham, a BYU alumnus who served as an LDS missionary in Ghana discovered a serious problem: as many as 10,000 schools operate without any electricity. So, he collaborated with the BYU School of Engineering and Technology and created a design-based solution. Using existing and affordable parts, he and the students constructed a merry-go-round that acts as a generator. The energy from the spinning playground toy is stored in a battery which in turn powers the school’s low-power LED lights. Brilliant!

The kids get a toy (which are, sadly, rare) and the school gets resources for more effective teaching. As another stroke of genius, the LED lights are themselves rechargeable so the students can take them home with them to continue their studies.

I was touched by the generosity and intelligence displayed through this act of service. It’s stories like these that convince me that there is always something to improve by way of design and God makes it possible for those willing to listen and follow through.

I’ll share some highlights from my notes after the jump.

• Joel Dehlin
• The Church is a supply chain arrangement. We have a product to deliver and we have to deal with overhead, spoilage, etc. just like any other supply chain setup.
• His focus is to deliver the technical platform to spread the Gospel. His primary points are:
1. deliver high-quality content to a global audience
2. decrease administration in order to increase ministration
3. bring souls to Christ
• Church websites not including familysearch.org receive around 50 million pageviews per month!
• The same websites welcome 5 million unique visitors each month!
• The new online application system for missionaries has cut the time from start to call-received in half.
• They are working toward providing portals for various user-groups within the Church in order to decrease administration. For example, allowing a bishop to login from his home to check on numbers/stats/callings/etc. Also, a new focus for web-based training for various callings.
• The top four challenges the team faces are:
1. Scale — how to deal with technology challenges in third-world countries and rapid growth
2. Languages, customs, and context
3. Complexity of content and requirements
4. Spending the Lord’s money wisely — how to have a top-notch IT department while spending sacred funds
• Tadd Giles
• The Interaction Design team is quite new and emerging inside the Church.
• He expects the team to be “jacks-of-all-trades/masters-of-a-couple-things”. For example, business analysts, UI developers, user researchers, and content analysts, etc.
• They use a process that seems to reflect the Getting Real approach in that they use a rapid prototyping process that heavily involves the customer and makes use of real screens to reach agreement.
• Some of the challenges that Tadd et al. face:
1. demand far exceeds supply. (this I like to hear as I’d love to work with this group )
2. maintaining consistency
3. globalization/localization of content/styling
4. accessibility
5. mobility
6. doing things the Lord’s way

That pretty much sums up my experience. I’m very glad I drove the six hours total to attend.

It’s great that there are people out there with enough time and motivation to work on such things and make them available to everyone else.

It’s great that there are people out there with enough time and motivation to work on such things and make them available to everyone else.