MAX 2007: Monday Keynote Part I

by Dana Tierney, MAX Correspondant

I was not sure what to expect at today's keynote, but Adobe created quite an impressive show. We sat in an auditorium with three gigantic screens, bigger than those you'd see at a movie theater. I was reminded of an IMAX film.

The first part of the keynote focused on creating the grand experiences with your applications that would give the awe you'd find at IMAX, and the message of the day was simplicity and integration. This message will be carried as well to the upcoming MAX events in Barcelona and Tokyo.

The keynote session began with a video presentation. "I'm a simple geek so I like it simple.", said a bald and bearded man onscreen. Then ColdFusion evangelist Ben Forta was up there too, talking about a lot of little pieces coming together to form something elegant. Snippet followed video snippet, all developers and software engineers talking about user experience. "If they keep coming back and keep wanting the same experience again and again, you know you've hit something.", said Kevin Lynch, Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect.

An Example in Action: Adobe Developer Connection

To illustrate their point, Adobe has just opened up the Adobe Developer Connection http://adobe.com/go/adc). Everyone who attended MAX is already a member. This is social networking at its finest. You can find other developers and view their profiles. One of the FAQU authors, Nicholas Kwiatkowski, was shown on the screen as I watched the demo. Adobe also had an area called "Create Your Own Conference." People could give presentations as they wished.

The Rules of Great Digital Experiences

Shantanu Narayen, President and Chief Operating Officer of Adobe, opened the keynote session, calling this the "best attended MAX ever."

"Great digital experiences, even today, are the exception rather than the rule," he said, and the time is ripe for a new set of applications to emerge. We need to respond to the "emotional and human needs" of the audience, to try to "make our good experiences great."

He set forth the following rules for creating these experiences:

1. Content is King.
   
   Do not think of the user interface first thing. "Make sure [it] flows from the content."

2. Make it personal. One size does not fit all.
   
   Narayen said, "The ultimate personal experience is on a phone," and proceeded to compare two very different phones:
   
   The first belongs to a middle-aged man, and the paradigm here is tv. The owner's interest is in stocks and news.
   
   The second is a teenager's phone, and it's much more geared to multimedia and messaging, with the focus on social life and fun.
   
   The phone makes a statement about its user.

3. Less is (still) more.
   
   We are in "a constant state of sensory overload." Though this is a cliche, it's still true. Narayen thinks we should enable designers and developers to speak to the core human experience.
   
   He used Premiere Express as an example. This is software which is available as a service, and has interfaces for MTV, Youtube and Photobucket. You can drag and drop clips to Premiere Express' interface, creating unique and personal experiences. He showed an example about Nelly Furtado, for which he reduced several lengthy videos to 8 seconds each, added some transition effects and a frame, and the resulting video played and was beautiful.
   The message here was: "You can focus on just a few things and do them really well."

4. Movement has meaning.
   
   Narayen talked about using transitions, cinematic effects and movement to convey meaning. For example, he showed several episodes of Good Night Burbank. If you click on an episode, there's a transition effect to show that you're going from the thumbnail to the actual clip, and there's a similar transition when you move from the clip back to the thumbnail. When you're in the middle of viewing the clip, there are breadcrumbs to show you where you are.
   
   What was he using to show this? Of course, it was the new Adobe Media Player, released at MAX, which uses the Glide user interface to keep the user aware of what's happening.

5. Create an experience, not a user interface.
   
   The immersive experience is not just for movies anymore. Narrayen showed an example of a bike tour site that was using video, GPS, Flickr and chat. "Technology is finally catching up with our vision," he said gleefully.

All of this was very convincing, but what excited me the most was the news that Flash now hyphenates Hebrew and Japanese correctly. I am familiar with Japanese, and I know the problems it has had with hyphenation on the web. This proved to me that what was being said here was not just hype but a real step forward into a new type of online experience.

Stay tuned for the second part of the keynote, The Internet Remixed.

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