This report comes to you from sunny Austin, Texas, where the Taptu team are busy drinking beer observing new trends, participating in panels and discussing new ideas. I’m spending most of the week looking for conversations about user experience in the hope that I can go back to the Taptu offices with some great ideas to improve your experience.

Funnily enough, the best inspiration I’ve found so far hasn’t been in a panel or presentation, but rather walking the streets of Austin. This sign is on a fairly busy road, next to a music venue and makes it unexpectedly easy for musicians to stop their rusty tour bus by the door to unload their equipment.

What’s beautiful about this is that it’s completely wacky and unusual but so much more intelligent and convenient. It’s so easy to stick to the rulebook and say “No, we can’t do that. That’s not how it’s done” and force the tour bus to go park at the end of the road and walk down with their gear. In the same way, it’s easy to create a site or an app in the normal, expected way, at the cost of the user’s time and clicks.

That’s where I hope we can learn from Austin; We will do everything we can, even if it’s a bit wacky, in order to make you, the rock band, have a better experience with us. So tell us, what can we do for you?

[Image source: Jamie Zawinski, DNA Lounge]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 12:31 am and is filed under Community and social networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.