Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer Panel Notes (SXSWi 2007)

Rough Notes:

The panel ended up being more about how independent designer/developers work, rather than their design aesthetic - interesting, but not really terribly applicable to me...

indie developers are where the bleeding edge happens. What developer means - changied over time - blurring relationship between designers and developers.

The death of the startup - no longer interested in the IPO - not the driving philosophy. Level playing field for mind share and distribution.

It's a small world - very easy to find what you need -

pxg site - recruiting tool

Defining design -
- great design speaks to you; it has something to say - the ipod giggle.
- hard to do great design - throwing away 80% of ideas

What are the lessons/rules we can learn from indie developers

Indie - what does it mean?
- not necessarily small; people who are designing for the user rather than the company
- building for themselves

Products are a personal obsession

Inman - Results of a conversation either with people who want the product or people using after it's built.

Gruber design process starts on paper - new notebook.

Inman - starts with research and learning.

Bradbury - build things twice - write some code, throw it away after learning about it, then start from the beginning.

when he gets stuck - he blogs about the project, and gets feedback that helps him work it out.

Gruber - looks at IM buddy list for help.

Inman - group of friends that give him good feedback and aren't afraid to tell him when something doesn't work.

Inman & Gruber - no experience working for a big corp. Bradbury - consultant, which made him want to be independent. because of the filter between himself and the user.

Listen to more fans or haters? - the haters.

Example bands that play live - immediate feedback.

lots of discussion of running an independent shop.