As creative director and founder of New York city based design firm, Kiss Me I’m Polish, Agnieszka Gasparska leads multidisciplinary teams in developing the creative vision for websites, interactive applications, identity systems and print solutions. She has worked on projects of all shapes and sizes in the fields of Art, Design, Education and Entertainment, and her clients have included GOOD Inc., Thrillist, Refinery29, Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame and The National Recording Academy.
In her keynote address, on “Visual Personality on the Web,” Agnieszka will explore the impact of visual presentation and how it sets the tone and emotion for encounters with websites. Whether that experience is with a person, an object or a piece of visual communication, everything we see possesses a unique visual personality – and conveying that character through specific choices is what designers have long practiced in all the various forms of visual design.
What did we do before APIs, jQuery, XML, application frameworks, and open source blogging tools? Well. The truth is we did quite a lot. But, even as our wrenches and pipes have matured and even transformed, it’s more worthwhile than ever to ask ourselves what we’re producing with all of that massive horsepower.
In his Friday afternoon keynote on “Bold Ideas and Insane Possibilities,” Merlin Mann will explore the question of how our creative output has kept up with our technological innovation and whether we’re driving a legitimate revolution in how the world sees, thinks and collaborates, or simply devising a more sophisticated method for telling millions of people about what we had for breakfast.
It’s time for bold ideas and the realization of insane possibilities. That’s what the future of the Web is all about.
Online communities have been shifting and evolving since the dial tone squeal of the first modems. As we’ve seen before, it’s impossible to predict when and where the next shift(s) will happen. Therefore, what will the future of social bring? Will we see one monolithic community rise, then fall, when another takes it place? Will people flock to smaller, niche sites that better fit their personalities? When there is no blueprint, where do you begin?
In “Carpe Futurum,” Virb.com President Brad Smith and Lead Designer Ryan Sims will guide you through the pitfalls and possibilities of building successful communities and sustaining existing ones. Taken from their experiences while growing Virb, you’ll get an honest, first-hand look at the realities of maturing a community; what works, what will have you hiding under your seat, and where they see it all going.
Hiring consultants, renting expensive lab equipment, and taking months to analyze results are not in the cards for most teams. Fortunately, they aren’t the only option for cooking up a great experience. There are very inexpensive and fast techniques and tricks that teams can use that will help them see great improvements to their designs.
In his Thursday morning keynote presentation, Jared Spool will share these “fast-food budget” techniques, showing you cost and time effective methods for extracting the core benefits of any user experience design process. You’ll learn simple ways to gather information about your users, the tasks they are doing with your designs, and how well the designs meet their needs. In turn, you can use this information as you continue to make changes, thereby making each new release that much more delightful.
This year, WebVisions is welcoming back Jared Spool as a keynote speaker for his timely presentation on “Cooking Up Gourmet User Experiences on a Fast-Food Budget.” Even when organizations are tightening their belts, there are still inexpensive and fast techniques that teams can use to improve a website’s design and usability. In his keynote, Jared will share these “fast-food budget” techniques, showing cost and time effective methods for extracting the core benefits of any user experience design process. Learn simple ways to gather information about your users, the tasks they are doing with your designs, and how well the designs meet their needs. In turn, the information can be used to continue to make changes, thereby making each new release that much more delightful.
Jared will also be doing a workshop on “Designing for Content Rich Sites” on Wednesday, May 20th from 2:00 – 5:00pm.
You may have heard of Mark – he’s the co-founder of the world’s most popular blog, Boingboing.net, and the editor of MAKE Magazine, the magazine, blog and television show devoted to DIY technology projects. Oh, and he’s also one of our fav illustrators and authors with book creds that include Rule the Web, The Computer, Mad Professor and his upcoming book, The World in Your Hands. Mark will deliver the Thursday afternoon keynote at WebVisions 2009. We can hardly wait.
