Recent implementation of HTML5 and CSS3 features in modern browsers allow for greater design control and creativity in our Web sites. HTML5 introduces a number of new elements and attributes that reflect typical usage on modern Web sites, including new functionality for audio and video elements. But what else is new?
In their full-day workshop on “HTML5 and CSS3” (catchy title, eh?), WebVisions veteran speakers Kimberly Blessing and Christopher Schmitt will reveal what attendees need to re-learn about markup, understand how to incorporate new HTML5 elements and embrace the new creative freedoms of of new Web typography and CSS3.
Familiar with programming, but looking to make the jump into or get serious about iPhone development? In his half-day workshop on “Real World iPhone Development,” full time iPhone developer Collin Donnell will give tips, tricks, and share real world experiences on a wide variety of iPhone related development topics including app architecture, data persistence, creating custom controls, and more.
The workshop will also cover how to make best use of Apple’s development tools such as Xcode, Interface Builder, and Instruments. Attendees will also learn how to actually get your app ready for submission through iTunes Connect.
Erin Malone is the founder of Tangible UX and has over 20 years of experience leading design teams and developing social experiences for the web. Prior to Tangible, she spent four years at Yahoo! where she founded the Yahoo! Pattern Library, and we’re excited that Erin will present a workshop on “Designing Social Interfaces” with her cohort, Christian Crumlish.
In their three-hour workshop, they’ll explore the landscape of social user experience design patterns and anti-patterns, focusing on the contexts in which specific interface designs work well and the unintended consequences that make some UI ideas seem like a good idea until they turn around and bite you in your app.
So, in brief: take their workshop, look smart and do great work.
Jason Grigsby and John Keith come to WebVisions with a hands-on workshop on “Performance Optimization for Web and Mobile” where they’ll walk through the steps to optimize a site, demonstrate techniques with a real use case and provide attendees with the tools needed to optimize their site. Whether building traditional web sites, AJAX applications or cutting edge mobile web tools, speed is paramount:
- Speed = Perception — Both of a site and the organization behind it.
- Speed = Money — Every 100ms costs Amazon 1% of sales.
- Speed = Mobile — Connection speeds and latency make mobile much slower.
- Speed = Environment — Data centers are huge power consumers. Reducing the load on servers is the right thing to do and one way to contribute to a greener earth.
Despite these benefits, most web developers are unaware of the simple techniques that can make web pages load and execute faster.
This workshop is for web and mobile web front-end designers and developers. For most web pages, 80% of download time happens after the html is delivered to the browser. The biggest gains come from optimizing html, css and javascript.
Bill Scott is one of our heroes. For 20 years he has bounced back and forth between design and engineering projects, creating products in areas as diverse as video games, widget libraries, war gaming, IDE tools, airline management and Web consumer sites. Bill currently works at Netflix, but in his prior work at Yahoo!, he was the Design Pattern curator where he launched the public Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. Bill returns to WebVisions with an outstanding workshop on “Designing with Patterns” and a session on “Bringing Design to Life: What Every Designer Should Know About Interface Engineering.” Be forewarned: Don’t miss either of these great presentations.
Justin Garrity is the new User Experience director at WebTrends. His mandate is to focus on user centered design, refined data visualization, and narrative context driven workflow. In his workshop on “Paper Prototyping,” Justin reveals the secrets of testing product interfaces—before writing code—which allows for easy and inexpensive modification to existing designs. All you need is paper, pens, scissors and your imagination. In a financial climate where frugality is a virtue, Justin’s principles for inexpensive user testing make it hard to say “no” to user centered design.
Leah Buley of Adaptive Path brings her Experience Design mojo to her half-day workshop on “Good Design Faster,” a workshop that condenses a week-long design sprint into three hours—taking participants from back-of-the-napkin sketching to the presentation of design concepts. This process enables UX professionals to move speedily from loose requirements to a clear understanding of what to wireframe and prototype, and it produces dramatically better solutions by incorporating more iteration on the right issues and more people as participants in the design process.
There is no single methodology for creating the perfect product but you can increase your odds. One of the best ways is to understand users’ reasons for doing things. Indi Young’s half day workshop on “Mental Models” gives you the tools to help you grasp and design for those reasons.
Indi observes that cognitive researchers have been describing and defining mental models for several decades. Mental models are the most effective way to align design strategy with your users’ behavior, and to approach your design from the understanding of the end user — they represent people’s behavior, philosophies, and emotion around how they accomplish something, regardless of which tools they use.
In addition to her workshop, Indi will also present a session on “Mental Models: Sparking Creativity Through Empathy.”
