UI17

Creating Adaptive, Responsive Web Designs Sold Out!

Design compelling experiences by focusing on content first and challenging yourself on every decision. Use progressive enhancement techniques to build cross-platform designs.

Aaron Gustafson

November 7, 8:30am - 5:30pm

Morning

Organizing and structuring your design’s content, UX, and markup

- The philosophy behind progressive enhancement and modern web design
- Why progressive enhancement relates to customer service, regardless of device
- A process for breaking down site content, then organizing and prioritizing it

Learning the opportunities and constraints of HTML5

- How to make HTML elements, forms, and microformats work semantically
- Techniques to control and manipulate a natural document outline
- An exercise for brainstorming markup ideas just by looking at a web page

Afternoon

Achieving “mobile first” and “responsive design” using CSS

- Methods for building from a simple set of styles that all browsers support
- Ways to integrate CSS3 and natural breakpoints to achieve responsive designs
- How to organize content and screen real estate for multi-device viewing

Marrying interaction and accessibility in your design

- Different approaches to hiding content and designing interactive widgets
- Which resolutions and device capabilities work for users with special needs
- Processes for creating adaptive UI’s, using JS creatively, and capitalizing on ARIA

Your Mobile Toolbox Is About To Double In Size

Dispel your mobile fears

You feel pressure from bosses, clients, and peers to “embrace mobile.” But just scratching the surface of possibilities has been exhausting and overwhelming. That is, until this workshop.

Build robust experiences

When you focus exclusively on designing sexy desktop and mobile sites, performance issues can derail everything. Learn how to architect solid experiences for our multi-channel world.

Create accessible designs

Whether you’re a champion or unconvinced, knowing how to make designs accessible is a skill — not a talent. Integrate accessibility controls in your process and become an authority.

4 Practical Takeaways from Aaron’s Workshop

Designs that go beyond simple styling
Great web pages come from understanding the mechanics first.

Handy techniques for working with CSS and microformats
Use the web’s building blocks with ease and enthusiasm.

HTML5 and CSS3 skills that transcend devices
Start building more intricate experiences that work across platforms.

Techniques to build fully-accessible designs
Get comfortable with ARIA, be the go-to expert for accessible design.

This workshop includes 2+ hands-on exercises

No team activities here! You’ll be interacting as a group during practical conversations Aaron will lead, then wireframing and sketching by yourself during focused periods. And be prepared to pick up — and practice — some new coding techniques along the way.

You'll see how to:

Fill your gaps in knowledge that come from being self-taught
Influence user experiences by using individual elements of a web page
Build awesome designs by challenging yourself on each decision
Deal with stereotypically painful parts of the web. (cough IE6 cough)
Push beyond the rote way of thinking about your job
More naturally think about people who don’t experience the web like you do

Related Podcasts:

Adapting Your Designs with
Progressive Enhancement

Aaron Gustafson, Progressive Enhancementologist

@AaronGustafson

Even if you’ve already read Aaron Gustafson’s book, Adaptive Web Design, you’re still going to learn more than you thought possible in a single day.

Why? Because Aaron isn’t just an authority on building cross-platform experiences — he’s a natural instructor who focuses on practical techniques you can start using now.

Which is why we’re ecstatic to have him, and also why you’ll love learning from him.

As the group manager for WaSP and man behind Web Standards Sherpa, Aaron works passionately and tirelessly to advance web standards across our industry. He also runs the web consultancy Easy Designs, has authored a slew of articles for .net Magazine and A List Apart, and frequently mentors teams at organizations such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and SAS.