10:00AM—11:30AM

AJAX And RIAs: Moving Functionality Over to the Client

Steve Mulder, Molecular

Learn what makes these new browser-based technologies so powerful for application developers. Steve Mulder will walk through Molecular's decision process on when (and when not to) use Ajax and RIAs to solve their client's toughest application-design problems.

If browser-side technologies such as AJAX and Flash are powerful flames heating up the Web, then designers are the glassblowers. It's up to design teams to creative intuitive, engaging interfaces on top of the new possibilities that AJAX and Flash bring. Yet, old skills aren't enough in this age of animated transitions, asynchronous interactivity, and application-like behavior.

What does every designer need to know to move from classic HTML sites to these new, dynamic rich interfaces? Steve will talk about effective ways to incorporate user feedback into an interactive interface, and how timing can be the difference between an design that delights and one that falls flat.

He'll also discuss how traditional ideals such as discoverability and simplicity take on new meaning when we design rich interfaces. Steve will walk you through examples of both successful and failed rich interfaces, so you can jumpstart your own great design ideas.

11:30AM—12:30PM

Peer-to-Peer Lunch

There will be hundreds of web application designers, developers, and usability professionals at Web App Summit 2008. Wouldn't it be cool to connect up with others who are tackling the same challenges you're facing? That's why we've added a special peer-to-peer lunch for this year's event. In the weeks leading up to the Summit, you'll specify the challenges you're facing and the ones you've tackled. Then, at lunch, you'll connect up with your peers and learn from their experiences.

12:30PM—2:00PM

Serious Design Considerations when using AJAX

Jeremy Keith, Clearleft

Browser-side technologies are extremely powerful, but they have serious constraints. Jeremy Keith, expert in web design, will show us what we need to look out for and how to work around any hurdles.

Every day, browser-based applications are feeling and looking more like the sophisticated desktop applications we've come to know and love. Yet, all this sophistication comes with a price: implementation complexity. Subtle differences in browser and platform implementations, server connectivity reliability, and legacy application constraints are just a few of the hurdles developers need to jump to create Ajax applications.

Yet, developers all over the world are taking design interactions, previously thought to be impossible in the browser, and bringing them to reality. In the last few years, we've seen incredibly smooth map manipulation, dynamic inventory updating, embedded multi-media viewers, and even highly-functional word processing, spreadsheet, and image-editing applications.

Now, it's critical that every designer understand what's possible with the technology. We need to know what is simple to implement and how to reduce the risk creating downstream quality issues because of platform and implementation issues.

Jeremy is one of the foremost authorities in Ajax implementations today. He'll help you understand where today's boundaries lay and how to avoid the traps and pitfalls that can quickly degrade your user's experience.

2:15PM—3:45PM

When Designers Get Too Clever: Avoiding the Traps of Bad Design

Bill Scott, Netflix

In the wrong hands, powerful interaction tools can turn a great experience into something painful. Bill Scott, the brains behind the Yahoo! UI Pattern Library, will show us exactly what we can learn when we study design catastrophes.

When the first web sites appeared, pages were filled with horrific elements, such as blinking text, dancing graphics, auto-playing theme music, pattern-filled backgrounds, and who could forget the "skip intro" splash pages. Created by well-meaning designers who wanted to add flair and pizzazz to their designs, it quickly became clear these stylistic elements weren't enhancing the user's experience.

Now, here we are with new interaction tools and, as happens, history is repeating itself. In an attempt to add more flair and pizzazz, designers are making serious interaction design mistakes, embedding gratuitous, unnecessary, and often frustrating usage modes into their designs. And, like the web sites of years past, they often reach production without the designers realizing the traps they've fallen into.

For the last few years, Bill Scott has assembled an amazing collection of these grievous design travesties and we've convinced him to bring them out for our perusal and amusement. He'll show us where designers committed acts of egregious drag-and-drop, tiny close buttons, and menus that fly across the screen, all in the name of creating delightful experiences.

But, the fun doesn't stop there. Bill has also gleaned important design lessons from each of these examples. We'll see counterexamples that what would've happened, had the designers made different choices. We'll walk away with a ton of ideas on what we can (and shouldn't) do to make our presentations more effective.

4:00PM—5:30PM

Engaging an Audience: Using Out-of-the-Box Thinking to Create Great Designs

Andrew DeVigal, The New York Times

Presenting complex information doesn't have to be boring. Learn how The New York Times takes data and raw information from the day's news and turns it into highly interactive and informative online experiences.

Barry Bonds' recent ascent of Major League Baseball's all-time home run record was news for a variety of reasons. While other news sites reported the story, the designers at the New York Times put together an interactive graphic, comparing Bonds' ascent to other record holders over the decades. Clicking on the graph quickly gives insight into how Bonds compared to greats like Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth. Yet the team didn't stop there: the chart will continue to update as new players make a run at the record.

This is just one example of the amazing work being produced by the talented design team at The New York Times. They've created a slew of interactive graphics, including a visual record of fallen war soldiers, an interactive map showing what it's like to run the New York Marathon, and an interactive map showing the travel schedules of the presidential candidates as they near the final year of the 2008 campaign.

We're extremely lucky to have a key member from The New York Times team, Andrew DeVigal, to share his inspirations, walk us through their design process, and reveal some of their journalistic techniques. He'll show several of his favorite projects and explain how just the right mix of talent, heart-pounding deadlines, and luck produce some remarkable results.