Wednesday, April 22
Featured Presentations 1
8:30AM—10:00 AM
Both sessions will occur concurrently. All you have to do is take a seat in the one you're most intereseted in.
Web Everywhere: New Insights in Web Standards Development and Design
Molly Holzschlag
Contrary to what certain usability leaders have recommended regarding mutli-modal Web design, the Web Everywhere (also known as Open Web) concept challenges contemporary "keep 'em separated" practices for building sites and applications. Open Web embraces an integrated ideology: That users should have the richest experience of any Web site or app on any application possible.
In this session, we'll discuss how developing and designing Web-based content with integration of multimodal techniques is changing. Our focus must be the end user no matter his or her abilities, browser, device or preferences, and creating the richest experience possible.
Making Apps that Work for Everyone: Accessibility Beyond Compliance
Derek Featherstone
The real world requires solutions that get you and people with disabilities using your apps right now. Learn strategies for ensuring what really matters: functional performance and how to achieve it sooner rather than later. Back by popular demand, this year, Derek has added an entirely new section on techniques that enhance the usability of your applications for people with disabilities -- techniques that you can take away and use tomorrow.
Featured Presentations 2
10:30 AM—12:00 PM
Both sessions will occur concurrently. All you have to do is take a seat in the one you're most intereseted in.
Using Interactive Prototyping for a Richer Web Experience
James Box and Richard Rutter, Clearleft
Wireframes come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and have long been a trusted tool for the UX professional. But as the web moves towards richer, more nuanced forms of interaction, our old friend is beginning to creak.
Enter the interactive prototype. An elegant tool designed to meet the needs of a more sophisticated web experience.
Using real-world examples, Rich and James will demonstrate how prototypes can be more than simple 'deliverables' and are actually highly effective design tools, perfect for the demands of an agile, iterative process.
We will share techniques honed on live projects at Clearleft that allow you to capture seemingly complex behavior such as ajax-like interactions and state-change with relative ease. How frameworks such as JQuery can be your friend and most importantly how to ensure prototypes give maximum return for both you and your client.
To Be Unique is to Stand Alone: Improve UX Collaboration by Unifying Your Deliverables
Nathan Curtis
After reviewing over 1,000 deliverables produced by UX designers over the past two years, one thing is brutally clear: no teams - in fact, no two individuals - seem to produce deliverables like wireframes the same way. And that's a shame.
Sure, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. However, too many designers seem guided by the flawed notion that not just design but documentation too must be ever unique. This leaves readers flustered, confused, and often dismissive. Even worse, not adopting a uniform approach may diminish a team's influence and credibility, and maybe even our role in the industry.
This session will share the practical techniques that EightShapes has learned from, taught and embedded in teams large (40+) and small (<10), discipline-specific (IAs only) and cross-disciplinary (IA, visual design, content strategists, and more) over three years. Just as important, you'll learn of challenges and pitfalls so you can avoid failures we've experienced along the way.
In particular, this talk will focus on how to modularize design assets across files, reuse artwork in interesting, valuable, and manageable ways, and even how multiple disciplines can thread deliverables together (such as blending copy and wireframes).
Peer-to-Peer Roundtable Lunch
12:00 PM—1:00 PM
If you missed the roundtable discussions on Monday, this is your chance to try it out. Sign up for a topic near the registration desk then join your peers at the table to discuss the challenges and opportunities you're facing in that topic.
Keynote Presentation
1:15 PM—2:15 PM
Revealing Design Treasures from The Amazon
Jared Spool
On its surface, Amazon.com just seems like a large e-commerce site, albeit a successful one. Its design isn't flashy, nor is it much to write home about. But deep within its pages are hidden secrets - secrets that every designer should know about.
If one looks closely at what the team at Amazon has built, it's filled with innovative functionality and clever designs, all of which creates a delightful experience for its users and directly produces regular profits for its shareholders. But not all is perfect. Some design changes in the last few years have not been the success that the team hoped for. Amazon's exceptional qualities and imperfections are critical knowledge for any designer that wants to dig deep into what makes the site tick.
In this entertaining presentation, Jared will share some of UIE's latest research into the hidden treasures of (the) Amazon. You'll learn:
- The simple Yes/No question that increased revenues by more than $1 billion
- The elegant subtlety of Amazon's security system
- Why Amazon's business model is more than meets the eye (and why designers need to care)
- The wins and losses that Amazon has had with social media functionality
New Perspectives Talks
2:30 PM—3:45 PM
United We Stand: From Lewis and Clark to Designers and Engineers
Nate Koechley
In 1803, Lewis and Clark shared command of the newly-formed Corps of Discovery. Both were young and adventurous and had shared experience as woodsmen-frontiersmen and Army officers. But the two were quite different in education and temperament. Lewis was speculative and at home with abstract ideas; Clark was more pragmatic.
Lewis and Clark shared their experiences in 5000 journal pages. Nate will report Yahoo's in this 75-minute talk. He'll reveal where they met expectations, and where they encountered hurdles. He'll demonstrate communication tools they’ve created and why they help designers and developers work better. Nate will share Yahoo's keys to adoption, community, and ongoing vitality. Perhaps most interestingly, they’ve discovered hints of a grammar shared between object oriented programming and object oriented design that he’ll unveil in this session.
4:15 PM—5:30 PM
Designing For First-time Use
Joshua Porter
At some point, every person who uses your web application uses it for the first time. Unfortunately, competing interests often make that first impression an afterthought on many design projects. Yet many applications get into a situation where they have lots of folks sign up, but very few people stay to use the software.
In this talk, Joshua Porter will give that first impression the attention it deserves, discussing design strategies to get your users off to a quick start. He'll discuss ways to get people started quickly, from one-time setup screens to pre-populating fields. He'll show tons of examples of applications that do it well, and those that need to rethink their first impression.