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The Designer's Toolbox: Your Brain on Fire
with Simon Collison
Practical ways to think smarter, respond better, design bolder, and produce magic
Understanding design problems and finding responses is what we do. We must make sense of what we’re given, and twist raw components into something engaging, meaningful, and perhaps unexpected. We’ve all heard about emotion, delight, storytelling, and responsiveness, but how can we efficiently and creatively put these at the centre of our process and discover stunning ideas? Well, in this very practical workshop, Simon will open his toolbox and explore numerous methods that brave designers can use to craft bold and interesting responses to even the dullest of briefs.
What will you learn?
- Understanding design problems
- Preparing our responses
- Better brainstorming for designers
- Sketching with purpose and constraints
- Opportunities for storytelling and personality
- Designing layouts and systems, analog-style
- Planning for surprise and delight
- Collating and analyzing responses
- Blueprints for a better digital process
What should you know?
This workshop avoids all talk of project or client management, and plunges straight in to the creative thinking process. It’s about empowering designers, but in truth anyone with creative input should benefit from the ideas and exercises. A few aspects may suit more experienced front-end designers, but the workshop covers methods and approaches that we can all use to design better responses and find the magic that produces great, engaging design.
What should you bring?
You won’t need to bring anything on the day, but laptops are welcome. Sharpies and paper will be supplied.
Simon Collison is a designer who probably spends more time thinking than designing. He’s been thinking and designing at the sharp end for well over a decade, and regularly presents his thoughts at conferences and in publications. He’s worked in a variety of situations for bands, governments, banks, explorers and most other things. He’s currently collaborating on a bold new music start-up, and organizes the annual New Adventures events. Simon is based in Nottingham UK but travels a lot, and will spend much of 2012 making short films with only his iPhone, a tripod, and some other gadgets. @colly | www
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Understanding User Experience
with Lynne Polischuik
UX and UI Are Not The Same Thing!
User Experience shouldn’t be the domain of one department or something that is quickly tacked on at the end of a project. Whether you are a designer, developer, product manager, marketer or content strategist, this hands-on workshop will teach you new, user-focused ways of approaching your projects and clearly demonstrate why ‘UX’ and ‘UI’ are not the same thing.
What will you learn?
- An introduction to ‘Guerrilla Research’ techniques
- To participate in a design studio exercise
- An overview of the fundamental processes, tools and methodologies that make user experience so powerful, from sketching to usability testing
- A look into “Lean UX” and ways that designers, developers and product teams can align behind a strategic UX vision and play nicely together
What should you know?
While this workshop is geared towards those new to the concept of User Experience, even experienced practitioners will come away with tips, tricks and new ways of engaging the entire project team, integrating good design practice and bringing the focus back to your users.
What should you bring?
Yourself. A laptop is optional if you’d like to take notes, but a workbook and slides on workshop content will be provided to you. We will be tackling hands on research and design techniques, so come ready to doodle–don’t worry, we’ll provide the Sharpies.
Lynne Polischuik, with nearly ten years of industry experience, has held roles in digital marketing before specializing in web analytics and further refining her skills in user experience strategy and interaction design. As an independent designer and consultant, Lynne developed a diverse client roster and worked across a variety of projects, tackling everything from corporate intranets and government sites to online applications for several Vancouver and Bay Area-based start-ups.
Currently she is a Senior User Experience Strategist with Analytic Design Group, an IxDA local leader for Vancouver and an advisor and member of The Designer Fund. Lynne is passionate about design and social entrepreneurship and constantly seeking ways that design can have meaningful impact. @lynneux | www
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Writing Compelling Content
with Stephanie Hay
A hands-on workshop for non-writers
If you’re NOT a copywriter but have found yourself writing content that clients or end users ultimately read, then this workshop is right up your alley. I’m going to teach you some pragmatic techniques for replacing Lorem Ipsum with usable content that compels users to *do* something. My goal is that you’ll walk away feeling more confident that you can — even without being a journalist by trade — write content that truly engages readers. (And without stressing out about it for days on end!)
What will you learn?
How to write great content for web and mobile usability. This workshop is all about helping non-writers get the tools and methods they need to write effective, engaging copy that makes people *do* something, like sign up or buy or come back for more.
- The 4 characteristics of compelling content
- Where to start when writing content from scratch
- How to prioritize messages during the writing process
- Techniques for editing existing content that sucks
- Tips for injecting personality while maintaining balance
What should you bring?
We’ll be going through a hands-on process of creating a message hierarchy, prioritizing messages, and writing bits of content. So folks will need to bring whatever text editor they love, whether it’s a laptop with Word, a Google doc, or a sketchbook and pencil. Be prepared to write, revise, and exchange high fives.
What should you know?
This workshop is aimed at anyone who writes content that end-users see. If you know you can write stronger content — if only someone could help you with practical ways of doing just that — then you should attend.
Steph Hay left farm country in Ohio to live near DC in 2003. (Ok, she followed a boy there; then she broke up with him 3 weeks later.) Little did she know that she’d stay and build a whole life with help from awesome friends, a burgeoning tech community, and brilliant coworkers at agencies like Viget Labs. Now, she’s running her own IA, UX, and copywriting consultancy – well, when not teaching kickboxing, co-organizing DC Lean Startup Circle, or changing the face of customer service with FastCustomer. @steph_hay | www
Afternoon Sessions 12:30 – 4:00
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Intro to Drawing with HTML5's Canvas
with Thomas Lewis
Drawing on the web without the need for plug-ins
With the introduction of the <canvas> element into the wonderful and magical world of HTML5, we now have a drawing API that can help us create experiences that we imagine and make them real on the web.
What will you learn?
- See examples of fun <canvas> apps ranging from casual games to data visualizations.
- Learn the fundamentals of <canvas> and how to manipulate it with JavaScript.
- Compare <canvas> with its cute sister <svg>.
- Learn the fundamentals of game and animation mechanics.
- Find best practices and real-world lessons in <canvas> performance and how to stay away from anti-patterns.
What should you bring?
A hammer, sugar, garden shears, marshmallows, sea shells, bicycle pants…oops, wrong workshop. All the links, demos, decks will be available online so that you can follow along or dig into something a bit deeper; so you may want to bring your computing device of choice.
What should you know?
We will be talking about the fundamentals of <canvas>, so you should just come with a baseline of HTML and JavaScript knowledge. But even if you don’t know them intimately, you should be able to follow along.
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Design Like You Mean It
with Matthew Smith
Learn to use the grid, design with hierarchy, use content to help you design, and design for responsive use cases
Learn how to take content and shape it to get business results. This is not a workshop about how to use a drop shadow, although you may learn a thing or two about that too. This is about using design as a vital tool to be profitable for you, for your clients, and for your companies. This is about designing holistically with realistic perspectives on development. This is about beer – okay, not beer, but doesn’t that sound enticing…
What will you learn?
- How to ask the right questions of your client or content provider
- How to layout your design with typography first
- How to make design decisions that make business sense
- How to drink beer while you design
- How to deliver a design to your client and the dev (if you’re not the dev)
What should I know?
You should know how to use Photoshop or (gasp) Fireworks. You should know that Helvetica is a sans serif and Georgia is a serif. You should know enough about web design to know that everything is changing and you’re actually excited about the change.
What should I bring?
Your brain. A beer if Shawn will let you. A laptop with Photoshop or Fireworks installed. Some content from a page you want to design, or a page you want to redesign (like Seth Godin’s blog for instance).
Matthew Smith is the Creative Director at Zaarly. He and his cohorts are trying to disrupt big box commerce and take back the neighborhood economy one great story at a time. He invented PatternTap.com, started CoWork Greenville, and speaks internationally on quality and craftsmanship in business and design. He’s smitten with his bride Amy, and has three amazing children, all of whom he dwells with in Greenville, South Carolina. @whale | www
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A Web Designer's Workflow
with Chris Coyier
A day in the life of a web designer building a website with his favorite tools
This workshop is going to be covering the complete front end web designer’s workflow. As many of you will already be web designers, what everyone learns will be different. We will be covering converting a Photoshop design to a live website. We’ll start with the tools we plan to use, writing semantic markup based on design, writing CSS with a preprocessor, using design patterns, making things happen with JavaScript, and who knows what all else we’ll encounter along the way.
What will you learn?
- How to get started writing code quickly
- How to write HTML and CSS based on what you see
- Two-second version control
- How to not be scared of preprocessors
- How you’re probably already pretty good at JavaScript but didn’t know it
What should you know?
I think you’ll be best off with at least a little bit of experience in writing HTML and CSS. Or, at least a strong desire to learn those things and a positive go-with-the-flow attitude. We have a whole website to build so we’ll all probably want to keep things scooting along.
What should you bring?
Watching and participating by asking questions / adding comments is going to be the best way to get a lot out of this workshop, so you probably won’t need much. Probably just your favorite electronic device for taking notes and checking Twitter or however you get your little dopamine bursts.
Most of Chris Coyier’s life revolves around web design and he’s proud of it! He considers himself a web craftsman since he has a fairly good understanding of how the web works, he builds on it every day, and he’s always trying to make it better.
He has a pup named Digby, a lab mix going on about 2 years. He likes spending time with her, be it trips to the park, taking her out camping in the woods, or looking her straight in the eye, saying made up words, and watching her head tilt.
Chris is currently living in Palo Alto, California and working for SurveyMonkey / Wufoo. He wrote a book called Digging Into WordPress, runs a website all about front end web development called CSS-Tricks, and speak at conferences like this one. He also loves the banjo, serialized television programs, and pistachios. @chriscoyier | www
