An Event Apart Austin 2012

Monday, July 9

1. 9:00am–10:00am

   Content First!

   

   Jeffrey Zeldman, author, Designing With Web Standards, 3rd Ed.

   The rules of design engagement are changing. You may no longer be in control of the user’s visual experience. Learn the number one job of every web designer, how to persuade clients and bosses not to subject users to dark patterns, why the days of “Best Viewed With…” are finally behind us, and how a mobile (or small screen) strategy can help you improve your content, rethink your web experience, and put the user first.

2. 10:15am–11:15am

   Creating UI Pattern Libraries

   

   Sarah Parmenter, You Know Who

   We’re now in a world where our designs need to adapt—and fast! A static 960 Photoshop template no longer best represents how our visitors use the web. So what’s the best way to get sign-off on our designs, in a world that is no longer one-size-fits-all? Sarah will deliver a large dose of practical advice on how to develop user interface pattern libraries within your projects to create clear, cohesive designs across a range of screens and devices.

3. 11:30am–12:30pm

   On Web Typography

   

   Jason Santa Maria, Founding Principal, Mighty

   Achieving a thorough grasp of typography can take a lifetime, but moving beyond the basics is within your reach right now. In this talk, we’ll learn how to look at typefaces with a discerning eye, different approaches to typographic planning, how typography impacts the act of reading, and how to choose and combine appropriate typefaces from an aesthetic and technical point of view. Through an understanding of our design tools and how they relate to the web as a medium, we can empower ourselves to use type in meaningful and powerful ways.

4. 12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH

5. 2:00pm–3:00pm

   Mobile to the Future

   

   Luke Wroblewski, Author, Mobile First!

   When something new comes along, it’s common for us to react with what we already know. Radio programming on TV, print design on web pages, and now web page design on mobile devices. But every medium ultimately needs unique thinking and design to reach its true potential. Through an in-depth look at several common web interactions, Luke will outline how to adapt existing desktop design solutions for mobile devices and how to use mobile to expand what’s possible across all devices. You’ll go from thinking about how to reformat your websites to fit mobile screens, to using mobile as way to rethink the future of the web.

6. 3:15pm–4:15pm

   A Content Strategy Roadmap

   

   Kristina Halvorson, author, Content Strategy for the Web

   How to make a website: discover, define, design, develop, deploy. It’s a familiar framework for most of our project processes. Now along comes this content strategy thing. Sure, it sounds like a great idea, but how does it fit in with what we’re already doing? Kristina will walk us through a typical website project to demonstrate why, how, where, and when content strategy happens.

7. 4:30pm–5:30pm

   Rolling Up Our Responsive Sleeves

   

   Ethan Marcotte, Author, Responsive Web Design

   We’ve discussed at length the fundamentals of responsive design, combining fluid grids and media queries to create more flexible, device-agnostic sites. So does that mean responsive design is a magic formula that solves all our problems? Well, no. But thankfully, we didn’t get into web design because we wanted to be bored. In this session we’ll review strategies for handling trickier elements that’d make even the most seasoned designer quail: stuff like advertising, complex layouts, deep navigation patterns, third-party media, and, yes, actual, honest-to-goodness content.

8. 7:00pm–??pm

   Opening Night Party

   

   Sponsored by (mt) Media Temple

   Media Temple’s opening night parties for An Event Apart are legendary. Join the speakers and hundreds of fellow attendees for great conversation, lively debate, loud music, hot snacks, and a seemingly endless stream of grown-up beverages. Details will be announced as the conference draws near, so stay tuned!

Tuesday, July 10

1. 9:00am–10:00am

   The Future of CSS

   

   Eric Meyer, Author, CSS: The Definitive Guide

   There’s a lot of activity happening in CSS right now. Not only are several popular aspects of CSS evolving, but major new ideas are being proposed and, in some cases, already implemented. From selectors to regions, from flexible boxes to filters, from conditionals to compositing, there is a lot coming. In this session we’ll take a look at the most popular and pressing modules, how they’ll affect what you do, and, most importantly, how you can help shape their evolution.

2. 10:15am–11:15am

   Hit it With a Pretty Stick

   

   Jenny Lam, co-founder, Jackson Fish Market

   Good visual design means more than just faithfully adhering to your chosen layout grid or applying rounded corners. Thoughtful, coherent, and professional visual design will not only help you shape the user experience, but also inform people about what your site does, how it works, and what your brand stands for. It sets the stage for a user experience that's emotional as well as functional. In this session, Jenny will discuss fundamental aesthetic principles that can be applied to web experiences of all shapes and sizes, present some objective tools for creating or critiquing site aesthetics, and offer techniques on how to fold aesthetic thinking into the development process from day one.

3. 11:30am–12:30pm

   The Spirit Of The Web

   

   Jeremy Keith, Author, HTML5 For Web Designers

   With the explosion of web-enabled devices of all shapes and sizes, the practice of web design and development seems more complex than ever. But if we can learn to see below this overwhelming surface to the underlying web beneath, we can learn to make sites not for specific devices but for the people using them. This presentation will demonstrate how tried and tested principles like REST and progressive enhancement are more important than ever. By embracing the spirit of the web, you can ensure that your websites are backwards compatible and future friendly.

4. 12:30pm–2:00pm: LUNCH

5. 2:00pm–3:00pm

   Bringing a Knife to a Gunfight

   

   Andy Clarke, Author, Hardboiled Web Design

   In the mid-nineties, when designers started making their mark on the web, they did it with software tools and processes that they’d brought with them from print. But the web’s a different place now than it was ten, five, even two years ago; the tools and processes we’ve relied on for years are no longer capable of properly designing today’s flexible, responsive web. In this session, we’ll find new ways to design that better serve the needs of today’s responsive web, and investigate better, alternative tools and approaches to design. We’ll learn too how new tools and approaches can improve communication between designers and developers and our clients.

6. 3:15pm–4:15pm

   The Real Me: Personality In Design

   

   Aarron Walter, author, Designing for Emotion

   While some companies use their brand as an opaque facade to hide questionable practices, others are opening up to their audience and sharing their true personality. The result is a more honest relationship with customers. We will share real world examples of personality in action, explore key business benefits, discuss how to create a design persona, and explain the relationship between brand voice (which must be constant in all media) and tone (which varies in each situation).

7. 4:30pm–5:30pm

   The Curious Properties of Intuitive Web Pages

   

   Jared Spool, Founder, User Interface Engineering

   When the page works, your user knows exactly what to do. Everything makes sense and they accomplish their goal, pleased with your site. Yet, often pages don’t work and users get flustered and confused. Turns out that intuitive web pages abide by a set of curiously unintuitive properties. Learn how to merge interaction design, visual design, information architecture, and other skills together to assemble pages that delight your users.

Wednesday, July 11

Designing Mobile Web Experiences

Each day, device manufacturers ship more than a million touch-screen phones enabling new ways for people to interact with the web. But when they get to your website or application, what kind of experience will people with these devices have? Will they be delighted by your mobile web experience or frustrated?

In this full-day session on web design best practices for mobile devices, Luke will detail how to think about and design for Web organization, actions, inputs, and layout on mobile. Through lots of examples, you’ll learn how to:

• Use “content first/navigate second” organizational structures optimized for small screens and mobile use cases
• Design for increasingly prevalent touch interactions with appropriate targets and gestures
• Construct forms and input fields to make input on mobile easier and more pervasive
• Manage layouts across multiple devices with ruthless editing, device experiences, and responsive/flexible designs
• And more!

Armed with these design best practices and principles, you can make sure people have a great mobile web experience whenever they visit your site.

This full-day workshop follows An Event Apart Austin and runs 9:00am - 4:00pm on Wednesday, July 11. You can register online and save over $100 when you sign up for both An Event Apart and the Designing Mobile Web Experiences workshop.

NOTE: The workshop on Designing Mobile Web Experiences is not a hands-on learning session or small-group workshop; upwards of 200 people typically attend.