Notes from my week.
Continue reading Weeknotes 2020.09.26–2020.10.04
Tag: design
An Event Apart: “The New Design Material”
Josh Clark speaking at An Event Apart Orlando 2018 on October 10, 2018
Just as mobile defined the last decade of digital products, machine learning is set to define the next. Learn to use machine-generated content, insight, and interaction as design material in your everyday work. Refit familiar design and UX process to work with the grain of the algorithm, to help the machines solve real problems without creating new ones. This lively and inspiring talk explores the technologies and practical techniques that you can use today—like right now—not only to make existing products better but to imagine surprising new services. The challenges and opportunities of machine learning are plenty; learn to handle this powerful new design material with care and respect.
An Event Apart: “Leveling Up Your Design Communication”
Aarron Walter speaking at An Event Apart Orlando 2018 on October 10, 2018
Design is a medium for communication, and to do it well, we must cultivate our own communication skills. Within design teams, we do our best work when we create a culture of feedback shaped by our creative space and our design review process. Beyond the design tribe, our work thrives when it’s communicated in language that aligns to the goals of the business and invites participation early and often. In this presentation, Aarron will share the experiences of real design teams at Apple, Spotify, and other organizations to show how to improve the communication of design both inside your team and with key outside stakeholders. You’ll see how to run effective design reviews and retrospectives which will help you create a culture of feedback that produces better work, helps designers sharpen their skills, and communicates the value of design by making it more transparent and inviting.
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An Event Apart: “’Til Launch Do Us Part”
Dan Mall speaking at An Event Apart Orlando 2018 on October 9, 2018
From one designer to a front-end developer: I’m so grateful for you. You take my pretty pictures and turn them into real-live websites and applications; you convert ideas and sketches into real things that people can use. And even despite that superpower, you rarely get the respect you deserve. It’s time for that to change. No longer will I throw my comps over the proverbial wall for you to blindly build. I’ll change my process for you. Let’s sketch together more to be more efficient and effective as a team. Let’s decide in the browser more. I’ll learn to write JSON for you. Let’s share stories about new, more modern ways of shipping products at higher quality in record time. This is gonna be great!
An Event Apart: “Durable Design”
Jon Tan speaking at An Event Apart Orlando 2018 on October 9, 2018
We’ve come such a long way in the last 20 years from a grass-roots web standards movement to Wired magazine launching a standards-based interface in 2003, to today, with all the tools and methods that inform current web design. But, where next? This talk makes a radical argument for recidivism in our design thinking; a return to durable, aesthetic, and inclusive web design. Through evidence and examples, you’ll learn to design for serendipity, for speed, and for economy of time, resources, and attention. Durable design is responsive design for the next decade, and it starts now.
An Event Apart: “Designing an Intuitive Navigation”
Gerry McGovern speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.
Confusing menus and links are the number one issue people have in getting stuff done in digital. Sure, search is critical but even the best search usually only jumps you down a few levels in the navigation hierarchy. To complete your task you nearly always have to click more, and selecting the right link is where so many people get frustrated, confused and annoyed. Learn about methods to reduce confusion and increase speed and simplicity for your customers. Learn how to use evidence to uncover the core navigational mental models within people’s minds and to create intuitive interfaces based on these mental models. Learn how to apply essential navigational principles such as: Familiarity, Unity, Essentiality, and Forward-Focus.
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An Event Apart: “Variable Fonts and the Future of Typography”
Jason Pamental speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.
For centuries, typography has shaped the way we ‘hear’ what we read. In our web work, though, we’ve have to balance our typographic desires with user experience and performance, knowing that every weight, width, or style of a typeface required a different file download. Variable fonts change that, as they include every width, weight, slant, and other permutation of a typeface, all in a single file not much bigger than a regular font file. Now, beautiful web typography can be crafted to respond to screen size, language setting, even ambient light. In a detail-packed hour, Jason will show you not just how far the new capabilities can take us, but how to make use of them right away.
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An Event Apart: “Inclusive UX: Techniques for Everyone”
Derek Featherstone speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.
You and your teams are doing the things that need to be done to create inclusive designs. You’ve been using meaningful, semantic markup from the get-go. You stopped using light grey on slightly darker grey text years ago. Designing and building your apps and sites in an accessible way is just how you work now—you have to try really hard to make things that don’t work with a keyboard. So, what’s next for you? How can you make sure that you’re delivering on the promise of the web by delivering an inclusive design that can be easily used by people with disabilities? In this talk, Derek will tackle the tougher problems through design approaches and practical development techniques that you need to create accessible, modern web sites.
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An Event Apart: “Responsive Content Models”
Steve Fisher speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.
Responsive Content Models describe all of the content types on a target site, the elements of each, and then prioritize the content type that should appear on a specific page type. They help us define the content creation, design, and user experience concepts for the new or refreshed site. This is especially important for the responsive web—because layout and user context is constantly changing, we have to make sure that content priorities are represented consistently across all platforms. In this engaging talk, Steve Fisher will show you how to find the core piece you need, prioritize for multiple devices, and sketch out the solution to your responsive-content woes.
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An Event Apart: “Use Your Words”
Kristina Halvorson speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.
UI is language. Interaction is conversation. Content is the fuel that powers our designs. So what happens when the writer’s not in the room, or missing from your project team altogether? Good news: you don’t need to settle for lorem ipsum or half-baked prose. In this talk, Kristina will share language principles and content design tools anyone can put to work—yes, even the “non-writers” among us. Using examples from popular products and well-loved websites, we’ll uncover the secrets to stellar content that anyone can create, no matter your role or area of expertise.