Tag: design

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.

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An Event Apart: “Tech Humanism: Data, Meaning, and Human Experience”

Kate O’Neill speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 4, 2018.

With so much emphasis in business on artificial intelligence, automation of various kinds, and digital transformation, the future of human work — and even humanity itself — can feel uncertain. And while we often talk about user experience, customer experience, patient experience, and so on, we rarely consider what a truly integrated human experience might look and feel like. But “Tech Humanist” Kate O’Neill presents the case for why the future of humanity is in creating more meaningful, dimensional, and integrated experiences, and how emerging technologies like chatbots, wearables, IoT devices, and more can be included in this kind of human-centric design. While weaving in examples from a range of industries, applications, and even pop culture, Kate offers an inspiring and useful framework for designers, strategists, or anyone creating experiences for humans.

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An Event Apart: “Mobile In the Future”

Luke Wroblewski speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 3, 2018.

In this session, Luke will take a look at what we’ve learned over the past ten years of designing for the largest, most connected form of mass media on our planet. Have all the mock-ups, meetings, emails, and more we’ve created in the last decade moved us beyond desktop computing interfaces and ideas? If not, can we find inspiration to go further from looking at what’s happening in natural user interfaces and hardware design? Find out in this session from the author of Mobile First.

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An Event Apart: “Everything You Know About Web Design Just Changed”

Jen Simmons speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 2, 2018.

2017 saw a sea change in web layout, one that few of us have truly come to grips with. We’re standing at the threshold of an entirely new era in digital design—one in which, rather than hacking layouts together, we can actually describe layouts directly. The benefits will touch everything from prototyping to custom art direction to responsive design. In this visionary talk, rooted in years of practical experience, Jen will show you how to understand what’s different, learn to think through multiple stages of flexibility, and let go of pixel constraints forever.

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An Event Apart: “Scenario-Driven Design Systems”

Yesenia Perez-Cruz speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 2, 2018.

Unified design systems are essential to building, maintaining, and evolving our sites and products. By empowering disparate teams via a common visual and UX language, they help us create cohesive user experiences. But creating a unified system that scales to serve a variety of content and use cases can be challenging. Sharing insights from her experience creating a unified design system for eight media brands with eight distinct editorial strategies, Yesenia will show how to approach a design system via a user-centered lens. Learn how being scenario-driven helps you design a scalable system that responds flexibly to specific contexts.

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An Event Apart: “Digital Marketing Strategies for the Busy ‘Web Master’”

Sarah Parmenter speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 2, 2018.

Reaching through the screens of our customers and holding their attention is becoming increasingly difficult thanks to the pace at which online content now moves and our dwindling attention spans. Nowadays the job of the multi-faceted web designer is to not only know the latest techniques for building in Grid but also know how to get that work seen amongst the saturated world of digital marketing. In this talk Sarah will be discussing the idea of quarterly website design reviews with a “design once use everywhere” mantra, plus digging into the ever changing world of Instagram algorithms, Facebook marketing, and topical social media takeaways for immediate implementation.

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An Event Apart: “Beyond Engagement: the Content Performance Quotient”

Jeffrey Zeldman speaking at An Event Apart Seattle 2018 on April 2, 2018.

Our products are tasked with providing ever-higher levels of “engagement.” But should they be? For many sites, analytics demonstrating high levels of “engagement” may actually be signs of failure. AEA co-founder and longtime web designer Zeldman introduces a new measurement of design success: the content performance quotient. Learn how relentlessly cutting needless content and architecture, fine-tuning UX and UI, and shoring up technical performance can create improved experiences that are better attuned to today’s web… and how to sell this profound change in design thinking to your bosses, clients, and colleagues.

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Connect Navigation

My team recently finished an overhaul of the navigation on our primary product, K-State Connect. Connect serves as a dashboard for Kansas State University, displaying various university services within “widgets”. The main goal of the navigation re-design was to add links directly to each of the widgets within the dashboard. The navigation was also in need of a better small screen experience.

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