May 8, 2014 - Comments Off on An Event Apart • Boston • 2014
An Event Apart • Boston • 2014
Here are some thoughts on talks at the recent An Event Apart, in Boston.
Understanding Web Design - Jeffrey Zeldman
- Web Design is held to the expectations of other media. Often ignoring the intrinsic strengths of web
- Like typography, web design's primary focus is communicating content
- Technology is often a hangup for people, when the user and their needs should be the primary focus of designers. "Design for people, not browsers!"
- Design is about detail
- A great website will subtly guide the user to their desired destination
Designing Using Data - Sarah Parmenter
- Design is no longer a differentiator. Making things look nice is common. The differentiator today is designing with purpose — answer the question 'why?'
- When the right metrics are studied, data offers objective and actionable feedback
- Data should allow a team to unite behind an objective goal — such as: Increase clicks etc.
- Customer facing advertising is most effective when honest and transparent
- Iterative design allows you to be flexible and try new things
Responsive Design is Still Hard/Easy! Be Afraid/Don't Worry! - Dan Mall
- Frameworks rather than processes, mean you define a set of constraints within which a project exists, and within this you find out what you can do that's unexpected
- Be active within your framework and volunteer/get involved with stages of production outside of your discipline
- Each member of a team will have divergent perspectives at the start of each project cycle, they should become convergent by the end. These are focal points
- Rinse and repeat the cycle, getting smaller each time to increase team involvement
- Extensive preparation should make the assembly part of the process the shortest
Screen Time - Luke Wroblewski
- Mobile is the dominant web browser worldwide
- Responsive design includes additional considerations than just screen size (multiple input types, variable ambient lighting etc)
- Screen size is a poor proxy for many of these considerations (screen size does not reveal input type)
- A user's posture or distance from device will also affect it's design, independent of screen size or number of pixels
- Design for human proportions, not pixels.
Content/Communication - Kristina Halvorson
5 key points for working with a client:
- Principles: these are internal motivators based on our better intentions. They can unify a team
- Strategy: pinpoint your goals and provide helpful constraints with which to execute
- Process: the process is not God, it should change and grow as needs change. Regular post mortems are encouraged
- Roles: RACI key for each agent on the client end. Responsible. Accountable. Consulted. Informed
- Perceptions: Translate to facilitate communication between different disciplines
UX Strategy Means Business - Jared Spool
- Design is the rendering of intent. Both user and provider
- Content delivery is as important as the content itself and vice versa. Great UX cannot exist without great content
- Advertising is unhelpful for all parties involved
- Strategic priorities in business can inform design considerations (increase revenue, reduce cost etc)
- There are a variety of models for monetizing the web
The Long Web - Jeremy Keith
- HTML allows for fantastic accessibility, deprecation and backward compatibility
- New HTML specifications can be adopted early as they will be skipped over when unsupported
- Progressive enhancement means you start with the lowest common denominator and then enhance as much as you like
- Progressive enhancement protects the experience from unaccountable errors such as unrelated javascript errors
- Text formats will last longer than binaries. Binaries are forever changing and becoming outdated
Responsive Design Performance Budget - Paul Irish
- Mobile users expect their content to load faster than the desktop
- Web growing is latency limited. The nature of requesting many small files means that a user's experience is improved by reducing the number requests
- UX can be greatly enhanced by prioritizing critical data and rendering early on
- Separate the critical CSS from non-critical. Load non-critical at the end of the page. Aim for main content to load in 1 sec (< 14kb)
- The number of higher latency users is increasing
The Chroma Zone: Engineering Color on the Web - Lea Verou
- Colors in web browsers have many nuances and limitations
- Hex and RGB are poor representations for human reading
- HSL and HSLa are better although they are not perceptually uniform (we perceive 50% yellow as much lighter than 50% blue)
- New color properties in CSS level 4 will make color coding more human readable (HWB = Hue Whiteness Blackness)
- There is room for much more improvement in web colors
Mind the Gap: Designing in the Space Between Devices - Josh Clark
- Designing for the space between screens. Not content but tasks. Verbs not nouns
- The technology is available today, we just haven't imagined the possibilities yet
- Interfacing with machine is likely not going to change much (touch and mouse are great interfaces)
- Physical things are beginning to have digital representations (avatars)
- How about affecting how we interface with physical world and communicating that to our devices.
- Software makes hardware scale, The endless possibilities
Web+: Can the Web Win the War Against Native Without Losing its Soul? - Bruce Lawson
- Web technology has inherent strengths, despite the popularity of native apps
- Web tech should not try to replicate — though it can learn from native. Build to the strengths of web
- Progressive enhancement and interoperability make web accessible and global. Always accessible by everyone
- Widgets failed as they were a poor imitation of native apps. They existed as a snapshot without the ability to update
- W3C is built for accessibility and interoperability. This means that it is designed for low level functions. Can be complicated but powerful
How to Champion Ideas Back at Work - Scott Berkun
- Great things are achieved in difficult circumstances
- Success and acclaim only arrive once a project is complete
- Charm and convincing people of your ideas is important!
- A network increases your potential. Reach out and get advice to harness that potential
- To enact change, start small with something you can excel at and expand from there
Published by: georgebrassey in The Internal Mechanism, The Programming Mechanism
Tags: responsive design
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