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 Design Track Coding Track Strategy Track Usability Track Workshops
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DAY ONE — July 18
Where beauty and brains come together. Successful Web design is a marriage of design and technology, a combination of aesthetic vision and well-crafted code. On opening day of Web Design World, you'll explore both.
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| 9:00 a.m. |
Keynote: Scent, Search, and the Pursuit of User Happiness
Jared M. Spool
Happy users are the brass ring of Web site design. Ultimately, the designer of every site has making users happy as their primary objective. However, many designs end up frustrating instead. User happiness is directly tied to whether the users accomplish their goals on the site. What prevents users from accomplishing their goals? Almost always, it's poor design caused by a design team that doesn't have the information they need. We'll share practical design strategies from highly effective Web sites, including: how the best teams allocate their resources by focusing on the most important content on the site; proven design techniques, such as persona-based design, to help teams understand what users need from the site; why the most effective sites never relaunch, yet manage to always have fresh designs; and how you can utilize the scent of information and how people search for their content to give your site the advantage. |
| 10:15 a.m. |
The Marriage of Presentation and Structure
Molly Holzschlag & Matt May
You hear it all the time in the world of HTML and CSS: separate structure from presentation. That's true in theory, but in the real world, presentation and structure are often strongly related. Without understanding the relationship of a document's structure to the style sheets that enable you to create beautiful designs, you're at a disadvantage when attempting to resolve conflicts, use advanced CSS selectors effectively, and gain better control over every aspect of your work. Learn the right way to marry presentation and structure — and get the power you need to move your CSS designs forward in creative, compelling ways. |
| 2:00 p.m. |
No More Tables: CSS Layout Techniques
Doug Bowman
Creating complex multi-column layouts used to mean having to nest multiple HTML tables — a technique that's cumbersome and introduces accessibility and compatibility problems. You've heard it's possible to eliminate those layout tables by using Cascading Style Sheets, but you haven't made the jump yet. In this session, CSS guru Doug Bowman will walk you through the steps of a real-world conversion. Learn the advantages of doing away with tables, and see how to avoid common pitfalls. |
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Design Track
Inspiration and insight. In the Web world, design isn't just about making pages that look good. You also need to create effective, intuitive user interfaces. You need to take global cultural differences into account. And you need to consider the growing number of Web users who have physical challenges. In the Design track, our expert speakers share insights and techniques for interface design, accessibility, global design challenges, and more. Take your design skills — and your sites — to the next level. |
| 11:30 a.m. |
How to Put the Design Back into Web Design
Bob Slote
Many visual designers feel that they've been pushed aside and are now relegated to a "paint by numbers" role, coloring wire frames created by a user-interface design team. In this session, you’ll learn some tips on how to work with the UI team. Design veteran Bob Slote will talk about why writing a creative brief shouldn’t be torture. He'll also cover some fundamental design issue, including using color harmonies; Gestalt theory in design; and using typography to all tell a story about brand, value propositions, voice and vision. This is a session that just might bring the two teams together. |
| 3:15 p.m. |
The How and Why of Blogging
Molly Holzschlag
Web logs, or "blogs," aren't just for personal sites — not by a long shot. Sites of all kinds can employ blogs and blog-creation tools to keep visitors informed and up to date. Learn what blogs can do for your site and for your business, and see the best tools for creating and maintaining them. |
| 4:30 p.m. |
Interface Design Insights: The Building of Basecamp
Jason Fried
Your visitors and customers don't care about back-end technologies, server platforms, "scalability," or "robustness" — they care about the interface and what it allows them to do. They want something that's easy to use, useful, quick, flexible, and respectful of their busy lives and hurried tasks. In this session, you'll journey inside the mind of one of the lead interface designers of the popular Basecamp Web-based project management tool. Learn practical interface-design tips and techniques, and get an inside look at the design philosophies behind a product that's been called "astonishingly elegant." |
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Coding Track
Coding the next-generation Web. If you're like most Web designers, you're already using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to specify typographic attributes. It's time to take the next step. It's now practical to use CSS to create menus and other interface elements, and to replace awkward tables for page layout. In the Coding track, you'll learn modern markup techniques from designers and CSS gurus who have helped to blaze the trail. Say goodbye to awkward workarounds, and learn how to create sites that are fast, reliable, compatible, and gorgeous. |
| 11:30 a.m. |
Creating Beautiful Interfaces with CSS
Doug Bowman
Drop-down menus and sophisticated interface elements have traditionally been implemented using JavaScript and kludgy coding workarounds that often don't work. It's increasingly practical to deliver rich, beautiful, functional interfaces using semantic markup and CSS. Learn how modern markup can deliver great Web interfaces that are fast and reliable |
| 3:15 p.m. |
XML: What a Designer Needs to Know
Joe Marini
XML is becoming more common in mainstream Web development every day. In this session, you'll learn how XML works, what it's good for (and not good for), and what you need to know about it as a designer to put it to good use. You'll see how XML can be used to separate content from layout, drive dynamic interfaces, and be transformed for display in different ways. |
| 4:30 p.m. |
From HTML to XHTML
Molly Holzschlag
XHTML is, according to the World Wide Web Consortium, "the next step in the evolution of the Internet." By migrating to XHTML, you can gain XML's benefits while retaining strong backward and future compatibility. Whether you're ready to make the move to XHTML or you're just curious about the differences between HTML and XHTML, this session is for you. Learn the rationale behind XHTML, how to author it properly, how well it's supported across today's software, and how to get started using it today. |
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DAY TWO — July 19
Strategy and usability. Should you use Flash on your site? Will a blog increase your traffic? How can you error-proof your site? And how can you tailor your site to your visitors' preferences? Web designers ask themselves these and similar questions every day, and our experts are here to answer them. They'll help you make the strategic decisions that will maximize your Web budget, and answer the critical usability questions that will make for satisfied visitors and customers.
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| 9:00 a.m. |
Keynote — Web Redesign: Workflow Redefined
Kelly Goto
Streamlined budgets and reduced timelines have created a need for a more flexible, results-oriented workflow. With increased audience expectations, focusing on the user experience is mandatory. Learn how to integrate an iterative development strategy into your existing workflow, and see how to create a strategic roadmap and utilize online tools to assist in measuring success. No one knows or teaches workflow and Web project management like Kelly Goto, author of the best-selling book Web Redesign: Workflow that Works, now in its second edition. |
| 4:30 p.m. |
Deconstructing... You!
Top Web designers join Conference Chair Jim Heid in critically evaluating several of our attendees sites. Bring your pencil! Your site may be among the ones we examine in this lively wrap-up session. |
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Strategy Track
Strategy is money. Web budgets are stretched thin, but the expectations of users, bosses, and clients haven't changed. See how to best leverage the latest Web technologies and trends, and learn easy, low-cost ways to improve your site. |
| 10:15 a.m. |
Effective Blog Design: Speed, Accessibility, Transparency, and Clarity
DL Byron
Good content is a requirement on any Web log, but there¹s a lot more to a
good blog than just the posts. Standard templates are fine, but there are
many reasons why you¹ll want to customize and enhance with a unique layout.
Proper blog design can insure your branding, position, and message are
optimally projected. Beautiful, cross-device, navigable, and fast loading
sites that search engines love are a must. This session will cover what top
bloggers do to get the best of all possible worlds. |
| 11:30 a.m. |
Web Writing: Seven Steps for Success
Kelly Goto
Writing for the Web is different from copywriting. Veteran Kelly Goto takes you through the tried and true practices of content development, from outline to integration. Learn how to integrate best practices for web writing including the development of a communication brief, audience profiles and a realistic workflow. |
| 2:00 p.m. |
Designing for Conversion
Lance Loveday
Getting traffic to your site is good, but converting that traffic to sales and/or leads is what really matters. This session will explain how to increase the conversion rate on your site as well as discuss specific landing page design tips and other secrets for improving your conversion rates. Learn how minor changes to your site design can yield big results for your bottom line. |
| 3:15 p.m. |
Search Engine Marketing: State of the Industry
Lance Loveday
Whether you're selling directly on your site or gathering sales leads, you need visitors. And you need to be doing search engine marketing — it provides the highest return on investment for marketing dollars. But what are your options? Who are the players? Where are smart companies putting their money now? In this session, Lance Loveday provides an overview of the search engine marketing industry, with an emphasis on why search engine marketing should be taken into consideration during every phase of web site design and implementation. |
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Usability Track
Designing for users. In the Usability track, top designers and usability experts share their secrets. Learn how to identify and fix "crisis points" that can trip up your site's users. Find out how users really surf by examining the results of actual user-testing studies. And get practical tips for enhancing your site's usability with JavaScript and CSS. |
| 10:15 a.m. |
How Users Surf: What Usability Tests Reveal
Steve Mulder
How do real people use websites? Are there patterns in user behavior that we can learn from and design for? Yes and yes. We’ll cover how users move around a site, how they scan pages, what they see and don’t see, and much more. You’ll get the findings of hundreds of usability tests — without having to sit through them. |
| 11:30 a.m. |
Defensive Design for the Web
Jason Fried
Let's admit it: things go wrong online. No matter how carefully you design a site, people will still encounter errors or make mistakes. How you handle these breakdowns is critical to the overall user experience. Learn how to use defensive design to prevent errors and help get your visitors back on track if problems do occur. |
| 2:00 p.m. |
Improving Usability with JavaScript and CSS
Joe Marini
Today's modern, standards-compliant browsers provide whole new ways of improving your site's usability. In this session, we'll explore ways of using CSS and JavaScript together to create pages that are responsive, intuitive, and user-customizable. You'll see how these technologies can allow users to control display properties like fonts and colors, create forms with better navigation and validation, and build pages with automatic features like table formatting and sorting. Best of all, you'll see how to make use of these technologies so that even if the user disables them, the page content remains accessible. |
| 3:15 p.m. |
Personas: Making Your Users Real
Steve Mulder
Personas are an effective tool for focusing decision making and design process on the goals and behaviors of real users. We'll discuss why personas are valuable and how to create them, including research techniques, user segmentation, and the details that make these fictional characters come to life. Then we'll look at how personas can be useful throughout the site creation process, from prioritizing features through information architecture and visual design. |
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Interested in speaking at Web Design World?
Click here to visit our Call for Papers site. |
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