outbreak

I was surprised at how big this conference is – according to a JavaScript that counts rows in the attendee list there’s 879 people in this hall.

Getting your designs approved: 12 Simple Rules

by Larissa Meek

A representative of the big agencies world (works for AgencyNet) Larissa delivered a nice checklist of what you need to think about when working with a big client. What I missed is possible solutions for this but this would probably require a dialogue and a day or two. The thing is, and it seems to be the theme here, that everything depends – on the projects, the client, the team,…

Photoshop battle

Jon Hicks, Elliot Jay Stocks, Jina Bolton, Hannah Donovan with commentary from Andy Clarke

The contenders were split into two teams – men and women. Women started the Photoshop battle and while the guys were chatting created the beginning of the final picture. After two iterations a weird image of Andy Clarke was the result. The chat was interesting and the result of the battle was hilarious.

Print and the web

Elliot Jay Stocks

A nice session about how web design relates to other stuff we know – print design, drama – and what the main meaning of design is. While print design has different limitation and different dynamics it’s a valid source of inspiration and technique copying for web designers – it should be the only one though.

From Design to Deployment

by Jon Hicks

Displaying how to change a design into a deployed page on the case of Cheesophile we got a few great tips from Jon. A technique I haven’t used before but I will try from now on is basic.css that is loaded in all browsers and sets the content for older browsers. What you do here is only add some color, maybe try to size fonts and of course add the background image that notifies the user that they’re using an older browser. An interesting proposition is also to allow users to tab to the “skip to …” menu – even though it’s hidden you could show it when people use tab to navigate through the page using the :focus modified in CSS. Another neat idea is to use some sort of framework for development and when you’re finished just go and set specific CSS rules to semantic class names.

Another thing Jon mentioned is how different font sizes are for different fonts – I had this problem a while ago when I was first starting to use the Vista ClearType fonts that are much smaller than your regular Arial font. So I created a script that would determine what font a certain tag is using and add a class name to that element so you could target that font directly. It’s a JavaScript enhancement so it’s not a perfect solution but it will help 90% of the people using XP without the new fonts. The thing is I never really finished that script so it’s not online yet – I’ll find it when I come back and put it online so the typophiles can use it to give a better experience with different typefaces on different platforms.

The first three presentations were great.

Finding Inspiration For Design

by Patrick McNiel

There are many ways of getting inspiration, what you need to know is that it’s an ongoing process. And the weirdest thing is that it comes from various places – so look for inspiration not only in your field but in other fields, adjacent or not. When looking for inspiration in your field use cataloging publications, so you can see how other people solve similar problems – for websites you can use Design Meltdown. You need to remember though – don’t copy!

User Experience vs Brand Experience

by Andy Clarke and Steve Pearce

The thing is that good experience is actually merging the two, not have them as opponents. If you think of these as opponents you’ll only get one thing when both are needed to create a good experience. This will hurt your client and your reputation so it’s important that you try to find the right point where you get the best from both worlds. You need to know that experience is like an iceberg – you only see a part of it (the part that branding wants to change) while most of it is below the line. And that’s the part that people will talk about when it’s good or bad.

While there are many ways to design stuff, some completely methodological, there is another way – genius design, where the designer does a design based on their experiences and try to think what the best way for a user to interact is. This kind of design doesn’t need (want) to be analyzed – either it’s right or wrong. They don’t need to be safe to be usable – you can do amazing and weird stuff, your experience as a designer will tell you how far you can go. If you fail that’s only a way to learn where that line is.

Designing the User Experience Curve

by Andy Budd

A great talk about how people experience stuff and what stays with them. With a lot of examples and great slides I can’t put my finger on a single thing that he said that really stood out – the whole talk was great so you really need to find a way to listen to it, the slides aren’t going to cut it. The keywords – first impression, usability, personalization and customization, attention to detail, feedback, fun, experience.

So I’m going to London. I’m currently waiting to get boarded at Ljubljana Airport (Letališče Jožeta Pučnika Ljubljana). I’ve uploaded some pictures to my marela account.

The reason I’m going is the Future of Web Design conference in London. It’s going to be my first Carsonified event and I hope it’ll be as good as the previous events were or better.

I’ll try to post something while I’m there even though I have no idea what the wireless situation is going to be – I know that my hotel only has wireless in public areas and that there’s supposed to be free Wi-fi at the conference.