Web Directions Podcast

AJAX is changing the way that users interact with websites - it has the potential to provide richer and more interactive online user experiences but also introduces its own set of usability and accessibility problems. This session will present views from leading usability experts from around the world from an experienced practitioner workshop conducted at the Usability Professionals Conference in USA. We will also discuss key usability issues we have unveiled through our own usability testing of a range of websites using AJAX over the last 2 years. The session will highlight some of the pitfalls and user frustrations with AJAX as well as how AJAX can be used to enhance the user experience. We will present usability and accessibility issues and common user behaviours with AJAX applications. Finally we will discuss interaction design guidelines for developing user friendly AJAX designs. This is not a technical session and will appeal to designers, developers and anyone working with interactive websites or web

The most interesting problems on the web are social, not technical. Once the open, social stack moves into wide use, the real work is going to be on us to create ongoing experiences that inspire, inform, evolve. Avoid this talk if you want to hear about monetizing community, gaming the newest social site for a quick spike in your user numbers, or how to get a [insert cutting edge social platform] strategy for your brand. Instead, we’ll diagram (sentence-like) real examples of marketing and revising (reviving?) web products for connected consumers. Think of it as Mind Hacks for Web Marketers. We’ll show you how sites like Dogster, Etsy, Moo, Photojojo and others parlay initial passions into deep, sustained, active communities. People-powered thinking extends well beyond messaging. Instead, we’ll preach a connected style of marketing that addresses a range of operational areas, both coming & going. We’ll pay particular attention to what happens after launch, as we think an attentive to and fro is the intimate

At Xerox PARC in the early 90’s Mark Weiser predicted a fundamental shift would move the user’s experience of computing away from the desktop and out into the "real" world. During the late 90’s the web brought the first wave of pervasive "anytime, anywhere" applications like search and webmail. Over the last few years the mobile web has driven a fresh wave of networked applications like Facebook and Twitter that are being used at the beach, in the car and in bed. QR Codes, Wifi Access Points and 3/4G dongles are everywhere you look. "Pervasive" is a very accurate description. What is driving this accelerating diffusion of networked technologies? How do you really measure or control how "pervasive" something is? Why would you even want to? We’ll introduce you to a practical framework for analysing and measuring your "spatial perception of an activity" and explore what it literally means for an application to be "pervasive", in both an experiential and business sense. At the end of this session you’ll be able

Since the earliest days of the web, perhaps the single biggest missing piece of functionality has been a standards based, browser native way for developers to do 2D (and 3D) rendering. Now, the Canvas element, supported in all contemporary browsers other than Internet Explorer, and part of the HTML5 specification, provides these capabilities, and is being widely adopted in cutting edge websites and applications. In this session, JavaScript ninja Dmitry Baranovskiy takes us into the heart and soul of Canvas, looking at what it does well, and not so well, how well it is supported, and how to use it in cross browser compatible ways. Developers with a good grasp of JavaScript will be able to add another dimension to their web solutions based on what they learn in this session. Dmitry has over 8 years experience in creating web applications. Having started as a back end developer, more recently he has changed his orientation to front end development and even pure design. These days he spends his working hours

The long run to the turn of the millennium got us preoccupied with conclusions. The Internet is finally taken for granted. The iPhone is finally ubiquitous computing come true. Let’s think not of ends, but dawns: it’s not that we’re on the home straight of ubicomp, but the beginning of a century of smart matter. It’s not about fixing the Web, but making a springboard for new economies, new ways of creating, and new cultures. The 21st century is a participatory culture, not a consumerist one. What does it mean when small teams can be responsible for world-size effects, on the same playing field as major corporations and government? We can look at the Web - breaking down publishing and consuming from day zero - for where we might be heading in a world bigger than we can really see, and we can look at design - playful and rational all at once - to help us figure out what to do when we get there. Matt Webb is CEO of the design shop Schulze & Webb, which has a special focus on the social life of stuff. Project

As we pack our pages with AJAX and RIA goodness we often lose sight of the fact that the key to exceptional user experience is the responsiveness of your site. Inspired by the excellent work by Yahoo!’s Exceptional Performance team, this talk will have something that every site can benefit from. You will learn how to analyse what your end users are experiencing and how to reduce your load times by 25-50% using a range of simple techniques. Mark Stanton is a specialist in internet systems design and development. He has a passion for many aspects of the web from usability & information architecture, to HTML, CSS and JavaScript, through to software design & development and languages such as ColdFusion, Java, ASP, PHP, Ruby and Python. Mark is highly regarded within the online community and regularly provides support, consultation and presentations to other web geeks. He is a founding member of the Web Standards Group which aims to promote best practices to web designers and developers through a range of educa

Designing for dynamic web applications and mobile devices poses a new set of challenges. Web designers are increasingly being asked to apply their skills to where the page model no longer applies. We need new ways of exploring the user experience and communicating behaviours involving sub-page changes and movement. Enter rapid prototyping. Widely acclaimed as one of the best ways to create great user experiences, it isn’t without its own pitfalls. This session will discuss the pros and cons of different prototyping techniques, and introduce a new technique called "screenflows" that focuses on visualising the user experience. Discover how to combine the best of paper prototyping, wireframes and HTML prototyping into one simple and effective prototyping technique. Learn how using this method can dramatically decrease the need for documentation, while increasing the speed and agility of the development process. Grant Robinson is the Senior Interaction Designer at Xero. Xero is an online accounting platform,

In the summer of ‘07 in a flood-soaked Oxford, England, Elliot appeared on stage for the very first time. His presentation, ‘Progressive Enhancement & Intentional Degradation’, looked at how to reward modern browsers with the latest CSS tricks and punish IE by dropping certain site features. Over two years later, what has changed? We’re starting to see the ideology of progressive enhancement — especially with CSS3 — spread throughout the web design community, but more work needs to be done. What can we do to spread the message further and design a better-looking web faster? Elliot will look at how features of the CSS2.1 and CSS3 specs can enhance your websites and he’ll examine the implication of using such techniques. He’ll look at the issues surrounding font embedding and the recent development of the font-as-service; the arguments about browser support; the potentially controversial irrelevance of validation; and how we can attempt to reach the future sooner by writing forward-thinking code. In this motiv

Increasingly, web-application behaviour is split between logic running on the server, and JavaScript logic running in the browser. Automated testing of the server-side component is fairly common, but too often the browser-side logic is left out in the cold. Mike Williams and Rob Mitchell will explain why you should test your JavaScript code, what to test, and how to go about it. They’ll talk about full-stack browser-based tests, as well as true unit tests, and explain where each are appropriate. They’ll also discuss integration of your tests into an automated build, and you’ll leave with a burning desire to try it out on your own projects. Rob Mitchell was exposed to Agile Software Development in 2001 and since then has been a strong advocate of automated testing of software, allowing quick feedback. He has extensive experience in writing and testing web applications as well as leading teams to deliver quality software. Mike Williams has been developing software for about 20 years, in New Zealand, the

Infrastructure and service costs are always a priority for any business, whether client-side or agency-side, especially now when we’re all trying to be particularly spend-efficient. A cloud technology can comprise infrastructure (Amazon’s S3, Google Apps for Domain), software services (Salesforce.com, Google Docs) and less tangible application services such as APIs (Facebook Connect, Google Friend Connect, Google Maps, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc). Cloud services change the way a business or campaign can operate, increasing flexibility, taking less time to deploy and introducing superb cost efficiencies so that we can redirect finances to where they’ll really pay for us - in innovation, experimentation and planning ahead. With these opportunities, however, come challenges around data and platform security, change management and who "owns" the platform and data you are using. Andrew Fisher is the Technology Director for Citrus, an award winning digital marketing agency. Andrew has been involved in develo

Far from being the enemy, data can be a designer’s best friend. So much so that it just might be the backbone of the next evolution of web design. Data doesn’t mean less creativity and experimentation, it means more. We’ve learned how to design sites that look good, and we know how to mark up our pages with web standards. Now it’s time to figure out what performs best. In this session you’ll learn not just the fundamental concepts of this ‘new web design’, but how you can get started with data-driven design using free tools that are available right now. If you’ve reached a point where you know how to design and build attractive, standards-based web sites and are wondering what comes next, this is the session for you. Luke Stevens is a freelance, Sydney-based web designer with clients in the US, UK and locally in Australia. He has been secretly nerding it up since school, when he started designing Mac BBS interfaces in the mid 90’s, and websites soon after. With a passion for design, some brief formal prin

The Open Web is an evolving term that encompasses technologies from web standards stalwarts like HTML, to almost-mainstream buzzwords such as OpenID, and on to emerging specifications like PortableContacts, but it’s more than that. It is a philosophy. It is the dream of technical building blocks that mesh together to discover and define identity, authorise accessible data, and validate membership of social or professional groupings. It’s one big personal data party and everybody on the web is invited. Lachlan Hardy will cover specific technologies and their usecases, showing how they plug together to make a cost-efficient open stack. He examines what the Open Web really means, how it works, and how your business can use it to reach more people, more powerfully. Lachlan currently works as a Design Engineer at Atlassian where he builds functional designs into all their products. He is a web standards expert who has worked on numerous high-profile sites for News Digital Media, Queensland Department of Prima

Designing websites in amongst the "suits" and their business models, targets, projections and synergies (ha!) can be death by dot point. Or fun. What are manager types actually thinking when they brief (or don’t) you. How do you translate their KPI’s into interface designs that 1. get their point across & achieve their targets 2. contribute to a profitable business 3. are easy to use (who would have thought the users get a say! ;-) Pete gets on their case, video camera in hand, to find out what they’re thinking. *Suits = managers/clients/executives. Dedicated to the Billy Walsh character in Entourage Pete has been designing web sites for about 10 years. Having previously worked as the Head of Design at Fairfax Digital and Creative Director at Daemon, he is now working at News Digital Media as the Group Interface Designer. Recently he has been designing carsguide, truelocal, & iphone.news.com.au. He works directly with site owners and execs (the suits!) to help inform requirements and push produ

Service design is a new discipline which focuses on understanding what customers want, then designing services which meet their needs. Sound familiar? Web designers have focused on user-centred design for years to create websites and applications that are user friendly. Service design is well established in Europe and North America and there’s already a handful of Australian businesses offering service design. What is it? Does experience in designing for screen interaction translate to designing services too? Will service design be the next big thing? Suze offers insight by drawing on her years of experience as a UX designer and researcher. She shows how service design might fit into your business in the future, who you might pitch it to, and what sort of skills you might need to deliver service design. Suze Ingram is Lead User Experience Consultant with Stamford Interactive, Sydney. Suze has been creating better user experiences for over 9 years with her user-centred design, interaction design, visual co

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a unique mix of marketing, usability and technology which can often cause confusion on how it is implemented across different organisations. An important part of your SEO strategy is getting the most out of your SEO dollars. This session will explain what your developers, designers, producers, content authors and marketers should all know about SEO to ensure you’re getting the maximum return on your SEO. A lot of SEO work undertaken by external agencies offers common sense advice and basic web standards information – in these tough economic times, are you getting value for your money or just throwing it away while your in-house web team aren’t involved in your SEO strategy? This session will give you the ground rules on setting up your SEO processes and systems within your organization to ensure that SEO is part of the day-to-day development and design of your websites. It will also cover when to bring in an external agency for SEO and what they should be utilised for to

When visualization is coupled with collective intelligence it becomes a very powerful tool for making sense of the data that is now an increasing part of our personal and organizational experience. But how do you design social web applications so they can use visualization effectively? In this session I’ll present a model for using visualization on the social web; discussing why social settings are a great match for visualization and how more general UX ideas can be applied to the design of social visualization. I’ll also describe 5 interaction design patterns that will help designers and developers make the transition from theory to practical application. Jeremy Yuille is a user experience designer, and academic specializing in the design of systems for online collaboration and real-time expression. Jeremy manages the Multiuser Environments Program for the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) where he works with industry to solve thorny Interaction Design problems. He is a co-founder of the Med

When people use websites and intranets they are doing more than just ‘finding’ information. They may be looking for something they know about or exploring something brand new; filtering through large volumes then comparing results; getting an overview of a topic or diving deep. They may even think they want to find one thing, but actually need something entirely different. Each of these information behaviours needs very different approaches to information architecture, information design and page layout. During this presentation, Donna will talk about each information behaviour, its key attributes, key design needs, and show good and bad examples of each. Donna’s a freelance information architect, interaction designer and writer. That’s a fancy way of saying she plans how to present the things you see on your computer screen, so that they’re easy to understand, engaging and compelling. Things like the navigation, forms, categories and words on intranets, websites, web applications and business systems. S

Designing for social interaction is hard. People are unpredictable, consistency is a mixed blessing, and co-creation with your users requires a dizzying flirtation with loss of control. Christian will present the dos and don’ts of social web design using a sampling of interaction patterns, design principles and best practices to help you improve the design of your digital social environments. Christian Crumlish has been participating in, analyzing, designing, and drawing social interactive spaces online since 1994. These days he is the curator of Yahoo!’s pattern library, a design evangelist with the Yahoo! Developer Network, and a member of Yahoo!’s Design Council. He is the author of the bestselling The Internet for Busy People, and The Power of Many, and is currently working on an upcoming book, Designing Social Interfaces, with Erin Malone. He has spoken about social patterns at BarCamp Block, BayCHI, South by Southwest, the IA Summit, Ignite, and Web 2.0 Expo. Christian has a bachelor’s degree in phil

Shift your thinking, alter your process, and create a dynamic of doing rather than spinning. Workflow veteran Kelly Goto leads you through a fast-paced session designed to help transcend obstacles and develop a culture of adaptation, progress and flow. Learn the fundamental principles behind The FLOW Method, an actionable series of steps utilizing new processes and techniques to re-invigorate your organization and team. Whether you are an independent, small business owner or the manager of an in-house web marketing team, you will gain valuable insights and tools to bring back to your organization. As an evangelist for "design ethnography", Kelly Goto is dedicated to understanding how real people integrate products and services into their daily lives. Goto is a sought-after international keynote lecturer and author on the topics of web and mobile strategies, usability, and design ethnography. Her book, Web Redesign 2.0: Workflow that Works has been translated into 14 languages and is an established standard

If you work on the web, it was hard to miss the announcement of Google Wave in May. It was especially exciting because this project, designed to leapfrog current modes of online communication, was developed right here in Australia by a Sydney based team. Wave’s interface designer - Web Directions favourite, Cameron Adams - will give us some unique insights into the challenges of bringing such an innovative product to fruition, the problems you face in designing a desktop application in the browser, and how to nurture a startup culture inside a large company. Cameron has given some truly memorable presentations at previous Web Directions - this keynote drawing from his experiences as part of the Google Wave team will be no exception. Cameron Adams - The Man in Blue, and interface designer at Google Wave - melds a background in Computer Science with over nine years experience in graphic design to create a unique approach to interface design. Using the latest technologies, he likes to play in the intersection