We’re happy to welcome over twenty speakers to present on the industry’s latest technologies. Prepare for an inspiration extravaganza.
Workplace culture doesn’t start with beanbags, foosball tables, or a beer fridge, and it doesn’t end with neckties, PCs, or big corporations. It’s the unwritten rules, behavior, beliefs, and the motivations that enable good work to get done, or it’s what stifles a workforce. For design to be most effective and for designers to feel valued, we need to work in a culture that embraces design and allows it to succeed.
In Aaron’s session he will explore how to recognize the traits of organizations that *get* design, both large and small. He will share what those teams, departments, and companies have that others don’t, and more importantly, how to begin to change your own workplace’s culture. Once you’ve worked within a culture of design it’s almost impossible to imagine yourself anywhere else
Aaron Irizarry is a Senior Product Designer for Nasdaq OMX, a lover of heavy metal, a foodie, and a master of BBQ arts. You can find some of his thoughts and presentations on the conversation surrounding design over at discussingdesign.com.
Films succeed in evoking responses and engaging audiences only with a combination of well-written narrative and effective storytelling technique. It’s the filmmaker’s job to put this together. To do so they’ve developed processes, tools and techniques that allow them to focus attention, emphasize information, foreshadow and produce the many elements that together comprise a well-told story.
With this workshop, we’ll revisit the topic of using stories in design and expand on the technical aspects used in film to communicate. We’ll look at some tools used in film, such as cinematic patterns, beat sheets, and storyboards. We’ll consider why they’re used and how we might look to them for inspiration.
Adam Connor is a designer, illustrator and speaker passionate about collaboration, communication, creativity and storytelling. As an Experience Design Director with Mad*Pow, Adam combines 10+ years of experience in interaction and experience design with a background in computer science, film, and animation to create effective and easy-to-use digital products and services. He believes that no matter how utilitarian a tool is, at the core of its creation lies a story; uncovering that story is key to its success. Occasionally, he shares his perspectives on design at adamconnor.com and discussingdesign.com.
JavaScript applications frequently utilize battle-tested libraries like jQuery, AngularJS, Backbone.js and more, but how can we be sure that our code is ready for production? This talk will share tips on how writing tests can be written easily and quickly and how to remove buggy code through testing.
AJ is a software engineer specializing in JavaScript working at Belly in Chicago. Lately he has been writing applications with AngularJS and loving it. When not coding he is out loving the outdoors with his dog, Sunshine.
Perception influences decisions, especially when it comes to selling products and services. Learn why before you even start sales conversations; good, thoughtful design and presentation will define you and your ability to close deals.
Arman is an entrepreneur who has his roots planted in building aggressive sales and revenue-generating teams. Having built out national sales and operations teams in the B2B and consumer spaces, his focus has been driving aggressive growth for technology-based companies. He has an extensive operating background and has built a career disrupting sales processes and approaches with companies doing the same in their respective technology spaces.
Static wireframes are a drag on the whole design process. Prototyping makes things a little better by allowing you to stitch together static wireframes or mockups while adding basic interactions. Rapid prototyping with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript is even better and faster; it increases collaboration and improves the iteration process. Kill your wireframes. Long live rapid prototyping
Bermon is the organizer of various community groups for user experience designers and front-end developers, and the organizer of Blend Conference, a three-day, multi-track event for user experience strategists, designers and developers. He also leads the user experience team for Cardinal Solutions’ Charlotte office, where he consults with large enterprise clients on interesting problems across user experience, design and front-end development.
We need to challenge conventions, too. Many of the design conventions used in web, mobile and device interfaces have evolved from systems and processes that no longer connect with our audiences’ realities: a floppy disk as a metaphor to “save” information, push buttons as control devices and typography standards derived from mechanical typesetting.
As designers and strategists, we need to think like Dick Fosbury, to deconstruct analogues, and to free ourselves from outdated ideas so that we can develop the new interfaces and interactions of the future.
Brad Smith is executive director for WebVisions, a conference that explores the future of the web. Most recently he launched “The Institute for Social Good,” an organization that connects non-profits with volunteers willing to spend a day building awesome web and mobile apps to change the world for the better.
It’s not uncommon for developers and designers to work from home. There are also a few companies that have multiple offices. Working for a business that spans three different time zones, Candi Lemoine will show how you make cross-office collaboration work. She will suggest various helpful tools because constant communication is key.
Candi Lemoine is a User Interface Developer at Dominion Marine Media as well as a Customer Advocate at A Book Apart. Aside from researching about user experience and design patterns, she also loves mentoring college students about the front-end side of the web. She also enjoys participating in hackathons with other co-workers and students.
Play isn’t just for kids and heavy gamers. Anyone with a Foursquare account knows that – and the stickiness of a badge and a leaderboard. But a good, playful user experience isn’t about those surface elements either – it’s about creating an environment with well-understood rules, meaningful objectives, and a sense of fun. Whether you’re trying to encourage people – or yourself – to save money or to lose weight, a focus on game mechanics and play could be the trump card you’re looking for.
Carolyn Chandler has been working in the field of User Experience Design for over 14 years. She was an adjunct professor at DePaul University and is the UX Design Instructor at The Starter League, where she first developed her activity-based approach for teaching core design concepts. Carolyn is the co-founder of The School for Digital Craftsmanship and co-author of two books, A Project Guide to UX Design and Adventures in Experience Design.
In this unconventional talk, Chris Mills will encourage you to pick up some drum sticks in addition to your laptop, and beat out a rhythm of learning – both of code and drum beats! You’ll learn basic JavaScript and CSS, plus beginner’s heavy metal drum patterns. The two are a marriage made in heaven, as nothing is a better antidote to code frustration than beating seven shades of **** out of a drum kit.
Chris Mills is a Senior Tech Writer at Mozilla, where he writes docs and demos about open web apps, Firefox OS and related subjects. He loves tinkering around with HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other web technologies, and gives occasional tech talks at conferences and universities.
In this presentation Dan will share techniques on how to send awesome messages using CSS, media queries and everyone’s favorite HTML element: tables. The fun part comes in the tools available for automation and testing to make it feel less like 1999.
Dan is a front-end dev at Envy Labs, where he works on client projects and Code School. He has been called a “seriously good copy and paster” and he puts those skills to use as he spends his days learning, unlearning and relearning how to build things for the web.
Designing for mobile is challenging. With the ever-changing landscape of devices and screen sizes, there is no way to predict every possible canvas we will be designing for. Luckily, there are a few tools at our disposal that allow us to be confident in our designs.
In this session we will introduce some of these tools and dive into some code to see how they can be used to create designs that look great on any device
Darby Frey is a software engineer and consultant who has worked on web and mobile applications for many clients including Groupon, Toyota, Paramount Pictures and others. Currently he is working with Belly in Chicago to create the world’s best customer loyalty platform.
From the creation of the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, to newer animated films such as The Princess and the Frog, to the branded “Wonderful World of Disney” itself, the Disney empire has been built upon a design ecosystem. Each film, theme park, or cruise shares a holistic view of a perfect world across time and cultures. Within each experience, the same beloved character traits are highlighted, similar visual and animation styles are used, and the same story and musical techniques are leveraged to bring the audience to an emotional place. This helps make the user experience familiar and nostalgic, and lightens the audience’s cognitive load to promote enjoyment. Join Erica as she highlights Disney’s user experience techniques and outlines how you can use them to design an ecosystem that will leave behind a lasting legacy, even while waiting in an extremely long line.
Erica Decker is a designer, developer, and speaker with a passion for technology, challenges, and all things design. She believes that fast-paced, iterative, holistic design is the best way to drive product innovation, and can support that belief with a lot of evidence. She has designed engaging digital experiences for Fortune 500 companies, non-profits, and upcoming companies alike, and is currently writing this bio while referring to herself in the third person.