How will our future change with technology? Designers and developers gathered last week to answer this question at WebVisions in New York City. Presentations and workshops during this 3-day conference explored the future of design, content creation, user experience and business strategy. Workshops centered on embracing new technology, designing for the user and collaboration.
Much of the focus in the area of Interaction Design centered on responsive design and mobile first. None of this is new to the field, but new techniques were taught in workshops. Jason Grigsby and Lyza Danger Gardner gave an in-depth workshop on designing and developing for devices and how to build in a future friendly manner. They believe that everything will be interconnected in our future, from your internet-connected refrigerator to your app-loaded car dashboard. By designing a flexible system now, our content will adapt itself to future devices. Participants explored device APIs, CSS3 media queries, responsive web design, and PhoneGap. The workshop was heavy in technical jargon but they always brought it back to how a development methodology can directly affect the user experience.
As the field of User Experience (UX) grows many UX designers are still trying to define it. Whitney Hess, an independent UX consultant, guided us through her principles of experience design coupled with current examples to help us visualize each principle in practice. Hess used Wanderfly.com to exemplify her third principle, Limit Distractions. The Wanderfly home page is minimal with large icons to navigate to your destination. The tenth principle was the most compelling, Make a Good First Impression. "A website is analogous to your a first impression of a person. You want people to make you feel comfortable when you first meet them," she explained. She pointed to Vimeo as one of the best first-time user experiences. When a user visits the site for the first time a message asks, "Welcome, you're new aren't you?" This casual language guides you in like a friendly doorman.
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