Workshops | Web Directions South 2012

Sydney, October 16–19

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Get up close and personal with the experts on October 16 and 17. Josh Clark — Tapworthy mobile design and UX, Douglas Crockford — JavaScript, the good parts, Karen McGrane — Content strategy for mobile

Douglas Crockford

Javascript: the good parts

Douglas Crockford was born in the wilds of Minnesota, but left when he was only six months old because it was just too damn cold. He turned his back on a promising career in television when he discovered computers. He has worked in learning systems, small business systems, office automation, games, interactive music, multimedia, location-based entertainment, social systems, and programming languages. He is the inventor of Tilton, the ugliest programming language that was not specifically designed to be an ugly programming language. He is best known for having discovered that there are good parts in JavaScript. This was an important and unexpected discovery. He discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format. He is currently working on making the web a secure and reliable software delivery platform. He has his work cut out for him.

Venue: The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Date: Tuesday Oct. 16 2012, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $449 (conference attendees) $549 (standard)

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Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and then released in a hurry before it could be refined. Once Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language.

In this full day Master Class, JavaScript expert Douglas Crockford will scrape away the language’s bad features to reveal all the good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language: ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. You’ll learn why this powerful feature subset is more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole, and discover firsthand how to create extensible and efficient code with it. Based on his popular O’Reilly book, “JavaScript: The Good Parts”, this class will demonstrate how JavaScript can be a beautiful, elegant, lightweight, and highly expressive language.

What will I learn?

• get a detailed look at JavaScript’s elegant features, including syntax, objects, functions, inheritance, arrays, regular expressions, and methods
• discover why object-oriented programming in classical, prototypal, and functional styles is unique to JavaScript
• really understand the Document Object Model (DOM): the web browser API so crucial to your work
• improve the quality of your JavaScript code through performance, security, and style
• learn how to avoid the bad parts of JavaScript, such as global variables and the eval function

Who should attend?

If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this class is a must, whether you’re managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run faster. Don’t miss this opportunity to spend an entertaining and instructive day with one of the true legends of JavaScript.

Karen McGrane

Content strategy for mobile

If the internet is more awesome than it was in 1995, Karen would like to claim a very tiny piece of the credit. For more than 15 years Karen has helped create more usable digital products through the power of user experience design and content strategy. Today, as Managing Partner at Bond Art + Science, she develops web strategies and interaction designs for publishers, financial services firms, and healthcare companies.

Prior to starting Bond, Karen built the user-centered design practice at Razorfish in her role as VP and National Lead for User Experience. Karen is also on the faculty of the MFA in Interaction Design program at SVA in New York, where she teaches Design Management, which aims to teach students how to run successful projects, teams, and businesses.

Venue: The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Date: Tuesday Oct. 16 2012, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $449 (conference attendees) $549 (standard)

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With users engaging more deeply and frequently with their mobile devices, they’re expecting an experience that’s as good as—even better than—the desktop web. It’s time to think about developing your content strategy for mobile. This workshop explores the challenges and constraints of presenting content in mobile interfaces and contexts. Desktop websites have gotten cluttered with useless information that doesn’t meet user needs. Mobile offers an opportunity to re-prioritize messages, rewrite jargon, and remove outdated information. You’ll learn how to use mobile as a wedge to create a better experience for ALL users.

This workshop will include a mix of hands-on exercises, discussion, and review of themes, problems, and real-world examples. We’ll analyze content from desktop websites and mobile websites and apps to uncover what works (and what doesn’t) when publishing on mobile.

In this workshop, you’ll learn:

• Prioritizing messages and content for the constraints of mobile
• Writing for people who are reading with just one eye
• Structuring content to be navigated with one thumb
• Creating editorial processes to COPE with the demands of mobile (Create Once, Publish Everywhere)
• Why your CMS needs to evolve to support mobile publishing
• How your governance model and organizational structure may need to adapt

Hands on-exercises include:

• Convince your CEO: how to fit mobile content strategy into your overall business strategy
• Auditing and inventorying content with an eye to mobile (and how to improve the experience for desktop users too)
• Messaging architecture and prioritizing content for mobile screens
• Content modeling and CMS UX design: how chunks and metadata support mobile content strategy

Attendees of this workshop are likely to be people who have a medium to large-size base of content that they’re looking to publish onto a variety of mobile devices. This workshop will be appropriate for all experience levels.

Josh Clark

Tapworthy mobile design and ux

Josh Clark is a designer specializing in mobile design strategy and user experience. He’s author of “Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps” (O’Reilly, 2010) and “Best iPhone Apps” (O’Reilly, 2009). Josh’s outfit Global Moxie offers consulting services, training, and product invention workshops to help creative organizations build tapworthy mobile apps and effective websites.

Before the internet swallowed him up, Josh was a management consultant at Monitor Group in Cambridge, Mass, and before that, a producer of national PBS programs at Boston’s WGBH. He shared his three words of Russian with Mikhail Gorbachev, strolled the ranch with Nancy Reagan, hobnobbed with Rockefellers, and wrote trivia questions for a primetime game show. In 1996, he created the uberpopular “Couch-to-5K” (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (His motto is the same for fitness as it is for software user experience: no pain, no pain.)

Venue: The Powerhouse Museum, Sydney

Date: Wednesday Oct. 17 2012, 9.00am to 5.00pm

Pricing: $449 (conference attendees) $549 (standard)

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From first concept to polished pixel, learn to create mobile apps and websites that delight. The workshop explores the practical principles of mobile and touchscreen design, teaching you to “think mobile” by planning and creating app interfaces in tune with the psychology and ergonomics of an audience on the go. Through a day of hands-on exercises, you’ll learn to conceive and refine an app’s interface and user experience in tune with the needs of a mobile audience… and their fingers and thumbs. You’ll learn:

• The expectations of a mobile audience
• The ergonomic demands of designing for touch
• Strategies for crafting your app’s visual identity
• How to work with gestures
• Unique considerations for designing for the iPad
• Techniques for creating sensational app icons

This workshop isn’t (only) for geeks. The workshop’s interdisciplinary approach is appropriate for everyone involved in the design process: designers, programmers, managers, marketers, clients. The workshop takes a hands-on approach to intermediate and advanced design concepts but requires no specific technical know-how. Experienced designers and newcomers alike will uncover the shifts in mindset and technique required to craft a great mobile app.

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