Web Directions Summit 2022

Session Details

Fixing Frustrating Design Patterns in 2023

Vitaly Friedman Editor-in-chief, Creative Lead Smashing Magazine

You’ve seen them before. Confusing and frustrating design patterns that seem to be chasing you everywhere you go, from one website to another. Perhaps it’s a birthday selector dropdown that always starts in 2022, or a date picker that prompts a clock wheel, or tooltips that — once opened — always cover the input field just when you need to correct a mistake. They are everywhere, and they are annoying, often tossing us from one dead-end to another, in something that seems like a well-orchestrated and poorly designed mousetrap.

In this talk, we’ll take a closer look at some frustrating design patterns and explore better alternatives, along with plenty of examples and checklists to keep in mind when building or designing one. We’ll look into birthday input, mega-drop-down-hover-menus, disabled “Continue” buttons, draconian password requirements, unusable sliders, poor inline validation, invisible tooltips, broken filters and of course scrolljacking — along with identifying buses and fire hydrants.

The insights are coming from usability tests and user research conducted by yours truly or our colleagues in the community. You’ll walk away with a packed toolbox of techniques that you’ll be able to apply to your projects right away.

Vitaly Friedman

Vitaly loves beautiful content and does not give up easily. Born in Minsk, Belarus, he studied computer science and mathematics in Germany. While writing algebra proofs and preparing for software engineering at nights in the kitchen, at the same time he discovered passion for typography, interface design and writing. After working as a freelance designer and developer for 6 years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine back in 2006, a leading online magazine for designers and developers. His curiosity drove him from interface design to front-end to performance optimization to accessibility and back to user experience over all the years.

Vitaly is the author, co-author and editor of all Smashing books, and a curator of all Smashing Conferences. He is the editor-in-chief and creative lead of Smashing Magazine and front-end/UX consultant in Europe and abroad, working with European Parliament, Haufe-Lexware, Axel-Springer and a few other companies.

Don't miss your chance to see Vitaly Friedman and many other inspiring speakers at Web Directions Summit.

Tickets start at $1295.

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