Web Directions Summit 2022

Designing For Complex UIs

November 30 9am–5pm

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

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.

Fixing Frustrating Design Patterns in 2023

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.

We'll Cover

• Complex mega-dropdowns with 4+ levels of navigation, layout, interaction design, sideways navigation, breadcrumbs, top task analysis, mobile/desktop (e.g. large university websites),
• Complex modals and overlays, confirm vs. undo behavior, right timing, intraction design, with guidelines and best practices to improve click-through rates and decrease mistakes (e.g. enterprise software),
• Complex multi-page forms, focusing on form components, one-column vs. multi-column layout, error recovery, inline validation, routing, conditional reveal, disabled buttons, input buffering (e.g. complex multi-column multi-page forms with dozens of steps),
• Enterprise-grade tables, complex use-cases with inline editing, filtering, tagging, sorting and search — on mobile and on desktop (insurance, loss prevention),
• Dashboards and spreadsheets, with complex layouts, data editing, inline filtering, infinite scroll UX, “load more” vs. pagination, access to footer and access to the current state, mobile optimizations,
• Complex filtering, layout, auto-apply vs. manual apply, filtering overlays, filtering and sorting intervals, best practices and guidelines, on mobile and on desktop (public archives, media library, large catalogs of products),
• Autocomplete UX, with layout and interaction design, when to show/hide suggestions, search query iteration, autocomplete blindness, faceted search, smart suggestions, type-ahead pattern, keyboard navigation, on mobile and on desktop (e.g. in eCommerce),
• Accessibility of complex interfaces, with technical considerations, focus traps, navigation, announcements of notifications, keyboard support,
• Privacy UX, and how to gather accurate data while avoiding legal battles and respecting user’s data,
• 100s of real-life examples, government and university websites, trip planners, financial services, eCommerce, online banking, configurators, insurance and mortgage calculators, data grids and enterprise products.
• Checklist for complex UIs with guidelines and decisions to consider when designing any component in a complex setting.

Don't miss this rare chance of a workshop with the renowned Vitaly Friedman .

Tickets start at $795.

Register Now

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