When we create for the web, we participate in a kind of public art. We code, we design, we build for an audience, making digital experiences that provide a service, that create joy, or that simply connect readers with words written half a world away. But in this session we’ll revisit what we’ve learned about responsive design, and ensure our content, not just our design, is readily accessible to them wherever they are. In doing so, we’ll look at some ways in which our audience reshapes the way we think about our medium, and see where they might be leading us—and the web—next.

A comprehensive design system is a critical tool for maintaining a consistent UI during rapid development that spans multiple codebases.

During the 2016 US presidential campaign, Mina spent most of her time building and refining Pantsuit, the design system that powered many of the applications hosted on hillaryclinton.com.

In this talk, Mina will share successes and failures from nearly two years at Hillary for America, including creating CSS architecture and implementing a redesign of the main website.

A "start small" and "rapid prototyping" approach to VR and AR. 5 best-practices for designing interactivity within an infinite canvas. We'll show 2 epic failures... so you can walk a different path. Attendees will get hands-on Oculas Rift demos; trigger open discussion - Are you ready, player one?

The largest risk in any digital project is building the wrong thing. Yet you’re expected to define a project scope and provide an estimate after just a few conversations. Then you have to manage to that budget for the life of the project regardless of what else you learn. This is nuts. One of your most important constraints–budget–is defined when you know the least about the project, the beginning. Running digital projects is hard. When expectations are mismanaged (or forced too early) during initial client conversations, running digital projects is nearly impossible. A few conversations and a quick estimate do not provide what you need to build the right thing.

During this talk, we will discuss how you can implement Awesome Discovery Projects to dive into a project with confidence while removing some of the largest risks. You’ll be armed with a thoughtful, scoped roadmap to provide more accurate estimates and be able to correctly set client expectations for the rest of the engagement.

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Learning to use the web has changed slightly since then. While everything in the past had to be self-taught, we can now get degrees or go to bootcamps to learn all kinds of Internet technology. Indeed, staying abreast of the latest techniques is a must for designers and developers to do their jobs. As part of that education, we need to stay focused on trends within new Generations. GenZ is the first generation who are truly digital natives. They make up 25% of the population, representing how future technology users will navigate the web and expect applications and interfaces to work. By paying attention to how GenZ uses technology, we can both improve the quality of our own work and make future technology more accessible and useful going forward.

What you'll learn: Understanding what's a Generational Misfit, Who is Gen Z, How does Gen Z use technology, How to design for Gen Z, What to market to Gen Z, What does the future have in store

We live in a world increasingly shaped by big data and a desire to “mathify” all of our decisions, especially design decisions. Never-the-less, as designers we often struggle to both sell and ensure the value of the work we do. In this session we’ll take a look at the ROI of design as well as some practical ways to shape our projects and processes to ensure value in our work.

The following may sound a little too familiar.

A client seeks you out. They give you thousands of dollars in advance. Then, inexplicably, they do everything in their power to ruin your life and make the project a miserable failure... Or do they? What is it that causes clients to lose faith so quickly?

In this talk, Carl will walk you through how to nurture blossoming client relationships, run successful client projects, and ultimately become a bona fide client whisperer.

During this session, Carl will cover:
•Establishing trust with a client
•Setting and maintaining expectations
•Having tough conversations
•Negotiating project conflict
•Utilizing leverage
•Keeping your client and team in sync
•The power of transparency

Being the only designer at a company is hard. You wear many hats: designer, product manager, editor, researcher, and occasionally office furniture coordinator. In this webinar, you will learn how to drive prioritization, get useful critique, and leverage your non-designer co-workers... you'll be a powerhouse design team of one in an environment where design is a foreign language.

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Like teenagers, web pages go through some jarring transitions as they develop. This talk is about that awkward time *after* a page’s content and/or layout has loaded, but *before* the images come in.

What can we do to make this time shorter, or, at least *feel* shorter? How can we use it to set user's expectations, and minimize nasty surprises? And why, sometimes, should we try to intentionally make this time as *long as possible*, so that images arrive *just in time* rather than *as soon as possible*?

In this talk, we’ll discuss the code-y hows and UX-y whys of lazy and progressive image loading on the web.

Product design can be a delicate balance of iteration and forward thinking innovation. Ideas for the future can come from the craziest places and without concrete illustration few people will be able to follow you to grander places. This is the story of how our product design team decided to take a step back and Design Stretch into developing a longterm vision for our product while keeping the day to day of our product moving forward.

UX Engineering is a relatively nascent role in our industry, but it's crucial to the product design lifecycle. As creative tinkerers, UXEs rapidly turn concepts into reality through prototyping and develop tools to empower design teams. Learn how this discipline operates at Google, its history, the impact we're making there, and find out if your passions, interests, and skillset make you an ideal fit for this unique role.

CSS Grid Layout is gaining more browser support everyday! But what is it? How does it work? Why should you use it? And what are some practical ways you can incorporate it into your project? I’ll show you how CSS Grid solves layout problems we’ve had for years, and how it’s a great compliment to the other layout tools we have.

Without servers, we'd have no way to share our creations with the world. The internet is, without metaphor, just a bunch of servers tied together with wires. In a bit of a paradox, servers are _less_ essential to our work than they've ever been. We can now do things on the front end that used to require a back end. When we do need a back end, our front end skills can be put to work, giving us some surprisingly powerful new abilities. Join Chris on a whirlwind tour of the tools, tech, and code that puts more power than ever into our front-end hands.