I’ll post here some of the notes I took from the conference. I hope they make sense:
Designing our way through data by Jeffrey Veen
I can not say much about this one. Unfortunately missed it because of a flight delay.
For example: BBC Home page by Tom Cartwright and Claire Roberts
Make websites thinking in the best practices on accessibility.
blur() not friends with JAWS
Care for some users brings a better experience for all.
http://www.bbc.co.uk
New Platform will be service oriented with the Zend Framework & PHP. Someone ask why they are going to use the Zend Framework. Tom couldn’t answer why. Would have been good to know , though
Upcoming: http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow. Will be an own JavaScript library for the BBC that it’s planned to go open-source.
Pan BBC Identity. Implicit and explicit personalization. This its been worked at the moment. Don’t know when will be launched.
For example:Clearleft presenting – Designing Eden bee by James Box
James is an Information Architect at Clearleft
A new site about people interested and concerned on global warming and climate change
They started with a discovery face, sketching ideas.
They wanted to show how your lifestyle choices affect your carbon footprint and create an ecological profile
They are using amee API’s to track and store information about your carbon footprint. Dopplr is using it as well to track your flights carbon footprint.
By adding and using the Amee API’s all the information gets saved in their database, therefore creating a general ecosystem of information how much carbon we generate
Getting your hands dirty with HTML5 by James Graham and Lachlan Hunt
I would have liked to see more interesting insights on this topic other than what you can find online. The presentation was quite poor to be honest. But here we go:
Same language, different syntax
Design principles:
- compatibility
- Utility
- Interoperability
- Universal Access
They explained with examples some of the basic structures that we use over an over again how could they be accomplished by using more semantic elements like <nav>, <sidebar>, <header>, <section>, etc.
It will give support for SVG animations and dynamically generate pie charts and the possibility to embed videos without using Flash through the <video> element
HTML 5 validator @ validator.nu
More information on HTML 5 you can find it here, here and here. Or check these guys blog and wiki and see how things are moving on.
Underpants over my trousers: Andy Clarke
Andy’s session was based on how to get inspiration for comic books (which are his inspiration) and how to transmit that inspiration into the web.
Usability is not getting only from A to B, it’s the experience you have between A getting to B
In the same sense that the drawings, the size of the boxes on a comic book give you a rhythm and emotion, web pages should convey the same sense of rhythm and momentum towards the end of your experience on a site.
The anticipation is part of the experience. That anticipated knowledge that you have when you click on a link and know what to expect.
It would be nice to insert a sense of story telling
Designing user interfaces: Details make the difference by Dan Rubin
The slides presentation will be able for download at http://www.superfluousbanter.org/presentations/2008
How a design should feel. Take care of balance, proportions and follow common patterns.
For instance, he put the example of the CNN.com website where they use common patterns for margins and paddings, like 6, 12 and 18px margins and a common 12px body copy size. Here you create pattern of sizes with 6px differences.
If you are really bad at math, just go for patterns of 5 ie. 5, 10, 15, 20px, etc.
Typography: tracking and letter-spacing.
For headlines use -1px on letter-spacing. This will help readability. We read words as entire shapes not letter by letter.
Grids: use columns to help you position the elements harmoniously. He use as an example Monocle which had a rigid use of grids.
Before you show your work you should be happy with what you’ve done. Fight for that and don’ t fall into a pattern where you hand in work fast and because you have to
On how to create an easy and interesting gradient: take or grab any picture at all, select 1 pixel height on one section of the picture running across. Crop to selection. Then strecht it and you’ll find yourself with an interesting gradient that you wouldn’t have imagined otherwise. Work on overlight, screen and other blending modes in Photoshop and more surprised you’ll be.
Conclusion
Overall great and inspirational presentations covering interesting points on each subject. If I get to track down some of the slide presentations of the presenters I’ll try to post them here.
Tags: @media2008, web, events, conference
