6 Inspiring Design Talks & Other Memories from a Web Conference in Prague
Designing systems | Design sprint | UI animations (WebExpo 2016)
by Brett Mazoch, published in A Designer’s Thoughts
Business, creativeness and development met together under the same roof again in the historical Prague in Czech Republic. Enthusiastic speakers from Google, Microsoft, Slack and others shared their inspirational thoughts and ideas. Local startups and established tech companies showcased their work. Businessmen, designers and developers networked in a friendly and supportive atmosphere… And three months ago I was lucky to experience all of this during the WebExpo conference (23–24th Sep 2016).
Since I still have in my mind great talks about designing systems in difficult places, Google’s agile design process or about meaningful animations in user interfaces, I would like to share my memories and thoughts from this great conference before the New Year arrives.
For those who haven’t heard about the conference yet: WebExpo started as a small meet up of people interested in the digital world and throughout the years it has turned into the largest tech conference in Central Europe. The sign of the quality are excited speakers from industry leading companies like the mentioned Google, Microsoft, Slack or several other as IBM, Adobe, MSD/Merck or InVision. On top of that, the conference takes place in a location which anyone can easily fall in love with because of its charming old architecture and delicious Czech beer — the city of Prague.
I attended 12 talks and since in our software company — Bluewire Technologies in Bristol (England) — I am working as a UI Designer, my schedule was full of talks on design related topics. I’ve realised that the talks I enjoyed the most were those in which the speakers shared their own personal experience and some good & bad real examples supported by their own testing or research.
The following 6 talks definitely met my internal criteria for the great performance. And, in addition to that, their content resonates with my current focus and interests. I enjoyed the ones mentioned below the most and I think you might do so as well, here we go:
Contents
- Design Systems in Difficult Places
- Ready. Set. Sprint!
- UI in Motion: Connecting the Dots
- Meaningful Motion in Design
- The Most Common Mistakes of Mobile and Responsive Web Design
- How We Hacked a Bitcoin ATM
01 — Design Systems in Difficult Places
Mark Boulton, Design Director at Monotype
MY TAKEAWAY…
When designing a system, start learning about your users, about who the users actually are. Creating simple design models based on the users study will help you in specific cases and situations with the answer to the question ‘How should the solution look like?’. Also provide a framework to support creativity in others by giving them well-designed parameters to work within rather then trying to be a design police. And finally understand (and eventually modify) the workflow to establish a mandate for the system.
Mark has also published a FREE e-book, really worth reading, called Designing for the Web in which he describes his design process and basics about typography, colours and layout.
WATCH THE TALK…
02 — Ready. Set. Sprint!
Dana Cohen, Strategic UX Designer at Google Campus
MY TAKEAWAY…
A team of multidisciplinary experts, led by an experienced Design Master, can find and test a solution very quickly and effectively before even starting programming by following the agile Design Sprint methodology. You will end up with well-discussed decisions and tested prototypes which means that you can save your development resources. You will also involve stakeholders and other team members into a design phase very soon and that means a bigger connection and a better satisfaction with the final solution.
If you are thinking about introducing this design methodology in your project, then definitely have a look at the Google’s website The Design Sprint. There you can find a comprehensive guide, video examples and other learning sources.
WATCH THE TALK…
03 — UI in Motion: Connecting the Dots
Tom Giannattasio, Director of Product at InVision
MY TAKEAWAY…
When thinking about incorporating animations into user interfaces, we should consider its purpose and actually have a good reason for incorporating them. We can think about these purposes for animations:
Explain — aid a user’s understanding of the content,
Acquaint — aid a user’s understanding of the architecture,
Change — switch an element’s meaning or behaviour,
Indicate — clarify the current state or the changes to it,
Convey — build a sense of quality or character,
Entertain — lighten the mood or occupy the user,
Delight — surprise with clever craftsmanship,
Engage — make the user an active participant in the interface.
Have a look at Tom’s animated presentation with examples.
WATCH THE TALK…
04 — Meaningful Motion in Design
Adrian Zumbrunnen, Freelance UX Engineer at Google
MY TAKEAWAY…
Aiming only for delight when designing animations is not enough. It is about creating meaningful interactions. Animate meaningfully and smartly. Don’t over animate your product. Focus more on smart motion and micro animations which do give gentle feedback and which explain, navigate and tell the story. Meaningful motion is about keeping your eyes on details.
WATCH THE TALK…
05 — The Most Common Mistakes of Mobile and Responsive Web Design
Jan Kvasnička, UX designer
MY TAKEAWAY…
In a mobile era we should optimise our designs for different and small resolutions. The optimisation for phone devices definitely pays off and in the future the impact will be even more significant. When designing for small resolution environments, definitely follow good mobile design principles and patterns. But that design optimisation should be based more importantly on information gathered from user testing and the analysis of real users behaviour.
You can find a lot of screenshots with explanatory notes at Jan’s article Practical guide to the most common mistakes of mobile and responsive web design (written in Czech only).
WATCH THE TALK (in Czech only)…
06 — How We Hacked a Bitcoin ATM
Ivana Jíleková, User Researcher at MSD/Merck
MY TAKEAWAY…
Thanks to a quick and informal user testing we can find important things in our products worth improving. And, surprisingly, even cheap and easy changes — based on insights from a simple user testing — can make the users’ experience way, way much better. Don’t underestimate the user testing.
In the articles Unusability of Bitcoin ATM and Improvement of Bitcoin ATM (both written in Czech only) is available introduced user experience study with videos taken during the user testing of bitcoin ATM.
WATCH THE TALK (in Czech only)…
Final thoughts — So how was the conference?
It was my very first time at the conference and I was captured by its digital vibe and really enjoyed this special event. I was walking from one talk to another with great interest in what I am about to hear, see and learn. And that is what I am always expecting from such a conference. If you are interested, you can watch all its talks on business, design and development topics at WebExpo Videos.
Thank you to promoters and speakers who prepared an entertaining mix of topics. I hope to see you next time WebExpo!
For more stories see ► A Designer’s Thoughts.
Thank you for reading and Happy New Year 2017!
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The article was written by Břetislav “Brett” Mazoch while working as a designer in England. He moved there from the Czech Republic to follow his traveller’s dreams and work passion — UI/UX Design and Front-end Development.
