Five Simple Steps

This workshop will take you through the theory to the practical application of how to design Grid Systems. From the fundamentals of composition and the basics of simple grid creation, through to the intricacies of mapping out complex grids.

Designing Grid Systems should be a starting point for any designer when looking at arranging information to be scanned, viewed, read, and consumed. This workshop will give you the theory, skills and tools to be able to do that confidently.

Who is this workshop for

• UX designers
• Web designers
• Developers
• Editorial Assistants
• Web Managers
• Anyone who is asked to 'do design' but isn't a designer

What you will learn in this workshop

• Compositional theory
• Macro typographic design theory
• How to design simple hierarchical, columnar, modular and compound grids
• How to design complex rational and irrational ratio-based grids
• How to use a 'new Canon' to design your grids
• Effective layout design for multiple devices
• An understanding of how layout structures can aid usability

Who is Mark?

Mark Boulton runs his own studio, Mark Boulton Design and is the co-founder of Five Simple Steps. Mark started designing web sites when he was the ‘young guy’ in the studio back in 1997 and he’s been banging on about applying the fundamentals of good graphic design on the web ever since. He is the author of the bestselling ‘A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web’ and is currently working on writing more books. His next book, ‘A Practical Guide to Designing Grid Systems for the Web’ will be available early in 2011 and workshop attendees will get a free copy when it comes out.

Who is this workshop for?

For anyone who is interested in getting started in this field, folks who end-up wearing 10 hats at work and one is “make this report look pretty” or even people who are fed-up with pedestrian excel charts and are taking it into their own hands to improve the situation. You hire a professional copy-editor and proof-reader, but ignore the visualizations – now you can be that expert. You will need to be comfortable with any text-editor and have a basic knowledge of an illustration program such as Illustrator or Inkscape etc.

What will you learn?

After attending this workshop, you will know some of the basic charts and graphs, when each is best used, along with a firm grounding in getting your feet wet in the world of infographics and visualizations. For beginner coders, you will learn to quickly generate visual data from text files. For designers, we’ll be talking about dealing with flexible and unpredictable data sets; how to design a structure into which dynamic data could flow. When you leave, you won’t think about data in the same way.

Who is Brian?

Brian is an informatician currently residing in Reykjavík, Iceland. He has spent a good portion of each day connected to the Internet after discovering it back in the mid-1990s. Most recently, he has been focusing more on the mobile space and future predictions. This could include better visualizations of data, interactions, work-flows and ethnographic studies of how we relate to these digital objects. His own little patch of Internet can be found at suda.co.uk where many of his past projects and crazy ideas can be found.

Brian’s book for Five Simple Steps, ‘A Practical Guide to Designing with Data’ was published in August 2010. You’ll get a free copy with this workshop.

What does it mean to get involved with Strategic User Experience?

• Understanding the experience that your users have beyond their interaction with the interface you're designing, across all medium, throughout the lifecycle of their engagement.
• Being proactively involved in shaping the product or service offering, working with disciplines across the organisation.
• Becoming fluent in the languages and practices of both User Experience & Business people, becoming a translator and facilitator for both of these groups.
• Developing some new techniques, and re-framing some existing UX techniques to help explore and communicate the strategic business opportunities that can be generated through a better understanding of our customers/end users.

Who is this workshop for?

UX practitioners with a few years experience under their belt who want to have more control over and input into the product or service they're working on.

What will you learn?

• How to get their attention and speak their language (getting onto the strategy radar)
• What is an Experience Strategy - what does it include, how to make and use one.
• Soft skills you'll need as a UX Strategist.
• How to transform traditional UX deliverables from tactical to strategic tools.

Who is Leisa?

Leisa Reichelt is a freelance design researcher & user experience designer who works with global brands, innovative startups and open source communities to help them deliver great online experiences for their customers and community members. She hasn't yet managed to write a book but you may have seen her work on the D7UX project for Drupal, heard her musing on Ambient Intimacy or Agile UX, or seen her writing at Disambiguity.org or speaking at UX London, dConstruct, IDEA, UX Week, the IA Summit. Leisa coordinates the London UX Bookclub and is an active mentor for UX Practitioners in the UK.

Who is this workshop for?

This is aimed at designers who may freelance or design for a number of smaller sized projects - not big enough to justify a full-time strategist - that often leave the designer to make decisions about placeholder copy, interaction instructions, or designing without good knowledge of what might end up being on these sites.

What will you learn?

• Discuss where content currently takes its role in the design process and what other options available.
• Writing interface copy, microcopy and error messages.
• Give examples of sites that use content in harmony and as inspiration for the look and feel of the site, and where this hasn't worked so well.
• Have a couple of practical exercises working with words as visual inspiration, using sketchpads and collage (pritt sticks and safety scissors provided) and then a discussion about how to use these online.
• Give examples of good practice and a good workflow for managing content, templates that might have variable content, working with writers, working with clients who are supplying content and a ready reckoner on how customers really read on the web to take back home.

Outcomes

• Confidence in using content as a design inspiration.
• A workflow for getting and applying content upfront, including reasons on why this works better than providing boxes to use with colleagues and clients
• Confidence in writing content that works for interfaces - how best to get someone clicking that link, filling in their card details or correcting their mistakes.

Who is Relly?

Relly Annett-Baker lives in the Home Counties with her husband, Paul Annett, and their two small sons. As a result she thrives on the country air and can be guaranteed to stand on Lego at least once a day. As well as being the Content Strategist for Headscape and a copywriter, she is employed as live-in domestic staff by two cats who often supervise her typing and make editorial suggestions such as 'I think it's dinner time'.

When not being purred into submission she writes copy and content for clients, magazine articles on multiple topics and attempts to read Japanese manga.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is most suited to people who have responsibility for large web sites, including information architects, product managers, website producers, communication managers, marketing managers, business analysts and graphic designers. It is also suited to people who are new to the field and would like to know more about information architecture work.

This workshop is taught will be at the level of an ‘advanced intro’, covering the basics and also allowing exploration of key challenges and issues.

Immediately apply ideas to your projects.

What will you learn?

• What information architecture is and how it relates to other user experience disciplines
• Core IA techniques – analysing content, conducting user research, card sorting and more
• Core IA theories – classification, categorisation, metadata & labelling
• IA patterns – structures for different types of sites
• Designing navigation & page layouts
• Putting it together in an IA project
• Current issues in IA

At the end of the workshop, you will understand

• How to design sites that help users find what they want
• What organisational scheme or schemes are best for your content
• How to conduct user research that helps develop your information architecture
• How to conduct a card sorting exercise
• How core IA theories, such as metadata, classification, and categorisation affect your site’s success
• How to conduct a content analysis and develop a solid IA structure
• How to design effective navigation and page layouts

The workshop will combine discussion, questions and hands-on activities. Extensive notes and resources will be provided for further personal exploration.

Who is Donna?

Donna’s a freelance information architect, interaction designer and writer. That’s a fancy way of saying she plans how to present the things you see on your computer screen, so that they’re easy to understand, engaging and compelling. Things like the navigation, forms, categories and words on intranets, websites, web applications and business systems.

Not surprisingly, given Donna’s obsession with usability and fondness of people, she’s also quite the teacher. She’s a very experienced speaker and regularly holds workshops and speaks at local and international conferences, on the topics of information architecture, interaction design, the web, writing and more. She even runs a user experience conference (UX Australia).

Donna’s been doing this since 2002. She’s worked on the boards of the Information Architecture Institute (international), Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) and has judged many web awards. She’s also written three books – on card sorting, web writing and now information architecture.

Donna’s book for Five Simple Steps, ‘A Practical Guide to Information Architecture’ was published in June 2010. You’ll get a free copy with this workshop.