“LiveBlogging” the In>Control Web Design Workshop Conference

February 22-23, 2010 | Orlando, Florida
Day Two

7:51am 02.23.10

Settling in here with a cup of tea and some trail mix. Unfortunately, it is raining here in Orlando today and I have no umbrella. That half mile walk seemed a wee bit longer this morning.

Kind of a young crowd here at the conference. Folks behind me apparently came in 3rd in a beer pong competition at the local sports bar last night. Rock on!

Keynote: Day 2

8:02am 02.23.10

Starting off with thanking sponsors and housecleaning announcements. Slides from all presentations will be available next week.

Ted Murphy (@tedmurphy) is our keynote presenter this morning. The title is "WTF Happened?" Did I mention that this is somewhat of a younger crowd?

8:am 02.23.10

We are being asked to shut down our laptops! Eeep. WTF?, indeed.

9:05am 02.23.10

OK, that was wild. The presentation was all about getting back to creative basics. We started out by having to meet 5 new people. Then we had to pair up with one of them and do an interview. After the interview we had to draw a picture of that person. I met, Jack, who helped develop the MP3 specs. Pretty cool. Then we had to form a group of 4 and come up with the idea for the worst pair of shoes ever. After that we had to brainstorm the best car security system ever. Our final mission was to think up an iPhone app. "Monetize" (ewwwww) it and then pitch it. I normally hate this kind of shit, but overall it was not too bad.

Looking forward to getting on with the normal part of the conference…

Designing and Developing Accessible Web Sites

9:16 02.23.10

Derek Featherstone will be presenting.

Dude is talking about how is a triathlete. Ooooh, ahhh.

9:24am 02.23.10

As graphic design is more than just choosing colors and drop shadows, so is accessibility design (AD) more than just adding alt tags and title tags.

AD making websites usable by people of all abilities.

Apparently some people confuse accessibility with SEO. So he is having to rant against this "misconception." People are strange.

9:32am 02.23.10

Still ranting… Is Google evil again?

9:35am 02.23.10

AD is not about the accessibility W3C rules. But they are the starting point.

Assistive Technology (AT) (simply tools to get a job done)

9:45am 02.23.10

So far we are just reviewing a variety of AT hardware and software that exist for people of all disabilities. Not very enlightening. No mention yet of HTML or CSS. I am sure we will get there…

9:48am 02.23.10

w3c web accessibility guidelines: POUR

9:54am 02.23.10

Must start with good, clean HTML. This may be all that the disabled user ever has access to.

Progressive Enhancement of Documents:

Web standards: ensures a baseline level of accessibility. Does not guarantee a rich experience, but it does guarantee a base experience: access to content.

10:01am 02.23.10

ROBUST = Semantic HTML: use this structure and these rules. Use it the way it was designed (no TABLEs for layout, no BLOCKQUOTE for indenting, etc.)

10:05am 02.23.10

Crap! Another go meet new people and solve a problem exercise. We are asked in three minutes to deconstruct the navigation of the United Methodist Church website.

Well, that was fine. But what does it all mean. Why did we do this?

OK so now we are going to strip away the presentation (CSS) to see how this nav would work with only the base HTML.

Aaaannnnndddd… it sucks. The point being the HTML was configured to present information, it tells a different story than the styled web nav. Need to make your HTML tell the same story (in a simpler form) as your final styled version.

10:17am 02.23.10

Tag Clouds are an example of how NOT to do accessibility. All of the relevant information (which tag is most used/popular) is all done with CSS. The cloud as HTML is not helpful. There are tools now that allow users to sort the cloud by size.

10:27am 02.23.10

Talking about HTML forms. All fields must use LABELs and they must include the instructional text (e.g., required field). Use CSS to move the instructional text to someplace that makes sense. Odd that this is suddenly a code intensive presentation. Don't get me wrong, I dig it, but we are a bit disjointed here this morning.

10:35am 02.23.10

Images can be content, be functional (nav), support other content, be decorative or is useless.

Screen readers will read the img src tag if no alt tag is provided. Not cool.

10:46am 02.23.10

Hyperlinks need to be semantic text. No more "click here" links. Include clues if the link is to open in another window or if the link is to a PDF. Title attribute not particularly helful. Text readers either read the link text OR the Title, not both.

10:57am 02.23.10

Linear Flow: site needs to flow semantically. Give feedback within the same container. TABLEs break up linear flow.

Proximity: instruction and alerts need to be tied to their trigger elements. Ajax can be good for keeping things together, but using href=# causes problems because it puts keyboard only users back at the top of the page.

11:06am 02.23.10

Finishing up here… best way to get good ROE on accessibility is to build it in as much as possible from the beginning (good, clean HTML). Follow the basic rules of good content with HTML, present with CSS and do behaviors with Javascript.

Web Workflow Workshop

11:17am 02.23.10

Greg Rewis is presenting again. He did yesterday's Javascript for Designers presentation. This is going to be a big Adobe CS4 love fest.

11:21am 02.23.10

The dynamic Mr. Rewis is going to make this a Tips & Tricks. Hoo, boy.

OK, now he is going to convince us all to use Adobe Bridge. Are you shittin me?

11:32am 02.23.10

Bridge (File Manager):

Yawn…

11:39am 02.23.10

New Photoshop Features:

12:03pm 02.23.10

We are getting way into this photo raw thing. Again, it is really cool, but you really need to be a photog to get into this.

12:17pm 02.23.10

People are going nuts for this PS stuff. Granted, it is way cool, but not entirely practical for web design in my opinion.

12:28 02.23.10

Saving for the web in PS. Need to change default of saving Meta Data. Also, add a little blur (new feature) as this lets the JPEG compression be more efficient.

But now we are plugging Fireworks as the superior save for web tool. Oy. Nice segue, amigo. Lunch break cannot come fast enough. BTW Fireworks saves a JPEG file at 60% of size of PS. I am really, really trying to care.

This guy came over from the Macromedia side to Adobe. He is really giving Fireworks the hard sell.

He is now arguing with people who prefer to use PS to do slicing of comps. Brilliant!

12:40pm 02.23.10

Yeah. Lunch is starting 10 minutes early for this guy. Fireworks love fest continues as does my lack to see how it is relevant.

See y'all in a bit…

Findability and SEO Workshop

2:02pm 02.23.10

Shari Thurow will be presenting this one today. It is already after 2pm (when we were supposed to start) and the room is almost empty. Am I in the right place?

Folks are now trickling in (as they are wont to do) and I am just sitting here digesting my Cuban sandwich. It could take a while.

2:12pm 02.23.10

And we are (finally) off and running… Here is what we will be covering:

Findability: Need to accommodate the following info foraging techniques

2:23pm 02.23.10

Scent of Info: basically a test for how to find what you need. A "weak scent" = bad design. So strong scent means a clear indication of showing the user how to do what they want to do.

SE try to validate searchers scents (e.g, video, local query = maps). Developers need to communicate this "aboutness".

2:32pm 02.23.10

SE Friendly sites:

5 rules to search friendly design

2:41pm 02.23.10

SEs all do this:

2:44pm 02.23.10

Man she is whipping through her slides. I am doing the best I can to keep up. I hope she offers them for download…

Whoo! we are taking a bit of a break while Shari give herself major props for her work on Medicine.Net which apparently kicks WebMD's butt on SEs. Thanks, Shari, you must rule.

Text at the top is more important than text at the bottom. She is saying don't use negative CSS coordinates, even for accessibility purposes. And a wicked argument is breaking out. She is getting some heat here. I want my mommy.

2:55pm 02.23.10

She is having some difficulty answering the more technical questions. She refuses to say she does not know the answer. She is rolling Google under the bus "oh, google said that? well they say a lot of things that aren't true". Not helpful.

Basically, it keeps coming back to good, semantic HTML design. Do that and you are going to do as well as you are going to do without resorting to tricks. IMO tricks will degrade as the SEs figure them out and then disregard your previous awesomeness.

The 5-Second Usability Study is the best guage of user experience. Huh, really?

3:02pm 02.23.10

So, no real surprise:

3:06pm 02.23.10

Break time. w00t!

3:22pm 02.23.10

Getting back to it now…

From most to least SE friendly links:

Offer two forms of nav (really?). One for the users and one for the SEs. I am calling BS on this. Unless you have few enough links to stuff into a footer or something.

Always offer a Site Map. I am on board with this. Also use some annotations with the links. Maybe this is what she meant by two forms of Nav. If so, I am feeling it.

3:32pm 02.23.10

Information pages are important:

Always include on your home page, even if you have Flash:

3:42pm 02.23.10

Behavior Component - Informational Intent of User:

These query types need to be respected and designed for. Design for people and receive the highest ROI.

3:52pm 02.23.10

Now we are into the Q&A… Nothing to see here, move along.

Apparently it is one of the presenter's birthday. We just sang to them and now there is a big ass cake be hacked up in the back of the room. I do not like cake.

Playing Beyonce on the sound system now for absolutely no discernable reason. Apparently if I liked it I should have put a ring on it…

User Research Workshop

4:02pm 02.23.10

Jared Spool is presenting. I have seen this guy before and it was good. We shall see if he does canned performances or if this will be something new and different.

The subhead for this presentation is "Why Good Content Must Suck: Designing for the Scent of Information."

Well, Okey dokey.

4:05pm 02.23.10

Designing for "scent" is different than desiging navigation.

Apparently "sucking" is a good thing for a web site, as in it "sucks" you in. Okey dokey.

Links give off scent. Amazon = millions of pages, but once you start looking for things, you get the scent of the information that you want to retrieve. Amazon, makes it easy to maintain the scent of what it is you are trying to find. On sites where it is difficult to follow the scent, people tend to leave.

"Design for scent and your content will suck". Again this is supposed to be a good thing: stinky sucky design is now the thing of the future.

4:15pm 02.23.10

People are happy to keep clicking on links getting deeper and deeper into the site as long as they think they are still following the scent of the information that they want. Consider trying to track down a printer driver. Find the site, find the drivers link, find the kind of printer, find the model of printer, etc.

"When design works well, it is invisible."

4:22pm 02.23.10

Ahhh, Jared. This guy is a true showman. We are all laughing our asses off. I think we are learning things too. I think.

4:27pm 02.23.10

We are very humorously deconstructing old versions of the HP, Amazon and Dr.Koop.com sites. Just kicking back and absorbing…

The man states the obvious, but he does it so very well.

4:48pm 02.23.10

I will try and tease out the nuggets of wisdom from the comedy show…

5:05pm 02.23.10

Done with the break now and back to Jared, the man…

Five different kinds of pages:

Predictors of broken Scent

5:23pm 02.23.10

Mad props for the Crutchfield website. Cool hometown mention.

5:40pm 02.23.10

Interesting screed on how home pages are not important. I tend to concur.

We continue to pound into the dust the points above about types of pages and predictors of bad user experience.

My eyes are starting to cross.

5:47pm 02.23.10

Three ways to get to desired content (in order of popularity)

Bottom line is that you must do user studies in order to build successful web sites.

5:52pm 02.23.10

That's all folks, thanks for tuning in.