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Don't miss out on your dose of Direction
A decade of bringing Australia's sharpest digital creative minds together
You spend your days focussed on creating great work. But our field changes constantly. So why not spend two days with us, to focus on what comes next?
For a decade now, we've been bringing together the world's most creative Web and digital designers and technologists to explore what comes next. Join us for our 10th anniversary, were we reboot for the next decade.
Featuring the world's leading digital creative minds, like renowned interaction designer Josh Clark, Creative Director: Voice and Tone at Slack, Anna Pickard, legendary Art Director Andy Ckarke, and Community Director for the ludicrously popular Cards Against Humanity, Jenn Bane.
In an atmosphere decidedly unlike any you've experienced at a conference, we help keep the most engaged minds in our industry like you up to date with the latest currents of thought at the intersection of the web, technology and design.
Now you're thinking, "it sounds awesome, but I can't really afford the time to take two days off no matter how good this might be". But the question really is, in such a fast moving industry as ours, can you afford not to?
Frankly, who shouldn't? If you design, imagine, create or build digital products, web sites and applications, you owe it to yourself, your clients or your company to attend.
Web Directions is the must-attend event of the year
Phil Whitehouse, General Manager, DT Sydney
I was honored to be part… What a fantastic event!
Ethan Marcotte, inventor of "responsive Web design"
Out of any conference, this is far and away our favourite
Dave Greiner, founder, Campaign Monitor
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×"What if this thing was magic?" Designing for the internet of things means blessing everyday objects, places, even people with extraordinary abilities—requiring designers, too, to break with the ordinary. Designing for this new medium is less a challenge of technology than imagination. Sharing a rich set of examples, designer and author Josh Clark explores the new experiences that are possible when ANYTHING can be an interface. The digital manipulation of physical objects (and vice versa) effectively turns all of us into wizards. Sling content between devices, bring objects to life from a distance, weave "spells" by combining speech and gesture. But magic doesn't have to be otherworldly; the UX of connected devices should build on the natural physical interactions we have everyday with the world around us. The new UX must bend technology to the way we live our lives, not the reverse.
Josh Clark is an interaction designer specializing in connected devices, mobile experiences, and responsive design. He is founder of Big Medium, a design agency whose clients include TechCrunch, Time Inc, eBay, O’Reilly Media, and many others. Josh wrote Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps (O’Reilly, 2010) and Designing for Touch (A Book Apart, 2015). He speaks around the world about what’s next for digital interfaces.
In a past life, he created the incredibly popular “Couch-to-5K” (C25K) running program, which has helped millions of skeptical would-be exercisers take up jogging. (His motto is the same for fitness as it is for software user experience: no pain, no pain.)
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×It's not a secret that women are extremely underrepresented in technical fields around the world. In this talk, you'll see scientific evidence of the barriers that women face in the technical workplace, and hear about concrete strategies to overcome them. Collaboration software company Atlassian has used this knowledge to develop tactics and initiatives to overcome these barriers, resulting in >46% female technical hires in their last three intern and graduate cohorts. Join Atlassian's Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion to learn about what you can do to overcome the gender gap. The talk will include a Q&A session, so please bring questions!
Aubrey Blanche is the Global Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Atlassian. There, she works with teams across the business to enhance access to technical education, recruiting, retention, and career mobility for underrepresented minorities. She relies on social science research and methodologies to understand the psychological and structural barriers to achieving full representation and inclusion. This research allows her to design effective interventions and programs that create equal opportunities for all Atlassian employees. Aubrey works with partners across the tech industry to define new standards for company transparency, reporting, and investment in diversity & inclusion. She believes that leading with empathy is the key to driving meaningful, sustainable change and creating highly effective teams.
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×Matt Griffin (founder, Bearded) has been thinking about what it means to be a "web designer," grappling with the many (and sometimes misunderstood) disciplines that come into play. All of the rapid changes in technology we grapple with every day have resulted in a shifting landscape of skills and responsibilities. What’s a designer to do? Luckily, Matt is in the unique position to answer this question from a variety of perspectives and experiences.
To create his documentary film about the web, What Comes Next Is the Future, Matt conducted dozens of hours of interviews, many of which could not make it into the final film. This talk draws on that additional footage, capturing the thoughts and experiences of industry leaders Trent Walton (founder, Paravel), Irene Au (operating partner, Khosla Ventures), Ethan Marcotte (author, Responsive Web Design), Indi Young (founder, Adaptive Path), Brad Frost (author, Atomic Design), Yesenia Perez-Cruz, Kelly Goto (founder, gotoresearch), and many more.
With Matt as a guide, these luminaries' perspectives create a cohesive, multi-faceted view of the modern web industry and a designer’s place in it.
Matt Griffin is a designer and founder of Bearded. Matt is a writer, speaker, and A List Apart columnist. He is the director of the documentary film What Comes Next Is the Future.
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×For much of the history of the Web, conversations and other digital analogues of real world social interaction have been a key part of user engagement. From Usenet, IRC to AOL Chatrooms and now Github, Reddit, and Twitter, design patterns like threaded commenting, liking and favoriting, up (and down voting) lie at the heart of social media, online platforms like Stack Overflow (and GitHub) make up our communication tools. With digital literacy at an all time high, new communication models are starting to usurp SMS messages.
Digital interactions, so utterly commonplace, when given not much additional thought can seem overall benign. But in the era of the Arab Spring, the current US Election, Gamergate, and the Panama Papers, digital tools are the catalyst and common grounds of "robust discussions". But do they really give rise to civil behavior, and benign outcomes? Or are they fundamentally problematic? Can we design our way to better, more healthy online behavior? Can empathy really be designed for web?
Caroline is a User Experience and Interaction Designer, researcher, interactive story teller, bad joke collector, and ridiculous pie baker.
She holds a masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a BFA in Photography and Imaging with a focus in digital media and culture from NYU.
In her role as a researcher for IBM Watson, Caroline investigates the role of human decision-making in developing robotics software. But beyond her work, Sinders applies her knowledge to projects that consider how design impacts and shapes conversations happening online.
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×For years we’ve been told that websites shouldn’t make people think, that they should be accessible, easy to use and fast. But what if that isn’t enough?
In this talk, art director and designer Andy Clarke explores how art direction can make designs that are visually distinctive and more effective by using design to communicate the essence and purpose of our our content.
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×People often hear about Cards Against Humanity's crazy stunts and pranks (like the time 30,000 fans ordered a box of poop as part of a Black Friday sale), but are left with a million questions. How did they come up with the idea? How were they able to execute it? Is it even legal to send poop in the mail? Learn the behind-the-scenes stories from community lead Jenn Bane, who is delighted to share Cards Against Humanity's best and worst ideas. This talk is weird.
Jenn is the the head of community at Cards Against Humanity & Blackbox.
She co-hosts a podcast about friendship & mental health called Friendshipping.
She also helps organize the Science Ambassador Scholarship.
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×Every interaction matters. Every line of marketing copy, every error message, every release note of every update is a chance to build a stronger relationship with your users. When building a personality for your company or your brand, how do you create or nurture a sense of the real people behind the product - and how do you scale it?
Over the last couple of years at Slack, Anna Pickard has been wrestling with how to solidify, sharpen and scale the brand voice: From style guides to grammar-bots, workshops to weekly office hours — to tapping into the shared characteristics and values, and the cultural channels and stories that help unlock them. So that users know they’re hearing from the same company — even if several people are typing.
Anna Pickard has spent a long time pretending to be other people. After training as an actor, and then segueing into dramaturgy when she realised she was too shy to act, she went from a small blog into a series of frankly ridiculous career moves: candle making, script editing, TV criticism, advertising and the games industry. For Glitch, a beloved but now-shuttered MMO, she gave voice to strange butterflies and surfer pigs; for Wieden+Kennedy she brought life to criminal cat masterminds and omniscient butter gods; for educational games studios, she turned mathematical concepts into friendly faces.
Now, as arbiter and wrangler of words at Slack, she's pretending to be a competent grown-up professional. One in charge of bringing a human approach to business, and maintaining the energy, entertainment, values and voice of the fastest growing piece of business software ever.
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×Cheap, accessible mass-market virtual reality systems - from Google Cardboard to HTC Vive - can explore a 3D web built in WebVR. Using the latest JavaScript APIs, WebVR provides a open and neutral platform for the authoring and delivery of richly interactive virtual worlds. It’s universe next door, and it’s already here.
Mark Pesce is an inventor, author, educator, broadcaster and entrepreneur. In 1991 he founded Ono-Sendai Corporation, the first consumer virtual reality startup, inventing a orientation sensor (US Patent 5,526,022) for low-cost virtual reality applications, adopted by Sega Corporation for their Virtua VR head-mounted display.
In 1994, Pesce co-invented the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the first standard for interactive 3D graphics on the World Wide Web. While running the VRML Architecture Group, a consortium of industry and academic stakeholders furthering VRML standards development, Pesce founded BlitCom, the first startup to use VRML to deliver streaming entertainment.
In 1998, Pesce was invited to found the Graduate Program in Interactive Media at the University of Southern California’s world-famous School of Cinema-Television, teaching the next generation of creative professionals how to master emerging technologies for storytelling. In 2003, Mark was invited to Sydney to establish the Program in Emerging Media at the Australian Film Television and Radio School, and continues to work with students through his Honorary Appointment in the Digital Cultures Program at the University of Sydney.
Pesce writes fortnightly a column for the internationally respected tech publication The Register, and for seven years was a panelist and judge on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s hit series The New Inventors, celebrating Australia’s newest inventions and inventors. He currently hosts This Week in Startups Australia, the nation’s leading tech podcast.
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×Jacob Bijani was Tumblr's first product designer and engineer. He and Pasquale D'Silva now work on OKDracula and other cool stuff at TotallyViable.
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×Pasquale D'Silva is an animator & software designer at Hype, in New York City. He co-founded Keezy.
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×It’s a rant about chatbots, machine learning, and the issues of accountability and power that go with automation.
Maciej Cegłowski was born into an indifferent world in 1975 and has been doing his best to deal with the situation.
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×Jonathan will be discussing the concepts in his book Tragic Design, published by O'Reilly Media. Bad design can have very real costs outside of just lost revenue. Bad design can harm physically, emotionally, by excluding, and by causing injustice. Jonathan challenges designers to rise to the challenge to avoid and fix these problems and put their design skills to use for good!
Jonathan Shariat has been in design for over 10 years. He is also co-host of the Design Review Podcast and runs a popular Twitter handle @DesignUXUI. He's written for publications such as Medium.com, most notably a #1 most recommended article “How bad UX Killed Jenny,” a story about a patient who died because the EHR UI distracted the nurses and caused a critical error. He's passionate about shedding light on the negative impact of bad design and an advocate for thoughtful, purposeful design.
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דData-driven” is the adjective on everyone’s lips—but can this truly apply to the creative space? Can we solely rely on numbers and evidence-based decision making to shape great product experience?
This talk will cover the two sides of data-informed design—both qualitative and quantitative approaches—with practical insight into key techniques including MVT and Design Thinking principles. Through a product and design lens, we’ll discuss how to achieve user-centred outcomes, deliver compelling experiences and collaborate with creative teams on product optimisation.
Lucinda Burtt has been shaping design at Fairfax Media for more than 7 years. Lucinda currently leads a cross-functional department of user experience and research specialists. As Head of Product Design she is a vocal advocate for product development informed by user-centred design and data. Her current work touches flagship news sites including the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian Financial Review across multiple digital platforms.
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×Listen in as Aaron, a 15 year veteran in the VR space, details how clients Qantas, Monaco (The Country), Olympus, P&O, Cruiseabout and more are using Virtual Reality right now to assist their clients with branding, training and buying decisions.
A professional photographer for over 25 years Aaron has been involved in Web & Multimedia development from the early days of the Digital Photography revolution in the mid ‘90s. From shooting on film and using film scanners to early professional digital SLR’s, Digital Video, Multi-Media CD-ROM and Web production he has always been on the bleeding edge of technology.
This is doubly so for the highly technical photographic niche of 360 panoramas, where Aaron has been a world leader for much of the past decade. A vast amount of work goes into Research & Development to ensure Panedia is always producing the best work available, in the shortest possible time. Fortunately 360 work is his passion, so the more work the better.
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×Museums are great storehouses of knowledge, and, importantly, things. They are also, when they are at their best - curiosity engines. Many have and continue to be radically reshaped by the opening up that the internet has brought with it. Seb Chan will talk about his work over the last decade in helping different types of museum transform and reimagine their possibilities through visitor-centric, technology-enhanced design interventions.
Seb Chan is the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where he is responsible for a holistic, multi-channel, visitor-centred design strategy for the institution. Until August 2015, he was Director of Digital & Emerging Media, at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York. There he led the museum’s digital renewal and its transformation into an interactive, playful new museum reopened after a 3 year rebuilding and reimagining
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×Behavioural Science, Persuasive Technology, Gamification, Behavioural Change. Some of the key concepts in the new digital focus on health are coming straight out of the entertainment and gaming sectors. This short session will look at a few examples of this, with a focus on one key app to show how the right balance of nudge, nag and failure can generate real success.
Jennifer is a Director of The Project Factory, a producer of creative multiplatform /transmedia projects across web, mobile, social media, games and virtual worlds. Jennifer is the author of several books and papers exploring the digital space: actively encouraging the telling stories through digital. She also works on digital solutions in the health and wellness space to help support positive behavioural change.
She has worked on projects as diverse as Sherlock: The Network, the official app for the hit BBC series; My QuitBuddy, an extremely successful and effective quit smoking app developed for the Australian Department of Health; Ringbalin River Stories, an SXSW nominated app bringing indigenous stories to life; Breaking Bad News, an AI-based project teaching doctors how to be better communicators; How We Get to Next, a website funded by the Knight and Gates Foundations to foster innovation; Julian Fellowes’s Belgravia, a revisioning of the book as an interactive app and site in text, video, images and audio, serialised more like a soap opera than a novel; and more recently PhoneBook, an interactive feature film told in chapters via mobile devices.
She spends her time between Sydney & London.
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×Fonts, particularly for Web and digital design have typically been a simple affair. We choose among the fonts most likely to be on most user's devices (with fallbacks to "similar" fonts to ensure coverage of as many devices as possible). The rise of Web fonts, and services like TypeKit opened up a far wider palette of possibilities. But how much do you really know about the fonts you're choosing?
Wayne Thompson knows about fonts, and typography. He's designed numerous typefaces, and custom type for leading global brands. In this session he'll bring you up to speed with what you need to know about fonts as a user of them. About various font formats, hoe they actually work on screen, and how to use this knowledge to improve the legibility of your type. Not only fascinating in its own right, the quality of your work will improve though the application of Wayne's ideas.
Fascinated by letters since he was a teenager, Wayne began with rub-down lettering and worked as a signwriter, photographer and journalist before settling into the design profession in the late 1980s. After 17 years as Art Director in several advertising agencies, Wayne now works full-time as a type designer, handlettering practitioner, typography teacher and educator, and has been running the popular Type by Hand series of handlettering workshops for several years. Wayne’s long term aims are to always learn more about typography, and hopefully contribute an Aussie flavour to the world of type design.
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×Shopping with kids can be a challenging experience, but out of the necessity the two must co-exist. So the CX team at Optus asked themselves "what if we focus less on the process of selling and more on creating an inviting retail environment where families want to shop"?
With this in mind, they placed children at the heart of creating the experience – by engaging with kids and asking them what they want, they created a space where parents can relax, and kids can have a little fun. Utopia.
Hear about the process, what they learned, and how you can involve kids, and the not so young, in the creation of retail spaces, products and experiences.
Ben Hawkins is a Design Director creating new ways to design and deliver unique exceptional retail experiences.
A long time Surf LifeSaver, Ultra marathon runner, and mountaineer, Ben has a very plausible theory as to the identity of Banksy
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×Jonathan will be discussing the concepts in his book Tragic Design, published by O'Reilly Media. Bad design can have very real costs outside of just lost revenue. Bad design can harm physically, emotionally, by excluding, and by causing injustice. Jonathan challenges designers to rise to the challenge to avoid and fix these problems and put their design skills to use for good!
Jonathan Shariat has been in design for over 10 years. He is also co-host of the Design Review Podcast and runs a popular Twitter handle @DesignUXUI. He's written for publications such as Medium.com, most notably a #1 most recommended article “How bad UX Killed Jenny,” a story about a patient who died because the EHR UI distracted the nurses and caused a critical error. He's passionate about shedding light on the negative impact of bad design and an advocate for thoughtful, purposeful design.
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×Jonathan will be discussing the concepts in his book Tragic Design, published by O'Reilly Media. Bad design can have very real costs outside of just lost revenue. Bad design can harm physically, emotionally, by excluding, and by causing injustice. Jonathan challenges designers to rise to the challenge to avoid and fix these problems and put their design skills to use for good!
Jonathan Shariat has been in design for over 10 years. He is also co-host of the Design Review Podcast and runs a popular Twitter handle @DesignUXUI. He's written for publications such as Medium.com, most notably a #1 most recommended article “How bad UX Killed Jenny,” a story about a patient who died because the EHR UI distracted the nurses and caused a critical error. He's passionate about shedding light on the negative impact of bad design and an advocate for thoughtful, purposeful design.
Wednesday November 9th | Thursday November 10th | Friday November 11th |
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Masterclasses9.00am—5.00pm Join one of the world's leading UX and IxD experts, Josh Clark, for an incredible all day masterclass Designing exceptional mobile experiences . Or spend the day with renowned designer and art director, Andy Clarke, reimagining Web layouts in Designing And Developing Imaginative Layouts . (requires workshop registration) |
Conference Sessions9.00am—5.30pm No more "FOMO" (fear of missing out), with our new, improved single-track format. Presentations are broken into four sessions, with either a 30 minute break, or hour long lunch in between to let you recharge and discuss. |
Conference Sessions9.00am—5.30pm Fully catered breaks, with healthy, tantalising treats, Sample Coffee Company's world class espresso, cold drip and pour-over coffee, and hallway conversations with all manner of interesting, creative people, like you. You won't want it to end! |
Movie Premiere6.00pm—9.00pm Watch the Australian Premiere "What Comes Next is the Future", presented by Director Matt Griffin, the night before the conference. Plus choc-tops, popcorn and a drink or two to get you in the mood for the next two days. (Silver & Gold Pass exclusive) |
Happy Hour5.00pm—6.00pm When the afternoon sessions wraps, stay and enjoy a drink and fine conversation with your fellow attendees. But it's not over yet! (all conference pass holders) |
Closing night party4.30pm—late Not the typical closing party, bring your family for kids coding, making and more from 4:30pm, while you and your partner enjoy craft beer and wine tasting, indie and traditional board and card games once the conference finishes. (all conference pass holders and family!) |
Direction After dark6.00pm—7.00pm Something brand new for Direction '16–an "after dark" session, featuring the highly engaging Jenn Bane from Cards Against Humanity. (all conference pass holders) |
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Speaker Dinner7.30pm—Late(ish) Join our speakers, and the most engaged attendees for an intimate dinner in a world class nearby restaurant. (Gold Pass Exclusive) |
Gold ExperienceGenuinely limited |
Silver ExperienceThese will sell out |
Classic ExperienceThe best price |
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Upgrades
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Our best price
Those looking to make their budget work as hard as possible
These will sell out
Genuinely Limited
Make the Direction 16 festival your team's ultimate offsite. Round up 5 or more people from your team (or across the company) and for just $999 per person get
To get this special offer, just use the code team when you register 5 or more people for a Silver Conference Pass or Gold Conference Pass.
We love the agencies who attend our events. So just for you, send 3 or more people and for just $999 per person get receive
To get this special offer, just use the code agency when you register 3 or more people for a Silver Conference Pass or Gold Conference Pass.
If you've been to one of our conferences previously, you get:
So, if you've been to a conference of ours before, just register for a Silver Pass, or Gold Pass using the code alumnus to get your special pricing.
To make Direction as accessible as possible we're offering even better pricing for a number of different types of attendee who may not have the biggest training budgets, but hurry, these are strictly limited.
Not quite sure if you qualify? Drop us a line. We're always as generous as possible.
Make your experience even better with these upgrades and bonuses. From amazing coffee and a closing night for the whole family for all attendees, to the Silver and Gold Pass bonus movie Premiere, and speaker dinner exclusively for Gold pass holders, Direction really is much much more than just another conference.
Only for Gold Pass holders, join our speakers and the most engaged participants at the conference for a world class meal close by the conference venue in one of Sydney's hottest suburbs, Chippendale.
As you enjoy and your partner enjoy a craft beer or wine, or other fine drink and bite to eat, your kids can be learning to code, exploring robotics and much more at our closing party. All fully catered, and professionally run. For all attendees and their families, no extra charge!
Exclusively for Silver and Gold conference pass holders, start Direction in style with the Australian Premiere of What Comes Next is the Future, the hugely successful kickstarted documentary on the present and future of Web design, presented by the director, Matt Griffin.
A big claim, but we stand by it! If you like your coffee, at Direction '16 you're in for a treat, with 3 Coffee Cup honouree and Barista of the Year in the 2014 Good Cafe Guide Sample Coffee Co. providing espresso, as well as their signature hot and cold drip coffee.
In 2016, we return to The Seymour Centre, home of perhaps our favourite conference ever, Web Directions 2014. In the heart of the exciting and vibrant Chippendale Creative Precinct, and embedded in the University of Sydney, between the School of IT, and Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning. We're excited to be back, and have a lot of surprises planned.
There are of course many hotels you can stay a short walk from the Seymour Centre, but why not see what's available on AirBNB? Right now you could nab a whole house a few minutes walk away for less than $150 a night. Did someone say roadtrip?
Here's a map to get a sense of the area, its nightlife, cafes, galleries and hotels.
The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it
Henry David Thoreau
We're all focused on ROI. But what we'll deliver is ROT (return on your time). We'll help you save time avoiding rabbit holes of hype that doesn't match reality. We'll help you invest your time wisely in the technologies, ideas and projects that will deliver for your company, clients and partners.
Co-founded and now run by John Allsopp, Web Directions has for over a decade brought together leading developers, engineers, visual, IxD, UX and product designers, Art and Creative Directors, indeed everyone involved in producing web and digital products to learn from one another, and the World's leading experts across this vast field.
We spend our lives thinking about what comes next, keeping up with trends in technology, practices and processes, and filtering the hype, to make sure you don't miss trends that matter, and don't waste time on hype that doesn't.
We promise attending one of our events will leave you significantly better versed in the challenges you face day to day, and in solutions for addressing them.
John Allsopp has been working on the Web for over 20 years. He's been responsible for innovative developer tools such as Style Master, X-Ray and many more. He's spoken at numerous conferences around the World and delivered dozens of workshops in that time as well.
His writing includes two books, including Developing With Web Standards and countless articles and tutorials in print and online publications.
His "A Dao of Web Design" published in 2000 is cited by Ethan Marcotte as a key influence in the development of Responsive Web Design, who's rightly acclaimed article in 2010 begins by quoting John in detail, and by Jeremy Keith as "a manifesto for anyone working on the Web".
For over a decade, we've worked hard to create inclusive, fun, inspring and safe events for the Web Industry.
As part of our commitment to these values, we've adopted a code of conduct for all involved: ourselves, our speakers, our partners and our audience.
If you have any concern or feedback, please don't hesitate to contact us.