Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

Daniels Lee(tm) – Designing for the 10 foot UI

Photo of Daniels Lee™This talk outlines the most important best practices to keep in mind when designing web applications for TV. We’ll cover issues like directional pad navigation, user interface design for TV, color issues, and zooming, as well as discussing some unique opportunities for TV applications.

Nicholas Zakas – Mobile Web Speed Bumps

Photo of Nicholas ZakasAs browsers explode with new capabilities and migrate onto devices users can be left wondering, “what’s taking so long?” Learn how HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the web itself conspire against a fast-running application and simple tips to create a snappy interface that delight users instead of frustrating them.

Divya Manian – Creative CSS3

Photo of Divya ManianFind out how to creatively use new features of CSS3 (gradients, multiple backgrounds, generated content, and many more) to give life to your design ideas, make them adaptable and maintainable, and provide the best experience possible on an array of platforms.

Aaron Weyenberg – Realistic UI Design

Photo of Aaron WeyenbergIn this session Aaron will lead you on a tour of current trends and practices, examining the strengths and drawbacks that realism brings. We’ll talk about things like mental models, innovation and usability as they relate to lifelike UI. Finally, Aaron will share some pragmatic guidelines to keep in mind as you build the next wave of mobile and touch apps.

Dave Balmer – HTML5 Graphics: Canvas Deep Dive

Photo of Dave BalmerThe Canvas tag has been around for a while, and HTML5 has given it more visibility. It’s now finding its way into most mobile browsers, and even a majority of desktop browsers. This talk will give a solid overview of what the canvas tag is, what it can do, and how it compares with other technologies like SVG and Flash.

Aaron Parecki – Geolocation

Photo of Aaron PareckiWhile location-based mobile apps are becoming increasingly popular, they are still relatively new. Special considerations need to be made for battery life and handling large data sets of geolocated data. The good news is there are many services and technologies you can use to assist you in building mobile location-based apps.

Jason Grigsby – Keynote: Native is Easy. Mobile Web is Freaking Hard!

Jason Grigsby PortraitNo one who advocates for the mobile web wants to admit it, but it is true. Native is easier. It’s easier to sell to stakeholders. Easier to monetize. And most importantly, easier to implement. So how do we sell mobile web projects? How do we work with the systems we currently have to build compelling mobile web experiences?

Aarron Walter – Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design

Aarron Walter PortraitIn this talk, Aarron Walter will introduce you to the emotional usability principle – a design axiom that identifies a strong connection between human emotion and perceived usability. Through real-world examples, you’ll learn practical interface design techniques that will make your websites and applications more engaging to the humans they serve.

Relly Annett-Baker – Telling tales

Esther Derbyr PortraitIn this talk, Relly will show you how narrative runs as deep through websites as it does through your favourite TV dramas, video games, comic books or musicals, and explain how you can write decent help for your users, define personality for your site and create documents to support everyone involved in creating that experience.

Esther Derby – Agile meets UI

Esther Derbyr PortraitEsther will share strategies for evolving UI design as the software grows, keeping UI designers in the loop and helping everyone on the team be a better designer (cause they think already are).

Zoe Mickley Gillenwater – Effective and efficient design with CSS3

Zoe Mickley Gillenwater PortraitCSS3 is changing how we design and develop web sites, allowing us to quickly and easily create and maintain highly efficient and adaptable sites that are a pleasure to use. You’ll learn practical yet progressive examples of the most beneficial CSS3 techniques to put to use in your pages today.

Nicholas Zakas – High Performance JavaScript

Nicholas Zakas PortraitIn this talk, you’ll learn what’s going on inside the browser that can slow JavaScript down and how that can end up creating a “slow page”. You’ll also learn how to overcome the conspiracy against your code by eliminating performance bottlenecks.

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Web Directions South is the must-attend event of the year for anyone serious about web development

Phil Whitehouse General Manager, DT Sydney