Sessions at edUi 2011 Conference on Thursday 13th October

With an official mission to “organize the world’s information,” and an unofficial motto of “don’t be evil,” Google has become the de-facto tool on which we all rely to navigate the sea of ideas, thoughts, products, people, and connections that the Web has to offer. But every time you ask a question of Google, a transaction is taking place. What exactly is the nature of that transaction? And how do the decisions that Google makes filter the very information they are attempting to organize? Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of “The Googlization of Everything,” explores these questions and the many ways that Google subtly (and not so subtly) is influencing our culture.

Writing a WordPress plugin can be extremely simple, but it takes a little more work to write a good WordPress plugin. Learn five simple tips to make your WordPress plugin future-proof, work on more WordPress installations, and more easily extendable.

The nightmare: In an information architecture presentation, clients are slack-jawed and staring blankly. While explaining why their content matters, one person snores. Despite the presentation of a brilliant taxonomy, another keels over. They don’t get that this architecture will save their site! How information is conveyed can be as important as the information itself. This presentation will show how people think and learn differently, how different presentation styles can improve the process of explaining IA and UX, and how resolving IA process breakdowns can prevent costly and time-consuming replication of effort.

Watch the deconstruction and transformation of a website using only client-side manipulation in JavaScript, using the jQuery library. Learn some of the rich user experiences you can add with jQuery, with an eye towards using it to work around limitations in your CMS or existing site architecture design decisions.

HTML and CSS serve as the essential content and design foundation for everything from the simplest web page to the most sophisticated web application. While many understand the basics of HTML syntax, a deeper understanding of the conceptual principles that guide these standards helps designers of all experience levels craft more refined and accessible web sites. This session, aimed at those with moderate to no experience with HTML and CSS, will cover the core elements of strong, standards-based HTML and CSS that guide modern web design, including the box model, positioning, the Document Object Model, document outlines, and semantic markup.

Although the specification is still being written, HTML5 can be implemented on your website today. Get an overview of the new HTML elements and their semantics, learn how to incorporate audio and video without Flash, get acquainted with new JavaScript APIs (like geolocation), and more.

Ready to dive in to the deep end of HTML5? Then you might want to attend Christopher’s workshop, Practical HTML5, instead and get a deeper look at HTML5.

Learn how one library team attempted to conquer ten years of old pages, outdated design, and poor usability to implement a site redesign within a single summer. Starting with the “keep, modify or archive” clutter clearing tactic, learn how we took charge of site and web “behavior.” There will be a focus on the creation of a dynamic and diverse team of organizers, as well as project management and overall timeline. Data-driven decision making will be covered, along with organizational communication plans. All facets of the quick but not-so-dirty redesign will be compiled into a best-practices document and checklist.

Web traffic tracking is ubiquitous, but actually making use of all those web stats is less so. A recent survey found that over 90% of departments and service units in a large public university track web traffic data, but about 75% of that same group never actually use the stats they track or they use them only sporadically. This session will discuss techniques that will help you identify and fix 404s, set up goals, track site search terms, create campaigns, and automate reporting.

Is content strategy the dog your team’s been begging you to adopt? Better yet, is it the dog that followed you home, and now you wonder if you can keep him? Go ahead, let him sleep at the foot of your bed. Whether you work in a team of one or in a large marketing group, in a university, museum, or library, content strategy is the smartest thing you can add to the family.

Attentive, loyal, consistent…we’re not just talking about Fido. If you’re trying to find ways to differentiate your brand, connect with your audience, prioritize competing features, and align those tactical decisions with larger communication goals, content strategy can help. Whether you focus on design, information architecture, social media, or other areas, we’ll discuss how you can incorporate insights from this aspect of user experience design into your next project. Learn the questions a content strategist would bring to the table so you help your work come in on time, on budget, and with consistency and compelling engagement. Discover how to make the case for content strategy to others in your organization—and why it’s worth it to teach an old dog new tricks.

Ready for more hands-on experience with content strategy? Plan to attend Margot’s half-day workshop, Kicking Off Your Content Strategy. One workshop is included in your registration.

Even though the specification is still being written, HTML5 can be implemented for your website today. This workshop is focused on real world solutions; attendees will learn about the new HTML elements and their semantics, HTML5 form elements, incorporating audio and video without Flash, new JavaScript APIs like geolocation, and more:

Basic Web Page Syntax
How to create that basic page or convert an existing XHTML page to HTML5.
Progressive HTML5 Markup and Techniques
Insuring that your page works in older browsers that didn’t get the email about HTML5, like old versions of IE.
Accessibility
Look at what’s new in regards to accessibility and HTML5.
GeoLocation
Taking advantage of knowing where your site visitors shouldn’t be creepy. Instead, with native geolocation support in browsers we look at how to provide enhanced information that your visitors can act on.
Audio/Video
Examining how to include multimedia natively in modern browsers and the file formats they support. Also, we will examine approaches on how to deal with Flash video vs. HTML video browser landscape.
Web Forms
Finally, we look at want is new with HTML5 web forms as well as cross-browser approaches.
Not quite ready to dive in to the deep end of HTML5? Then you might want to attend Christopher’s hour-long session, HTML5 Does All That… And I Can Has Cheeseburger? You Bet!, instead for an entertaining overview of HTML5.

Great mobile design doesn’t start in Photoshop, it starts by understanding the users, the goals, the intended devices and a million other tiny variables. Who better to solve these problems than the designer?

In this workshop led by Brian Fling, author of O’Reilly’s Mobile Design and Development, we will deconstruct a variety of successful mobile experiences from the old green screens to today’s hottest iPhone apps. We’ll identify what works in the mobile context and why. But more importantly we’ll learn how we can design incredible mobile experiences for educators today and for tomorrow.

Not quite ready to dive into a half-day on all things mobile? Maybe you should check out Brian’s one-hour session “Six Rules for Designing Amazing Mobile Apps“.

Spend half-a-day with designers Todd Zaki Warfel and Matt Ventre in this hands-on action-packed workshop. They’ll ease you into prototyping with some handy tricks for paper prototyping dynamic interactions like progressive reveal and just about any interaction you can dream up. Then they’ll kick it up a notch and show you how easy it is to design and prototype with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery. If you’ve never written a single line of code, don’t worry. They’ll have you writing jQuery functions before the end of the day. And if you’re a code jockey, you’re still guaranteed to walk away with a few new techniques.

Todd and Matt will take you through a progression of several examples that will teach you how to:

Start by designing with data before you ever drop a single box or arrow into your design
Determine the right level of visual and functionality fidelity for your prototype
Design and prototype with HTML5—it’s so much easier than that legacy HTML stuff
Use CSS3 to create sexy buttons and linear gradients without the use of background images or sliding doors
Make your designs bulletproof and responsive for desktops, tablets and mobile devices
Create a flexible responsive grid w/just 13 lines of CSS
Pull off awesome jQuery transitions and effects in just a couple of lines of code
Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops and favorite code editor. Sample files and source code will be provided. If you’ve been thinking about designing in code, this workshop will show you just how easy it is.

Not sure you want to spend half a day on prototyping? You might want to check out Todd and Matt’s condensed version of this talk Progressive Prototyping (condensed) which will not be as hands on.

Are you ready to dig into content strategy? Let’s gain some practical, hands-on experience together. Take a few sample organizations through the paces in a website redesign engagement. First, we’ll discuss how to prioritize communication goals and develop a message architecture with a hands-on exercise—ideal whether you’re designing for the web, a mobile app, social media, or an offline experience. Then we’ll discuss how you can use this foundation to conduct a content audit, and work together to do just that. Finally, we’ll ask “so what?” We’ll uncover the implications of a content audit through a gap analysis that points to content needs and next steps for our sample organizations. You’ll leave with the confidence and savvy to bring content strategy techniques and thinking back to your own organization.

Not quite ready to get up close and personal with your content? You might want to check out Margot’s overview instead, Content Strategy: Smart, Useful, and Paper-trained.