Sessions at Webstock 2012 on Thursday 16th February

The Lean Start-up movement gives us powerful, useful tools to discover what users want and how they want it, including the MVP or "Minimum Viable Product." But the key attributes of a desirable product don't live in the product. They live in the users. Find out how to design and build the MBU and make the competition less, you know, Viable.

Our perception and measurement of time has changed as our civilisation has evolved. That change has been driven by networks, from trade routes to the internet. Now that we have the real-time web allowing instantaneous global communication, there's a danger that we may neglect our legacy for the future. While the web has democratised publishing, allowing anyone to share ideas with a global audience, it doesn’t appear to be the best medium for preserving our cultural resources: websites and documents disappear down the digital memory hole every day. But we can change that. This presentation will offer an alternative history of technology and a fresh perspective on the future that is ours to save.

We live in a culture of fear. Fear feeds on attention and attention is captured by fear. Social media has complicated our relationship with attention and the rise of the attention economy highlights the challenges of dealing with this scarce resource. But what does this mean for the culture of fear? How are the technologies that we design to bring the world together being used to create new divisions? In this talk, danah will explore what happens at the intersection of the culture of fear and the attention economy.

There’s a lot of talk going around right now about designing for delight and gameification. You know what? Giving you a badge for getting your expense report done on time probably isn’t going to make you any happier or more likely to do it on time next time. And delight is temporary -- people habituate pretty quickly.

There’s a vast difference, though, between designing an experience that doesn’t suck and one that drives engagement. We’re good at eliminating frustration. It’s easy to observe whether your customers are pissed off, and then just not do that. But that’s really not enough anymore. Users’ expectations are higher.

Some companies are doing it - they’re creating great experiences. From the outside, it looks effortless. But you know it’s not. The user part of you is like, wow, now this is really nice, I get it, in fact, I don’t want to live without it. The designer part of you is going, holy crap, how’d they do that -- it’s really hard!

In this session, we’ll look at a nifty framework for thinking about and talking about what I call three levels of happy design. The framework is based on research done over the last couple of years looking into behavioral economics, hedonics, positive psychology, the importance of adult play, emotion in design, and a whole bunch of other stuff better saved for the talk.

Your phone's browser may be more advanced than your computer's browser, but chances are that the phone itself may have similar memory and bandwidth constraints to the computer you threw out (recycled?) 5 years ago. While your desktop and mobile users may be using equally modern browsers to access the web, the devices themselves create various constraints that you need to consider. When it comes to mobile, you always need to think about battery life, latency, memory and UI responsiveness. In this session we'll discuss best practices to make sure your site's CSS, JS and HTML perform, no matter how your user is accessing your content.

It's really easy to understand the lure of small, artisanal projects that we can polish to a satin finish: they offer a sense of craftsmanship, a human scale for our work, and the chance to get something really *right*. But larger projects and bigger systems can often feel soulless and unsatisfying, even when we're excited by the causes and ideas behind them. So is there a way to work on an ambitious scale without losing the purpose and handcraftedness that makes more intimate gigs so much fun? (Hint: yes.)

Via the craft of content strategy and its intertwinglements with design and code, this talk follows the connections between making small-scale, handcrafted artifacts and designing big, juicy systems (editorial and otherwise) that encourage both liveliness and excellence.

There’s been a lot of great discussion about responsive web design: merging media queries and flexible, grid-based layouts to create more adaptive, universal designs. But how does a responsive approach affect our design workflow? And when is responsive design right for your project? We’ll look at sites and strategies to try and answer these questions, and learn to become more responsive designers.

We have more data at our disposal than ever before. Learn 10 things you should do in 2012 to make the most of it.

Two years ago, the announcement and subsequent launch of the iPad catalyzed a strange mix of euphoria and panic in the boardrooms and newsrooms of the publishing industry. The hope for broadening their reach and appealing to new markets has been coupled with the challenge of shifting reader expectations and behavior as an onslaught of new products continue to redefine what's possible. With a front seat view into the strategy and design of these new products and apps, Jennifer will reveal what went right, wrong, and what might be next.

Matt will cover a bunch of lessons he’s learned in the past decade of life as he embarks on turning 40. They eschew much of the Techcrunch/ReadWriteWeb/Mashable world by focusing on taking a longer term view of your work and focusing on life/work balance and having a happy life as well as a fulfilling career.

Fantastical storytelling is at its most potent when it's anchored to reality. Lauren Beukes talks about why she writes strange and twisty fiction from novels to comics to TV shows and the occasional ARG, and how storytelling that re-imagines where we are has the ability to tell us more about who we are. Short Q&A to follow.

If anyone's ever told you, "You can't do that," you're playing the game. If you've ever had a flash of insight, a sudden desire to do something, and then told yourself "That'll never work," you're playing the game. If you feel like you're being nibbled to death by ducks — slowly, painfully, irritatingly — then chances are high you're playing the game. We all play the game. It's just that most of us never realize we're playing it. But when you learn to spot the game in all its manifestations, you can change it. You can change everything.

Web-designer-turned-comic-artist Matthew Inman (AKA The Oatmeal), will talk about how he makes things on the web that are highly likable. His talk will include various tips, tools, and ideas for generating and promoting great content. There will also be poop jokes.