Last week was a bit of a whirlwind: Kelly and I flew to Orlando, co-hosted a vegan chili cook-off with the Filament Group and lost the coveted trophy Kelly so lovingly created, launched a refresh of the website for the Registrar’s Office at Sewanee University, and I delivered a new talk and workshop at Breaking Development.
To be honest, I was a little nervous about my talk, Designing with Empathy. I am a developer. I live and breathe code and this was my first attempt at delivering a completely code-free talk. And one on a fairly touchy-feely subject to boot. To my amazement, the talk seemed to resonate with the audience. I received lots of excellent questions and had a handful of in-depth conversations with attendees after stepping off the dais. I could not be more pleased with the talk’s reception and am looking forward to delivering it a few more times this year at Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf, Germany next month and Reasons to Be Creative in Brighton, UK in September. You can check out my deck on Slideshare (or thumb through it below). Luke W also took some excellent notes during my session. The video is forthcoming.
I also debuted a new workshop in Orlando: Planning Adaptive Interfaces. The idea was borne out of the corporate training work I’ve been doing and Retreats 4 Geeks’ mentoring sessions: A brief introduction to progressive enhancement and adaptive considerations followed by actual hands-on group activities where teams plan and sketch out different ways to experience common website conventions, taking into account screen real estate, browser capabilities, assistive technology and more. The response to the workshop was excellent as well and I appreciated the opportunity to get into the trenches with the teams and help them tackle complex cross-device problems. I’ll be taking this workshop on the road to UXLx in Lisbon, Portugal and Beyond Tellerrand in Düsseldorf, Germany next month and a few other as-yet-unannounced conferences in Europe this Fall.
