Meta Refresh 2015

The web in your pocket

##Meta Refresh 2015 edition: The web in your pocket

##Theme
We’re already in a world where smartphones outnumber all the desktops and laptops put together. A sizeable portion of your existing user base could be accessing your website only through a handheld device. It is quite likely that future web users will never experience a site on a large screen.

Undeniably mobiles, be it phones or tablets, have become a critical channel for user acquisition and customer engagement. In fact, one can argue that mobiles are already the primary touch-point for reaching and experiencing the web in many cases.

For many web designers and developers, however, the constraints of a mobile device continue to be a beast — small screen, low resources, fickle networks and the (often false) assumption that the user is always on the move with limited time at hand.

Responsive design hasn’t been enough. Mobile-first was just a start. It takes a lot more to tame the beast and to create a great browsing experience for a mobile user.

Meta Refresh 2015 will focus on enhancing web experience on mobile devices.

We’re looking forward to proposals about:

  • Evolution of web design in your organisation: what is the context of your business and customers? Why and how did you evolve your UX strategy and practice for mobile devices?
  • In your experience and practice, how does the context of mobile user influence the design of your websites? How does the behavior of users accessing web through a mobile differ?
  • How do you take complex web applications beyond the desktop? Speak to us from your experience.
  • What are the common misconceptions / incorrect assumptions about the mobile context? How did you figure these in your practice?
  • How do you design content for mobile websites? What kind of detailing is involved here?

And oh, if you disagree with the theme, we’d like to hear about that as well.

We are accepting proposals under the following sections:

  • Design process outlining concrete steps.
  • Mobile website strategy.
  • Content design.
  • Design patterns.
  • User research and insights.
  • Performance and front-end tools – crisp talks only.
  • Maintainability challenges.

Commitment to Open Source

HasGeek believes in open source as the binding force of our community. If you are describing a codebase for developers to work with, we’d like it to be available under a permissive open source license. If your software is commercially licensed or available under a combination of commercial and restrictive open source licenses (such as the various forms of the GPL), please consider picking up a sponsorship. We recognize that there are valid reasons for commercial licensing, but ask that you support us in return for giving you an audience. Your session will be marked on the schedule as a sponsored session.

Format

The 2015 edition is a two-day single-track conference – 16 and 17 April. We invite proposals for:

  • Full-length 40 minute talks
  • A crisp 15-minute presentation
  • Sponsored sessions, 40 minute duration

Criteria to submit conference proposals

You must be a practising web developer or designer, and must be able to show how your own work has advanced the state of the web in the past year. You are expected to present original work that your peers — this event’s audience — recognise as being notable enough to deserve a stage.
If you are excited about someone’s work and believe it deserves wider recognition, we recommend you contact them and ask them to submit a proposal.

##Workshop proposals
If you are interested in teaching, sharing knowledge with the community and/or conducting professional trainings on CSS, front-end engineering and design, submit a proposal under workshop section. Specify past experience in teaching and conducting workshops. Even better if you share links to videos of workshops where you were an instructor.
We’ll host workshops starting October 2014 until April 2015.

###Buy tickets here: https://in.explara.com/e/meta-refresh

Hosted by

Meta Refresh is an umbrella forum for conversations about different aspects of design and product including: UX and interaction design CMS, content management, publishing and content marketing Information architecture more
Brajeshwar Oinam

Brajeshwar Oinam

@brajeshwar

Styleguide Driven Development for a sane cross-platform design (Mobile, Tablets & Desktops)

Submitted Jan 20, 2015

Ushering in a key practice to front-end design and development to foster clear separation of UI (User Interface), UX (User Experience), front-end and the back-end. Styleguide Driven Development (SDD) is a practice that helps maintain sanity across all mediums and platforms, be it mobile, tablets or desktops or perhaps something else in future.

The ultimate goal of SDD to allow everyone involved to work on their task, not to step on each others’ toes and hopefully bring peace between front-end team and the back-end.

Outline

In recent times, quite a bit of established companies - small, medium and large - have embarked on a journey to find a way to maintain design consistency, ability to quickly prototype and design on small sections or modules of a bigger project and get stack holders involved early on.

The best way to do so far is through the practice of Styleguide Driven Development.

Some of the points this talk with touch upon are:

  • Philosophy behind SDD.
  • Preparation for SDD.
  • How to go about maintaining a Styleguide.
  • Tools, Template and References to help start off with SDD.

Problem

A universal tuck-of-war between designers and developers will remain as long as web design and development exist. Unfortunately, there may unlikely be a solution that solves it 100% but we can try to reduce the friction and bring sanity to the design+developer world. The problem is more prominent in an Agile environment, where a design changes, evolves all the time and where designs cannot be ‘fixed’ before the development.

Of course, there is the code bloat that happens when two or more developers work on the same design and codes similar designs in multiple styles.

Presentation Preview

Imagine a scenario where there can be a common, updated visual guide for all the design elements, modules and styles. With my presentation, I’ll walk through the common problems faced by teams of designer and developers working on a project.

There will be examples, approaches to solving the problem of designer-developer mis-fits via Styleguide Driven Development. I’ll walk through the process, best practices and want to build, maintain and cultivate a system of design and development based on a Styleguide.

The presentation will include examples from projects I have been part of.

Remember that a Styleguide is not a Photoshop or a JPEG file, it is not a Word or an Excel Doc. It is actual production ready codes, it should be part of your project version control system. Its purpose to help separate design from development and at the same time be on the same page.

Takeaway from the Presentation

There will be enough examples from companies that have successfully implemented Styleguide Driven Development.
Concrete step-by-step process to start and maintain a Styleguide with the options to tweak it suit the needs of any team.
I’ll also be developing a working example of a Styleguide, which will be open source and can thus be extended, or used as bootstrap for your styleguide.

Speaker bio

I believe in simplicity, minimalism and an ardent willingness to push the envelop, envisioning the betterment of usable and practical solutions. - brajeshwar

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Hosted by

Meta Refresh is an umbrella forum for conversations about different aspects of design and product including: UX and interaction design CMS, content management, publishing and content marketing Information architecture more