We've heard it all before... prototype, prototype, prototype! It's a standard step in almost any design process—but often the first step skipped in time and budget constrained projects. Although prototyping is considered a luxury for many PC-based experiences, it is an absolutely essential part of creating compelling tablet and mobile experiences.

This workshop will outline why prototyping is an essential part of the emerging world of tablet and mobile experience design. You'll learn the underlying design principles and design conventions of Natural User Interfaces (NUIs), a set of emergent mobile UI design patterns, and tips for creating and testing your work throughout the design process.

Finally, you'll learn a wide variety of hands-on prototyping methods that can be applied to your design process. You'll receive tactical, hands on instruction for how to storyboard concepts and screens, develop and hone your ideas through low-fidelity prototyping methods, and turn your ideas into high-fidelity on-device prototypes with speed and confidence.

Participants will:

• Understand the design principles and conventions for Natural User Interfaces
• Understand why a curiosity for context and ruthless editing are important to tablet and mobile UX design
• Experience three prototyping methods: when they should be used and the questions they should help answer

How do you plan for the unknown? The answer is obvious—you can't—but that's not a bad thing. Unknowns can be scary, but they also create opportunity.

On the web, it's tempting to focus our effort around what we know (or think we know) about our customers based on analytics data we're collecting and our own experience of the web. Similarly, we often get hung up on trying to give every customer the exact same experience of our product. What we need to realize, however, is that analytics and anecdotal knowledge only get you so far. Our customers' access and experience of the web is highly variable, deeply personal and, more often than not, completely out of our control.

But take heart, all is not lost. By being flexible in our approach and embracing the unknown, we can create user experiences that are intended to vary from device to device, browser to browser, and network to network.

In this workshop, Aaron Gustafson will explain the ins and outs of crafting rich web experiences that adapt to the capabilities and peculiarities of our customers and their devices, while maintaining your sanity in the proces. You'll leave with:

• an understanding of the challenges (and possibilities) presented by the wide range of browsers and devices being used to access the web;
• a fresh perspective on interface design, grounded in the progressive enhancement philosophy;
• ideas around how to tailor experiences based on device capabilities;
• solid strategies for determining how common UI components can be re-imagined in an adaptive fashion; and
• a practical knowledge of how HTML, CSS, and JavaScript can be deployed in the service of adaptive user interfaces.

When developing in the mobile space, we are no longer restricted by older versions of Internet Explorer and their lack of support for even the most basic features of CSS. However, the mobile space does provide us with new constraints. Mobile does not just mean tiny devices. We now have to consider the constraints of limited memory, limited bandwidth, limited battery power and increased latency. In addition, we have the issue of varying, limited screen sizes and varied resolutions. CSS can help us with all of these.

In this workshop we'll learn which features to avoid (and why), and deep dive into newer features that should be staples of your mobile web development tool box. You'll learn which CSS3 features to use and which ones to avoid, with more in-depth coverage of the features that are a must in the mobile space. Of course we'll cover features that you know you need to know, like using media queries for different screen sizes, resolutions and browser capabilities, but we'll also cover issues that you may never have considered, such as tricks for bandwidth and memory management, features (and pitfalls to avoid) to ensure smooth animations, and CSS basics like selectors, gradients, transforms and animations that should be in every developers bag of tricks.

Gone are the days when the web was contained in our desktop and laptop computers. Today it flows through a sea of unique devices each with their own opportunities and limitations. Leading this shift are mobile computers whose numbers are growing at an astonishing pace and becoming many people’s first (and sometimes only) way of getting online. Designing for this reality requires new ways of thinking and getting things done.

In this half day session, Luke Wroblewski (author of Mobile First) will walk you through detailed explanations, examples, and design best practices that will shift your thinking about website organization, layout, input, and more. You’ll learn how to:

• Organize your websites and applications to deliver immediate value on mobile devices and beyond
• Optimize navigation systems and menus for mobile devices and adapt them to a variety of screens
• Create layouts that take mobile’s unique capabilities and constraints into account without compromising large screen designs
• Understand the difference and decide between responsive web design, RESS, and device experience solutions for multi-device web design
• And much more!

After this concentrated deep dive into mobile and multi-device web design, you’ll be armed with the best practices and principles you need to deliver a great experience for your audience no matter what device(s) they’re on!

Workshop Slides (PDF)