Join us on Wednesday evening as we host a pre-conference mixer from 7:30 – 9:00 p.m. in the Senate Suites at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. Mingle with the planning committee, speakers, and other conference attendees as we play old school video games or enjoy the warm summer breezes on the huge outdoor deck (weather permitting). You can sample the Penn Stater's excellent snack offerings as you sip a cool drink from the cash bar.
This session will demonstrate a selection of accessibility checking tools that will allow you test for a number of accessibility blockers in a streamlined fashion.
Providing members of your community with live, online coverage of important events can feel like a daunting undertaking. It's true -- there *are* a lot of moving parts to consider. But even an A/V novice can get up and running with a live event coverage service fairly quickly. This presentation is essentially a step-by-step guide for going to web streaming zero to live coverage hero. We'll cover the equipment needed, services available, and buy-in necessary for a successful adventure in livestreaming on your campus, and will discuss the benefits and pay-off of doing so. Learn from my mistakes: I screw up, so you don't have to.
Even when the institutional website "belonged" to one person who was responsible for everything, the college website has always involved many parties from across campus. Then and now, few relationships have been more critical than the relationship between marketing and IT departments. This presentation will examine the keys to successful project management from both IT and marketing perspectives to help you leverage these tactics in your own organization.
Node.js is a platform that allows you to use JavaScript on the server side to build websites. Over and over JavaScript has proven to be a powerful language on the client site. In recent years we have also seen the rise of JavaScript on the server side through Node.js. Are you crazy? Why would you use JavaScript on the server side? Well, because it’s lightweight, cross platform, powerful, performs well, and most likely developers on your team are familiar with it so some extend. Come and see how you can use Node.js to build web sites using JavaScript on the server side. This introductory session covers how to create a basic website with Node.js, the programming model when using Node.js, MVC frameworks for Node.js like Express.js, database access with Node.js, and other features of the platform.
The open web doesn't stop at our desktop. Smart phones and tablets not only contain more computing power and better browsers than the computers that started the Internet economy, they have better displays. In this session presented by Christopher Schmitt, we will work through tips and tricks to develop future friendly images in our sites and apps.
Make your course content more accessible and increase student engagement by leveraging mobile devices and social media tools to communicate lessons, readings, assignments and feedback to students in and out of the traditional classroom. In this workshop we will go over how to make your course content mobile friendly and accessible to students outside of the classroom. Leverage social media and social media tools to keep students informed, engaged and interacting with content, peers and you (the instructor). Learn to implement mobile web technologies, web applications and modify existing web services to make your classroom a future friendly learning environment leveraging aspects of the mobile platform, mobile web and student communication habits. Experience Level: Beginner - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Must have some experience with either designing or creating websites or website content development and use of social media and social media tools. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Attendees will learn what to consider when implementing course content, social media and how to engage learners with the mobile web.
Do you know what it takes to make your mobile site or application accessible? Glenda will share her experience in designing for mobile with a focus on accessibility.
While content as 'king' may not be the best analogy, the importance of well-written, useful text content can't be overstated. Tone can affect engagement, keywords can make or break your SEO, length can kill interest—great writing is vital. Content isn't just blog posts or 'About' pages, it's everything that gives information (including the way the information itself is presented)! I'm seeing a common theme amongst businesses: no one cares about their content. Why? In this session, we'll refresh how you view your own web content by seeing it through the eyes of the user, and we'll discuss methods of improving UX by employing simple and effective psychology alongside common-sense SEO. We'll also explore how many of the methods of effective conversation apply directly to content creation to expose and correct some of our bad habits (like a lack of useful empathy). Then, since better prospects will be finding and reading your content, I'll show you how to target your audience, measure the results, and constantly improve your outreach. To see an instance of this presentation and read actual attendee feedback in the form of tweets, visit http://logos-creative.com/noonecares.
From big brands to college admissions offices, understanding the user is something that all sites struggle with. We as designers, developers, and content curators often attempt to make a site for everyone when, in fact, if we target a specific user, the experience could be tailored just for them. Higher ed institutions have many constituents. In this presentation we will target the prospective student user, the lifeblood of any tuition-driven college or university. Ashley Hennigan will present what you need to know about the prospective student of today, the state of college admissions, national enrollment trends, and her experience as a college admissions professional. Emily Okey, a UX designer, will cover design and development trends based on her experience with big brands as well as share new ideas for prospective student UX. Proposal Track: content, responsive design/mobile, marketing
Today, a web page can be delivered to desktop computers, televisions, or handheld devices like tablets or phones. While we have started to embrace techniques that help ensure that our web sites look good across that spectrum of devices we've forgotten that we need to make sure that our web sites also perform well across that same spectrum. More and more of our users are shifting their Internet usage to these more varied platforms and connection speeds with some moving entirely to mobile Internet. We need to understand how our development choices affect how well our sites behave so we can make sure that our content is usable to anyone, anywhere and on any device. Dave will provide technical tips and examples for improving the web performance of your web sites and applications. The talk will cover server-side as well as front-end web performance optimization techniques. This presentation builds upon Dave's "Optimization for Mobile" chapter in Smashing Magazine's "The Mobile Book."
In the world of RWD, there’s no shortage of debate about the process of creating a responsive website. What steps should be taken to efficiently organize content, design and implement? What are the specific process deliverables? In this session, Jeremy shares about the process he and his team at Sparkbox use and have refined over the past few years. In doing so, he’ll also describe the specific RWD client deliverables they use along the way.
Time invested in visual and illustrative representations of your website set the stage for more focused goal setting and a greater buy in from all stakeholders. This workshop demonstrates tools and techniques for translating a website’s functional requirements into sketches, mockups and prototypes. Prototyping early in the design process helps teams refine their ideas, communicate unarticulated assumptions and conduct early-stage usability testing before writing a single line of code. Participants will practice these techniques using pen and paper as well as a host of freely available online sketching, wireframing, and prototyping tools. The workshop will also demonstrate methods of user testing in each stage of the prototyping process.
Accessibility of online content is an increasingly important topic. This includes more than just websites, it includes any document that you put on the web for people to access. The variety of technologies that we use to create these files and the number of accessibility considerations as they apply to each tool can be confusing and overwhelming, making it hard to know where to start. This session will highlight the top 8 considerations (aka “blockers”) for accessibility as they apply to all web content and discuss these considerations as they relate to the most frequently used technology tools. Presenters will demonstrate how to apply accessibility principles and best practices to Word files, PowerPoint presentations, and PDF files providing practical knowledge and skills that can be applied right away.
An efficient and cost-effective web experience management (WEM) solution is essential to deliver engaging, multichannel user experiences that drive online institutional success. A WEM solution must give marketers and IT the agility to attract new visitors, deliver targeted content, and optimize multichannel outreach (including mobile) for increased click-throughs, conversions, and constituent loyalty. To stay ahead of today's competition, you need a WEM solution that meets the dynamic and ease-of-use needs of your marketers as well as the architecture and technical requirements of IT. This session provides an overview of Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe's WEM solution. The session will include a presentation and demonstration of Experience Manager's key capabilities and features, including authoring ease of use, mobile applications, social communities, digital asset management, personalization and targeting, and integration with web analytics.
In higher ed, we're no strangers to doing more with less. We have less manpower, but higher expectations. We have fewer resources, but more responsibilities. We need new ways to curate content, to shine while presenting information and to make things interesting for our users. But it doesn't have to be mission impossible. You, too, can be a renegade element. Let's talk technology and how you can use it to win friends and influence people. Need ways to curate information in an interesting format? We've got apps for that. Want a way to collaborate with coworkers that doesn't share internal information to outsiders? We've got ways to do that, too. How about growing your community? We're way ahead of you. In this session, we will explore emerging technologies to embed in your sites, add to the conversation, and add to your repertoire of looking good and being awesome. And really, who can't use an inside track to awesome?
PHP is one of the most popular programming languages used for web development, and one of the easiest to learn. In this session we'll take a look at how you can incorporate PHP into your web development in order to provide dynamic content and interact with your users.
Delivering a website that meets the needs of its intended audiences should be a focal point when developing a website. As part of the website redesign process at Lehigh University, the Internet Services team conducts in-person task based usability testing to assess the overall effectiveness of the site and to help identify and avoid potential design and development pitfalls. As Lehigh undertakes a redesign and redevelopment cycle that focuses on responsive design, usability testing has never been more at the forefront of our minds. According to a 2012 E-Expectations Report published by Noel-Levitz, Inc., “Among students with mobile devices, 52 percent said they had viewed college Web sites on them; 20 percent did so via a tablet device.” So, how do you effectively deliver your message across all devices, but also ensure that audiences can easily accomplish all tasks regardless of the device that they are using to view your site? Our presentation focuses on our venture into in-person task based usability testing utilizing various devices with high school students as we finalized the development of our Undergraduate Admissions website. We will outline our implementation of our tasked based usability testing including how we conducted each half hour concurrent in-person session utilizing a variety of devices including laptops, tablets and smartphones. We will also share our analysis of the testing results and how we utilized what we learned to improve the site and ensure that our new Undergraduate Admissions site was not only responsive, but also usable and effective.
How to you adapt audio, video, and interactive content to meet the needs, preferences, and devices for all visitors? How do you select the right media type to meet your objectives? How do you develop media-rich content with limited resources? In this session, we will discuss how we use "text-first" approach to developing multimedia, how we prioritize media development, and how we iterate through or media projects so that we provide multiple solutions and constantly improve our work.
The Pareto Principle, better known as the 80/20 rule, states that in many of life's situations 80% of results are triggered by 20% of causes. This principle can be applied to many areas of life, but this session
will focus on applying it to user research.
My company recently conducted a Pareto Principle based user research study and our results were astounding. We discovered that literally 80% of our client frustration was stemming from 20% of our core product areas, and they weren't the areas we expected!
During this presentation I will explain the Pareto Principle user research process, outline the planning method I used to tailor this research method to a specific industry problem, give some data collection tips, cover how to analyze the data you obtain, and finally I'll go over the results my company garnered and the numerous benefits that your organization can reap from implementing this research method.
The method is quick but powerful, and has given our organization greater levels of stakeholder buy in, a more usable focused set of future enhancement ideas and ultimately happier users. I hope it will do the
same for your organization!
UX today has mastered the art of sprawl. Interactions with our institutions, our brands, and our marketing and communication take place on myriad devices, anywhere in the world, and at any time. The sum of these interactions forms an interpersonal identity, telling the larger story of what we stand for and why we matter. In a culture where there is no longer a battle – and increasingly less distinction – between the web and the real-world, this presentation explores how the experiential expectations of our constituents has turned fluid and why an integrated approach to your college or university's marketing and communication can impact and enhance overall user experience.
The explosion of mobile device usage and the introduction of HTML5 Geocoding APIs in desktop and mobile browsers have led to a proliferation of applications that are increasingly tied to the location of the user. How can we understand what is actually happening in location-based computing applications? While data visualization skills are a key competency for modern software developers, geographic visualizations have long been the domain of experts using expensive, proprietary software. Recent advances in open source Geographic Information Systems have opened the doors to the new world of map-based information display to all developers willing to step inside. This session will cover the most common and powerful data geo-visualization techniques, providing real world code examples in JavaScript and Python using freely available open source software packages and libraries.
Imagine making a one-time commitment and having your publication work across innumerable platforms. The content is entered once in a single CMS and it works perfectly on the web, on a tablet or phone, indeed on any device you can imagine. Impossible? Not if you use Responsive Design. When talking about Responsive Design, it’s easy to feel that it could be applied to alumni magazines and other publications. But the enthusiasm frequently fades when existing teams encounter new and thorny challenges. How do you get approvals if Responsive methodologies demand a more iterative approach? How do roles and responsibilities need to shift to accommodate the new order of things? How do you reliably predict the cost? A case study will be used to show how to move beyond flip-books and apps to create a publication that displays and behaves elegantly across innumerable platforms, and what lessons we’ve learned about making the transition.
Play the Election was a web based platform developed by ImpactGames in partnership with Rand McNally intended to educate secondary school students about the history and workings of the US Presidential election process. Based on the award winning Play the New platform, Play the Election was comprised of a total of eleven casual form games released in time with major events within the 2012 election campaigns that gave students a deeper understanding of the issues and allowing the to predict the outcome and give their opinions as to what would occur. Developed and deployed in a four and a half month period, Play the Election functioned on a variety of platforms including tablets. This presentation will provide a post mortem of the development process including the challenges of deploying a large scale application to a large audience in a short time.
While it is possible to create accessible presentations, it's not always easy. Microsoft PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, and other presentation software have continually added more sophisticated features for presenters over the years, but have ultimately fallen short when it comes to providing content that is easy to consume, access, and share. Furthermore, in today's world of smartphones, tablets, and live-tweeting, the need for more interactive and accessible presentations is greater than ever. Learn how to create accessible online presentations using a responsive WordPress and jQuery Mobile powered platform built specifically for delivering accessible online presentations in this informative session. As with so many other areas of accessibility, we discovered benefits for everyone, not just those with disabilities. For example, making the content so easily shared and immediately viewable enhances the presentation for all, creating a system where it's much easier to share content directly from the source. This not only benefits the audience, but also the presenter, who would like for the presentation to receive as much participation and feedback as possible, and would also like the content to reach out to the audience members' networks and perhaps even beyond.
So, the organization you work for is finally on-board with content strategy. They believe in telling stories instead of broadcasting marketing messages. They agree that content must be relevant and refreshed often. They even want to engage their users. Luckily, they hired a consultant to blaze a path into this brave new world. One problem: That "path," while essential, is contained in a 50 page proposal. What's a fledgling in-house content strategist to do next? The strategy is meaningless if you don't know how to execute it. This session will explore the tactical phase of content strategy. From editorial calendars and meetings to copy templates and workflow, attendees can learn how to implement strategy in manner that is practical, and most importantly, manageable.
As talented web professionals, we know best practices for how content should be created and how digital products should be designed and delivered. But we often have to convince our colleagues in other departments or disciplines of this. As change agents, it's our job to innovate and lead, despite the financial or cultural obstacles we face in our institutions. Follow the yearlong efforts of the marketing staff at American University's Kogod School of Business, as they worked to improve the usability of their digital communications for prospective and current students. They held focus groups, usability studies, and surveys; presented ideas to administrators, staff and faculty; and slowly implemented changes to the business school's website, email newsletters, and admissions processes. Learn what worked and what didn't; how to convince colleagues to get on board; and what good work ultimately went to waste. Analytics and outcomes will be shared, along with persuasive tactics. Strategies were (in part) inspired by Web Conference 2012 sessions.
Some say content is king and others argue that better features bring in the users. One thing that is seldom mentioned but could top both is how long it takes your site to load. If a page takes more than a couple seconds, the user becomes frustrated and moves on. Learn how techniques used by Facebook, YouTube, and Wikipedia keep their sites running fast and their costs down as their content and user base continues to expand. Whether your site is being marketed worldwide or has just outgrown your current Web server, there are simple approaches that can be implemented to solve potentially disastrous performance problems. This presentation will describe what caching is and how it can improve your site’s performance and allow for substantial and sustained growth. Since no one solution works for everyone, different methods will be discussed including file, memory, and database caching. Each method will be explored to provide a better understanding of the problems each are meant to solve. Several practical examples will also be reviewed to demonstrate effectiveness and ease of implementation in real-world scenarios.
No matter what your role is on a web team, you can apply product management principles and techniques to your sites and applications in ways that help you get the best possible results. Deliver the most elegant and simple product that your customers and clients need, validate it through ongoing research, and continuously improve it in incremental ways. A popular session at South by Southwest Interactive 2012, the Minimum Viable Web demonstrates how product management leads to more design success on all types of web-enabled devices. Kris will connect a variety of concepts, including: - developmental psychology - content strategy - business analysis - accessibility - responsive design - lean UX - agile development - usability evaluation into a practical and coherent process for delivering progressively-enhanced web solutions that meet your users’ and organizations’ needs.
Concept diagrams are one of the best bang-for-buck deliverables available to today's UX designer. This workshop provides a fast-paced primer (or refresher) on building concept diagrams and using them to understand relationships between ideas in new ways. Learn the simple rules for creating concept diagrams, when you will and won't want to create one, and what to do with the diagram once you have it. Understand how concept diagrams differ from similar techniques such as affinity diagramming and mindmapping, and when best to apply it in your process. A concept diagram uses nouns connected by verbs to describe a system, idea, or application. They can be sophisticated deliverables or quick-and-dirty sketches. The technique is not unlike diagramming sentences in elementary school — though it tends to be quite a bit more fun.
You know your PDF files need to be accessible to make sure all your readers can view your content and comply with various requirements. But what if you want to make an existing file accessible and don't have the original document? In Acrobat XI, many new tools have been added to assist accessibility authors. New to this version is support for the new PDF/UA specification. In addition, Acrobat XI provides customizable actions, and workflows that make it even easier to create and repair accessible PDFs as no other application can! In this workshop you will learn how to properly create, analyze, and repair PDF documents from a variety of sources.
So, you’re thinking about using WordPress for your departmental website(s)? Teaching & Learning with Technology recently relaunched its website and several of its sub-sites with WordPress. We’ll talk about the objectives we set out to accomplish and challenges we faced, as well as common goals relevant to all Penn State websites, including accessibility and branding. We’ll highlight tools, themes, and plugins that we used to build and theme (migration from other cms’s, implementation), publish (workflow, marketing, social media), and improve user experience (mobile-friendly, findability). We’ll discuss how we use WordPress’s theme management to unify look-and-feel as well as allow flexibility for site owners to customize their own sites. You’ll also learn about how you can use sites.psu.edu to create a website without having to worry about technical details of installing and maintaining WordPress yourself.
Having a great website is more important now than ever. But how do you know if your website is working well and meeting goals and objectives? (You have goals and objectives, right?) In order to optimize your website, ongoing, comprehensive evaluation of both your website and your web operations are needed. This presentation will explore a wide range of evaluation methodologies including web analytics, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, focus groups, surveys, and more. Mark will examine the strengths and weaknesses of each to help you create a comprehensive web evaluation framework.
Many of the features we identify as "modern" on today's websites are based on client side technologies. These can sometimes be difficult to test/debug. A proxy tool like Fiddler2 makes development much easier and is an essential tool for support groups. This presentation will cover how Fiddler2 can be used to test AJAX calls and payloads, investigate security issues, evaluate performance and perform simple load tests. If time allows similar functionality will be shown in Firebug and the Chrome Developer Toolbar.
The era of desktop-first methodologies has ended. According to Google, 90% of consumers now use multiple screens to accomplish tasks on the web. People aren't just visiting your site on phones and desktop computers, they are also using game consoles, laptops, tablets, and other devices. As we enter into the renaissance of the postdesktop web, we must be prepared to boldly alter how we prototype, design, and gather feedback from audiences. Two of the most important factors for current web usability are considering the screen (designing and testing for multiple displays) and context (delivering content and utility based on location, identity, activity, and time). This session will examine how critical human factors influence higher education in the following areas: • responsive design • prototyping • learning tools • usability testing
Schools at all levels of education are introducing technology into the classroom at a rapid pace. News stories about iPads being issued to every student are commonplace, and Apple specifically mentioned the education market with the introduction of the iPad Mini. In my presentation I will argue against the creation of platform specific "Apps” for the classroom, citing reasons both technical and logistical. I will demonstrate how you can replicate most of the functionality available in a native iOS or Android application with HTML5. To inform the development of a collaboration platform aimed at high school physics activities, researchers at Tufts University performed a thorough evaluation of the technology resources available inside the classrooms we encountered. The diversity of devices and operating systems was striking, and over 50% of schools encouraged students to bring their own devices. Barriers to implementation of technology-enhanced collaboration were evaluated, and requiring teachers to install and update an application was a problem of both time and expertise. On the development side, going through the certification process for an “App Store” is time consuming. HTML5 works on any device and operating system, doesn’t require any installation, and is quickly updated in a single location on the server. Participants will be given the opportunity to interact with our collaboration platform, InterLACE (http://bit.ly/ILHistory). I will present specific 3rd party tools that enable a wide range of interaction on all devices, tips and tricks for multi-platform development, and education specific design principles.
Back by popular demand, Velveeta will play "cheesy 80s music" on the lawn at the Hintz Family Alumni Center from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. as we dance the evening away. Make new friends, sample delicious hors d'oeuvres, play games and have a drink or two with your fellow attendees. Transportation will be provided between the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel and the Hintz Family Alumni Center.
This session will be all about ARIA and what every developer needs to know in using ARIA for accessibility.
Writing useful and compelling digital copy is not an act of magic or divine intervention, and it's certainly not a feature of your word processor or content management system. Scott believes anyone can--and everyone should--develop a personal process to make writing easier, more enjoyable, and more successful.
Scott's presentation breaks the unwieldy concept of "writing" down into four phases: thinking, composing, editing, and finishing. He'll demonstrate tools for managing each component and teach you when and how to use them. Add your favorite software and techniques to a personal toolbox and leave prepared to do great work on your next writing assignment.
Note: This is not a workshop on grammar and syntax, and it's quite alright if you're not a spelling bee champ. Techniques learned in this session will make it easier to spot mistakes and patch up your writing weak spots. Anyone who has to write web, business, or informational copy on a regular basis can benefit from this talk.
Not so many years ago, prevailing wisdom extolled the uniqueness of the mobile user context. This drove the creation of curated, mobile-specific user experiences such as m-dot sites and native mobile apps. In the past couple of years, the favor of the web community has swung sharply away from these mobile-specific experiences and toward responsive web design, predicated on the idea that all users want access to the same content and functionality, organized and accessed in the same way, regardless of what device they're using. It's a compelling concept backed by smart, inventive, future-aware techniques. However, focusing on technique alone makes it easy to lose sight of the human user in the real world. We were wrong in the past to speak of the mobile context as though it were monolithic, simple, and deterministic. But we're just as wrong today to ignore the ways in which user contexts can drive meaningful differences in user needs, expectations, and behaviors. In this session, we'll examine the physical, technological, mental, and social dimensions that define a range of mobile contexts, and how they argue for a broader and more flexible approach to engaging with our users.
Interaction design has many dimensions to it. It addresses how people deal with words, read images, explore physical space, think about time and motion, and how actions and responses affect human behavior. Various disciplines make up interaction design, such as industrial design, cognitive psychology, user interface design and many others. This presentation will give the audience a starting point for creating a visual language to enhance the understanding of interdisciplinary theories within the UX and interaction design field. It will use concise descriptions, visual metaphors and comparative diagrams to explain each term's meaning, such as Affordances, Cognitive Load Theory, Signal and Cue and others. It will be a great session for people new to designing for the web, project managers, developers and other stockholders who want to brush up on the proper language of experience design. This is based on my book: www.interdisciplinaryinteractiondesign.com.
What makes a human? Is it empathy, passion, humor, hope? The state of being self-aware? One of these? All of these? Perhaps the bigger question to higher education's social media practitioners is how to bring humanity into their work - a field that rarely deals with human-to-human, face-to-face interaction. We know that making our online interaction "more human" can benefit our institutions and our selves in many ways, but how do we do that and maintain a semblance of professionalism? In this presentation, we'll get to the heart of what it is to be human. And humane. I'll contend that - contrary to many communication professors' assertions - SM is an interpersonal medium... provided we follow the rules of humanity in its execution. We'll discuss what interpersonal rules and best practices we should follow in order to bring SM to a more human state - one interaction at a time.
The unit testing web developer population, in general, has been growing by leaps and bounds, but, so far, those gains haven’t been as steady on the client side. I’d like to address a few of the reasons why that is, and how we can change that by unit testing our client side application code as thoroughly as possible. Most unit testing examples focus on very straightforward imperative tests. I have seen many explanations of javascript unit testing that describe how to verify the logic behind a calculator or a form validation library, but not how to test a more complex, event triggered application. I’ll walk you through a simple unit tested backbone application and explain some design tips for effectively unit testing your code along the way. After that, I will explain how to effectively mock ajax requests and trigger ajax events from your unit tests. I will also be giving an introduction to the grunt build tool. I’ll show you how to setup grunt in such a way that your test output can be easily integrated with your continuous integration suite as well as run every time you change a file. Hopefully, eventually, we’ll all be able to have the confidence inspired by the green and red lights on a build monitor, on both sides of the great http divide.
HiSoftware Compliance Sheriff is software being used by Penn State to help identify accessibility problems on their websites. This session will teach attendees how to use Compliance Sheriff to efficiently scan and filter results, customize checkpoints and more.
Specific points that will be covered include:
Are you a content creator, not a numbers person? A writer, not a web analyst? A creative person who runs away screaming whenever someone starts talking about Google Analytics? This session is for you. Assessing your content is a basic part of any content strategy, and analytics—web, social media, and otherwise—are great tools to help content creators understand how effective their content is. We’ll look at how to use the many tools at our disposal to get specific, actionable insights on your content and how to improve it. Find out the signs that show your content is doing its job, and the signs that show that things need a little work. Even if you don’t consider yourself a numbers person, you can use analytics to help you create better web and social media content.
Like the universe itself, the Internet is constantly expanding, and the devices we use to access it are multiplying by the day. It should be clear by now that our attempts to match the pace of new Internet-enabled devices is a losing battle. Keeping our footing in an ever-changing landscape requires us to embrace flux. We must plan flexible, modular solutions; with our CMSs, our code, and our designs. In this presentation we will present a new mental model for approaching design problems on the multi-device web, as well as practical applications for our designs and code. We'll look at some of the approaches we use at Bearded to help solve these problems, and how tools like Sass and Compass have helped us along the way.
Web innovation outside of learning and development is based on a content-on-demand model. How can the learning and development industry adapt this model to create personalized, just-in-time training? What can we learn from web innovation in other industries? The speaker will challenge your thinking on this topic.
PDF’s are everywhere – they are simple for non-web professionals to create and send to the person who does web postings. They are good for proving a particular document was in place at a specific place and time. That concludes all the good that can be associate with pdf’s. PDF’s are not section 508 compliant in all but a few instances. They possess all the SEO effectiveness as cattle grazing in the pasture. Users can’t search within them. They don’t work in browsers. They don’t work well with small screens. But they are a part of our lives. We need to change that, and we can. With real solutions, great concentration and safe in the knowledge that right is on the side of html. We will walk through the ways to effectively push-back against those who produce pdf’s for web distribution. It is important to keep in mind that we are asking for the hardest thing in the world: change. If we demand change with “because it’s better”, we will lose. We will present alternatives to pdf’s, the why’s and wherefore’s to demonstrate the gains in SEO – meaning more love for the author/subject, why the soon-to-make-landfall mobile tsunami is going to wreak havoc on those unprepared. This presentation doesn’t have the wow factor that some topics, but this is a real problem in all our lives. The wow we’re aiming for is “wow, this site is great!”
The audience, structure and often the design of university websites are 90% the same (for the most part). Although your website is probably not the sole reason students enroll, it can be a detractor. The difference between a regular site and a rememberable one is the #littlebigdetails. A lot of time is spent on the “big details” of a website, like the centerpiece image, and things that everyone expects, frankly the easy decisions. The harder, but more memorable, are the little details that make a big difference in your user's experience. Learn why these details make such a large impact and how to take a step back to discover how to add a little joy to your user experience.
For the first time in over a decade, Penn State will launch a full website redesign in February 2013. As part of the planning and development process for this large-scale effort, a team assembled from various departments across the university has been working to incorporate a wide range of research, user feedback, and usability testing into the redesign. This presentation will step through the way research has informed each phase of this process, including early benchmarking, usability testing on the current site, card sorting during information architecture, testing and analysis of the various elements of the feature “slider” area in order to optimize the level of user engagement, clicktracking tests on wireframes and design comps, and “live wireframe” testing (at the time of this writing, the site is currently in development, and we anticipate further testing after launch). This presentation will share the unexpected and anticipated results, along with follow-up actions, throughout the development period. We’ll share testing goals, methods, and analysis, with an eye toward what attendees may want to bring back to their own work. Attendees will gain a greater understanding usability testing and the manner in which results can be applied throughout the process of website development, as well as a feel for the range of affordable usability testing resources that are available.
User experience is more than designing a product interface. Designers often overlook a user's initial onboarding, user engagement and retention, virality, and creating a safe online environment. A carefully constructed end-to-end user experience builds a brand for your product and can make or break the success of your business. I've been the sole UX designer of a small startup as well as a founding member of the design team that developed Google+. This workshop will address how to build beyond interface design and develop a holistic view of what it takes to create an end-to-end user experience.
Understanding the usage patterns for mobile design will help U/X members of your team create experiences that leverage universal platforms. This talk will examine emerging patterns on mobile devices and how our processes will continue to evolve in creating compelling experiences in a multiscreen world.
On first glance, the WordPress theme API can look like a large, unwieldy beast, but with that size and scale comes an unparallelled flexibility. During this session, we’ll run through a brief overview of the theme API and some of the handiest tips and tricks for developing your own WordPress theme. We’ll briefly review the differences between frameworks, parent themes and child themes, and how you can use each to your advantage.
The university experience is now online as much as it is on campus. This presents real opportunities for students, but also challenges in ensuring the web is accessible for all. During this presentation, attendees will learn about the laws impacting web accessibility and the dangers of not complying with the changing requirements. Attendees will be presented with a real-life university case study from Purdue University Calumet that walks them through the challenges the school faced, its methodology for identifying a solution and how an automated compliance solution became central to web accessibility compliance. HiSoftware will showcase the benefits of automating compliance, how it works and present three proactive steps your organization can take to achieve web accessibility compliance.
In October 2012, the University of Michigan-Flint embarked on its first 24-hour photo project, collecting images by way of Twitter, Instagram, and Flickr with the hashtag #umflint24. While we weren’t the first to try and capture a “day in the life,” we had our own share of successes and challenges. In this session, I will share our inspiration, our plans, and our process. The case study will also include a breakdown of the 24 hours, the technical hurtles we encountered throughout the day, the results, and the lessons we learned for the future.
Facebook is not a good marketing tool for your department, group, major or college. It might not even be a good marketing tool for your school, buit I won't talk you out of that one. Your music department Facebook page, with posts about the next concert, is being ignored by the minuscule percentage of people who even see the post. There's a better way, and it involves thinking about Facebook differently. Instead of building communities from scratch, leverage the student communities to spread your department news.
You have your ideal website conceptualized and built, but you find that the page load time is rather long. How could this be? Well, did you optimize your images? No? Then your images are weighing you down! In this presentation, the importance of optimizing images and its effect on the UX on desktop and mobile devices as well as a brief overview of basic optimization techniques will be discussed. In addition, the session will explore popular tools for testing page load time.
It¹s no surprise that the students sitting in the back row with their cell phone in hand, probably aren¹t following along. We can¹t be certain if they are taking notes, texting that cute girl in the next row, or contemplating their next Facebook status. Regardless of their intent, these students carry with them the technology and social connections necessary to engage each other in meaningful discussion. This presentation will explore the development of new mobile applications designed to take advantage of the mobile and social technologies students are already using. A growing interest in connection and conversation creates new opportunities to engage students both in and out of the classroom - not by creating new destinations, but by taking the conversation to where they already live.
Often, people consider accessibility after completing an IT project, but this method is generally more costly and time-consuming, and you may lack sufficient resources. Learn a different way to implement accessibility in your project's lifecycle, using a role-based approach. We can change how we incorporate accessibility in IT projects' lifecycles, by assigning responsibilities to each role involved. When we determine accessibility responsibilities for project managers, designers, developers, usability and accessibility specialists, etc., everyone is accountable and one person doesn't have the oft impossible task of "accessifying" projects. Otherwise, sometimes: * People wait until an IT project is complete before they consider accessibility. * The accessibility team--sometimes one person--has to test projects without consulting people with disabilities to see if they can use the project successfully. * Projects go over budget because of extra time and work needed to re-develop their foundations, due to late planning. * The team slates projects for remediation, yet never implement fixes because accessibility is an unprioritized afterthought. * Projects fail because they're unusable liabilities. Each person can prevent these and other mishaps through careful planning and knowing one's accessibility role.
Two Penn State staff members from the Methodology Center discuss how they overhauled their center’s website to improve the user experience including usability, content layout, and content quality. In one year, they increased Center web traffic by 100% and the number of the site’s registered users by 60%. Topics SETTING GOALS AND FOSTERING BUY-IN FROM RESEARCHERS. The Methodology Center created a comprehensive dissemination plan based on two theoretical models to guide all online dissemination. The two models, Diffusion of Innovation (Dearing, 2009) and Stages of Change (Prochaska, Di Clemente, & Norcross, 1992), will be discussed as well as how these models led to buy-in at the Center. We will then discuss how to work with a diverse group of researchers based on their personality and personal style. CREATING AND ORGANIZING CONTENT. We will discuss how usability testing 1) allows user experience to guide site design 2) challenges preconceived notions of the project team 3) provides data that can help remove obstacles created by ego or reluctance to listen to people without PhDs. (How to do usability testing will not be the focus.) Also discussed, the difference between science writing and scientific writing and where each should appear on the website. PROMOTING CONTENT. The pros, cons, and applications of online tools are discussed including email newsletters, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, podcasts, and giveaways/contests. Emphasis on calling an audience to action. ANALYTICS. The use and organization of Facebook statistics and Google analytics will be discussed for tracking impact.
The brand of an institution isn’t just defined by what the institution says. In fact, the community surrounding an institution generally has better stories to tell, and sometimes better methods of telling them. Because of this, brands don’t want to drive entire conversations, but merely create the stage for these conversations to take place. Through collective efforts, you, too, can authentically share your institution’s story. In this session, we’ll explore * listening on social channels, * curating authentic voices, * methods and strategies for recruiting and sharing community content, * measuring and gauging your “returns” -- on your community and on engagement, experience, and emotion -- and * showcase examples of taking curated content to the next level.
Penn State has many excellent learning tools that faculty and students use in their coursework. Unfortunately, usage has been limited by the difficulty in integrating tools with Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as ANGEL, Blackboard, D2L, etc. Many vendors have recently expanded their support for the IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard which makes integration much easier. Integration between two LTI compliant systems now takes minutes and can be done by LMS administrators. Pilots are already underway with Panopto (http://capture.psu.edu/) and YouSeeU (http://www.youseeu.com), with others being planned: i.e., Piazza (https://piazza.com/why-piazza-works) and VoiceThread (http://voicethread.psu.edu/). This presentation will cover the basics of LTI and educate users on what they can do to get their learning tool into ANGEL(or any LMS).
Kids are growing up in a world filled with ubiquitous mobile devices and access to the world's knowledge literally at their finger tips. We are seeing students who are mobile and connected. Tech-savvy kids are growing up to be tech-savvy college bound teens who are connected, social and will bring with them a new paradigm of gesture bias and interaction preferences with technologies, media and privacy. This cohort will break down the traditional ideas of branding, marketing and personal privacy and continue in their dependence on online information and social media. How will this bias for gesture/touch over mouse/keyboard influence the adoption of technology in schools as this generation moves through the educational system? What will the impact of this cohort be on college and universities in the next five to eight years? How will the classroom and teaching change? How will your institution adapt and change to meet the new expectations of the digital kids? Findings from 1.5 year study include looking at gesture technology bias, form factor, device weight and thumb input and design patterns. Experience Level: Beginner/Intermediate - Assumes no prior knowledge of topic. Prerequisite Knowledge: Must have some experience with either designing and creating websites or website content development. Skills/Knowledge Gained: Attendees will learn about the impact of technology biases and the growing role the mobile web will have on their organizations.
Let’s be honest -- User Experience (UX) has become this year's new black. What is it? How do I get it? Is UX the same thing as UI? How do I know if I have it? This session will address Usability, Information Architecture and User Experience Design. We'll discuss just how important UX and UI is, how to recognize it, and how to test your site to see if you have it -- and how you can make it better. We'll explore examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly in User Experience, and identify tools you can incorporate into your web toolkit that will help make UXperienced, too.
EPUB3 is the emerging standard format for accessible ebooks. It is based on the technologies you already know - HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, with a little XML to glue the books together. The format is supported by all ebook readers except the Kindle, which uses the closely related, proprietary Kindle format (and can be automatically converted from EPUB format). We will take a deep dive into the EPUB3 format and review some of the tools used to create and publish modern ebooks.
Through colorful, been-there-done-that examples that worked successfully for Elizabethtown College, Donna Talarico will show you ways to increase audience engagement on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. From building a student social media street team and welcoming students back to campus with a 30-day Instagram photo challenge to an interactive grassroots “Tag! You’re It!” campaign during the 2012 Homecoming and Family Weekend and many things in between, you will learn how to use your audience to get inspiration, create conversations and grow your following and engagement. She will also share tools and tidbits she uses to help streamline process with other elements, including web, print and in-person.
Javascript developers can’t get enough of callbacks. It’s been our tried and true workhorse when dealing with asynchronous code since the dawn of ajax and the rise of jQuery. With the advent of nodejs, we’ve taken things to the extreme. Now, if we want to make a database query, respond to a web server request, or make a rest call to a web service, we need deeply nested callbacks in order to achieve what we need. In time, this phenomenon becomes the pyramid of doom, where we need 500 character of horizontal screen width to read all of our code. The issue here isn’t that we are using asynchronous code, but rather that we aren't using the best design pattern for the job. I’d like to talk through a relatively new paradigm for control flow in javascript, the deferred. Using this technique, you can develop an much more straightforward asynchronous javascript application. Not only is it a way to remove the need for callbacks, but it opens a door to new design possibilities, without the complexity of continuation passing style. Rather than passing all of our callbacks as arguments, we will take a higher level, and more functional approach, by creating a system that expects promise objects to eventually produce data, and we manipulate that data expecting that it will exist in the future.
In September of 2012, Drexel University launched a responsive redesign of its "core" university website, which is managed with the SiteCore content management system. In a staged approach, administrative departments and research micro-sites are being migrated to a companion responsive template that closely matches the navigational patterns and branding of the the core site. When complete, this process will present a seamless user experience as traffic flows between the large universe of Drexel web presences, whether it is a smartphone, tablet, or a variety of desktop platforms. This presentation will cover both technical (HTML and CSS) and organizational challenges and opportunities, especially the matrix team of outside consultants, content producers, front-end web developers, and cms specialists that made success possible.
Over the past year, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have captured the attention of educators across the world. Many higher education institutions, including Penn State, are partnering with organizations like Coursera, Udacity, and edX to develop and deliver courses intended to serve tens of thousands of students simultaneously. While Penn State has been developing online courses for over 15 years, MOOCs provide new challenges due to their scale. Video-based instruction, peer assessment, and large-scale social learning must work flawlessly with little or no instructor intervention. Imagine a technical glitch or poorly designed interface multiplied by 50,000 students! Sound pedagogy combined with novel user experience design are essential to making a successful MOOC. In this presentation a group of experienced instructional designers and educational technologists will deconstruct MOOCs from a variety of providers and examine what works, what doesn't, and suggest strategies for designing compelling and intuitive educational experiences at massive scale.