Aarron Walter » Conferences

On Brand Honesty

Aarron — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:02:40 +0000

I’m working on a new talk about brand honesty, and shaping the voice and personality of products. I’ll be debuting the talk at Future Insights in Las Vegas in April. Interested in a sneak peek at what I’ll be talking about? Check out this interview I did with the folks at Future Insights.

In 2000, multinational oil company BP began a re-branding campaign aimed at positioning the company as a forward-thinking energy company that was actively pursuing a world “beyond petroleum.” A new green logo and a rush of TV commercials followed shortly after.

Critics found no shortage of fodder from BP’s campaign. The company was accused of “greenwashing” from the outset, and in 2010 the image of BP as an environmentally-sound alternative to other energy companies was shattered by the Deepwater Horizon spill — the largest of its kind in history.

What does this have to do with web design and development? A lot, according to Aarron Walter, UX design lead at MailChimp.

read the interview

Video of Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design

Aarron — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:15:33 +0000

In September of this year I delivered at talk about emotional interface design at Webdagene, an amazing conference in Oslo, Norway. The conference organizers were kind enough to record the talk, which can view on their website in case you missed it in Norway.

Video of Learning to Love Humans Talk in Norway

The UX Sketchbook in Action at Future of Web Design

Aarron — Fri, 27 May 2011 12:00:21 +0000

I ran a day long workshop at Future of Web Design called “Interface Design Bootcamp“. In the workshop we learned how to conceptualize an app to connect people at an event like the Future of Web Design Conference using design personas and sketchboards. Ryan Carson sat in on my workshop and wrote a nice post on Think Vitamin about the sketchboarding process.

The workshop was so perfectly timed as the UX Sketchbook I’ve been working on had just rolled off the presses, and it was time to take it for a serious test drive. As I mentioned earlier here, the UX Sketchbook was really designed to support quick ideation, and specifically, sketchboarding.

I snapped a few pics from the conference to document the fun we were having with the new sketchbooks. You can view all of the workshop photos on Flickr.

get your own UX Sketchbook »

Idea To Interface: Sketchnotes From Future of Web Design London

Aarron — Wed, 25 May 2011 12:10:56 +0000

I recently gave a talk at Future of Web Design London entitled “Idea To Interface” in which I challenged and hopefully inspired my fellow web designers to create side projects to fuel creative thinking, and inform the work we do at our day jobs. I worked with the amazingly talented Mike Rohde, illustrator for Rework on the illustrations for the slide deck. As a sketchnote guru, Mike was the perfect fit for this talk as it’s all about capturing one’s ideas on paper or in a simple prototype.

With sketchnoting as the central aesthetic for my presentation slides, you can imagine how excited I was to discover after walking off stage that my talk was sketchnoted by the amazingly talented Eva-Lotta Lamm. Eva deftly captured the salient points of my talk in a series of clever little sketches giving those that could not attend a visual overview of the concepts I shared.

Sketchnote created by Eva-Lotta Lamm from Idea to Interface talk at Future of Web Design London

Thanks Eva for creating such an amazing drawing of my talk, and thanks to the folks at Ubelly.com that hired her to sketchnote the entire Future of Web Design conference.

Links and Resources From An Event Apart Talk “Idea to Interface”

Aarron — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:30:54 +0000

Links and resource came fast and furious in my talk at An Event Apart Boston. To make your life easier, I’ve assembled all of the resources I mentioned into a handy little list. Feel free to share this with your colleagues.

Keep an eye on my SlideShare account for the slide deck from this presentation, which will be released once the AEA season has come to a close.

Books

You might also be interested in …

I compiled a massive list of handy UX resources for a workshop I did recently.

Domo Boom! at LAUNCH Conference

Aarron — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:47:27 +0000

Jason Calacanis put on a hell of a conference this past week in San Francisco. LAUNCH gave a series of startups the opportunity to demo their products to a panel of expert judges (including your truly), the tech press, and a crowd of industry pros. Some amazing products were presented. My favorites were Hipmunk, a mobile and web app that does travel booking the right way, and Chute, a mobile app that get’s you to “photo 0″ by facilitating photo sharing and backup to the cloud.

The final demo on the day I was judging was Domo, a mobile app that helps you find people with similar interests in your vicinity. It’s a cool idea, though perhaps not the best design execution. The presentation, however, was brilliant. You’ve got to see it to believe it.

Interface Design Bootcamp: Future of Web Design Workshop

Aarron — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:15:29 +0000

I recently conducted a day long “Interface Design Bootcamp” workshop in New York at the Future of Web Design. We covered a lot of territory including user research, personas, wireframes, sketchboards, prototypes, and usability testing. There are so many useful resources freely available on the Web that make the job of a user experience designer easier. Here are a few of the UX resources discussed and the slides from the workshop.

View more presentations from Aarron Walter

User Research and Personas

Sketchboards

Wireframing

Prototyping

Usability Testing

Design Patterns

Essential Books

General Resources

Slides From Talk “Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design”

Aarron — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:32:12 +0000

It’s been a busy year. I’ve been traveling an awful lot talking at some great conferences like An Event Apart, Future of Web Design, Future of Web Apps, and Web Directions US. The talk I’ve been giving is entitled “Learning to Love Humans: Emotional Interface Design”, and it explores how emotion in design can help you build a devout following, foster good will that will come in handy should something go awry with your app or site, and encourages evangelism.

Now that the conference season is drawing to a close, I’m releasing my slide deck here. The talk was well received, and is being turned into a book for A Book Apart, which will be released in 2011. In the mean time, this article “Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users” will tide you over. Keep an eye out at the Web Directions US site for the release of audio from this talk.

Christopher Fahey: The Human Interface

Aarron — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:09:26 +0000

Presented at The Web and Beyond conference in Amsterdam, Christopher Fahey discusses how to design human interfaces, and why products are people too.

Dive Into the Modern Web Workshop at Web Directions USA

Aarron — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 14:48:01 +0000

I’m co-presenting with Leslie Jensen-Inman and Glenda Sims a workshop called “Dive Into the Modern Web” today at Web Directions US in Atlanta, GA. This workshop will help educators and self-guided learners get up to speed with the changing landscape of the modern Web.

I’m doing presentations on HTML5 and CSS3, which will cover a lot of ideas, technologies, and resources. Below are my slides, the exercise files, and the resources mentioned in the presentation.

The Files

The Resources

The InterACT Summit

Aarron — Tue, 25 May 2010 11:31:02 +0000

The Web Standards Project and Environments for Humans are proud to announce the launch of InterACT With Web Standards, a book that brings all aspects of web design together for teachers and students. To celebrate the release of the book, several of the expert contributors come together online to give mini-tutorials in their fields of expertise:

Learning More Effectively on the Web – Denise Jacobs
Content Strategy – Glenda Sims
HTML5 – Chris Mills
CSS3 – Aarron Walter
Accessibility – Derek Featherstone
InterACT in the Classroom – Leslie Jensen-Inman

This event is free for students and educators, so wand seating is limited. Reserve your space while you can. http://interactsummit.eventbrite.com

See Me Speak in 2009

Aarron — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 02:50:01 +0000

2009 is shaping up to be a busy year for me. I’m going to be speaking at a number of conferences around the United States, and I hope to meet you at one of them to share a beer and conversation about our craft.

Here’s where I’ll be speaking:

February 3, 2009: Web Directions North at Denver, CO

Ed Directions, a highly focused, in depth whole day symposium aims to address the challenges of educating web professionals, by helping teachers, trainers, course and curriculum developers, and others in the education field keep abreast with the latest developments in standards and best practice, and to develop and deliver the best possible curricula and courses.

March 16th, 2009: No Web Professional Left Behind at SxSW Interactive

Far too often, students aspiring to be web professionals leave school with a degree yet without adequate training to prepare them for the real world. The Web Standards Project (WaSP) announces a living curriculum to help schools, colleges and universities bridge the gap between educators and industry best practices.

Rather than locking down your content by publishing in one place, learn to use the power of social networking tools to broadcast your content widely and improve findability.

May 5th, 2009: Findability Bliss Through Web Standards at An Event Apart Seattle

Connecting with your audience is objective number one for any website. Findability—the discipline of helping users discover the content they seek—not only helps businesses get their message out, but it improves the user experience, too. The secret to attaining findability bliss, both with search engines and beyond, lies in the wisdom of web standards.

June 23th, 2009: Findability Bliss Through Web Standards at An Event Apart Boston

Discount on An Event Apart New Orleans

Aarron — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 22:29:58 +0000

If you’ve been sitting on the fence about whether or not to attend An Event Apart in New Orleans April 24-25, let me help sway you to make the decision easier. The stellar line-up of speakers alone might compel you head to the Big Easy to learn from the likes of Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Dave Shea, Jeffrey Veen, Robert Hoekman, Andy Clarke, Stephanie Sullivan, Jason Santa Maria, Aaron Gustafson, Cameron Moll, and lil’ ol’ me. It’s a rare opportunity to learn from such influential designers, builders, and thinkers who are shaping the future of the Web.

Here’s yet another temptation to attend. You can get $50 off registration with this special discount code: AEAAAWA. Badger your boss, pester your partner, do what you have to do to make it happen. Sitting on the fence hurts your bum. I hope to see you in New Orleans in April!