This workshop is a full-day masterclass that takes a deep dive into the world of responsive web design, covering everything including broad concepts, strategy, how responsive design affects process, responsive design patterns and principles, and more.

Responsive design is a huge topic so unfortunately it’s impossible to pack everything about it into a single day. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try, right? Here’s what will be covered:

• The ever-shifting landscape – The web landscape is getting more diverse every single day, and this section will address why responsive web design is becoming increasingly essential

• Approach – There’s more than one way to skin this mobile web cat. We’ll look at the various strategies being used to approach the multi-device Web landscape

• Foundations of Responsive Design – Responsive web design 101. Fluid grids, flexible media and media queries make up the core of responsive web design

• Principles of Adaptive Design – What beyond layout do we need to concern ourselves with when creating great multi-device web experiences? We’ll cover how ubiquity, flexibility, performance, enhancement and future-friendliness are powerful principles for making great adaptive web experiences.

• Atomic Design– Introduce a design methodology for creating robust design systems, and introduce Pattern Lab, a tool for creating atomic design systems

• Strategy and Workflow – Our websites are fluid, so our process and workflow needs to be fluid as well. This section will tackle thorny areas like convincing clients and colleagues, and discuss tools and techniques to effectively design in the Post-PSD Era.

• Responsive Patterns – Creating adaptive interfaces is challenging, but thankfully the Web community is hard at work creating flexible, downright innovative design patterns. We’ll look at how to tackle layout, navigation, images, data tables, and really anything else you can put in an interface.

• Development Best Practices – The way we build websites has changed. We’ll discuss mobile-first development, CSS techniques, “support” vs “optimization”, device testing and more to help you develop future-friendly web experiences.

What you'll learn

You’ll learn different approaches to responsive design projects, the why and how of atomic design, common effective responsive design patterns, modern responsive design best practices.

Who it's for

It’s for web designers, developers, and anyone working on responsive design projects.

What to bring

You’ll need brains and something to take notes with.

This workshop will help you improve your writing and editing skills, giving you tools you can immediately take back to work. We’ll talk about how to address business goals and readers’ needs while maintaining a consistent voice and adapting your tone based on the content type. And we’ll cover how to craft public content like marketing copy, interface flows, blog posts, and emails, as well as behind-the-scenes documents like mission statements and style guides.

We’ll dive deep into the writing process and do some practical exercises along the way. You’ll organize your content types, sketch pages and flows, work on a voice and tone guide, and exchange feedback with other participants. This workshop will give you the skills and motivation you need to write with confidence, and you’ll leave with building blocks for developing content standards within your organization.

What you'll learn

You’ll learn how to:

• Write clear, friendly, and useful web content
• Find your voice and adapt your tone for different situations and content types
• Develop content in modular chunks
• Sketch web pages and interface flows
• Create a simple style guide
• Articulate your mission and work toward it as you write

Who it's for

The workshop is for anyone who works on website content. Experienced writers will deepen their skills, and new writers will jump right in with the exercises.

What to bring

Bring a pen and a laptop if you’d like.

Once you have data from user research, how do you turn that into a compelling design solution…and herd the cats along with you? It’s especially tough when you have to work around limited project scope and organizational silos. That’s the focus of this full-day workshop.

Storytelling is a powerful tool, both for unleashing our imaginations and for persuading others. We’ll start by turning qualitative data into a type of story, using journey mapping to help the team identify opportunities. From there, we’ll use storytelling in a generative way: creating ambitious stories at the level of a service design scenarios to broaden our thinking and develop a vision, then scoping down into detailed product-level scenarios from which to sketch. We’ll then use scenarios to guide our storyboarding, which is a sequential approach to sketching. We’ll even take a look at how scenarios can help translate your research data into visual design priorities.

Topics will include:

• Benefits of using journey maps, like bridging the gap between problem and solution, persuading the team to come along…even sharpening your interview skills.
• Techniques for developing effective journey maps from interview data, with a chance to practice.
• Comparing scenarios to use cases, Agile user stories, and requirements.
• Deciding when to use different types of scenarios.
• Using personas (or not) in your scenarios and design.
• Creating an effective scenario, with a chance to practice developing several types.
• Using scenarios to generate clear, effective requirements.
• Using scenarios to help translate solutions to any channel or platform, whether you’re mobile-first, desktop-focused, or translating between digital and brick-and-mortar.
• Using your initial scenarios to drive structure and flow in your sketching, then using increasingly detailed scenarios to iterate and test the solution—fast!
• Supporting design decisions with scenarios, even at the pixel level.
• Using scenarios to sell your solutions.

Expect realistic exercises where you’ll put theory into practice. Throughout the session, we’ll discuss practical realities like limited scope, skeptical stakeholders, and the challenges inherent in certain industries or consumer settings. Bring your questions and frustrations as well as your success stories!

What you'll learn

You’ll learn how to:

• Narrow the gap between understanding your users and knowing what to do about it
• Develop a shared view of the problem, stop feature creep, and minimize opinion-based wrangling about solutions.
• Create user-centered solutions that don’t mirror your org chart or ignore users’ real cross-channel behavior.
• Make your user experience better by examining every touchpoint and using emotion–not just functions and tasks–to inform your choices.
• Fit scenarios seamlessly into your existing process, whether it’s Agile, waterfall, or Agile-fall.
• Make design choices and trade-offs visible to the team (and even users) quickly and cheaply.
• Help drive the requirements process instead of responding to it when it’s over.

Who it's for

This workshop is for any designer, engineer, or product manager who’s had to figure out what to build, how it should behave, and how it should look…and sell the rest of the team along the way. A solid grounding in interface design principles and patterns is helpful for the sketching exercises. Those with a lot of experience using scenarios may find parts of the session are a “refresher.” The content is equally applicable whether you’re designing something new or improving what you already have.

What to bring

Bring your willingness to experiment, collaborate, and create. A laptop or tablet might come in handy for one of the exercises.

“Product Manager” is the new hot title for 2015. This workshop will teaches practical skills, actionable take-aways and easy-to-run exercises for understanding how to evaluate, manage, and grow a product from idea to product market fit and beyond.

What you'll learn

Topics include:

• Disruptive vs Sustaining Innovations
• The 5 methods of product management
• The Jobs to be Done framework product innovation
• How to interview customers & prospects to understand the role of your product
• How to scope a product, and manage a roadmap
• How to measure, get feedback on, grow and or kill features in your product
• Product strategies to follow for virality, 2 sided marketplaces, B2B SaaS, and more

Who it's for

This is for:

• Product managers for companies of all sizes
• Anyone developing a new internal or external product within their company
• Entrepreneurs and start-up founders.
• Designers tasked with taking a product from idea to inception.
• Consultants looking to strengthen their product design skills.

What to bring

Brains.

Harper Reed spent 18 months as CTO, Obama for America. He and his team worked 16-hour days, six or seven days a week, trying to re-elect a president. It worked: they raised hundreds of millions of dollars online; they made unprecedented progress in voter targeting and they built everything atop the most stable technical infrastructure of any presidential campaign. They ultimately made it simpler and easier and more enjoyable for anyone to engage meaningfully with Obama and his re-election effort.

This was a high stakes game, and one not without its challenges. Without resilience, in both the team itself and the technology, this would not have been possible.

What you'll learn

In this workshop, Harper will share some of his experiences and insights during this time, sharing important insights for building resilient systems and teams. This will be an interactive workshop and the attendees should come to share as well as learn.

Along with some good laughs and stories of inhuman strength, you should expect to leave the workshop with a good framework for building teams, managing crisis and testing all the way.

Who it's for

This workshop is for people who care about their employees, their friends and enjoy being human. If you are not human or hate your employees, you should not come.

What to bring

Just the usual.