The old “waterfall” model of design, development, and client partnerships, where projects are expected to be handed off from one entity to the next, often falls short among changing scopes, project discovery processes, and evolving requirements. We will discuss the added value that up-front communication and agile collaboration methods bring to a web-based project to save time, money, and headaches. For project managers, contractors, agencies, and anyone else who has to manage or work with multiple team members on a web project

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Mobile-first is one of those phrases getting thrown around a lot now, but most often mistakenly as interchangeable with “mobile responsive.” Mobile-first is the holistic design and development approach of both designing for phones first and flipping the stylesheet on its head so media queries are for large mobile on up to desktop and CSS without media queries are for the phone viewport. Topics covered:

• Why mobile-first
• Trends
• Examples How-to: – Sassify – re-think – re-organize

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Sketch is a Mac design app for vector and web graphics. Learn how to leverage this powerful creative tool to quickly prototype designs, wireframes, and theme layouts. Share UI/UX design tips and discover fun Sketch to WordPress workflows.

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I’ll explore basic web accessibility principles for web designers, developers, and site owners, then show how to turn seemingly daunting and confusing accessibility requirements into understandable, actionable tasks and techniques. The talk will cover some of the accessibility-specific WordPress plugins and themes available, as well as some quick, easy tests to integrate into design and development workflows.

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While we work with WordPress every day, many of our clients do not. Make this powerful CMS easier for them to use by implementing good UX practices using:

• Custom post types and custom meta boxes
• Client-proof plugins, and
• Quick functions.php additions

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Much like online businesses or blogging, higher ed is a world of its own with unique challenges, content, stakeholders, and target audiences. In our world, we don’t worry so much about which eCommerce plugin is best. Instead, we’re more concerned with how to manage a large-scale network of faculty blogs, abide with FERPA regulations, and implement Active Directory single sign-on. This talk will showcase how WordPress is used in the world of higher ed and how we’re a great candidate for utilizing WordPress to its full potential, whether it’s using the powerful CMS to stretch limited resources or using its new API capabilities to share information and break down silos.