IIDCon

 I attended IIDCon on 11/19/16 which was a conference that included 4 speakers; Victor Yocco, Brian Crumley, Liese Zahabi, and John Halfpenny. The first speaker was Victor Yocco who is a research director of EY Interactive. He writes about psychology and design. Through his research he theorizes that psychology is important to design because psychology is the study of the human mind affecting in a given context, and humans will be the ones using the things you design. Psychology reflects empathy for the users. When he starts designing he thinks to himself, "what do I want on this canvas?" Then he thinks about where information will be chunked throughout is design. He says that if you invest time into your work you will build a connection with your work. Some psychological skills he uses in his design are heuristics, default effect, and scarcity effect. Heuristics build metal shortcuts when there are too many decisions to make at once. The default effect shows that many users don't adjust the settings of a device because they assume hat the designers have the best interest of the user. The scarcity effect is motivated by limited availability or exclusivity. This enhances the user's perception of scarcity. It also is a common motivator of design decisions. He ultimately encouraged us to remember to research and think of the psychology of design decisions.

Up next was Brian Crumley, a lead front end developer. He likes to think of websites as systems rather than pages. He usually starts out by asking what elements will be used in what context. To do this he needs something that starts a conversation. This is why designers use perspective style guides. This front end style guides are not made of code. It show what information you have, but it is the designer's job to find out how to use it. The info should flow in 1 direction. It is a good idea to avoid bloat or too much repeated code as it takes up too much space harming the sites performance, and improves user experience. This document optimization turns a regular document into a living document. The style guide builds a common language between all on-board staff members of the project. The guide includes basic and additional elements. The elements can later be built byte sized and accessed internally from the CSS. He finds himself using a lot of Photoshop to optimize or normalize photos. He then talked about a system for design called SEAL which stands for solicit, encourage, ask, and listen. He said that all elements on a style guide should be used at least once.

 The next person to talk was Liese Zahabi , a professor of interactive design at Maryland University. Her talk was about information science. She started out by discussing the search process when she used to work at a library and comparing it to the way Google collects data from users and targeted adds. From this she concluded that searching can be hard, especially on the Internet. She said the Internet's original purpose was to share information with many people. She stated that because all things are integrated with each other that their is really only knowledge that separates all things. Searching forms its own ecosystem on the web because the Internet is always evolving. All search engines need to organize information which can be done more easily today than ever before. Unfortunately content is formed much quicker now of days. Early websites didn't understand how to design for web because it was such new territory. Now with Google's data, it is easier to find information, which formed a consolidation and a near monopolization of search on the web. A single search sifts through an exponential amount of options that are filtered and prioritized through many categories. She ultimately wanted us to know that the Internet was a evolving ecosystem, it was created to build a better comprehension, and to embrace it as a new metaphor.

 The last speaker was John Halfpenny, a reputation specialist at BrandYourself. The most important thing to remember is what you write will be recognized on the Internet. He says your profile should be optimized for your readers so optimize it for screen. To produce your personal branding, you need to design you for you and your audience. You need to not be a phoney, be true to yourself. 5-7 brand touches are recommended to distinguish your brand. It is recommended to use social media, the big 8 he refers to, as you get recognized better and have about 7 times the personal connection with your audience. It also helps optimize your name on search engine results, which is also recommended. Another way to do this is to make use of your keywords, which should be your name, throughout your sites. It is important to fill out your bio, and build a structure of your sites through links. The overall message of his speech was to take control of your presence on the Internet.