Breakfast

Since I had a late night last night breakfast was in the form of a free Monster drink obtained from the registers lounge.

SXXPress

Back again to the SXXPress pass line on level 4, going up the escalator you can see the number of people milling around on the floor. Getting up to the fourth floor there was a long line. I feared it was not for the SXXPress line, but it was, so I decided to come back later realizing some of the passes might be sold out.

How to say fuck no and still have them love you

This session I actually accidentally attended, but I am glad I did after listening to the speaker. It discussed how the design process works as his company. You give solutions not options and show the process how you came to that outcome. This allows for the client to focus on the "what".

Some take away notes:

• Success is by working with decision makers and not committees.
• They don't give options they give solutions.
• No one is an expert anymore, buy a dslr you are a photography. All information is online.
• Being an expert is something that is lost.
• Preach what you practice, you need to discuss what and why you did something.
• No Options, only solutions. Justify every decision they make.
• With mechanical engineer you can prove why something is a bad idea. With design there is in definitive proof that an idea is wrong.
• Ask the question why five times allows you to get down to the root of the problem.
• Clients always focus on the how, font size, logo size, colors. They should focus on the what
• You need direct contact, going through a proxy can't work. You get sign off with wrong assumptions.
• Everything for the first proposal should be in blacks and white so there is no preference to color.
• Never say "I like it" that is personal preference.
• Sketches are ideas and not solutions.
• If you get bad ideas from clients, you need to come back with a better idea
  
• Never send over a design without some sort explanation on why the direction for the design.
• You can't give a informed opinion when someone just drops something in front of you.

Hungry

Since I have yet to actually have any food of substance I figured I will head to my next session and stop by a food stand near the room figuring I will have plenty of time (20 minutes from start). I managed to eat up my time and by the time I got the door 100ft away the session was full. That will teach me to try to eat

Exploring Gesture in Interface Design

I got to this session late, but it was interesting to hear how gestures and other forms of feedback influence devices and humans interact with them.

A few take aways

• Talk about how feedback in gesture based style devices gives better experience with the device.
• Gestures were conceived in 1983
• Standards are good and bad. A good balance allows you to use standards but the ability to use your device your way.
• Nothing is a one size fits all.

CSS Preprocessor Myths

Since we recently started using less at work this session was a perfect fit for me. The session ended up being a refresher on some of the topics I read about in the past regarding to less/sass. Once again this ended up being one of the sessions I know I should go to for work as it relates but at the end of the day I would have been better off going to something outside of my comfort zone. I did have a few take aways which will be good to share with the team back home.

Informal poll shows sass leading the way in Europe.

In USA, big portion of users asked do not use a pre processors. Sass is also the most popular.

Why use it?

• CSS is repetitive
• CSS doesn't have variables
• Plan CSS is inflexible, limited reusability.
• Complex websites are hard to maintain

The Myths

• Adds complexity to the development process
• You lose control over the final code
• Adds overhead to the website
• Adds extra dependencies to your development workflow
• Too hard to debug

God, SCSS looks like JavaScript and Php mated in a drunken state - Christian Heilmann

Debunking the Myths
Complexity

• Nesting is a natural way of coding.
• Named variables are easier to manage than individual values like colors
• You don't have to use all the functionality

Lose Control

• If your CSS code is currently horrible, your sass will undoubted be horrible.
• Sass doesn't write code by itself
• Use expanded output option during development

Overhead

• Compiled file is just plain CSS
• Automatically minify/compress the CSS output
• Easy to add (or remove) vendor evil prefixes
• Seem less file concatenation, so you can maintain the styles easier

Dependencies

• Your current setup already has dependencies
• If you don't use a pre processor, you need a post processor
• Many tools are available for free

Hard to Debug

• Organized code shouldn't be hard to debug
• There are ways
• It's getting better

Techniques and Tips

• Sass debug info
• Sass debug info, shows the sass line number in the CSS output so you can easily reference the original location Source maps
• Chrome 30+ includes source map support for sass 3.3 and Less 1.5. Allows for the map file to identify the original file location.

File organization

• Divide and conquer
• Master the import files and file concatenation
• It's easier to find a rule in a small file
• Import within media queries so you don't have to repeat media queries
• Make one file by component/section with all it's media queries

Nesting

• Apply the inception rule, do not go greater than 3 levels deep

Pitch

• Hoisin.scss, light and extensible, responsive, doesn't make any design assumptions. Start point to write your code. Content first and performance first.

Which one is the best?

• All have about the same functionality
• Use the one that fits in your workflow and feels better to you.

Final Considerations

• Source Control, ignore compiled css/compile on deployment

Lunch

Now that my session is over I figured I should get a proper lunch. I talked to a few people at the conference recommended Casino El Camino It did not disappoint!

KC Burger with Beer Braised Pork Belly

Always Be Testing Novelty in A/B Tests

The last workshop for the day was talking about A/B testing in terms of email marketing to raise funds for the Obama reelection campaign. This workshop was really good for me as it gave me insight on how various email campaigns work and what kind of tactic you should take to increase clicks and money.

Some take aways

• Words are important words like now convey to the user that this is just the next step

Tools Used

• Optimize league
• Blue state digital

Novelty factor

• Basically a tactic hat is effective nit because it is awesome but simply because it is eye catching.
• Supporter records

• Adding a p.s.

• Mix control group with some of these novelty testing

Case studio, ugly email

• Sometimes pretty does not mean better, simple and plain looks more like a real person sent it.
• Ugly yellow highlighting can be a novelty effect

Case Study, email volume

• Two emails in a day did not result in a scary amount of unsubscribes. Everything more resulted in just extra money.
• More emails resulted in more money
• Time of day is not really important, just don't send the middle of the night.
• Adding in 🔔 in subjects increases novelty effect.

Predestination

I decided to end my day by seeing a movie. I did not know anything about this movie but was a great watch. It kept you guessing until the end.