Schedule

You'll be interacting with innovators and thought leaders from across the design community. Take a look at what they'll be speaking about below

FOWD Welcome party! (Wednesday 16th April)

  1. Official FOWD Welcome party!

    @ Jewel, Covent Garden

    19:00 — 01:00

    Location / Details

    2. Conference Day (Thursday 17th April)

    1. Registration

      08:00 — 09:00

      Location / Details

    2. Welcome

      From Paul Boag, the FOWD Conference Chair

      09:00 — 09:10

      Location / Details

    3. Patrick McNeil (Design Meltdown) Finding Inspiration For Design

      Learn how to find inspiration by looking within the web design industry and where to turn for outside inspiration. Even more importantly we will demonstrate how to avoid abusing inspiration and how it can be leveraged to your benefit. We will also discuss how to avoid the pitfalls of following the trends; which ironically can also be great sources of inspiration.

      09:10 — 9:50

      Location / Details

    4. Andy Clarke (Stuff & Nonsense) & Steve Pearce (Poke) User Experience v Brand Experience

      Andy and Steve will take it in turns to ask if it's possible to achieve the holy grail of web design - fusing style and function to produce beautifully branded and usable websites.

      9:50 — 10:50

      Location / Details

    5. Microsoft

      Benedict Ireland - Splendid

      10:50 — 11:00

      Location / Details

    6. AM Break

      11:00 — 11:40

      Location / Details

    7. Andy Budd (Clearleft) Designing the User Experience Curve

      These days people expect more from a website than a handy set of tools and a pretty interface — they want an experience. As soon as somebody starts using your site they'll be judging you on everything, from the way the site looks to the tone of your error messages. And they won't just be comparing you to other sites.

      They'll be remembering every customer experience they have ever had, from the rude man at the train station, to the lovely hotel clerk that checked them in on honeymoon. In order to compete, we need to up our game and look at experiences both on and off-line.

      In this session, Andy Budd will look at the seven key factors that go into designing the perfect customer experience. Using examples from the world around us, Andy will discuss how we can turn utilitarian experiences into something wonderful.

      11:40 — 12:20

      Location / Details

    8. Larissa Meek (AgencyNet) Getting your designs approved: 12 Simple Rules

      Getting approval on designs can be an exasperating and time-consuming process where significant rounds of revisions can result in scope-creep. This session will offer methodologies for getting sign-off on designs with the fewest revisions, and simple tips for preparing and presenting your comps in the most efficient manner.

      12:20 — 13:00

      Location / Details

    9. Lunch

      13:00 — 14:00

      Location / Details

    10. Andy Clarke to commentate, Jon Hicks (Hicksdesign) Elliot Jay Stocks (Carsonified) Jina Bolton (Jinabolton.com) & Hannah Donovan (Last.fm)

      Live Photoshop Battle: Battle of the sexes! Top designers play design tag right in front of the FOWD audience.

      14:00 — 14:30

      Location / Details

    11. Elliot Jay Stocks (Carsonified) Print is the new web

      Why we can - and should - draw inspiration from print design.

      14:30 — 14:55

      Location / Details

    12. Jon Hicks (Hicksdesign) From Design to Deployment

      Creating a site isn't always a straight process of sketches to static photoshop comps to coding HTML & CSS. Looking at the workflow and nitty gritty of various designers reveals a variety of techniques for getting a design deployed on the web. This session will look at those practices: creating personal frameworks, planning markup for semantics, accessibility and SEO, browsing testing, bughunting and many more.

      14:55 — 15:45

      Location / Details

    13. Adobe

      Andrew Shorten

      15:45 — 15:55

      Location / Details

    14. PM break

      15:55 — 16:30

      Location / Details

    15. Paul Farnell (Litmus) Unconventional ways to promote your site

      Blogging, Google Adwords and SEO tactics are some of the more traditional ways of getting visitors to your site. From his own experience, Paul will discuss some more unconventional methods of generating traffic and sales.

      16:30 — 17:10

      Location / Details

    16. Daniel Burka (Digg & Pownce) Evolving the User Experience

      Getting your site or application launched is a huge hurdle but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Next you're going to face the challenge of evolving your user experience to engage your visitors, improve features, and hopefully foster growth. Daniel will be discussing how to successfully adapt your design with examples drawn from his work on Digg, Pownce, Mozilla, and other sites. He'll share his experiences of adapting sites from changes gone awry to surprising successes. Most importantly Daniel will identify the factors that lead to successful and timely evolution of the user experience.

      17:10 — 17:50

      Location / Details

    17. Closing words

      From Paul Boag, the FOWD Conference Chair

      17:50 — 18:00

      Location / Details

    18. FOWD after party!

      @ 20 (formerly EnVogue), Kensington

      19:30 — 02:00

      Location / Details

Workshops - Friday 18th April

We have a great line up of workshops which give you a unique opportunity to get expert advice from the legends of Web Design.

Visit the workshops page