Event: IA Summit 2008

by March 14, 2008

IA summit 2008April 11th -14th I’ll be speaking and presenting a workshop at IA Summit in Miami, Florida. This year's program looks awesome and I'm very happy to be part of it.


On Friday, April 11th, I'll be teaching a full day workshop on Web Form Design. I've compiled lots of material on just about every aspect of form design you could imagine including (but not limited to): form organization, conversational inputs, group distinctions, paths to completion, minimal distractions, tabbing, label alignment, input field lengths, required inputs, flexible inputs, additional inputs, flexible inputs, messaging, input groups, actions, inline validation, help & tips, gradual engagement, and more! As this workshop has filled up fast, sign up while there's still room.

Official Description

In the world of Web applications, forms bridge the gap between people, their information, and your product or service. From registration forms that welcome new customers to checkout forms that finalize e-commerce transactions, Web forms frequently broker crucial online interactions.

In his full-day workshop, Luke Wroblewski, author of the upcoming book, Web Form Design Best Practices, will walk you through design considerations and best practices of form design culled from international site-tracking, usability testing, eye-tracking studies, and over eleven years of designing Web applications. He'll outline how the interaction and visual design of Web forms can make the difference between acquiring a customer and completing a transaction or not.

Through presentations, discussions, and hands-on exercises, attendees will learn how different types of forms, input fields, input labels, validation, feedback, calls to action, and surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior. The workshop is structured to provide attendees with an understanding of the right "best" practices for their specific context, so they can quickly go from the quintessential design answer of "it depends" (on the business goals, user needs, and context of your forms) to actionable solutions. After this workshop, you'll never look at web forms the same way again.

I'll also be giving a talk during the conference:

Content page design best practices

In today’s social, distributed, search-driven Web, customers are finding their way to Web content through an increasing number of distinct experiences. Yet when people arrive at most Web pages, the experience they get isn’t optimised for this context. Instead, the vast majority of content pages online remain more concerned with their own context than the context of their users: where did a user arrive from and where are they likely to go next? These pages remain designed as if they were primarily accessed from a Web site’s home page or a carefully thought-out selection from the site’s information architecture.

To address these issues and more, this talk outlines a set of best practices for Web content page design that focuses on appropriate presentations of content, context, and calls to action. Specifically: how can content be optimised to meet user expectations as they arrive from a diverse number of access points; what is the minimum amount of context required to frame content appropriately; how can the most relevant calls to action be presented to maximize user engagement? Applying these considerations enables information architects to deliver content experiences that take full advantage of emerging opportunities online and the existing assets within their Web sites.

Update: I'll be giving my Content page design best practices talk again at 10:15 on Sunday April 13th as it was voted one of the 3 most popular presentations (by IA Summit attendees).