WIAD Switzerland 2017 is over.
See you again on February 23–24, 2018

WIAD Switzerland 2018

Videos


Andy Fitzgerald

Designing for the Human Scale

Slides


Clementina Gentile

Designing (with) Language

Slides


Gabriela Patil

A Writer, a Designer and an Engineer Walk into a Bar…
A Creative Take on Structuring Software Information

Slides


Lara Portmann

Architecting Conversations or What IA Can Learn from Conversation Analysis

Slides


Victor Zwimpfer

How Does Structure Inform Strategy?




Reto Lämmler

Trends in User Research Methods




Esther Brunner

Make Prominent Visual Elements Accessible!




Frederic Schwarz

Mapping the World from the Inside: Designing a 3D Platform for the Web




Michael Schranz

From Idea to Final Screendesign

Slides


Sara Wachter-Boettcher

Design for Real Life



Speakers



Speaker

Andy Fitzgerald

Independent UX Designer, Seattle - USA

Andy is an independent user experience designer with applied expertise in design research, information architecture, and interaction design. He works with organizations of all sizes to create products and services that help users succeed by understanding their needs and meeting them on their own terms.

Speaker

Sara Wachter-Boettcher

Content Strategy Consultant, Philadelphia - USA

Sara runs a content strategy consultancy and speaks at web conferences worldwide. She is the co-author of the new book Design for Real Life, a book about creating products and interfaces that are more inclusive and compassionate. She is also the author of Content Everywhere, a book about creating flexible, mobile-ready content.

Speaker

Clementina Gentile

Design Consultant, Brussels - Belgium

Clementina works as a consultant in a design agency in Brussels (Namahn), being involved in UX and service design projects for clients like Sony, the Flemish government and the European Commission. She has been involved in the organisation of World IA Day in the past, first as a local organiser and then as a regional coordinator.

Speaker

Lara Portmann

Information Architect, Nothing Interactive, Bern

Lara is an information architect and content designer at Nothing Interactive in Bern. Her background lying in English and German linguistics, she is interested in content and communication in both micro and macro contexts. She is currently pursuing her Master’s in English linguistics with focus on language and communication.

Speaker

Gabriela Patil

Co Founder, Twygg, Zürich

Gabriela Patil holds an MA in Communication Design from the Bern University of the Arts. She has worked as a designer for a software company and for various communication agencies in Switzerland and Canada. Gabriela has experience in both digital media and traditional graphic design.

Speaker

Victor Zwimpfer

Lecturer, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Luzern

Victor is trained both as social scientist and software engineer. He works as lecturer in business analysis, human-computer interaction, information visualization, and data modelling. Furthermore he carries out research in the realm of mapping strategies.

Speaker

Reto Lämmler

CEO, TestingTime, Zürich

Test early and often is Reto’s mantra for good Interaction Design. Reto started TestingTime at the beginning of 2013. As CEO, Reto leads the vision and mission of the startup. Prior to TestingTime, Reto worked as Interaction Designer and Usability Consultant with his own 58rocks GmbH. At doodle.com he gained international startup experience as VP Product Management. He owns a MAS in Interaction Design and a BS in Computer Science.

Speaker

Michael Schranz

Head of Business Development, Apps With Love, Bern

Michael Schranz started his career in the digital business in 2010. After his studies at the FHNW in international Management he worked as a project manager “live communication” at Swisscom. Currently, he is working as the Head of Business Development at Apps with love and is lecturing at various universities of applied sciences.

Speaker

Esther Brunner

Chief Frontend Developer, Zeix, Zürich

Esther is a user interface developer and partner at Zeix where she helped building up a front-end development team. Accessibility and semantic structure have been a focus of her work since 2008.

Speaker

Frederic Schwarz

Co-Founder, Archilogic, Zürich

Frederic studied Architecture at the ETH Zürich and is the co-founder of Aero Architekten and Archilogic. While designing buildings and furniture, he learned what it means to communicate spatial ideas. At Archilogic, he now works on combining architectural knowledge and technology to make spatial decision making accessible.​

Program

Use our official hashtags #wiadch and #WIAD17 for Twitter and Instagram.

Friday, Feb 17

  • 08:30 Registration Workshop 1
    Foyer ZHdK

    Grab your name tag, meet old friends, new friends and get your post-its-game on.

  • 09:00 - 12:30 Workshop «Taxonomy for Experience Designers»
    Andy Fitzgerald

    Taxonomy is a vital tool for connecting digital content to user-friendly interfaces in a dynamic, sustainable, and scalable way. This workshop offers a practical introduction to taxonomy design and use for digital information spaces.

  • 13:15 Registration Workshop 2
    Foyer ZHdK

    Grab your name tag, meet old friends, new friends and sharpen your pencil.

  • 13:45 - 17:00 Workshop «Designing Content Models»
    Sara Wachter-Boettcher

    Does web content make you cringe? You’re not alone. It’s always late, rarely good, and definitely way too long on mobile. But if you’re not the one writing copy, it’s hard to know how to improve things. This workshop will help you. We’ll practice identifying patterns and priorities in the content we're designing, and building structural systems to support them. We call this content modeling.

  • 18:00 Fondue Dinner
    Frau Gerolds Garten

    It's cheese time! Join us for our annual fondue dinner at Frau Gerold's Garten.
    Register here

Saturday, Feb 18

  • 10:30 Registration – Doors open
    Foyer

    Grab your badges, meet old friends, make new friends and prepare for our awesome lineup.

  • 11:00 Welcome

    Howdy from team WIAD Switzerland.

  • 11:15 Opening Keynote – Designing for the Human Scale
    Andy Fitzgerald

    The popular metaphor of how thinking works is computational: we recall information from memory, process it, and manipulate it in a predictable way. While this metaphor has its use, it often leads us to ignore key differences in the ways that machines and people access and use information.
    To design effectively for the human scale, we need to bring to our work as User Experience Designers and Information Architects a working knowledge of language and embodied cognition as a foundation for understanding. This talk explores the cognitive and linguistic operation of human comprehension and offers strategies for designing to human scale in the increasingly rich and interconnected digital world.

  • 12:00 Designing (with) Language
    Clementina Gentile

    Are we aware of the power of language as a tool and as an outcome of the design practice? On the level of the product, on what extent the way we design for language-based interfaces mirrors or influences the language and therefore the interaction with our peers? On the broader level of complex systems, processes rely heavily on language. Ultimately, an organisation consists of conversations that eventually lead to agreement. Agreement leads to transaction. How can we design with and for language, to foster innovation and systemic change? This talk will explore the potential and capability of language, from the design of an interface to the one of complex socio-economical systems.
    This talk wants to bring awareness on the impact we have as designers to shape the language that people use with devices and within organisations

  • 12:30 Lunch
    Foyer

    For lunch we got you covered, you will find a buffet in the foyer. En guetä!

  • 13:45 Lightning Talks

    Buckle up, 4 x 5 minutes full of insights and theories!

    Architecting Conversations or What IA Can Learn from Conversation Analysis
    Lara Portmann

    How Does Structure Inform Strategy?​
    Victor Zwimpfer

    Trends in User Research Methods
    Reto Lämmler

    Make Prominent Visual Elements Accessible!
    Esther Brunner

  • 14:15 A Writer, a Designer and an Engineer Walk into a Bar… A Creative Take on Structuring Software Information
    Gabriela Patil

    At our startup Twygg, our mission is to represent key information about software projects. We will show how our interdisciplinary team went about developing a new visual language about this highly abstract subject. Physical structures started to emerge as we aggregated data and looked for meaningful ways to organize it. Mixing graphical design with data engineering and ontological work has been challenging. However, information is always subjective, and architecting it greatly benefits from different perspectives.
    Based on a few real-life examples, we’ll share our learnings on what has been helpful in getting over the disciplinary divide. This is relevant for information architects who tend to work at the intersection of different fields.

  • 14:45 Mapping the World from the Inside: Designing a 3D Platform for the Web.
    Frederic Schwarz

    Up to 90% of our time we spend indoors, yet there are hardly any digital interfaces for interiors. The fast development of the web allows for new means of interaction with interior spaces, including spaces that no longer exist or don’t exist yet.
    At Archilogic, we are building a platform for 3D interiors on the web to drive our vision to democratize the communication about the spaces we live and work in. This talk will give you some insights on our journey to make spatial interaction and decision-making accessible for everyone.

  • 15:15 Coffee Break
    Foyer

    Grab a snack and a coffee and look out for our goodies from our global sponsors.

  • 15:45 From Idea to Final Screendesign
    Michael Schranz

    Every app project starts with an idea ideally coming from a real problem that needs to be solved. Apps with love has designed and developed more than 100 Apps since its founding in 2010 and is happy to share the experiences and learnings about it. How does the process look like from the first idea to the final screensdesigns of an application? What tools and methods can be used to figure out how the functional and visual design should look like?
    During this presentation we will share a whole bunch of working examples and cases with you.

  • 16:15 Closing Keynote - Design for Real Life
    Sara Wachter-Boettcher

    The products we create can make someone’s day—or leave them feeling alienated, marginalized, hurt, or angry. It all depends on whether we design for real life: for people with complex emotions, stressed-out scenarios, or simply identities that are different from our own.
    In this talk, we’ll look at real-life examples of everything from onboarding processes to conversational UIs, and see how seemingly small design and content decisions can make or break your users’ experience today—and embed systemic bias into our products for the long term. You’ll leave with both practical techniques for designing inclusive experiences, and a new lens on the ethics of information architecture.

  • 17:00 Goodbye

    Raffle and a whole lot of Thank Yous

  • 17:20 – 19:00 Füürabebier in the Foyer ZHdK
    Foyer

    Let's have a drink! Free beer for everyone! Es het, solangs het.

Workshops


Speaker

Taxonomy for Experience Designers

Andy Fitzgerald

Date: February 17, 9:00-12:30
Venue: ZHdK Toni Areal
Tickets: Regular 200.-

Taxonomy is a vital tool for connecting digital content to user-friendly interfaces in a dynamic, sustainable, and scalable way. This workshop offers a practical introduction to taxonomy design and use for digital information spaces.

Topics and exercises will include:

  • Taxonomy types and uses
  • Understanding user terminology
  • Modeling content domains
  • Creating taxonomy frameworks
  • Using taxonomies and content models together

No prior experience with taxonomy use or creation is required.




Speaker

Designing Content Models

Sara Wachter-Boettcher

Date: February 17, 13:45-17:00
Venue: ZHdK Toni Areal
Tickets: Regular 200.-

Does web content make you cringe? You’re not alone. It’s always late, rarely good, and definitely way too long on mobile. But if you’re not the one writing copy, it’s hard to know how to improve things. This workshop will help you. We’ll practice identifying patterns and priorities in the content we're designing, and building structural systems to support them. We call this content modeling.

Topics and exercises will include:

  • How to turn a big mess of content into something meaningful and modular
  • Why working with content patterns and chunks will improve your design process
  • How simple, flexible content models make for stronger mobile experiences



Venue

Zürcher Hochschule der Künste ZHdK, Toni Areal
Pfingstweidstrasse 94
8005 Zürich

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From Zürich Main Station take

  • Tram 4 to «Toni Areal» (stops right in front of the venue)

Thanks to our local sponsors who make this event possible.


Gold Sponsors





Silver Sponsors





Bronze Sponsors


Interested in becoming a sponsor? For more informations download our Sponsoring Flyer or Get in touch.

Team

Speaker
Andrea Rosenbusch UX Architect & Partner, Zeix
Speaker
Fabienne Gafner UX Designer, Less A Mess
Speaker
Laura Sgier UX Architect, Zeix
Speaker
Mak Abdennabi Product Designer
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