An event celebrating World Information Architecture Day was held in Zagreb, Croatia, last saturday. This event (organized by croatian agency UX Passion) gathered around 60 attendees from all around Croatia, eager to learn something new about IA, UX, web design, mobile, …
After the first WordPress Meetup we helped organize last month, Zagreb was home to one other event that is really important for the design community. Guys at UX Passion did a great job organizing WIAD in Croatia. Thumbs up for that.
Talks
There were 5 talks during the day with a final panel discussion where all the speakers discussed different career paths and their own design processes.
IA — reality, not a dream
Lucijan and I gave the first talk of the day. We talked about how to organize your day–to–day web design tasks to involve more information architecture. Since we have a different (non–agency) background we emphasized the importance of everyday learning and educating clients (thing we do a lot these days). Lucijan also gave a more technical overview of our design process, how we change it every few months and even some tips & tricks like using Dropbox to better organize your clients.
Foraging for Creativity
Tin Kadoić from Brlog talked about the creative process and the creativity itself while connecting design with world’s best chef – René Redzepi, and his work in Noma, a two–Michelin star restaurant. As Tin said: “Creativity is a skill, innovation is a process” and I couldn’t agree more on this.
Navigating the Mobile World
After first break Merlin Rebrović took the stage with his talk about navigation patterns on mobile platforms. Since mobile platforms are everywhere around us with their palm–sized screens, Merlin gave some insightful thoughts about how to follow the platform guidelines (iOS/Android) rather than to improvise with our own (usually wrong) navigational patterns.
The Container Model
Konstantin Weiss from world–known IA, explained how they used a container model in web design. With a different usage than usual (no sidebar, i.e.) it’s not suited for every use there is. Since we never used a container model in our web design process it sure was interesting hearing this talk, since “container model facilitates clarity in communication” – what is rather important for us.
No one wants to use your product!
Last talk before the panel was from Goran Peuc. As usual, Goran was a bit challenging to the audience with the talk “No one wants to use your product!”. He talked about how people actually don’t care about your products and instead care about the final outcome of using a product.
Panel: Processes and career paths
At the end of the day Vibor took a stand and asked us all sort of questions about how we started, how our process evolved and so on. Since we all came from different backgrounds it was interesting to hear how others see creativity and what are the challenges they’re facing.
From my perspective the most important thing is to love what you do. I see my job as some sort of a creative playground and since I’m always playing I really love what I do :).
First WIAD in Croatia
With all the tickets gone in just a few hours and with around 100 people on waiting list for the first WIAD event in Croatia I can say that it was a success. Organized in Kino Europa it was like being in a living room watching the talks on your TV. Cosy atmosphere, snacks and beer in the afternoon, WIAD in Zagreb was organized perfectly.
I’m already looking forward to the next year event and the opportunity to see interesting people that are designing with passion.
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