New York, New York – Vanguard Custom Software announced today that registration has opened for Experience and Style: The Design Conference for FileMaker Developers. The conference will be held October 21-22 in Chicago. Ryan Singer, Product Manager at 37 Signals, will present the opening design session. There will be in depth sessions on experience design and visual design, and attendees will have opportunities to get live feedback about the user experience and interfaces in their current projects.

Exceptional software balances a delightful user experience and a rich style. To create a great experience, you have to understand the problem, the people who would use your solution, the scenarios they face, and their goals in those scenarios. To create a stunning interface, you have to know about color, layout, and typography. Unfortunately, most FileMaker developers do not have design training and few have access to a skilled visual designer to help them polish their interfaces. If you are a FileMaker developer, with an appreciation for design but feel like you are missing necessary information, this is the conference for you.

Attendees can save $100 if they register by October 1st.

Conference Schedule:
Monday, October 21

9:15 – 10:00: A Product Designer’s Instinct:
Ryan Singer, Product Manager at 37Signals:
Great product designers cut to the essence of a problem. They have an ability to sniff out what really matters and focus in on what the user wants. How do you do that? Ryan will share a model of the product development process that encapsulates the intuition he built up after ten years of designing easy-to-use software products.

10:45 – 12: 00: The Foundations of Great Design:
Dr. Don Levan, Lead Designer at Vanguard Custom Software:
Examining apps that get it right and those that get it wrong Dr. Levan will discuss the key principles and best practices of interaction design, the cognitive abilities and limitations shared by all people that designers must keep in mind and the modern trends that impact user’s expectations.

1:15 – 2:-00: The Design Master Class for Custom Software Developers:
Albert Harum-Alvarez, Lead Designer, SmallCo:
Step into the Design Master Class and get honest and direct design criticism of the experience and style in your current project. Presenters have one minute to explain the goals and roles of the existing application and answer the question “Who uses this tool, and what do they want to accomplish?” After the one minute intro, Albert will facilitate a live critique of the solution.

2:00 – 3:15: Designing for Mobile: What we Can Learn from Twitter’s 140 Characters:
Steve Abrahamson: Technologist, UX Designer:
Designing for today’s mobile environment requires you to balance constraints. This can be frustrating, but it can also challenge you to greater clarity – cut out the noncritical and deliver only the core message with brevity and grace. Steve will examine how the user experience and user interface conventions, of the past and present, can inform our designs for mobile devices today, and look at where mobile is heading and how this can help us create design plans for tomorrow.

3:45 – 5:00: After the Sketch: Using FileMaker Pro to Validate your Designs:
Ernest Koe, President and co-founder of The Proof Group:
After sketching and low-fidelity mockups are complete, higher fidelity prototypes can help validate the UI design and how it works with the data model. Ernest will explore how he uses FileMaker to validate the visual design and the solution’s data model.

Tuesday, October 22

9:00 – 10:15: Applied Color Theory: Using Color, Gradients, and Translucency in Applications to Direct Attention and Enhance User Experience:
Colin Keefe, Visual Artist, Curator, and Project Manager at IT Solutions:
Colin will discuss Color Theory first in the context of the underlying science, fine art applications, usage in web and application design, and then specifically in the framework of the FileMaker Platform. 

10:45 – 12:00: Designing with Type: Lessons Learned from Advertising, Newspapers, and the World at Large
Bob Shockey, President, Alchemy Consulting Group
Typography is a primary element of graphic design. While our choices are more limited in FileMaker, there are core typographic skills that every developer should have. Bob will review the key aspects of this important subject; examine what can be learned from magazines, newspapers, and advertising; and provide hands-on techniques on how to organize, arrange, differentiate, and standardize data on a screen or printed page.

1:15 – 2:00: The Design Master Class for Product Developers:
Albert Harum-Alvarez, Lead Designer, SmallCo:
Step into the Design Master Class and get honest and direct design criticism in your current project. Presenters have one minute to explain the goals and roles of the existing application and answer the question “Who uses this tool, and what do they want to accomplish?” After the one minute intro, Albert will facilitate a live critique of the solution.

2:00 – 3:15: Planning and Designing the Complex Application to Run Across Multiple Platforms:
Dr. Don Levan, Lead Designer at Vanguard Custom Software:
Designing apps that will run on more than one platform can be very challenging. How do you create an environment that is familiar without requiring all elements to look and behave the same way on each platform? Dr. Levan will present a process which developers can use to design the interactions, user flow, and functionality of a complex app that will run with feature parity on more than one platform.

3:45 – 5:00: Styles, Patterns and Experience – a Case Study of Visual Interface Design:
Chih Hsiao, Senior User Experience Designer, FileMaker:
Beauty is more than skin-deep. To develop an effective visual style requires an understanding of what humans see, what cues we’re used to seeing, and how to apply this to your unique application. Chih will use a FileMaker case study to illustrate the theories, choices, and iterations in creating a visual style guide for your projects.

About the Speakers:
Ryan Singer, Product Manager at 37Signals”
Ryan Singer leads product design at 37signals. In 2003, he worked on a team of three to design Basecamp, their flagship app. As the company gained a reputation for making easy-to-use software, Ryan shaped their development process and made core design decisions on new products. In 2008, he became the company’s first Product Manager. Hepr led a complete redesign of Basecamp in 2012.

Dr. Don Levan, Lead Designer at Vanguard Custom Software:
Don is president of Vanguard Custom Software, LLC., a New York based FileMaker consulting firm, and is the founder of the Design Studio – an intensive, three day, hands-on workshop that teaches a formal process and set of practices for designing exceptional applications. Dr. Levan is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist and a former photojournalist. He is an accomplished presenter and teacher and has provided design consulting to FileMaker, Inc.

Albert Harum-Alvarez, Lead Designer, SmallCo:
Albert Harum-Alvarez is lead designer at SmallCo, an original FileMaker Business Alliance Platinum Member, whose clients include Apple, AFLAC, BNP Paribas Investment Bank, Fidelity Investments, Harvard University and other small and large companies on four continents.

Steve Abrahamson, Technologist, UX Designer, Ascending Technologies:
Steve Abrahamson is the founder of Ascending Technologies. He has been working with computers and FileMaker for over 20 years, has received numerous awards from FileMaker, Inc. recognizing his efforts in the FileMaker community, has presented multiple times at the annual FileMaker Developer Conference, and co-founded and led CAFDA, the largest professional FileMaker developers’ group in the central United States.

Ernest Koe, President and co-founder of The Proof Group:
Ernest is the president and a co-founder of The Proof Group. Ernest brings over 10 years of experience with database and web technologies. He is a veteran FileMaker DevCon speaker, a founder of PauseOnError, (the un-conference for FileMaker developers) and a co-host of the FMCraft Interaction Design Seminars (with Don Levan).

Colin Keefe, Visual Artist, Curator, and Project Manager at IT Solutions:
Colin Keefe is a project manager for IT Solutions Consulting, Inc.  He is also a curator and visual artist based in Philadelphia, PA.
 
Bob Shockey, President, Alchemy Consulting Group:
Bob is a graduate of Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles, where he studied Communication Design. He worked in the field of newspaper, magazine and advertising design for well over a decade before moving into technology. Bob has worked with FileMaker Pro since 1989, and is a FileMaker Certified Developer in every version possible.

Chih Hsiao, Senior User Experience Designer, FileMaker:
With a background of fine arts and human-computer interaction design, Chih has over 13 years of experience in the consumer web industry and is currently a Sr. User Experience Designer at FileMaker, Inc. Prior to joining FileMaker, he worked in the digital media industry at companies including advertising agencies, technology startups, gaming and media companies as a producer and designer (notably Electronic Arts and Yahoo) and has been designing interactive digital content across media types on devices and environments.

Vanguard Custom Software
Experience and Style: The Design Conference for FileMaker Developers
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Vanguard Custom Software, LLC., is a New York FileMaker consulting firm. Vanguard’s mission is to create simple applications which solve complex problems. The company incorporates software development best practices, interaction design, and cognitive psychology to create data-driven applications and websites that are efficient for business and easy for people. All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2013 Vanguard Custom Software, LLC. All Rights Reserved. FileMaker is a trademark of FileMaker, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.