Refresh Portland

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Social Planning Hour

Refresh Portland is back, and our January meetup is all about you! To start off the year, we invite every Refresh member, old and new alike, to an informal dinner and planning hour.

Maybe you’ve been wondering about what Refresh Portland could, or should look like this year. Maybe you have a burning idea you want to share, or a new space where we can host future meetups. Maybe you’re looking to talk usability and front-end design with people who get it. Or maybe you’re just looking for a way to contribute and help out a growing group. This is the venue to ask, give, and wonder about all of the above.

Help make Refresh Portland the best it can be for 2010, and enjoy a nice drink and mindshare with some of the best designers/developers in town!

January 28th, 2010, 6:30 PM at Cassidy’s Restaurant

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• We haven’t yet announced the speaker for this month yet. If you are interested in giving a presentation this month, please contact us and we’ll get back to you shortly. Stay tuned! We should be announcing a speaker and topic shortly!

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Assumptions About Users, & Accessibility

When the accessibility of technology (hardware, software, web, and mobile) is considered throughout design, development, andtesting, the rewards are systems that provide equal access tofunctionality, services, and information for their entire range of users. To plan for accessibility, assumptions must be made about users, and these assumptions can can create design that is either inclusive or exclusive, with narrow or broad usability.

This presentation will inspire thinking about users in ways that will help designers and developers create technology that works for everyone, rather than technology that just supports what some see as the disparate groups of “normal” users and “those with disabilities”.

A discussion of universal design, usability, accessibility, disability, younger and older user groups, as well as particular assistive technologies (including screen readers, often used by persons with visual impairments) will be of interest to web and interactive designers, developers, product managers, user experience practitioners, educators, and anyone who has ever used, or plans to use, a pencil, keyboard, mouse, or telephone.

February 25th, 2010, 6:30 PM at Portland Incubator Experiment

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• Callie B. Carroll is a humanitarian technologist who speaks both computer and human. She specializes in user experience, usability and accessibility, and has worked at Apple for iTunes Store and iTunes U.

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The Sovereign Consumer

Take a deep-dive into the intersection of viral culture, mass marketing, design and technology. By studying issues like privacy protection, sustainable design, social media and virtual reality - a new consumer persona is taking shape. Sovereign Consumers are technology enabled, privacy disabled and very much aware of their value to marketers. They expect brands to deliver value and stay in-step with their values. This presentation provides practical advice for marketers on approaching the Sovereign Consumer.

March 25th, 2010, 6:30 PM at Portland Incubator Experiment

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• Keith lives at the intersection of culture, technology and business. With over 17 years of experience working on both the agency and client sides, Keith understands the challenge of keeping brands relevant in an ever-changing media landscape. Currently, Keith is an independent consultant providing trans-media brand stewardship.

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Custom Map Scripting and Design

Most Google Maps are boring, but yours doesn’t have to be. There are simple, off-the-shelf tools that, along with your design talent, can make your maps stand out from the rest. You can decide where they go, how they look and how they act.

Location on the web is more important than ever before. The data may originate from a phone or a check-in service, but chances are it ends up on a map. Learn how to customize markers, react to map events and layer images on top. You don’t even have to settle for the same old colors: make the maps conform to your design. Once you see how simple the tools are, you’ll want to get started right away on a mapping project of your own.

• View slides (Slideshare)

April 22nd, 2010, 6:30 PM at Portland Incubator Experiment

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• Adam DuVander is a web developer and the author of Map Scripting 101. He blogs at Programmable Web and has written for WebMonkey, Wired.com’s web developer resource, since 2000.

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Bringing the CSS3 Experience to our Users

“CSS3 is great, but I can’t use it on my sites because it’s not supported by IE.”

We may have heard this or been caught saying it in the past, but there are ways to enrich our user experiences today using CSS3 effects and animations - even on sites which still have high IE traffic. In this quick and dirty on CSS3 we’ll take a look at how to wield the power of CSS3 today, discuss appropriate implementation of things like effects and animations, and address the issues of browser compatibility (otherwise known as the “Plague of Redmond"). We’ll wrap it all up by diving into custom CSS3 animations to make your users in webkit browsers shout for joy. 

• Download slides (PDF)

May 27th, 2010, 6:30 PM at Portland Incubator Experiment

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• Josh Clark is a Eugene, OR based designer and developer who, for the past 3 years, has been freelancing as Origen Creatives. Recently, he’s taken an in-house position as Senior Web Designer for Palo Alto Software.

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Faster and More Secure Webfonts

TypeKit, FontSquirrel and Kernest are all great solutions to have webfonts in your sites, but wouldn’t you like to know what these services actually do in the underbellies, for once? And do you know that making fonts load faster often means also making it more secure?

Kill two glyphs with one stone by subseting, embedding and randomizing your own webfonts. See actual performance benchmarks (for once), and learn some hacks that would drive every would be type-pirate crazy (really).

• Watch presentation (Livestream)
• View slides (Slideshare)
• Download slides (PDF)

June 24th, 2010, 6:30 PM at Portland Incubator Experiment

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• Bram Pitoyo is a design strategist and typographer who works at the nexus of user experience, architecture, community engagement, and most other subjects.