Best of WAQ17 – Point of view of our Web designer

Wow! That’s what describes my first experience at WAQ, 2017 edition. With a background in graphic design dating back to 2011, I have been working more seriously in Web for 3 years. In fact, I am passionate about web design. Creating custom mockups, designing personalized icons, playing with typography and, more recently, adapting my web visuals into responsive and mobile environments.

I attended as many sessions as possible to get the most inspiration! I’m sharing my favorites that relate more to design, e-commerce and a bit of programming.

Favorites and chocolate!

First day, after a breakfast of fruit and a chocolate fountain (yum!), the interesting conference E-commerce: improving the user experience through internal search by Myriam Jessier gave us ideas to improve the customer experience from the perspective of the search module on e-commerce sites. In short, the closer you get to human thinking, the more your user will find your product!

Then, Isabelle Lopez, an energetic speaker, enlightened us on user frictions and delights, whether in physical or virtual commerce. The goal? To identify the irritants of your own company (or your competitor’s!) to find solutions or delights that will compensate for the inconveniences.

In the afternoon, it was the turn of speaker Denis Boudreau who reminded us of the importance of the accessibility of our websites for people who are not part of the majority of users. The “parallax” effect, very (sometimes too…) used, can cause nausea and dizziness due to the movement of different elements on the web page. Sometimes, trends are not well suited to the target audience of the project. Design trends in 2017, and their impacts on UX and accessibility was a conference that makes you think!

On the more technical side…

I also had the chance to deepen certain more technical web aspects, notably the use of Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) files in website integration. Functional for a few years on the market, SVG files are now easier to integrate and have the same advantage as vector files, namely the enlargement of rich images without any loss of quality since an SVG file retains its vector properties.

That’s not all, really?

Finally, beyond all these sessions, I loved the organization of WAQ 2017: the friendly breakfasts every morning, the ease and speed of lunches, the quality roastery coffee, etc. All this, not to mention the two crazy 5@7 events: Mexican fiesta with tacos, imported beer, tequila, 80s theme and its wonderful music videos, plus karaoke. So much fun!

Back next year? We strongly hope so!

Geneviève Blouin, your Web designer (you know, the girl with red hair!)