The 5 Principles of Adaptive Design, Public Speaking - Future Insights

Future Insights Live, Vegas is only 2 months away (where has the time gone?)?And?in the run up to the event we?are?continuing to chat with our speakers, bringing you a bit of insight into who they are, what they do and what you can expect from their session.?

This week, we are lucky enough to hear from Brad Frost. Brad is a mobile web strategist and front-end designer and is located in beautiful Pittsburgh, PA. He is the creator of This Is Responsive, a collection of patterns, resources and news to help people create great responsive web experiences. He also created Mobile Web Best Practices, a resource site that lays out considerations for creating great mobile web experiences. He runs a responsive web design newsletter and also curates WTF Mobile Web, a site that teaches by example what not to do when working with the mobile web. He is passionate about mobile and is constantly tweeting and writing about it.

With such a busy schedule, we appreciate Brad taking the time out to chat.?

As a Mobile web strategist and front end designer primarily, can you tell us a bit about what you do and how you got to where you are today?

My first job was making real estate websites right around the time the bubble burst, so yeah, that was fun! I then moved to New York City and worked at a small e-commerce shop, putting in a lot of hours and learning a whole lot. I then moved to R/GA?where I was until setting out on my own at the beginning of the year.

I began my career as a designer/developer, designing and developing websites. I then moved more toward development, but over time evolved into a hybrid of a lot of things: designer, strategist, evangelist all while still doing my best to be a front end developer.?

What does your day to day job entail? What tools are you mostly working with currently?

I honestly have no idea what my job is anymore hahaha. It's currently a blend of a lot of things: front end design, speaking, workshops, consulting, writing and more. I work with a lot of tools, but find myself spending an extra lot of time in the following: Coda 2, Keynote, IA Writer, Wordpress, Google Docs and e-mail. Oh man, so much email!

You state on your website that you have a passion for art? Tell us a bit about that.?

I love art. My mom is an art teacher and spent my whole life making things: paintings, sculptures and a whole lot more. I pretty much lived in the art room in high school, which is where I first got to play around with Photoshop and Illustrator. Even though I'm not a professional artist and I didn't study art in college, I've always made sure to keep a couple unfinished paintings lying around the house and make it a point to create new pieces every year.

You are the creator of?This Is Responsive?and?Mobile Web Best Practices, great resources for designers and developers. Can you explain to us what these are and where the ideas came from?

Mobile Web Best Practices and This is Responsive,?both arose from a very simple question: "Where do I go to learn about this stuff?" It's a question I got (and still get) on an almost daily basis, so I decided to do something about it.

I'd field the same questions all the time at work: "Native vs Web?" "What framework should I use?" and so on. So instead of writing the same e-mail 100 times, I decided to put short thoughts and resources together and just send people a link instead.

My job role was an interesting one. I wasn't dedicated to a specific team, but rather I would float around across the company. Because of this, I got to see what people were struggling with. One week, it just so happened that three teams were all struggling with making breadcrumbs responsive. I could have helped each team independently, but instead I decided to make some generic design patterns as they'd be more reusable. I then began abstracting other responsive patterns, and ultimately the responsive pattern library was born.

Tell us about the?Future Friendly movement and your involvement?

A few people who care deeply about the Web got together after the Breaking Development Conference?in Nashville to discuss the future of the Web and how to tackle all this increased device diversity. The result of the get together was the Future Friendly manifesto.?

Being future friendly means acknowledging and embracing?unpredictability. Technological disruption certainly isn't slowing down, and as creators we need to accept that fact. There are things we can do to be more future friendly: focus on what really matters to our users and businesses, invest in your data and prepare it to go anywhere, ensure your content is accessible to as many people as possible, and start thinking about how to create experiences that work well across multiple screens.

With your fingers in so many pies?(so to speak), how much time to you actually have to dedicate to your work endeavours and how do you manage your time?

Right now I manage my time extremely poorly. Before setting out on my own I said "YES!" to a lot of things to make sure that I could, ya know, eat and stuff. And now I'm paying for it. Thankfully all these pies (so to speak) are delicious, but I have to devise some serious pie-eating technology in order for me to get everything done. I know that things are pretty manic right now, but I'm confident that I'll be able to settle down once my business gets set up a bit more and I do some basic groundwork.?

You'll be speaking at Future Insights Live, Vegas on BEYOND MEDIA QUERIES: ANATOMY OF AN ADAPTIVE WEB DESIGN. Without giving too much away, what can the audience expect to take away?

By now everyone's familiar with responsive web design, but I see a lot of conversations talk about it in very narrow terms. My talk addresses that creating great multi-device web experiences is more than just creating flexible layouts. I introduce what I call the Principles of Adaptive Design, which are ubiquity, flexibility, performance, enhancement and future-friendliness.?

You say it yourself, that you love public speaking. Have you always been a confident public speaker or is something you have fine tuned over time?

I do love public speaking! I've only been speaking for a year and a half now, so I feel like I have a long way to go. But I've been a musician performing in front of people since high school, so I've gotten used to being in front of an audience. However, I'll say it's a lot less nerve-racking when you have a bass strapped around your neck!

Yes, I've heard that you are a bass player, drummer and guitarist??

I play bass and drums every day. I've been playing bass since high school and played in bands in high school and college. I've been on tours and have played gigs that went 5 hours straight. Music is such a blast and I very much attribute a lot of my success as a web designer to the fact that I'm a musician.?

What tips do you have for any aspiring speakers who are thinking of getting into the conference circuit?

I really like my friend Val's advice: meetups are a super great way to get started speaking. You're amongst familiar faces, the stakes aren't high and meetups are pretty casual. I'd also say that you should believe you have something important to say. Even if you were to talk about Web Design 101, there will be people in the audience who haven't heard it before. Don't feel like you have to be doing crazy inventive or high-profile stuff in order to talk.?

What is getting you excited about the tech industry in general? What or who do you see as the Next Big Thing?

I'm continuously impressed with how open, honest and sincere the Web industry is. People share by default and everyone benefits as a result. That excites me a great deal and I want to see this openness permeate to other industries.

As for the Next Big Thing in the industry, it's tough to tell as it changes so fast. I think we can count on more devices, more screen sizes, more input methods, more?interconnectedness and more diversity. The Web has the amazing ability to reach all these screens, and I believe it's our obligation to preserve that.

---------

HUGE thanks to Brad for speaking with us. If you'd like to see Brad in action, he'll be joining us at Future Insights Live (April 29 - May 2). Early Birds are available now, so check it out and come join us.

Source: http://www.futureinsights.com/home/the-5-principles-of-adaptive-design-public-speaking-and-the.html

Sage Stallone Mermaid Body Found Celeste Holm Stephen Covey klimt bastille day breaking bad