Sarah Parmenter, a web and UI designer.

It’s the calm before the storm, I don’t think the realisation of just how much I’ve got to get done before I head off to Florida on Thursday has really sunk in yet. I’ve been bumbling about the internet checking out what films Virgin Atlantic are currently showing and general musings that really could wait until another time, but I really can’t wait to head over to Tampa Bay in Florida for the Front End Design Conference this Friday.

I believe there are still a few tickets going spare so if you are in the area and fancy seeing Larissa Meek, Jina Bolton, Meagan Fisher, Lea Alcantara, Niki Brown, Adelle Charles and myself talk to you about various web related (or iPhone related in my case) topics then head on down, it’s going to be a brilliant day in a lovely location of the Hilton Hotel in Tampa Bay, and yes, it’s an all female speaker line up!

*insert sharp intake of breath here and await various comments about male/female segregation in the industry*

Yes that was a joke, been there, done that

I’m the only one coming from across the pond so I feel really honoured to be a part of this conference. I am really looking forward to the sessions, each and every one of them sounds brilliant and captivating, I saw an opening slide preview of Meagan Fisher’s talk on her blog and it looked beautiful.

The only thing I’m worried about, and believe me it’s a stupid worry. Whenever I’ve flown to the States I’ve found a few hours after landing I’ve got really bad motion sickness, never to the point of actually being sick but I feel like I’m still on a plane and the ground seems to move side to side making me dizzy and sicky feeling. If anyone has come across this before and has found a remedy, please let me know before Thursday! It always goes away after a nights sleep but I’d prefer to actually make the speakers dinner the night before!

If you are coming to the Front End Design Conference, please be sure to come over and say “Hi” to this Brit!

Hope to see you there!

I’ve had a lot of people ask for this so here it is, nothing amazing, nothing fancy, just a purely functional app definition chart .eps for you to use in your projects and proposals, this is the same one I used in my talk at Future of Web Design, London.

Download the App Definition Chart

Disclaimer:
This file must not be hosted on any other site.
Unfortunately I can’t offer support on this file.
Enjoy!

I’m frantically trying to respond to all my email, paint my nails, pack, transfer my final slide deck to Dropbox and switch on my auto-responder, which must mean one thing, tonight is the start of Future of Web Design, London.

I’m really honoured to be speaking at this web conference, it was the first web conference I attended back in 2007 and I can honestly say my working life changed for the better from that day forward. At that time I was on the brink of giving up working for myself, having had enough (at the time) of the stress and strain of dealing with everything myself and carrying (what felt like) the weight of the world on my shoulders and instead, “working for the man”, but turning down “that” job for a company in Chelmsford, was the best decision I ever made. After meeting so many great people at FOWD and having a chat about the trials and tribulations of working for yourself, I realised I wasn’t alone and came away with a spring in my step and a weight off my shoulders, I haven’t looked back since.

So, what should you expect from my talk at FOWD? Well, it’s a monster. We’ve got 10 Principles of iPhone User Interface Design to get through, I’ll be talking about everything that will involve a design decision when approaching an iPhone UI project, including how development choices affect your design, how Apple would like you to approach designing for an application, the best way to produce innovative and inspiring documents to your clients and the all important taboo subject of pricing UI design. I have pitched it at people who are dabbling in UI design, just starting out or know nothing about it at all. If you are a developer with limited design experience, you would also get a lot out of this talk either for guidelines to pass to a designer or to have the confidence to have a go yourself.

Also, in the afternoon of Wednesday the 19th, I’m running a design clinic, along with Elliot Jay Stocks, Remy Sharp, Dan Rubin and Paul Boag from 3.10pm – 4.15pm where you can swing by and have a chat about your latest project, and get specific advice and help there and then.

If iPhone UI Design isn’t your cup of tea, then the fabulous Web Standardistas are on the other stage talking about User Experience Design, which I’m sure will be great and I’m sad to not see myself.

Look forward to meeting you all there…

I’m currently laying on my Mum and Dad’s sofa with the old duvet thrown over me, which was normally reserved for sick days, powered by a very sugary cup of tea, still nursing a hangover from last night and awaiting pickup from hubby-to-be to take me back to our house.

I also have two nasty blisters on my hand from travelling halfway across the UK with a daft girly-sized suitcase and definitely not travelling light.

So I’m back from the DIBI Conference, wow, what a fantastic couple of days it has been. Gavin Elliot and the guys at Codeworks thought of everything, Red Bull in afternoon break 1 and ice cream tubs in afternoon break 2 were particularly noted, fully catered lunches, snacks, drinks, after-party drinks and dinner, great communication and lovely people with it as well. Throw in the fact they also had a large percentage of speakers coming from abroad and had the aftermath of the volcanic ash cloud travelling panic to deal with too, (cueing alternative travel arrangements across the board) they have dealt with everything superbly.

I was honoured to be alongside the seasoned conference speakers such as Andy Clarke, Dan Rubin and Simon Collison who were all fantastic and clearly had the art of public speaking down to a “T”. I had read Confessions of a Public Speaker prior to DIBI and these guys could have written the book themselves.

I’m not going to go in-depth into the talks as I think this is better done from the point of view of a true attendee, and there are already some lurking on the world wide web;

• Some thoughts on the DIBI by Armitage Solutions
• Thoughts on DIBI by Minute44
• DIBI by David Appleyard

It was a fantastic experience for me, I had a great time meeting lots of different people and hopefully enlightening even more with some iPhone UI knowledge they didn’t have previously. I’ve had some really great feedback from people who went to the conference but I’d also appreciate any constructive criticism you feel would be beneficial for my next talks, which would be FOWD (London) and FrontEndConference (Florida) , that too would also be gratefully received (sarah at youknowwhodesign.com).

As I am speaking about a similar topic at FOWD, I’ve made the decision to not make my slides public until after that point, I really feel it would ruin it for FOWD attendees as the principles of iPhone UI are not going to change between now and the middle of May – even though it’s a new talk and we get to go a bit more in-depth as we have the advantage of more time, I still want to keep things a surprise for those attendees too.
I’ll of course honour anyone who has already sent me an email asking for slides from the conference as you’ve already seen everything contained within

Coming home, I also had a pleasant surprise of being sat with 3 lovely business people on their way back from a training course. We quickly got chatting, even quicker after I produced my iPad as one was an Apple fan. It was an absolute pleasure to speak with them for nearly three hours back to London and reminded me that we should all talk more, as brits we have such a habit of keeping ourselves to ourselves, one of the three now has my business card and we have connected on Twitter. The perfect end to a really fantastic few days away.

Now to sort the email aftermath…

To celebrate the launch of the iPad, and undoubtedly another fantastic platform to design for, I have designed an iPad Wireframe to help you with the design process for yourself and/or your clients. When I started doing iPhone UI, I created my own basic wireframe to help with the planning process for the apps I was working on, I found it better to show clients a stripped back version, no colours, no flourishes, just purely focusing on the UI of their app.

I knew I’d need the same for iPad, so I’m happy to share my iPad Wireframe with you too. It’s in one neat .eps file.

Download the EPS file.

Disclaimer:
This file must not be hosted on any other site.
Unfortunately I can’t offer support on this file.
Enjoy!