Web Intents - Design Push

“Web Intents will change the face of the web but we may not have arrived at an optimal design…”

Rich Tibbett, Platform Architect at Opera.

We've invited a select group of expert designers and technologists to join us in Brighton on the 25th of February to work on the user and developer experiences of Web Intents.

What are Web Intents?

Part of the power of the web lies in its diversity... take for example the idea of sharing content -- there are a number of platforms at your disposal:

but you probably have a shortlist of platforms that you prefer to use.

Rather than forcing publishers to include links to each platform, Web Intents allow publishers to simply offer visitors the ability to share and the user can choose which platform they wish to share with rather than having to swim through an ugly, noisy, mess of links.

This approach isn't limited to simply sharing content; imagine being able to edit images, pay for goods or contact someone using only the services you know and trust. Web Intents creates a grammar of performing an action upon an object and asks how do you want to perform that action... "You want to edit this photo? Which of your favourite photo editing tools would you like to use?"

Indroduction to Web Intents

Find out more about Web Intents

If you'd like to join us on the day, or just learn more about Web Intents, here's a list of articles that will help give you an overview of the subject.

Webintents.org: This is the main site for Web Intents created by Paul Kinlan who came up with the original idea.
Gluing web functionality together: An in-depth overview of the whole web intents concept by Glenn Jones.
Web Actions: Identifying A New Building Block For The Web: This is a great introduction to the driving forces for Web Intents. Tantek Celik asks us to take wider perspective.
Button Sluts and Web Actions: Erin Jo Richey looks at the current usage and design of social sharing buttons.
Web Apps Update - experiments in Web Activities, App Discovery: Mozilla Labs have been working on a parallel concept called Web Activities.

What's the plan for the day

Paul Kinlan, the inventor of Web Intents and a member of the Google Chrome team will join an expert team of designers and technologists to work on the user and developer experience of Web Intents.

The day will start with an hour of lightning talks and Q&A sessions, followed by two sessions of group work and finish with a show and tell session to present the progress of the groups. Full schedule.

All content created on the day will be added to the Design Push wiki for continued work by the community.

Possible outcomes

User taskflow patterns and design best practises

Shared vocabularies/design language

Recommendations for standards bodies and browser vendors

Community building and fostering stewardship from within the community

Schedule

9:30 Registration

10:00 Lightning talks

6 5 minute lightning talks + 5 minutes Q&A each. We will use these to describe Web Intents and possible areas that could benefit from your design/UX input.

11:00 Introductions

Everyone introduces themselves and says what design problem/opportunity they're interested in, this will us get into groups for the day.

11:30 Groups working on design problems

Most of the day will be self-organising with each group deciding on how it works on a problem and what outcomes they are going to present back. If people want to switch groups this is fine.

17:00 Show and tell

At the end of the day we’ll gather and present our work back to everyone. We’ll try and document everything in the Wiki.

17:45 Wrap-up, tidy-up

18:00 Beer o'clock

Web Intents Design Push