Recently I joined a team on their first day of discussing building a website. The kind of discussion that talks about what you want to be when you grow up—or in this case, once deployed. As I listened, it dawned on me—I don't do this—I build. It's unusual for me to be involved in the design phase, the phase where you take random thoughts, concepts and wants and make them a cohesive concept that are then mapped out into a design or wireframe or user journey. You see, I'm a developer and I don't take ideas from concept to product. I build based off specs/requirements.

So what's a developer to do? 

Enter Karl Kaufmann.

Karl and I will help developers understand how to be User Advocates. We will take you through design thinking and get to focus on your users in ways you never thought you even needed.

Attendees will learn:

• About the Design Thinking process to help guide from concept to MVP
• How to advocate for accessible web experiences for users with sight, hearing or cognitive impairments
• About real world examples where websites succeed and fail to provide best-in-class user experiences
• How we as developers can get out of our own way and embrace User Advocacy.

This session is geared toward current site builders and developers from beginner to intermediate levels who are building websites but who probably haven't tried to really understand their full compliment of end users.

This session is not specific to a version of Drupal.