Two weekends ago I attended BADCamp, short for Bay Area Drupal Camp. This three day production took place on the UC Berkeley campus. I was quite impressed with the coordination and level of professionalism of this *free* Drupal Camp. Most importantly, they had free coffee!

This was my first Drupal Camp since quite some time, and it was awesome to be reminded of how passionate the community is and how fast things are moving (Drupal 8!) Here are some notes from some of the sessions I attended. Thanks to all the presenters and volunteers who made this camp possible.

Drupal 7 UX Study Results

One thing brought to my attention: think of Drupal UX as multi-faceted... separate the needs of content editors from site builders. This helps break down the different layers of usability we need to think about for Drupal.

A good technique for gathering immediate UX feedback while doing a test: ask user to give some adjectives to describe his or her current experience with product

Big and obvious Drupal usability issue that I was reminded of and brought up during session: why in the world are modules called projects? Why is there no obvious method for typing in a module name in search and it leads me right to the module page? (show key result on Georgetown University website)

Check out yuilibrary.com/theater

Efficient workflow for design and development projects

One interesting thing stressed was the importance of allowing your client to push content while you are still developing. This way you can actually push changes while they are making content changes so you can see how it all plays together. Seems dangerous but in the long run I bet it makes client happier earlier and helps spot problems sooner rather than later.
Presentation Link

Features in the Real World

One good idea of a way to use Features is to package all your relevant WYSIWYG modules and settings into a Feature and then use it on each of your site. I should start doing this…

Features have "states". Once you enable them the interface will tell you if you have overridden the default settings of your Feature by site changes since you've enabled it. You can also rollback to the default options of a Feature, or you can rollout a new version that includes current changes.

Try out the Diff module.

Features module won't let you enable conflicting Features.
Presentation Link

Beautiful Dynamic Forms in Drupal 7

Consider both SASS and LESS frameworks, but know that LESS is less (no pun intended) powerful than SASS but it's an easier framework to start with

Check out urbanairship.com for push notifications for mobile apps

The states attribute as part of the new Forms API sounds really powerful
Presentation Link

Responsive Drupal Theming

Responsive design is cool and uses CSS media queries to serve each device a design that will optimize experience

Important presentation on the mobile first ethic (which really just seems to be the new term for progressive enhancement) :

Adapt.js is a way to make 960gs adaptable to only serve user the grid size they need depending on viewport size detected by JavaScript
Presentation Link