FITC Toronto 2017
Talks
A Human and a Robot Play a Drawing Game
Sougwen Chung is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores transitional edges –where the mark-made-by-hand meets the mark-made-by-machine. In this talk, she will share her perspective on creative practice, weaving through… Read more…
Sougwen Chung
sougwen.com
AR/VR HUB
Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, Razer, Samsung Gear VR, PS VR, Leap Motion, Magic Leap. The list seems intimidating; should you be paying attention to one, or… Read more…
Augmented Reality Storytelling
In this talk, Helen Papagiannis will present AR storytelling conventions looking at recurring themes/approaches (what we’ve seen so far), and emerging styles/mechanisms (what’s coming).
This presentation aims to inspire the… Read more…
Dr. Helen Papagiannis, Ph.D.
Augmented Stories
Beautiful WebGL for Designers
Don’t wait until you’ve mastered WebGL to create beauty. Aesthetics are sometimes dropped during the learning process to focus on pragmatic technique, but without beauty we’re set adrift. Advanced concepts… Read more…
Hoss Gifford
hossgifford.com
Behave Boldly
Elise Russell is about sticking her neck out to win. In 2012, she quit her job as an award-winning worker bee to be an entrepreneur. It wasn’t a soft transition;… Read more…
Elise Russell
Pony Friday
Beyond Reality: Shaping the Future of Immersive Projects
With the full release of consumer virtual reality (VR) devices and the mass acceptance of augmented reality (AR), our landscape is shifting to allow for an even greater potential of simulations… Read more…
Building a Collaboration Service for the Hololens
In this talk, Cyrille will go through experiments he made lately with the Hololens in the field of mixed reality (AR/VR) for the construction & manufacturing industries. You will learn… Read more…
Cyrille Fauvel
Autodesk, Inc.
Calling Voyager: Interface Design for NASA’s Deep Space Network
NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) is one of its oldest and longest running projects. Without the DSN, we can’t talk to the legendary Voyager Spacecraft, or even Curiosity on Mars.… Read more…
Krys Blackwood
NASA JPL
Creating a Great Career
With a life mission of creating great experiences one of the best ways Dave can help others is by providing guidance on careers. We spend about 1/3 of our lives… Read more…
Dave Benton
metajive
Curating Life Experiences as a Way of Making Meaningful Work
After 3 years of working at Sagmeister & Walsh, Santiago left to start his own studio and to work with friends, many of whom were and still are doing amazing things.
This… Read more…
Santiago Carrasquilla
santiagocarrasquilla.com
Defined by Defiance
This is a personal story of the journey to point B and how defiance became a driving force to stand back up after every knock down. The story is filled with… Read more…
Hydro74
Hydro74
Designing for Voice
As voice user interfaces (VUIs) continue to emerge as a dominant new user interface, designers are experimenting with voice interaction over the traditional screen based UI. At TribalScale, they’ve seen… Read more…
Mitch Seguin
Tribalscale
Designing Immersive Experiences in Escape Room Puzzles
Are your users or players getting stuck and frustrated in your immersive environments? Use design techniques found in escape rooms to learn how to improve how you guide people through built… Read more…
Adam Clare
Wero Creative
Down the SVG Rabbit Hole
We use Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) every day, but how well do we really understand it? More often than not, we are merely scratching the surface of a large and… Read more…
Robyn Larsen
International Growth @ Shopify
Emotion in Motion
Can objects and machines express feelings? We’ve seen bouncing lamps and curious robots as main characters in Pixar films – not to mention depressive robots in “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the… Read more…
Alon Chitayat
Google
Everything I Know About Design Leadership I Learned Coaching Youth Baseball
Process is a way of doing things and it’s important to establish a process and continuously refine it. But, in his years as a designer and a design leader, Albert has come… Read more…
Albert Poon
DoorDash
Faking the Future
Over the last 100 years we’ve moved from radio, to tv, to phones, and now to spatial computing. Technology moves so fast that in order to design for it, you… Read more…
Basheer Tome
Google
Feels.js – Growth, Emotions And Success In Tech
The web development industry is an incredibly fast growing and fast moving industry. Those relatively new to it can sometimes be overwhelmed with the increasing complexity of their job, what… Read more…
Haris Mahmood
Shopify
Fish, Hamsters, Hammers and Selfies
Why write spreadsheet software when you could be imbuing hamsters with art skills? Why design the next smart kitchen appliance when you could be teaching fish to use hand tools?… Read more…
Neil Mendoza
neilmendoza.com
Fixing the Visual Web: Lessons From a Six Year Quest
As one of the first front end developers at YouTube, Chris noticed a problem. The way we serve images online was broken. We designed it for a web that was… Read more…
Chris Zacharias
imgix
Flash in the Box
Remember Flash? Some of you may even remember a time before Flash – the Golden Age of animation. Each frame was hand drawn and filmed to create the moving picture,… Read more…
Frameless
It’s undeniable that VR technology has captured the public’s imagination. But when it comes to the content, we’re still trying to adapt storytelling methods developed for screen-based media. Regardless of whether… Read more…
Stefan Grambart
grambart.ca
From Data to Experience
Our lives are increasingly defined by data. From the ads we see online, to the steps we count, to the time we set aside to drive to a client, data… Read more…
John Rothenberg
Sosolimited
From Experimentation to Production: The Future of WebGL
You don’t need an advanced degree in graphics engineering to use WebGL as a robust solution in your web design and development. During this talk you will discover how to… Read more…
FUTURE TYPE: Using the History of Typography to Inform the Future of UI
With the rising popularity of immersive media, we’ll need to rethink UI standards around a new modality. As communication becomes more gestural, conversational, and less typographic, we will need to… Read more…
Michelle Cortese
Facebook
How We Built A Bot For FITC
Imagine a platform where language is the new UI. When we build chat bots that augment human abilities and experiences, it’s not about man versus machine. It is about man… Read more…
Rami Sayar
Microsoft
How We Learned to Love Sunlight
Making light art installations involves covering windows, taping up tents, creating light-tight domes… anything to block every single photon you can find. This is so that your projections or lights… Read more…
Hybrid Body Craft
“Fashion is play, with the most profound of human questions: Who am I?” -Roland Barthes
It is an innate human desire to play with and craft our appearance. With the… Read more…
Cindy Hsin-Liu Kao
MIT Media Lab
Interactive Cinema + Film Project “A Man And A Woman”
This presentation will be about interactive storytelling and cinema, using the interactive film project “A Man and A Woman (abbrv. AMAAW)” by the presenter, Thierry Loa, as a case study.
AMAAW… Read more…
Thierry Loa
HelloHello
Interactive Light
Light is a particle and a wave and carries both data and information. There are many more applications than just backlighting the grid of pixels on a smartphone. Join Jared… Read more…
Jared Ficklin
Karma Chameleon: Design is Never About the Designer
As a digital problem solver, being a chameleon is the only way to build good karma into your work. Liam will discuss a dozen tangible ways to design and develop… Read more…
Liam Oscar Thurston
Loblaw Digital
Lightning in a Bottle: Hand-Drawn Animation in VR
Nick is an animator and VR developer. For him, the rise of 6DoF controllers–wands you can move in 3D space–is the most exciting development in VR. He created the Lightning Artist… Read more…
Nick Fox-Gieg
Nick Fox-Gieg Animation
Make it Blend: Bringing VFX Techniques into the Browser
With the rise of WebGL, 360 video, and WebVR we’re finding ourselves with a lot of new opportunities to get creative with 3D in the browser. And while it’s fun… Read more…
Jonathan Hooker
Oblio
Mass Personalization and Customization
For the past 150 years or since the birth of the industrial revolution, our society has lived in the world of mass commercialization. We have mass-marketing, mass-production and mass distribution.… Read more…
Max Burton
Matter, Inc.
Master of None
Refuse to believe there’s a limit to how much you can know. Understand what perpetually learning (new skills) can do for you without mentally drowning from the start. In this… Read more…
Olaf Blomerus
B L M R S
Mathematics of Animation
In the past few years, animations on the web have evolved dramatically. We are able to build animations that generate and manipulate complex geometry, react to user input and tell… Read more…
Varun Vachhar
rangle.io
Mentoring Open Source
Abby has been testing out ways to bring more open source to the different communities the Mozilla Foundation works with: science, internet of things, journalism, and web literacy. Taking lessons… Read more…
Abigail Cabunoc Mayes
Mozilla Foundation
MIDI is Staging a Comeback… in Your Browser!
If you own an electronic music instrument made in the last 3 decades, it most likely supports the MIDI protocol. What if we told you that it is now possible to… Read more…
Jean-Philippe Côté
TangibleJS
New Adventures in Responsive Web Design
With HTTP/2, Service Workers, Responsive Images, Flexbox, SVG and Font Loading API now available in browsers, we all are still trying to figure out just the right strategy for designing… Read more…
Vitaly Friedman
Smashing Magazine
New Tech X Old Tech
What happens when you take user interfaces from the 1980’s and re-imagine them using Raspberry Pi, Arduino, Oculus Rift, and Unreal Engine? Witness how old ideas from the past are… Read more…
Mark Lapasa
knowledge.lapasa.net
No, You First
Social media has hit a ceiling. We’re not talking about the need for it any more; in fact, it’s become ubiquitous enough that most agencies have a large-scale team and… Read more…
Helen Androlia
Juniper Park \ TBWA
OneDAY
We are all on these unique journeys as creatives, as artists, as musicians, as thinkers; and more and more, as business people in the art world. The more Shantell learns… Read more…
Shantell Martin
Shantellmartin.com
Origami Throwie
This drop-in workshop will create an opportunity for attendees to build an Origami Throwie one-on-one with makers/speakers. Attendees will make origami balloons that have a programmed RGB led and a… Read more…
Pretty Much Everything: The Harrowing Account of Making Our Very First Book
They got a book deal! That mythical call up to the big leagues. Hear the whole story behind making Draplin’s first book. From the contracts to the scheming, from the pagination to… Read more…
Aaron James Draplin
Draplin Design Co
Product Strategy Playbook
Every year hundreds of new companies and products fail because they make something that nobody really wants. Seems obvious that there should be demand for what you’re selling, so why… Read more…
Kurt Krumme
OneMethod
Real Work/Life Balance in the Studio
After breaking away from agency life and having gone independent, Anton & Irene are treating their Brooklyn-based studio as their long-term passion-project. Now in its third year, they finally managed… Read more…
Recharge Room
Find your happy place in the Recharge room at FITC Toronto, and take a break from all the awesomeness in our little conference oasis.
Open every day, all day, during the… Read more…
Reinventing Normal
The search for ideas and how to be more creative. Dominic is on a constant creative journey to discover innovative ideas and possibilities through all sorts of techniques he uses to get his brain… Read more…
Dominic Wilcox
dominicwilcox.com
Sensploration
Drawing from her work at the intersection of food, experience design and technology, Emilie will explore how the senses can inspire new creativity in interaction design, human behavior and user… Read more…
Emilie Baltz
Emilie Baltz
So I Decided to Program a Solar System Simulator
This is the story of how a Javascript experiment, a solar system simulation in the browser, became a t-shirt through a successful Kickstarter. It started as a pet project, which… Read more…
Martin Vézina
La Grange
Storytelling for Social Action
Using creativity as a means for social action, cultural commentary, and positive change, Ivan demonstrates the power of an idea, to hijack media and inspires audience members to get out… Read more…
Ivan Cash
Cash Studios
Storytelling in the Age of JavaScript
Many of us are telling stories on the web- whether it be expressing concepts with data visualization, the story of how our product works, or simply writing good documentation. JavaScript… Read more…
Sarah Drasner
Microsoft
Styling Hillary
A comprehensive design system is a critical tool for maintaining a consistent UI during rapid development that spans multiple codebases.
During the 2016 U.S. Election, Mina spent most of her… Read more…
Mina Markham
Slack
TensorKart: Self-Driving MarioKart With TensorFlow
TensorKart is an end-to-end deep learning demonstration about training an AI to play MarioKart 64 with TensorFlow. Using the same technique as Google’s self-driving cars this talk will go through… Read more…
Kevin Hughes
Shopify
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Time-Travellers
Imagine being able to learn about the future of your business by experiencing it live. In a talk experienced by over 250,000,000 people (by the year 2067), Trevor Haldenby will… Read more…
Trevor Haldenby
The Mission Business Inc.
The Colors of Design Cultures
Building and nurturing a flourishing design culture at scale is hard. All designers have unique skillsets and personalities, and it’s vital for design leaders to be able to identify their… Read more…
Kit Oliynyk
Fannie Mae
The Do’s and Don’ts of Motion Design Domination
Depending on who you talk to, either God or “the devil” may “in the details.” At Sarofsky, they use animation, visual effects, computer graphics and live-action to collaborate with clients, from… Read more…
Erin Sarofsky
Sarofsky Corp
The Future of Motion Design
Motion design (or “motion graphics,” if you prefer) sits at the busy intersection of graphic design, animation and filmmaking. Inextricably linked to technology, the discipline of motion design is constantly… Read more…
Justin Cone
BUCK
The Intersection of Fashion, Robotics and Technology
Fashion becomes interactive and technology has never before been as close to the skin – what kind of possibilities does this open up? Anouk Wipprecht is a FashionTech designer who… Read more…
Anouk Wipprecht
anoukwipprecht.nl
The Skills and Tools You Need to be a Successful Designer
It’s estimated that 70% of millennials have “imposter syndrome” at work. Feeling like a fraud when the opposite is probably the case. In this session, evangelist Paul Trani will reveal… Read more…
Paul Trani
Adobe
The Vinyl Server
Once upon a time not so long ago, all of our media were physical – a picture was printed on paper, a song was pressed into vinyl or encoded in… Read more…
Mark Rigley
Shopify
The Web Audio Experience
Explore the technology and process behind rich, web-based audio experiences. Learn about WebAudio tricks, prototyping tools, audio visualization techniques, and some novel applications of audio on the web. Learn how… Read more…
Matt DesLauriers
Tinkerer’s Toolkit
Being technology agnostic means you are free to explore every deep, dark corner of technology to discover something new, something interesting, and ideally something applicable. From visual recognition API’s to machine… Read more…
Stacey Mulcahy
Microsoft Garage
Tool Libraries, and How Humans Share the Earth
The sharing economy is a way of accessing the things you do not need to own. Ownership, in the case of many of our physical products, is a burden, for… Read more…
Lawrence Alvarez
The Institute for a Resource-Based Economy
Total Eclipse of the Art
“Every now and then I fall apart” – Bonnie Tyler may not have been singing about love after all. Explore the parallels between her epic love anthem and the creative… Read more…
Stephen Martell
DE-YAN STUDIO
Understanding the Past and Present to Determine the Future of Design
Visual communication has been around ever since humans could hold a stick. Over the years that stick has changed into a chisel, brushes and now into a mouse and touchpad… Read more…
Paul Trani
Adobe
Unstoppable Curiosity vs Immovable Limitations
Inspired by the classic paradox “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” Jeremy will explore what happens when two key aspects of every creative endeavour collide: curiosity & limitations. Using examples… Read more…
Jeremy Cox
Imaginary Forces
Using Big Data to Find Anomalies and Fight Crime
Many crimes are difficult to track down: human trafficking, fake parts, counterfeit medication. But traces exist: in ads, in posts, in shopping sites and on and on. Richard approached the problem… Read more…
Richard Brath
Uncharted Software
UX IRL
Most of us in the digital space think of UX as something that happens inside our screens, but user experience is in every product, service or space we encounter. Why… Read more…
Matt Hryhorsky
Shopify
Vector Strong Style
Hydro74 will present a peek at his work from the past 17 years of his career, showcasing successes, failures and surprises. He’ll cover case studies from projects including Gears of War & Lucas Films and share his… Read more…
Hydro74
Hydro74
What is Innovation Really?
Friction And the Rise of Design
Innovation is one of the ultimate buzzwords of our era but what is it really? What is its meaning? How can we see it?… Read more…
Mike Costanzo
Rangle.io
Why Journey Mapping is Essential for Digital Products
How to improve customer engagement and service delivery in the connected age.
Digital transformation is not a buzzword. It’s the promise that your organization can reach new heights by leveraging… Read more…
Lee Dale
Say Yeah!
Why Looking at Failure Leads to Success
We all strive for perfection but in reality there are times where mistakes happen. How we choose to deal with them determines our chances at success.
This is a candid… Read more…
Victoria Evans
Relish Interactive
Workshop – Concept, Create, and Sell!
SOLD OUT!
Note: This is a full day workshop and will be held on Saturday April 22 from 10am to 5pm, and is available to those with a WORKS or WORKSHOP ticket.… Read more…
Workshop – Make The Logo You Always Wanted To Make
Note: This is a full day workshop and will be held on Saturday April 22 from 10am to 5pm, and is available to those with a WORKS or WORKSHOP ticket.
Make The… Read more…
Aaron James Draplin
Draplin Design Co
Workshop – Smart Responsive Design Patterns
Note: This is a full day workshop and will be held on Saturday April 22 from 10am to 5pm, and is available to those with a WORKS or WORKSHOP ticket.
In this… Read more…
Vitaly Friedman
Smashing Magazine
Workshop: Expand Your Field of View: Creating with Gear 360
Note that this is a free 1/2 day workshop held on Saturday, April 22. You must RSVP to ensure you have a seat.
Gear 360 is Samsung’s first 360-degree camera… Read more…
WTF is Mixed Reality?
Interested in experiencing the world of holograms and mixed reality? Microsoft has a vision for the future, and it involves terms and technology straight out of science fiction.
In this… Read more…
Mickey MacDonald
Microsoft
