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Designing For Complex UIs, 2026 Edition

Vitaly Friedman
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Vitaly Friedman
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Workshop includes:

  • 🍵 Tea, coffee, snacks, and drinks available all day
  • 🥪 Delicious lunch included

Full-day workshop • Monday, October 12, 2026.

Not much can surprise us when it comes to interface challenges. We can design a decent card, a well-rounded accordion, an accessible modal and an exquisite hamburger navigation. But what if there are slightly more complex UX challenges ahead of us?

Well, complex UI doesn’t have to be complicated. In this workshop with Vitaly Friedman, UX consultant and creative lead behind Smashing Magazine, we’ll dive deep into dissecting how to solve complex design problems. Whether you’re working on a complex nested multi-level navigation or creating enterprise grade tables, this workshop will give you the tools you need to excel at your work.

Here’s What You Should Be Expecting:

  • Inspiring & Inclusive

    A full day of teaching in a friendly, inclusive group

  • Interactive & Practical

    Plenty of time for practice & feedback

  • Hands-on exercises

    With 1:1 reviews by Vitaly

  • Cooperate

    Learn from your teacher and other attendees

  • Dedicated Q&A time

    To ask all your questions

  • Digital Smashing Certificate

    A well-deserved reward for your work

€549.00 Excl. VAT Register for this workshop → Get a single workshop, or bundle with a conference.

🎪  Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.

You’ll Learn:

In this workshop you’ll learn:

  • Complex mega-dropdowns with 4+ levels of navigation, layout, interaction design, sideways navigation, breadcrumbs, top task analysis, mobile/desktop (e.g. large university websites),
  • Complex modals and onboarding UX, confirm vs. undo behavior, right timing, interaction design, with guidelines and best practices to improve click-through rates and decrease mistakes (e.g. enterprise software),
  • Complex multi-page forms, focusing on form components, one-column vs. multi-column layout, error recovery, inline validation, progress bars, routing, conditional reveal, disabled buttons, error messages, input buffering (e.g. complex multi-column multi-page forms with dozens of steps),
  • Enterprise-grade tables, complex use-cases with inline editing, filtering, tagging, sorting and search — on mobile and on desktop (insurance, loss prevention),
  • Dashboards, charts and spreadsheets, with complex layouts, data editing, inline filtering, infinite scroll UX, “load more” vs. pagination, access to footer and access to the current state, mobile optimizations,
  • Complex filtering, layout, auto-apply vs. manual apply, filtering overlays, filtering and sorting intervals, best practices and guidelines, on mobile and on desktop (public archives, media library, large catalogs of products),
  • Search and Autocomplete UX, with layout and interaction design, when to show/hide suggestions, search query iteration, autocomplete blindness, faceted search, smart suggestions, type-ahead pattern, keyboard navigation, on mobile and on desktop (e.g. in eCommerce),
  • Accessibility of complex interfaces, designing for older adults and children, colorblindness, neurodiversity, dyslexia, deafness, autism, technical considerations, focus traps, navigation, announcements of notifications, keyboard support,
  • Privacy UX and State of Authentication in 2026, and how to gather accurate data while avoiding legal battles and respecting user’s data,
  • 100s of real-life examples, government and university websites, trip planners, financial services, eCommerce, online banking, configurators, insurance and mortgage calculators, data grids and enterprise products.
  • Checklist for complex UIs with guidelines and decisions to consider when designing any component in a complex setting.

€549.00 Excl. VAT Register for this workshop → Get a single workshop, or bundle with a conference.

🎪  Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for interface designers, front-end designers and developers who’d love to be prepared for complex and time-consuming design challenges. You’ll walk away with a toolbox of techniques and examples of doing things well — in your product, website, desktop app or mobile app, be it a small mobile app or a large enterprise application.

About Vitaly Friedman

Vitaly Friedman loves beautiful content and doesn’t like to give in easily. When he is not writing or speaking at a conference, he’s most probably running front-end/UX workshops and webinars. He loves solving complex UX, front-end and performance problems.

Time & Location

This full-day workshop will take place the day before SmashingConf. The workshop will be running from 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM on Monday, October 12.

The workshop is happening at Vestar, Lamorinierestraat 53, 2018 Antwerpen. Google Maps

Schedule for Monday, October 12

9:00 AM – Doors open, Registration
9:30 AM – Introduction & Kick-off
11:00 AM – Coffee Break
1:00 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – Afternoon Session
3:00 PM – Coffee Break
5:00 PM – The End

Save EUR 100 when signing up for the conference and a workshop!

€549.00 Excl. VAT Register for this workshop → Get a single workshop, or bundle with a conference.

🎪  Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.