How do you know when your audience is ready to buy from you? Should you wait to “monetize”? How big does your audience need to be? These are common questions and the answers have been debated over the years. I am going to share an answer I gave George from the Man Up Blog during his blog critique. George spent some time in the dating world, sometimes called the “pick up artist” niche. This is shy dudes learning to pick up the ladies mostly, but obviously the market caters to all genders and tastes. It’s pretty obvious what people want from dating advice, but…
Selected by dougsomerville
-
Most Topular Stories
-
When Should You Start Selling from Your Blog?
Chris Garrett on New Media31 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pm -
Ecova
Brand New8 Feb 2012 | 4:53 amThe result of the recent merger between Advantage IQ and Ecos, Ecova is a "total energy and sustainability management company". The new identity was designed by Sandstrom Partners. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online -
Deliberatism
ideasonideas31 Jan 2012 | 9:42 amI’m taking a short break from ideasonideas. (Don’t worry—I’ll be back.) I’m doing so in order to find a little time to work on a new project that I feel strongly about. For now, it’s a simple blog that poses … Continue reading → -
I don't think website design gets much better than this
PagePlane.com8 Feb 2012 | 5:57 pmI was drawn in because this website looks interesting. I dug deep because it is interesting. What more could you ask? The folks at Specimen Products make great products. They and ALSO (their design studio) tell their story with thoughtful copy. They've taken the time to craft a mountain of information-rich illustrations. And they have wrapped it all in quirky, deceptively humble design. This website that is firing on all cylinders, you could do it different, but you'd be hard-pressed to do it better. Hats off to Matt Lamothe, Julia Rothman, and Jenny Volvovski of ALSO. I really like the way… -
Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need
A List Apart31 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amWith a mobile-first responsive design approach, if any part of the process breaks down, your user can still receive a representative image and avoid an unnecessarily large request on a device that may have limited bandwidth. But with several newer browsers implementing an “image prefetching” feature that allows images to be fetched before parsing the document’s body, some of the web's brightest developers are abandoning responsive images in favor of user agent detection, at least as a temporary solution. For us standardistas, UA detection leaves a bad taste in the mouth. More…
-
Chris Garrett on New Media
-
When Should You Start Selling from Your Blog?
31 Jan 2012 | 3:18 pmHow do you know when your audience is ready to buy from you? Should you wait to “monetize”? How big does your audience need to be? These are common questions and the answers have been debated over the years. I am going to share an answer I gave George from the Man Up Blog during his blog critique. George spent some time in the dating world, sometimes called the “pick up artist” niche. This is shy dudes learning to pick up the ladies mostly, but obviously the market caters to all genders and tastes. It’s pretty obvious what people want from dating advice, but… -
Why You Shouldn’t Drive Traffic
16 Jan 2012 | 7:58 pmIn the first 7 days of this blogs life, 20,000 visitors checked it out. Sounds like a pretty nice result doesn’t it? I was super happy, but a little disappointed in one specific respect. Only 500 people subscribed. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved and nurtured those 500 subscribers and 500 subscribers in any time frame is not to be sniffed at! My problem was, how can you have 20,000 visitors check out my blog and only 500 of them want to stick around? The cause? I was “Driving” traffic … Big Lessons Learned I had been involved with a couple of successful blogs at… -
How to know what your audience really wants
23 Dec 2011 | 11:53 amYour audience does not want your content. Your audience probably does not want to hear from you at all. If you think that because your website looks great that people will want to visit it … think again. What do they really want? Your audience and potential customers know who they are and probably have a very good idea of their goals. At the very least they know their immediate needs. They are looking for answers to questions, advice, and resources that help people like them get the stuff people like them want. When someone seeks out and clicks on your content it is only as a means to… -
Finding and Communicating Your Value
5 Dec 2011 | 11:06 amMany bloggers don’t have a value problem. They have a great deal to share. I am sure you do – I have never met someone who doesn’t. Why then do people struggle to find an audience. Never mind an audience who knows, likes and trusts them – ANY audience? It’s weird but a lot of the time it is because you have SO much to offer, it’s hard to know who you are for and what specific benefit you provide. A lot of my coaching clients have this problem and, thankfully, there is a solution. The solution is simple, but it isn’t always easy. Check out Ryan… -
How to REALLY make money from a website
23 Nov 2011 | 3:08 pmAs much as I tell people to seriously reconsider buying too much into the hardcore “Make Money Online” hype, I can not argue against its allure and the fact that, well, people DO make money online. The problem is, there are the usual caveats: It’s not fast. It’s not easy. You WILL encounter problems and tough challenges. You might not always enjoy it. These are challenges facing Roman who asked me for a blog critique. He has been building a site all about his experience of creating a website that makes money called “How this website makes money” (how meta).
-
Brand New
-
Ecova
8 Feb 2012 | 4:53 amThe result of the recent merger between Advantage IQ and Ecos, Ecova is a "total energy and sustainability management company". The new identity was designed by Sandstrom Partners. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online -
Rescuing the American Red Cross
8 Feb 2012 | 4:31 amEstablished in 1881, the American Red Cross is one of the most well-known emergency response organizations in the world aiding victims of natural disasters and other emergencies. It counts with more than half a million volunteers and 35,000 employees across 700 national chapters. Recently, a new logo and design standards designed by Turner Duckworth have been quietly implemented. The Brand Standards manual can be seen here [PDF] and covers more than is represented in this post, in case you are interested. The pin is a symbol of enthusiastic participation. It is a personal, grassroots and… -
SOCAN
7 Feb 2012 | 4:15 amEstablished in 1990, SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) represents and works with more than 100,000 Canadian composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers "to protect, preserve and promote the performing rights of music creators." At the end of January SOCAN introduced a new logo. Story here. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post online -
New Theatre on Rotation
7 Feb 2012 | 3:57 amEstablished in 1932, the New Theatre is a proudly independent theater in Sydney, Australia. "We're not slick, we're not refined and we don't conform," is only one of many statements it makes, "We believe in artistic and social expression, not just escapism. When we take the stage, we're for real." Or "We're driven by passion, not money." You get the point. This past January, New Theatre introduced a new visual and verbal identity created by the Sydney office of Interbrand. At the centre of it all, a new logomark referencing unexpected twists and turns in the form of an 'NT' device, that stems… -
BMO Harris Bank
6 Feb 2012 | 6:01 amHeadquartered in Chicago, Illinois, BMO Harris Bank, is a result of a series of bank mergers after Bank of Montreal Financial group (Harris) acquired Marshall && Ilsley Corporation (M&&I) in July 2011. At that time, M&I Marshall && Ilsley Bank, M&&I Bank National Association (N.A.), and The Harris Bank N.A. merged into Harris N.A. Harris N.A. then changed it's name to BMO Harris Bank N.A. Conversion of bank branches to the new look began in December 2011 and will continue until late 2012. Thanks to Stefan Bean for the tip. Don't forget to cast your vote about this post…
-
ideasonideas
-
Deliberatism
31 Jan 2012 | 9:42 amI’m taking a short break from ideasonideas. (Don’t worry—I’ll be back.) I’m doing so in order to find a little time to work on a new project that I feel strongly about. For now, it’s a simple blog that poses … Continue reading → -
Bullshit
17 Jan 2012 | 5:28 pmMy morning bus ride affords an opportunity to listen to music, witness sleeping commuters drool, and catch up design and technology news. Over the past months, I’ve made an effort to skip my usual reads (TechCrunch and Hacker News) and instead look at … Continue reading → -
Difficult People
23 Sep 2011 | 3:14 pmI think I called her an asshole at one point or another. Certainly not to her face, and probably not even out loud, but I’m quite convinced that I at very least muttered the word under my breath. Mrs. Hughes … Continue reading → -
Buying Creative Sucks
13 Sep 2011 | 5:40 pmIf you run a creative shop, you probably offer your customers a pretty crappy experience. While it may be unpleasant to hear this, it’s likely the case. In fact, I’d argue that this is commonplace in our industry. For the … Continue reading → -
The Rules
23 Aug 2011 | 8:58 amWeak designers believe they are artists. They eschew rules, believing them to be unnecessary constraints that serve only to stifle their visual “genius.” Such perspectives are overwhelmingly endemic amongst amateurs. Their thinking is analogous to musicians saying they don’t need … Continue reading →
-
PagePlane.com
-
I don't think website design gets much better than this
8 Feb 2012 | 5:57 pmI was drawn in because this website looks interesting. I dug deep because it is interesting. What more could you ask? The folks at Specimen Products make great products. They and ALSO (their design studio) tell their story with thoughtful copy. They've taken the time to craft a mountain of information-rich illustrations. And they have wrapped it all in quirky, deceptively humble design. This website that is firing on all cylinders, you could do it different, but you'd be hard-pressed to do it better. Hats off to Matt Lamothe, Julia Rothman, and Jenny Volvovski of ALSO. I really like the way… -
For designers: The how, what, why, and maybe of Facebook
6 Feb 2012 | 12:22 pmWould it be useful to you, as a designer, to be a fly on the wall of Facebook headquarters and to hear what the leadership believes are its strengths and vulnerabilities? Wouldn't it be educational to know all about the current platform and hear about the products and services Mark Zuckerberg and his team are planning for the future? This is a close as we may get — absolutely fascinating stuff: The Facebook Form S-1 Registration Statement as filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Thanks to my friend Bruce Schneider for pointing us to it. The Facebook Form S-1 Registration… -
Do you know who Fred Terman is?
3 Feb 2012 | 8:19 amIf not, you might be surprised to know that many folks believe he, his colleagues, and the institution of Stanford University in Santa Clara Valley, California created the very seedbed of the Technological Renaissance known as Silicon Valley. Is renaissance too big a word to describe it? Not when you consider the fact that this one small part of the planet produced (in large part) the transistor, microprocessors, personal computers, genetic engineering, and the protocols which would become the standard for Internet communication between computers. And much, much more. I point you to this… -
If you're interested in ephemera and the history of design and publishing
1 Feb 2012 | 10:03 amGene Gable is curating a virtual museum of design, typography, and related ephemera over at CreativePro.com under the title of Scanning Around With Gene. He certainly has the credentials. At various times he has been the head Publish magazine, the publisher of The Seybold Report, and a member of the Ziff-Davis executive team which was responsible for major business events such as Comdex. If you don't yet know him and his eye for interesting, you're in for a treat. Three examples of his column: The Dead Letterhead Department... When Halftones Were an Art Form... When Letraset Was King... An… -
Lyrical lettering for a serious subject
30 Jan 2012 | 1:31 pmI love these stamp designs created for the Royal Mail by Hat-Trick Design and letterer Marion Deuchars. There's just something about black, white, and red that makes a subject a bit more profound. This is the rare case when lettering that might normally be construed as having a light or lyrical tone is successfully paired with a serious subject. Why is that? Hamlet... The Tempest... Henry VI... King Lear... A Midsummer Night's Dream... Romeo and Juliet... Marion Deuchars... Hat-Trick Design... Follow Chuck on Facebook... Visit the Ideabook.com Store | Subscribe to the…
-
A List Apart
-
Responsive Images: How they Almost Worked and What We Need
31 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amWith a mobile-first responsive design approach, if any part of the process breaks down, your user can still receive a representative image and avoid an unnecessarily large request on a device that may have limited bandwidth. But with several newer browsers implementing an “image prefetching” feature that allows images to be fetched before parsing the document’s body, some of the web's brightest developers are abandoning responsive images in favor of user agent detection, at least as a temporary solution. For us standardistas, UA detection leaves a bad taste in the mouth. More… -
Pricing Strategy for Creatives
31 Jan 2012 | 4:00 amStrategic pricing helps your brand and helps you to make more money. Issuing a price is like handing out a business card—it’s a great branding tool, but be careful about what it says to your market. Beginning relationships with customers at a high price makes the statement: “we’re good at what we do and we know it.” Fighting with a competitor over a low price says “I’m uncertain about my abilities, so I’ll take what I can get.” Failing to use a considered pricing policy will leave you treading water in a sea of design mediocrity, allowing you to just stay afloat while you… -
Building Twitter Bootstrap
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amBootstrap is an open-source front-end toolkit created to help designers and developers quickly and efficiently build great stuff online. Its goal is to provide a refined, well-documented, and extensive library of flexible design components created with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for others to build and innovate on. Today, it has grown to include dozens of components and has become the most popular project on GitHub, with more than 13,000 watchers and 2,000 forks. Mark Otto, the co-creator of Bootstrap, sheds light on how and why Bootstrap was made, the processes used to create it, and how it… -
An Important Time for Design
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amDesign is on a roll. Client services are experiencing a major uptick in demand, seasoned design professionals are abandoning client work in favor of entrepreneurship, and designer-co-founded startups such as Kickstarter and Airbnb are taking center stage. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the fact that design has a massive role to play in the evolution of the web and the next generation of web products. The result, says Cameron Koczon, is that designers have now been given a blank check—one that lets web designers band together as a community to change the way design is… -
A Pixel Identity Crisis
17 Jan 2012 | 1:00 amThe pixel has long been the atomic particle of screen based design: a knowable, concrete unit of measurement. But layouts based on the hardware pixel are fast becoming an endangered species. Even the introduction of a new, W3C standard reference pixel, although it promises stability in the long-term, can't help us navigate the current chaos. Consider the two "standard" pixel definitions and 500 "standard" viewports your user's Android device may support. To create designs that transcend platform differences—the promise of the web and standards—you must normalize pixels across devices.
-
Think Vitamin
-
Rails 3.2.1
8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amGreetings, folks! If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest Rails news, we have a new version! Ruby on Rails 3.2.1 has recently been released with some very welcome changes! Faster development mode – Rails now only reloads the classes you’ve actually changed between requests in development mode. Explain queries – In development mode, you can automatically show the explain of certain queries by calling .explain at the end of your query. The results will go in your log. Active Record Store – Active Record now has a built in way to do key/value storage right… -
Treehouse Groups are live!
8 Feb 2012 | 5:45 amYou can now create a Treehouse Group Account for your company, university, school or any grouping of two or more people. Group plans are 25% cheaper so it’s a great way to save money. We’ve added a simple Groups Dashboard that allows you to see … Group Activity: Who’s watching videos and unlocking Badges Ranking in your Group, based on Badge unlocks More info … Group pricing is 25% off normal prices, which allows people with large groups to save a bit of money. You only need 2+ people to sign up. If you’re already a Member, you can’t be brought into a… -
Free Video: Getting started with iOS development
7 Feb 2012 | 7:38 amIn this 6 minute video, we will get you started with iOS development by learning about the benefits of Apple’s iOS Dev center and how to gain access to the integrated development environment (IDE) called Xcode. This video is from Treehouse, a high-quality video training site with hundreds of short videos on topics like … Accessibility CSS3 Aesthetic Foundations Django HTML CSS HTML5 iOS Development JavaScript jQuery NoSQL PHP Responsive Web Design Ruby Ruby on Rails UX Version Control WordPress Theme Design New videos are added regularly, so it’s a great way to stay… -
Another Round of Treehouse Nerd Merit Badges!
7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 amWe recently launched Treehouse and, thanks to you, it’s been successful beyond our wildest expectations. Thank you all so much! We had so much fun celebrating with our previous giveaway, that we thought we would do another one.If you tweet to @treehouse the name of your favorite web app, we’ll randomly pick 10 winners to receive a "Mike the Frog" Nerd Merit Badge! Here’s a picture of what they look like: -
Pears: An open source collection of common markup & style
6 Feb 2012 | 10:38 amLo and behold, Mr. Dan Cederholm has done it again! This time the folks over at SimpleBits unveiled their latest project, Pears, an open source WordPress theme that enables you to get your own pattern library up and running quickly. This is super helpful to collect, test and experiment with your collection of semantic HTML & CSS patterns. For beginners it can be a great way to begin to understand the relationship between markup and style. No matter which audience you fall into, it is a handy tool for improving speed and productivity. Also make sure to take notice of the Pears website…
-
FreelanceSwitch
-
How To Deal With Criticism
8 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amWorking in the creative field means you are an open target for criticism. Someone doesn’t like your photography work, they think you’re a bad writer, or your prices are unfair. And as freelancers, it can be hard not to take criticism—no matter how well meaning—personally. I read this blog post on Forbes.com on how to deal with really tough criticism, written for people who are business leaders. While I’m not necessarily the target audience for this article, I did take away some good lessons that I’d like to share for the freelance set. The first thing we need to consider is that… -
5 Ways to Spread the Freelance Love
8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amValentine’s Day is probably not a holiday that brings your fellow freelancers to mind. You may have made a point to recognize your clients during the December holiday season, so why not make February the time to applaud your fellow independents? Spreading good karma always pays off in some manner, whether it be a new contact, lead, or networking opportunity. Here are some ways to get started. Hire someone. You might not think of yourself as a potential client to other freelancers, but face it, you can’t be good at everything. You could tap into fellow freelancers for several aspects of… -
Build a Better Tweet
7 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amA new study from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science called “Who Gives a Tweet: Evaluating Microblogging Content Value” has unveiled what we like to read, and what we don’t like to read, on Twitter. I have to say, the results aren’t all that surprising. A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Georgia Tech launched a site asking for anonymous feedback from people like you and me in exchange for rating their tweets. Users had to sign in to their website and rate 10 tweets before getting any feedback on their own tweets. Luckily for these researchers, their… -
5 Ways to Earn More from Current Clients
7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 amIt takes a lot of work to get a new client. Unless you have a regular stream of referrals coming your way, you may need to do all the legwork yourself by approaching potential clients, contacting them, and testing if they’d be interested in your services. This often requires a lot of research and preparation. Still, you’re not sure any of these prospects will convert into paying clients – even if you know you did everything right. This is why, during a work famine, it may be easier to get hired again by people who already paid you before: your former and existing clients. -
Grow Your Community by Asking Questions
6 Feb 2012 | 7:00 amReporters at The Washington Post are now actively engaging their readers by posting comments in streams on the paper’s news stories online, something they’ve never done in the past. The paper switched to a new website platform called Echo, which has helped them grow their online community. Reader comments at the paper have shot up 142% since March, 2011. This is new territory for many journalists. Never before have they been urged to take part in the conversations the public is having online about their stories. This type of involvement helps reporters fend off rumors, speculation, and…
-
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report
-
A better Photoshop grid for responsive web design
8 Feb 2012 | 7:58 amIN MAKING the move to responsive web design, one of the potential hurdles is the rather awkward maths for calculating the percentage-based widths necessary for fluid layouts. If, for example, you’re designing with a 960px grid in Photoshop and you have six columns, each 140px wide, you divide 140 by 960 to get your percentage-based width: 14.583333%. Now, I don’t know about you, but numbers like that look a little scary. It doesn’t matter that there are great calculation tools built into TextMate to do the maths for you; the point is that the final figure looks like an arbitrary number… -
Mobile Web Resources
8 Feb 2012 | 5:03 amONE of the most frequent questions we get asked about the mobile web is ‘Where do I go to learn about all this stuff?’ So here’s an extensive list of helpful tools and resources that can help you create great mobile web experiences.” Mobile Web Resources | Mobile Web Best Practices. -
Notes from An Event Apart Atlanta 2012
7 Feb 2012 | 2:03 pmLUKE WROBLEWSKI’S notes on most of the sessions from An Event Apart Atlanta, 2012, Feb. 6–8, 2012. Thanks, buddy! Properties of Intuitive Web Pages — February 7, 2012 An Event Apart: The Future of CSS — February 7, 2012 An Event Apart: CSS Best Practices — February 7, 2012 An Event Apart: Buttons are a Hack — February 7, 2012 An Event Apart: Content First — February 6, 2012 An Event Apart: Inclusive Design — February 6, 2012 An Event Apart: Handcrafted Patterns — February 6, 2012 An Event Apart: Hacking Users Brains — February 6, 2012 An Event Apart: Adaptive Web… -
Fluid grids, orientation & resolution independence
7 Feb 2012 | 5:12 amIF YOU’VE spent any time building responsive websites with fluid grids, you will have encountered the shock of seeing your beautiful portrait layout distort when viewed in landscape mode (or vice-versa.) This happens because whilst the layout and embedded content (images, video etc) are sized in relation to the pixel width of the viewport, the typography is not. And whilst it isn’t too difficult to design with enough affordance for the variation caused by the iPad’s 4:3 aspect ratio – most (if not all) Android tablets have 16:9 displays. These screens make the orientation… -
My Glamorous Life: Lucy Ricardo, C’est Moi
1 Feb 2012 | 6:07 amTRYING A NEW breakfast place. I tell the cashier, “Extra crispy bacon.” “Extra bacon,” she says. “No, not extra bacon. Extra crispy bacon,” I say. A fast-paced volley of shouted Spanish follows, between the cook, the cashier, and the server. A customer in line behind me chimes in. He is either describing my order to the cashier or telling her about a dream he had involving velvet chickens. I’ve got to learn Spanish. The cashier turns her green gaze back to me. “Extra bacon,” she says. “Um, no,” I say. “No bacon,”…
-
UX Magazine
-
Messification: Why Games Should Be Designed to Be Games First
7 Feb 2012 | 3:22 amIn 2009, interest in the capacity of games to solve real-world problems spontaneously began to erupt within general culture. This was an idea that a lot of people had been promoting for a some time through initiatives like Serious Games, Games for Health, and Games for Change, but their message had mostly flown under the public’s radar. As a UX practitioner, I had long been fascinated with exploring how games could effect positive change in people and achieve things that would otherwise be difficult through conventional design. It was clear to me that the UX community could benefit from… -
Breaking Through the Glass:Designing Digital Experiences Beyond the Screen
6 Feb 2012 | 1:50 amI look back on going into second-hand stores and finding little treasures and that actually meant more to me ‘cause it was more of a stab in the dark, you didn’t know if you could afford it or even know what you were really looking for. – Kurt Cobain As smartphones continue to cement their position as the digital hub of the consumer universe, and people engage with digital experiences across an increasingly diverse range of devices, the term "user experience" encompasses an ever-growing array of interfaces and contexts. We read recipes on iPads in the kitchen, dance with a virtual… -
Wireframing in Powerpoint? It Works!
2 Feb 2012 | 1:48 amIt’s important for designers to translate the ideas in their heads into a tangible form that stakeholders can relate to. Prior to writing any code, wireframes are a great way to quickly map out the functionality and flow of a website or application. This helps anticipate conflicts (“That's not what I had in mind") early in the process, at a point where they are painless to correct. Dedicated wireframing tools are in abundance, so you might be surprised that my weapon of choice for sketching wireframes is Microsoft PowerPoint. PowerPoint makes it possible for stakeholders and non-techies… -
How Chief Customer Officers Are Driving Change
31 Jan 2012 | 1:57 amAn increasing number of companies are appointing a single executive to lead customer experience efforts for a business unit or the entire company. Whether firms calls these executives chief customer officer (CCO) or give them some other label, these executives are driving change at organizations as diverse as CEMEX, Fidelity, General Motors, Maersk Line, and The Washington Post. And as diverse as the companies are that they work for, these leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds. To better understand the profile of a CCO, we recently gathered data on 165 executives in charge of… -
Announcing UX Magazine's New Jobs Board
17 Jan 2012 | 3:56 amOver the past few years, we’ve heard from a lot of business and hiring managers that they find it hard to find qualified UX professionals and UX-minded businesspeople to fill vacant jobs in their organizations. We’ve also heard from UX pros who say that, in a world where anyone can claim to be able to “do UX,” it’s hard to stand out from throngs of job seekers on high-volume sites such as Monster.com and Indeed.com. We’re therefore pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new jobs board exclusively for the UX community. We believe that UX Magazine’s strong reputation in and…
-
Good Experience
-
How Bit Literacy helped build the Minnesota Twins stadium
2 Feb 2012 | 5:39 amFrom a reader review of my book Bit Literacy: I was at a conference where the construction and development team responsible for putting together and constructing the new Minnesota Twins baseball stadium gave a detailed presentation on the project. One of the first things they mentioned is that they required their entire management team to read "Bit Literacy" prior to starting the project so they could come up with a communication system via email and task list tracking system that was fast, efficient, and effective. There was no room for time wasting procedures and methods. The new… -
New Gel Video: Alicia Hansen
25 Jan 2012 | 7:26 amAlicia's nonprofit, NYC Salt, provides teenagers in New York with professional-grade skills in photography and other visual communication - thereby helping them succeed academically and professionally. Here Alicia introduces the Gel 2011 audience to two of her students, both of whom entered college later in the year, on scholarships they achieved in large part due to their time with NYC Salt. -
New Gel Video: Marc Abrahams
25 Jan 2012 | 7:13 amThe founder of the Ig Nobel Prize describes some past favorites - including some connections to other Gel 2011 presentations. See also Marc's Annals of Improbable Research. -
New Gel Video: Michelle Barwell
25 Jan 2012 | 7:08 amAs a psychiatrist for Operation Safety Net in Pittsburgh, Dr. Michelle Barwell delivers mental health care to the homeless - where they live. Here she describes how she goes about this highly unusual and courageous work. -
New Gel Video: James Chan
25 Jan 2012 | 7:05 amNative Singaporean, venture capitalist, and photographer James Chan has seen a tremendous transformation of that city-state as it grew into its present-day success. Here he describes some of the policies that set Singapore apart - and could help other cities succeed.
-
Andy Budd::Blogography Articles
-
Web Design Disciplines Explained Through the Medium of Dungeons & Dragons
27 Jan 2012 | 8:23 amFirst off let me apologise for the laboured metaphor I’m about to inflict on you, but I thought it could be entertaining to try and describe the web design industry using a medium I’m sure you’re all familiar with—Dungeons & Dragons. However I should point out that I’m no D&D expert, having played it last when I was 13. So please don’t leave comments to the line of “you got that all wrong as those character classes were changed in AD&D 2nd Edition, Unearthed Arcana.” or I’ll pull out my +2 broadsword and go Berserker on your ass. -
UX Developer is a misleading and potentially damaging job title
27 Jan 2012 | 2:58 amI was really disappointed to see a recent post from somebody I admire and respect defend the validity of the new UX Developer job title that has been cropping up of late. As well as being misleading, the title, UX Developer has implications that are damaging to the field of User Experience and will hasten the current devaluation of the term. Despite what many newcomers to the industry may think, User Experience Design is a well-defined specialism as distinct from visual or interface design. The practice of user experience design is a specific field of study with its own books, conferences,… -
The Tyranny of the Minimum Viable Product
22 Dec 2011 | 6:04 amI first came across the term Minimum Viable Product when I dropped into a talk by Eric Reis at the Web 2.0 Expo in New Year a few year’s back. As a company that has always worked on variable scope projects, defining a MVP seemed like a great way of managing client expectations. Rather than clients worrying whether your team would deliver something useful, you’d work together to define the smallest thing you could release and it still be a success. You would then guarantee that the client would meet their core business needs, and everything else you manage to deliver in that time… -
Why designers are holding themselves back
3 Dec 2011 | 5:21 amHave you every been in the situation where the client keeps requesting tweaks to the design or changes in functionality? As you sit moving boxes around the page, the budget is slowly draining away and you’re no longer sure whether the project can be completed on target? In these situations what do you do? Some designers will push back on the client, claiming that these changes were never in the agreed brief and that they had only budgeted for 2 or 3 rounds of design. Others will simply swallow the cost in the hope that the changes are almost finished and in the knowledge that… -
Hanging with the Hipsters in East London
1 Dec 2011 | 11:19 am
-
Church of the Customer Blog
-
Playbooks and visual explanations
6 Feb 2012 | 8:30 amBy the time the New York Giants and the New England Patriots took the field Sunday for their Super Bowl matchup, the players on both teams had read, re-read and rehearsed their respective game playbooks dozens, if not hundreds of times. They'd studied each play via multiple diagrams and photographs, stats and descriptions of assignments for every player on the field. A playbook is an apt metaphor for any business team that needs concise, how-to plans to deal with the complexity of systems, processes and moving variables, especially with social business. Whether it's for one of the world's… -
People trust people
1 Feb 2012 | 12:27 pm[Click on chart to see larger version.] The latest edition of the Edelman Trust Barometer study just came out showing CEO's in the dog house when it comes to being trusted. Who do people trust? Academic and tech experts, sure. But the biggest movers in the study are "a person just like me" and "regular employee." Look at your 2012 marketing plan. Are you providing ways for your customers to get together in-person and online to encourage word of mouth? Are you showcasing your best employees in social media, at conferences, and at private events with customers? Source: 2012 Edelman… -
FedEx's apology: expertly delivered
21 Dec 2011 | 8:29 pmWe've seen this before: 1) company makes an egregious service mistake and is outed by a customer via a YouTube video, 2) video goes viral, 3) mainstream media picks up the story and amplifies it, 4) PR nightmare begins. This week's culprit is FedEx. A California FedEx driver is caught on a security-camera video flinging a package containing a computer monitor over the fence of a gated Southern California house. At no time does the driver attempt to ring the bell for delivery. Just a toss over the fence, and he jumps back into his truck. In two days, the video has over three million views. … -
The simplest definition of word of mouth marketing
28 Nov 2011 | 12:38 pmNice video from WOMMA on the basics of word of mouth marketing. Tweet -
14 new statistics about word of mouth marketing
17 Oct 2011 | 11:45 amThe Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has a neat infographic detailing the latest stats about word or mouth marketing, online and offline. Source: WOMMA Note: the WOMMA Summit is coming up November 16-18 in Las Vegas. It's a great conference to learn the latest WOM marketing techniques from leading brands and agencies. Tweet
-
UIE Brain Sparks
-
10 Tips for Designing Effective Surveys – A 2/28 Next Step Virtual Seminar
8 Feb 2012 | 7:17 amSure, you already know that data-driven decision-making can be a great thing. And a survey can be a great way of getting hold of a lot of data. But if you’ve ever had to complete a frustrating survey asking seemingly mindless questions, and we all have, then the idea of having to design one yourself might make you shudder. In her seminar on February 28, 10 Tips for Designing Effective Surveys, Caroline Jarrett will talk about how to rescue already-in-progress surveys and strengthen their performance, as well as how to approach new surveys from scratch. The next time you need your… -
UIEtips: Discovering Web App Structure – A Discussion with Hagan Rivers
7 Feb 2012 | 1:28 pmIt’s easy for web applications to get overly complicated. Ideally, complex applications help their users solve complex problems, making their lives simpler. Unfortunately this isn’t always the case. Vague commands, useless dashboards, and confusing navigation create headaches for users by otherwise well-meaning applications. Often this can be a product of the structure of the application itself. Hagan Rivers is a walking encyclopedia of web app design knowledge. A frequent speaker at our events, she has an amazing knack for making the highly complex digestible and easy to… -
Designing Dashboards: The Do’s, Don’ts, and D’ohs! – Our 2/23 Virtual Seminar
7 Feb 2012 | 9:19 amDashboards are a great idea. The problem is, many are useless. In this seminar, Hagan Rivers will show you which elements to include, how to structure them, and what to slash out of your existing dashboard that needs some UX TLC. She’ll show you a bunch of dashboards. And she’ll give you tips for helping stakeholders understand the implementation benefits and drawbacks of seemingly simple components, from graphs to customizable panels. Join us on February 23 for Designing Dashboards: The Do’s, Don’ts, and D’ohs! Designing a new UI? Evolving an existing one? You’ll walk away from… -
Lou Rosenfeld – 8 Better Practices for Great Information Architecture A Virtual Seminar Follow-up
3 Feb 2012 | 1:10 pm[ Transcript Available ] The goal of any site is for the right audience to find the right information. But beyond your actual content there are many things that can cause findability issues. These tend to be unanswered questions about your primary audience and whether or not you’re satisfying the need of that audience. Good information architecture can help guide your design decisions so that your users can effectively engage with your content. Lou Rosenfeld offers up suggestions in his virtual seminar, 8 Better Practices for Great Information Architecture: Closing the Findability Gap. Lou… -
UX Immersion: We started with 100, but now it’s 80
3 Feb 2012 | 9:10 amSeats for the premiere Agile development and mobile design conference are going fast We started out with 100 spots, but already we’re down to 80 for the UX Immersion 2012 Conference in Portland, OR April 23-25. You can register at the lowest rate of $1,349 to secure one of the remaining 80 spots. After these spots are gone, the price increases by $300. We’re not surprised at how fast these spots are going. Once you see the full-day workshop topics and amazing speakers, you’ll want to grab your own spot. Spend 3 intensive days devouring the latest UX techniques in 2 important…
