I saw this article on Scrum and UX design at t3n.de (in German only).
Category: General
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Quote to remember
via Su Franke on Flickr:
"Firmen wollen auf den Mond fliegen, haben aber nur klapprige Fahrräder rumstehen" Zitat von Jürg Stuker https://t.co/PKlFCO22Q9
— Panchenga (@nchenga) September 17, 2016
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The fast track to DIY images
For all my creative photography friends, here’s an article by Moz on how images boost conversion. And a list of tools.
- Visage https://visage.co/
- Recordit http://recordit.co/
- GIFboom (no link cos the sample photos look like they are intended for a dating site)
- Placeit https://placeit.net/
- Studio http://www.madewithstudio.com/
- SnapChat (errr… really?)
The sample images displayed in the Moz article aren’t very inspiring but the tools look useful.
My toolset? I use Canva and Photoshop at the day job and Pixelmator on my MacBook at home.
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Co-working space in Copenhagen
Need a place to work in CPH for a couple of hours or 1 day? I can recommend the cafe of http://republikken.net/. Good coffee. Work atmosphere with other people working around you.
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Recommended article: Great content isn’t the same as long-form content
Here’s a Moz article on the current trend to write long-form articles.
Great Content ≠Long-Form Content
Long-form articles need to be well-researched. Just going for length is not going to work.
“Create content that helps people.”
It’s fun… writing about long-form articles in very short blog posts.
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3 Copywriting tips supported by research
Tip 1: Use simple vocabulary
Tip 2: Use short sentences
Tip 3: Help readers navigate your writing
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Barcamp Bodensee 2016
Last Saturday I attended Barcamp Bodensee in Konstanz.
Here are some brief notes and thoughts on sessions that I attended:
Ask a digital teen
Barcamp attendees asked a 15 year old what apps and web services he uses. Youtube, Gaming, TeamSpeak, Discord app, some Whatsapp, Google Calendar. No TV. No Facebook. His school doesn’t allow the use of smartphones on the school grounds.Digital strategy for non-profit organizations
Digital strategy means finding a way to connect CMS and CRM and accounting and payment apps and processes. CiviCRM was recommended; if offers connectors for WordPress and Drupal. There’s an association called “Software für Engagierte” (in German only). QuickBook, Collmex were mentioned for accounting purposes.Getting Things Done
A certified GTD trainer offered an intro to David Allen’s method. Mind like water. Some very useful tips. For example, to do lists aren’t enough. Lists need to be sorted and categorized. Actionable items and next steps instead of just listing the project. Tasks that take less than 2 minutes should be taken care of immediately. Cos it takes more time to get back to these mini-tasks. Related links:Intro to Snapchat
Useful intro to a social network that is growing fast. The speaker encouraged us to sign up to learn how influencers are using Snapchat for storytelling.Sehr coole Session zu #snapchat von @sozialpr beim #bcbs16 pic.twitter.com/EdCYOuELyg
”” André Kirberg (@adkirberg) April 16, 2016
Messaging
Messaging apps are probably going to change in 2016, c.f. Facebook’s recent announcement. E.g. possibility to order services and buy products via chat like in Asian chat apps, Line and WeChat. We went off on a tangent and collected a comprehensive list of messaging apps….
I’ve learnt a lot at barcamps in the past and recommend attending one or two if you can. The same content will cost you $$$ at a commercial conference and lots more nerves. Barcamps are fun and way more relaxing.
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Snapshots
Some photos from my Flickr stream:
I’ve got this theory that fresh green colour soothes the eyes and helps to relax.
I saw 2 cats. Both look somewhat unamused. And ready to pounce on any intruders.
Saturday was sunny and warm. I like this snapshot, taken with my Moto 3 G:
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Museum Unterlinden in Colmar
On my daily bicycle commute, I kept noticing art posters, labelled Le nouvel Unterlinden. Today, I saw a Designboom article, shared by someone in my community, discussing the newly renovated museum in Colmar.
herzog & de meuron renovates and extends colmar's musée unterlinden https://t.co/qXcTozsuOY pic.twitter.com/sepN4lgU19
— designboom (@designboom) February 7, 2016
Connection made.
Advertising works. Both print and online.
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It’s February already
I listened to the latest episode of The Big Web Show this weekend. The topic was interaction architecture. Here’s a tweet pointing to the show:
Is Information Architecture a dead art, or does it matter more than ever?@abby_the_ia @zeldman
Big Web Show â„– 142https://t.co/ft9EQIw8n4— The Big Web Show (@thebigwebshow) January 22, 2016
On Sunday evening, I saw this tweet, which describes exactly what happened to our content/our attention.
Remember when we all moved out of the houses we owned into the big free hotel, and years later management changed the wallpaper to ads?
— Paul Ford (@ftrain) February 6, 2016
Maybe a good candidate for my Twitter Poetry collection?
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Recommended movie: An by Naomi Kawase
I saw this film: An by Naomi Kawase. I liked it.
It’s about freedom. It has a poetic feel. It’s slow and feels real. You get attached to the main characters.
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Best snapshot of 2015?
Here is an attempt to find my best snapshot per month for 2015.
January 2015
February 2015
March 2015
April 2015
May 2015
June 2015
July 2015
August 2015
September 2015
October 2015
November 2015
December 2015
The method:
I quickly scanned through my photos on a per month basis and selected a photo based on number of views or memories or both.History:
See past summaries for 2014 and 2013 and 2012 and 2010. -
Jetpack Publicize
Auto-sharing via Jetpack Publicize didn’t work on my previous post on chiperoni.ch. I’ll need to investigate if there is a conflict with another plugin.
Irgendetwas ist immer.
Maybe this post will be auto-shared?
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A vine a day
I’ve started using Vine on my 2nd generation Moto G. I haven’t bought a tripod or started editing vines. Some recent shots:
Everyday typography:
Everyday typography https://t.co/sCth2BNAeV
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) October 22, 2015
Chiperoni ku Basel (drizzle rain in Basel):
Chiperoni ku Basel https://t.co/2oBqHHOMzn
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) October 15, 2015
Velo culture:
Velo culture https://t.co/E0PWXp1o4M
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) October 17, 2015
Whoooosh:
Whoooosh https://t.co/XzdhTgwFtP
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) October 19, 2015
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You are not the user
Via the #confluencecon hashtag, I found some good background articles (thank you @ruthburr, @danlovejoy for tweeting).
You are NOT the user. http://t.co/bMlp1uwJqU #ConfluenceCon #UX #Marketing
— Dan Lovejoy (@danlovejoy) September 10, 2015
Take the time to understand your user. It will decrease the risk of creating an an unfavorable experience and give you an opportunity to turn them into your greatest advocate.
Guerrilla Research Tactics and Tools http://t.co/IGIsa3bC92
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) September 10, 2015
A reminder of research tools that I can use to learn more about the people that will use a website or app is provided in this article.
Guerrilla Research Tactics and Tools http://t.co/IGIsa3bC92
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) September 10, 2015
Above all else, there is no excuse for designing based off assumptions””in the immortal words of Jakob Nielsen: “Leaving the user out is not an option.”
Some new marketing tools mentioned in this slide deck by @ipullrank and a call to understand marketing technology:
Some new tools mentioned in the slides above:
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Recommend reading: Why No One Pays Attention to Your Marketing
Why No One Pays Attention to Your Marketing – Whiteboard Friday
"if you don't test, you'll never know" http://t.co/9uk0hhiSaT
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) August 16, 2015
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Helmet hair
One of my favourite jokes is to walk into the office and complain about helmet hair. I keep saying that I’ll write a confessional book how bicycle helmets ruined my hairdo and life.
I found some stats that show helmet hair is an issue for some bicycle commuters:
I enjoy my bicycle commute too much to worry about my hair.
The reasons to wear a bicycle helmet outweigh the disadvantages by far:
- It offers some protection of your brain in case of a bicycle accident.
- If you ever have a bicycle accident, you can answer the most common question with “Yes, I was wearing a bicycle helmet”.
- Today’s helmets are lightweight and look sporty.
- You can have endless conversations on helmet models, which model is the best, and how to wear the helmet correctly.
- You can make jokes about helmet hair.
Complimentary link:
I found a link on the history of bicycle helmets. And wearing a helmet is quite a recent development.How helmets have changed over the past 30 years of the #TDF: http://t.co/6xVuQFCEqz pic.twitter.com/bxf5jvRiU8
— Bicycling Magazine (@BicyclingMag) July 26, 2015
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Email Growth Hacks
I read this Forbes article on email subscription growth:
5 Email Growth Hacks From Someone Who Amassed A List of 750,000
- Optimize your top pages
- Rock the bonus content
- Create email-based courses and recycle content
- If you don’t ask, you won’t get
- Have one core goal, and reverse engineer it.
"I’m a do-er. I do and learn." http://t.co/xWVDiIc6Pp
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) July 26, 2015
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10x
Two sites that I read regularly – Moz and Hubspot – analyzed and wrote about their own blog post frequency.
Quality vs. Quantity: A 6-Month Analysis of the Age-Old Blogging Debate
Raising the Bar: A Publishing Volume Experiment on the Moz Blog
I am stunned. Flabbergasted.
How will small and medium-sized enterprises thrive in such a content marketing world?
High quality and high frequency.
My prediction has always been that we will return to media empires with gatekeepers guarding the entrances.
Citizen journalists and bloggers will only get a voice when the gatekeepers choose to let them.
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What will an SEO audit be like in 10 years?
A couple of months ago, I went thru an SEO audit. I wanted to write a blog post to reflect on what I learned. This is my feeble attempt to collect my thoughts and jot down some notes. Where available, I’ve tried to list my source links.
What is an SEO audit? In an audit, your website is analyzed and checked (often by an external SEO specialist) to be sure that it complies with SEO best practises.
12 items to consider:
- GWT is your best friend.
I spent a lot of time working my way thru Google Webmaster Tools, cleaning duplicate title and meta description tags. Duplicate title tags are a negative quality feature for Google. Sources of duplicate title tags are- non-translated title tags,
- content management software settings, e.g. showing the same mono-lingual Drupal view in several website languages.
GWT is the place to find these. Same for missing title tags. Or meta descriptions that are too short. Or the index status, which shows you how many pages are indexed.
- Follow a holistic approach. If you think you’re all set ‘cos you have had your new web design and navigation tested for usability by a user experience expert… Think again. You need to involve SEO early on in your design project. Ask for SEO guidance once you’ve gone thru the card sorting/information architecture steps. Check your designs from an SEO perspective. Write content in close collaboration with your SEO analyst.
- Question the SEO impact of new website features.
Ask your web developers about the SEO side-effects of adding new features and changes. I learnt that website changes to make a website responsive and mobile-friendly may add unintended SEO problems, e.g. ‘cos the changes added a second hidden navigation which Google cannot identify yet. - Ignore SEO noise.
A lot of the SEO advice that you read on the web is blabla. Avoid link-bait. Hearsay. Look for reputable sources and SEO specialists that really know their field. - Use the hreflang tag on multilingual websites.
Addrel="alternate" hreflang=xon all web pages. - Check the correct usage of heading tags.
Use only one h1 per page. Keep the order h2, h3, or h4. Don’t jump to an h3 after using an h1.
Check thru the design elements (e.g. navigation, footer, search button, contact form heading, teaser text blocks, or similar for hidden h1s or h2s). - Improve h1 content.
A heading 1 should provide a good summary of what to expect on the web page. Include keywords. - Internal linking.
Add relevant internal links. Add an on-page sitemap. Use footer links for important landing pages, not to repeat the navigation. Never use any hidden sub-page menus. Make sure you use dropdown menus that can be parsed by Google. - Clean up any 302 redirects that may have been added by the content management system.
- Repair or replace all internal broken links. Tool tip: I used Integrity for Mac.
- Page speed matters.
Check Google Page Speed Insight to improve the loading time of your site. - Check the XML sitemap.
The XML sitemap should only include pages with status code 200. Use the real, final URL in the XML sitemap, not the CMS page ID.
What will an SEO audit look like in 10 years? That is an intriguing question. I have no idea which way SEO will go. My guess is as good as yours. I do know that SEO is getting quite complex. And may even be replaced by *something* entirely new. If you are a website manager, my advice is to dig in and ask lots of questions.
Look at all aspects. Take a holistic approach. Try to form a cross-functional team (designer, ux researcher, web developer, SEO expert, content writer).
If you do search on Google, remember the search engine result on page 1 is not necessarily the best content, but the best optimized content. Use Google search operators to get you off the beaten track. And there are alternatives like DuckDuckGo and Wolfram Alpha, which we should support more to avoid monopoly and manipulation.
Related links
GWT resources:
http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2014/05/21/how-to-use-google-webmaster-tools-for-seo/On-page factors:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/on-page-factorsDuplicate content:
http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/duplicate-content-problems/
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66359?hl=enHow to carry out a content audit:
https://moz.com/blog/content-audit-tutorialTechnical Site Audit Checklist: 2015 Edition:
https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015Disclaimer:
All mistakes are my own. Please let me know if I got something really wrong. I’m here to learn. These notes help me to reflect and learn. - GWT is your best friend.
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Notes and photos from #UXcampch
Some notes and photos from Saturday’s UX camp in Zürich:
Adrian Sameli took us thru the process of building infographics. His tip on tools to use: Excel and Adobe Illustrator. He tried one or two infographic tools but didn’t like them much. In the discussion we looked at d3js.org.
Next, I attended a session on atomic design. Design systems not pages.
Developers need to agree early on with designers on the semantics of the smallest, small and medium building blocks. These then are used in templates to build pages.
Background reading: Atomic design by Brad Frost.
Focus on identifying modules, semantics and adding markup first.
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
The discussion after the presentation got straight to the daily challenges. Questions like
- How do you get developers to use the existing pattern? Nobody reads documentation. In an ideal world, developer and designer sit in the same room and discuss the initial elements and define the markup. In real life the UX team may be much smaller than the developer team and might be geographically distributed, etc.
- Is anybody using Pattern Lab in real-life projects? Very few projects get paid to build a pattern library. Pattern Lab is really more for larger projects due to the effort involved. How can this be improved?
Next, I listened to Simone Reichlin talk about the RITE method vs traditional user tests.
About the RITE method http://t.co/MzHAlYCRsI
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
Main idea: Often you see some obvious problems in your UX design after your first or second test person. Instead of going thru the whole test with the remaining test participants, change the prototype with your improvement between tests. And then continue testing your changed prototype.
Main requirement: Designer needs to watch the user test. This shortens discussion time afterwards.
Tools used: Sketch and inVision.Don’t change too much. Follow Medlock’s classification.
Want to try RITE? Start with the traditional method first. Only use RITE after you have gained some experience in carrying out user tests.
Prio 1 obvious cause, quick solution, implement the fix and test with the next participant.
— âœ___CollectThisTweet (@nchenga) May 16, 2015
Next:
A very good session by Vincent van der Lubbe on creating space in conversations. And we even got a reference sheet to take home. The hard part is putting this into practise.
Fidel Thomet presented his B.A. project, Flaneur.io. It’s a Chrome extension to capture digital findings in form of text fragments gathered while browsing the web.
We briefly looked at Marian Dörk’s PivotPaths. This podcast by datastori.es was recommended.
Unknown, useless fact about me:
Once upon a time, I had to write a uni term paper on Walter Benjamin and Paris in the 19th Century.My snapshots are on Flickr.
Disclaimer:
All mistakes are my own. Please let me know if I got something really wrong. I’m here to learn. These notes help me to reflect and learn.
