This past weekend, a community of passionate WordPressers came together in the sunny, beautiful city of Los Angeles. We couldn’t have asked for better weather, vibes, and people in The City of Angels. Over 400 visitors from surrounding areas of LA came ready to absorb the rich knowledge of all things WordPress.
Photo Credit – Peter Minges
There are so many things to love about WordCamp. The one thing that makes these events uniquely awesome is it’s inclusion of different people of all backgrounds, skills, and interests. This made for a comfortable, safe environment to truly learn and explore the open-source world of WP. Huge shoutout to the speech-to-text reporters...
Atomic Blocks is one of the most popular and most downloaded libraries of beautiful, responsive, and customizable blocks for WordPress 5.0. In addition to giving users the ability to quickly add great-looking elements to their web pages without touching a line of code, Atomic Blocks also offers
This week, we explore the Academy Pro theme, a theme for online course creators, membership site owners, and educational content marketers. In a world where so many schools, institutions, educators and universities are looking for innovative ways to more effectively reach students, the Academy Pro
In this panel, Brunner will be joined by popular Austin figures as they discuss who and what has been the major change agent in Austin. Brunner will represent technology while other panelists will represent food and film. Joe Nick Patoski, author of Austin to ATX: The Hippies, Pickers, Slackers
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Melissa Hathaway came across our radar recently when President Obama tasked the former Bush administration aide with leading a 60-day review of Bush’s Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative; a largely classified, purported $30 billion, multi phase plan to address cybersecurity issues
9 Blockchains Transforming the Way We Pay, Play, and Work
Look past digital currencies’ nosebleed pricing volatility, and you’ll discover a robust, decentralized, secure database. Brands and technologists are quickly figuring out how to put this powerful ledger to good use. Here are several real-world examples that demonstrate cryptos’
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
Finally, Hathaway sees this as a unique opportunity for the United States to work with countries around the world, and with organizations on an extremely local level. “We cannot succeed if our government works in isolation,” she added. It requires “leading from the top” from
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Why are we willing to sleep in strangers’ beds, or conversely, let strangers into our homes? We do so because Airbnb has established a trusted, secure, and easy to use customer experience. Similar to Rent the Runway, Airbnb is a player in the growing “sharing” economy. The peer-to-peer online
a look at wordcamp los angeles 2018 .
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s
Sympathy vs. Empathy in UX
If you’ve been with your team for a while, you may have a good idea of the types of erroneous assumptions it tends to make. Create specific guidelines that can act as a check point against your team’s bad habits, especially when it comes to empathy. For example, if your team is prone to not
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
It used to be that you would buy two or three nice outfits to have in your wardrobe and would rotate them for special events. But in today’s era, with social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, all your friends will see what you wear, whether they go to the same event or not. And even
Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design
That mainstream corporate websites make blatant usability mistakes is understandable because most members of their teams aren't grounded in graduate degrees in human-computer interaction. (That's why I have recently added foundational courses, such as The Human Mind, to my usability conference
Indicators, Validations, and Notifications: Pick the Correct Communication Option
Three common approaches for status communication include validation, notifications, and status indicators. These terms are used sometimes interchangeably in product design, but they stand for different communication methods that should be used in different circumstances. Understanding the
Helpful Filter Categories and Values for Better UX
Within filter categories, you’ll need to decide how to order the filter values. For numerical filter values, the preferred way is to sort them from lowest to highest (for price ranges) or vice versa (for example, for average customer ratings). When the filter values are words, the default
a look at wordcamp los angeles 2018 .
Wishlists, Gift Certificates, and Gift Giving in E-Commerce
Gift-related shopping often puts greater emphasis on established e-commerce guidelines or alters their interpretation. For example, it's always been a guideline to disclose shipping & handling, sales taxes, and any other charges before you ask users for personal information. When shopping with
Ecommerce UX Trends: User Research Update
Many sites are adding details to reviews: relevant details about the person writing the review, such as gender or age, or particular product criteria for evaluation, such as sizing or quality. Sites are recognizing top contributors and letting readers rate the value of the review. They are
Case Study: Iterative Design and Prototype Testing of the NN/g Homepage
We learned something new with each round. Feedback was categorized into four themes: copy, architecture, layout, and visual style. Depending on the feedback, we tweaked one or multiple aspects of the page. In some cases, we only needed to tweak a sentence or make something higher contrast; in other
The Role of Enhancement in Web Design
Enhancements that become standards are an ideal, gentle route for innovations in user-interface design. If you are thinking to introduce a new feature, start by providing it as an enhancement. But beware, the road from enhancement to standard is full of temptations, and it’s easy for a smart UI
A Model for Conducting UX Workshops and Exercises
Activities should always begin with brief introduction and explanation. This can be kept brief (in the nature of a summary) if all team members have participated in many previous activities of the current type, or if they all participated in the same type of activity very recently. If some
The Biggest Hacking Risk? Your Employees
Consider something as seemingly innocuous as your printers. These can be easily hijacked and sent print jobs, such as when a hacker named “Weev” was able to access public computers nationwide and print anti-Semitic literature. Kevin Pickhardt, CEO of enterprise print solutions provider Pharos
Is Business Headed for a Cognitive-First Future?
And that’s a big deal: DataRPM has calculated that a 1 percent improvement in productivity across the manufacturing industry can result in $500 million in annual savings. Predicting anomalies can result in a 70 percent elimination of breakdowns, the firm says. With McKinsey predicting the IoT
Images of Fitbit next smartwatch reveal heart-rate improvements
Fitbit is on schedule, as its boss James Park keeps reminding us, to launch its next smartwatch by the end of the year. We don’t know what the smartwatch will be called, though Blaze 2 seems likely, but thanks to leaks we know its design and some of the hardware improvements. Images obtained by
How to Fail Your Way to Success
The business plan is a blueprint for the financials and can give basic indications of whether what you are thinking of is even worth doing at all. The problem is that these business plans often stop you from employing the basic trial and error methodology adopted by most the most successful
a look at wordcamp los angeles 2018 .
7 Business Killers — Thoughts Startups Ought to Consider
The boomers are also the ones that are often trusted with the reviews for the new customer. Ask the boomer for reviews about your services — they genuinely want to help you and will follow through with a recommendation. Use them for your major source in a referral campaign and thus helps your
7 Best Free Tools for Bootstrapped Startups
The free version of SurveyGizmo lets you have three surveys open at a time. You can collect up to 100 responses per survey and ask questions with a variety of answer styles (multiple choice, short answer, rating scale, etc.). Again, this tool is better suited to businesses with smaller customer
A Look at WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 . | Scrolling and Attention
Scrolling and Attention
Even with lists or information presented in a structured way, people use more eye gazes (and thus reading time) for the top of the page, as they need to understand how the page is organized. Once they do so, they tend to focus very efficiently only on the information relevant to the task at hand
Iterative Design and Testing of Icon Usability
The second row shows our next round of attempts where a person was used to represent the developers. As you can see, we couldn't restrain ourselves from having a propellerhead despite the fact that we had rejected this aspect from the first iteration of the home page. The first developer icon was
The Roots of Minimalism in Web Design
Although there is some debate about what exactly qualifies as minimalist web design, there are a few common features that most designers can agree upon. These include flat textures, limited color palettes, and the use of negative space. These and other specific characteristics and their frequency
