Last week, some of the most progressive marketers and innovative thinkers using WordPress came together at the 2018 WP Engine Summit. Attendees left exhilarated and inspired to push their brands and agencies forward faster. The theme of this year’s Summit was Breakthrough. Insight into the Internet’s most forward-thinking trends like AI, voice technology, AMP, and PWA energized attendees with the knowledge and inspiration to fuel their professional breakthroughs. Additionally, Becky Hammon, Assistant Coach to the San Antonio Spurs, delivered a keynote speech to help ignite personal breakthroughs.
To conclude the Summit, we heard from WP Engine leaders who offered a look into the WP Engine roadmap. This included a look...
As Austin’s tech scene has evolved from semiconductors to startups, Heather added that new tech companies have consistently had to define their corporate identities. While some of Austin’s legacy technology businesses have jumped out as philanthropic leaders, she said that new, larger
WordPress is capable of powering strong eCommerce sites. You can run your entire business with the help of the Outfitter Pro Theme. This theme puts the focus directly on your products. With a brief description of your company at the top, the rest of the page is dedicated to showcasing what you’re
Heather’s leadership at WP Engine has been instrumental in helping the company build an enduring, predictable business, particularly after a key investment from Silver Lake last January, as well as the recent acquisition of StudioPress. Heather also heads a diverse leadership team and has
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’
Emerging Technologies are Banding Together to Accelerate Big Data’s Growth
Thanks to the growth of the internet, the rate at which new information is being released is growing exponentially. Accelerating big data between machines. We are in an age when communication is not just between human beings. Machines are now the go-to for connections between the people to people
The Future of Blockchain: Technology Partnerships with AI, Bots, and IoT
A new group is working toward getting 100 cities to implement the same smart city standards and connect with each other for further benefits. Coin Telegraph offered four case studies on how blockchain, AI, and connected devices are helping develop the cities of the future. For example
Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions
Taking fuzzy, abstract concepts and making them tangible enhance team communication and creates common ground. It’s also make it easy for a team member to immediately spot something on the map and say, “that’s not right.” Maybe your colleague is right, and something wasn’t captured
shifts a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit the
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
In their definition of user experience, Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen claim that “the first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother.” Brands that choose to address an unmet user need at the core of their business are
Intranet Design After a Merger or Acquisition
The employee address book is a killer app on most intranets, and is of dire importance post merger, so employees can contact the right colleagues. Include employee profile documents with information about a person’s skills and knowledge. Additionally, organization charts that show where each
Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens
Teens are wired. Technology is so integrated with teenagers’ lives that creating useful and usable websites and apps for them is more critical than ever. To succeed in a world where the next best thing is a click away and text message interruptions are the rule, not the exception, website and app
The Anti-Mac User Interface (Don Gentner and Jakob Nielsen)
Metaphors not only constrain and mislead users, they can also limit designers' ability to invent more powerful interface mechanisms. For example, we are as guilty as anybody for using the tired book metaphor: When we recently designed the user interface to 300MB worth of Sun's online documentation
Wireflows: A UX Deliverable for Workflows and Apps
Wireflows emerged as a common practice among teams designing mobile apps, where each step in the flowchart is represented by a wireframe for a full mobile-screen design. Because of the relatively small size of mobile screens, actual page designs (i.e., wireframes) could easily replace abstract
Tesla’s Touchscreen UI: A Case Study of Car-Dashboard User Interface
The other factor in target-acquisition time is the target size: the larger the button, the faster it will be reached. Yet, with version 9, Tesla decided to make its targets smaller (presumably in order to fit more options in the visible menu bar — 7 in version 8 compared with 10 or 11 in version
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Alternative Payment Methods Enable International Purchases
While bank transfers used to take days and seemingly a lot of work to set up (and, in the U.S., consumers rarely if ever transfer money for casual use), online banking has improved, and transfers are fast and easy in many parts of the world. For example, in many countries in Latin America, payment
Status Trackers and Progress Updates: 16 Design Guidelines
USCIS’ status tracker consists of a prominent status update in the center panel and previous updates below (to the left). There was a long period of no update between the 19th September and the 3rd December. Also, while the Next Steps panel is a useful concept, the content — We will notify you
Flat-Design Best Practices
Even if your organization’s characteristics fit that list, we usually advise against a totally flat UI in most situations. There are some cases where a totally flat design won’t do much harm — in designer portfolios or very simple marketing sites, for example. Such sites those can benefit
Long-Term Exposure to Flat Design: How the Trend Slowly Makes Users Less Efficient
You may ask: isn’t it a good thing if users are forced to pay more attention to language and placement of design elements on the screen? In our course on the foundations of HCI we teach that deep processing is better for memory than shallow processing (in other words, processing the meaning and
Ideation in Practice: How Effective UX Teams Generate Ideas
Ideation as a step in the design process does not seem to be widely recognized across many organizations. Teams struggle with garnering management support to allow them the time for both user research and ideation sessions, and to get the level of multidisciplinary involvement needed to generate a
6 Emerging Cyber Threats to Lookout for in 2019
2018 showed us an accelerated growth in cyber threat activities. Data breaches, attacks using malicious software and insider threats were among the most familiar forms of attack. Many well-known organizations suffered from these cybersecurity disasters and compromised data of millions of users
We get Smarter with the Internet of Things (IoT) and so do Cities
Storing, processing and organizing this data is crucial in generating useful results for the coming issues on this topic. Essentially, for any system to work, its important to select a number of developmental designs and priorities in a planned manner. In this way, you’ll be able to generate more
A 60-Second Trailer of the 60-Day Report on Cybersecurity
She explained that the original design of the Internet was driven more by considerations of interoperability rather than security, and as a result we are now faced with almost insurmountable issues. Some examples include online criminals who steal our information, mass bandits who have the ability
5 Ways Blockchain Startups Can Appeal to Enterprises
Blockchain technology offers a significant boost to productivity. Today’s enterprises mostly operate on software purchased from major vendors like SAP, Oracle, or Microsoft. When they work with business partners that have different systems, those systems don’t always agree on details like order
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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
How to Battle Anxiety and Depression as an Entrepreneur
However, 30 percent of entrepreneurs (almost 1 in 3) experience depression in their lives. There are many reasons for this. First, society puts a lot of pressure on the entrepreneur to succeed. Small business owners work extended work hours. They often struggle to form a vibrant personal life. The
A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit | Kill the 53-Day Meme
Kill the 53-Day Meme
Unfortunately, it is proving to be almost impossible to stop writers (whether journalists or Usenet posters) from citing this number: it has taken on a life of its own, as people cite it based on secondary sources (earlier articles) instead of primary sources (direct interviews with me). The 53-day
Direct Access vs. Sequential Access: UX Definition
With the advent of responsive web design, uncommonly long pages proliferate not only on mobile, but also on the desktop. A long page that contains a variety of content forces the user to scroll down with the hope that they will find something relevant. Yes, users scroll, but only if tempted by the
Minimize the Need for Customer Service to Improve the Omnichannel UX
We often design for the happy path through our products and services and we don’t necessarily plan for direct customer contact to be part of their journey, but customers often still need one-on-one support to overcome issues. Understanding the common reasons why customers make contact and
