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...
What is a child theme? A child theme works in combination with the parent theme. With regards to Genesis, child themes serve as a sort of skin that can change the way a theme looks, while relying on the functionality of its parent theme (in this case, Genesis). Child themes offer users the added
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
Last week, WP Engine employees from all over the U.S. came together at our Austin headquarters for the first biannual All-Hands event of 2019. All Hands is a two-day event in which employees from other offices and teams around the country get the chance to collaborate and strategize with one
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
Can the blockchain and IoT solve international freight’s issues?
DS: IOTA is a distributed ledger that can be used for transactional settlements as well as data transfers. Because of the properties of IOTA — namely, its scalability, lightweight-ness and lack of transaction fees – it’s the perfect solution for the Internet of Things. We see IOTA as
Decentralized P2P Lending Services vs Networks
Trustlines Network is an Ethereum-based P2P platform for creating IOU networks. Based on the original concept behind Ripple, introduced by Ryan Fugger in 2004, the Trustlines Network will allow users to generate money and make secure payments among themselves. The high-level idea is that
When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods
Most of the methods in the chart can move along one or more dimensions, and some do so even in the same study, usually to satisfy multiple goals. For example, field studies can focus on what people say (ethnographic interviews) or what they do (extended observations); desirability studies and card
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Airbnb makes it easy to satisfy the needs of these travelers by connecting them with owners who want to make an extra dollar by renting out their property. Before Airbnb, sites such as Home Away and property-management agencies used to connect owners with interested renters, but these were focused
Marking Required Fields in Forms
Forms are no fun. They require users to do a lot of work. In fact, many forms end up being abandoned because filling them is too hard or too tedious. To increase the chance that your form will get completed, minimize the effort that your users will have to put in and the information that they need
Why Personas Fail
The truth is; Yes, they do already know a ton about customers, so it’s sometimes hard to justify doing research on a body of people you have been working with for years. In these situations, it is beneficial to think of personas and present them as an alignment tool rather than a research
Wireflows: A UX Deliverable for Workflows and Apps
While wireflows excel at showing task flows on apps and dynamic websites where the content or layout on each page changes based on user interactions, they can also be suitable for documenting task flows in traditional static websites. Be cautious, however, about using wireflows to document static
Toggle-Switch Guidelines
If immediate results are not achievable or seem ill-suited, an alternative (i.e. radio buttons or a single checkbox — see chart above) should be used instead. If you’re considering including toggles in long forms where other types of form fields are present, and users will need to click a
Is Poor Usability Killing E-Commerce?
In 1997, I predicted that specialized sites will generate most of the Web's value. My assumptions then were somewhat too optimistic: I assumed that Web advertising would generate one cent per page view, and that the Web economy's total value would amount to $1.3 trillion by now. As it turns out
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
The State of Transactional Email
In preparation for the fourth edition of our report on transactional email and confirmation messages (part of our Ecommerce User Experience report series), we conducted two user research studies: in-person usability testing, and a longitudinal diary study. The main types of transactional email
Large Devices Preferred for Important Tasks
Today, smartphones play a larger role in our lives, and as a consequence, users are more familiar and comfortable with mobile than they used to be. For example, in 2010, researchers at the University of Alberta found that reading comprehension was impaired when people read content from a mobile
Test Paper Prototypes to Save Time and Money: The Mozilla Case Study
The designer made the prototypes using OmniGraffle, and we printed them onto tabloid paper and cut them to size. Because there was no code to change, this prototyping method allowed us to make design changes quickly during testing. Firefox users helped progress the designs rapidly toward better
Expandable Menus: Pull-Down, Square, or Pie?
Marking menus are well suited for contextual use, being more efficient because users do not need to travel the whole route to the target, but they can just start moving towards the target. In expert mode, the menu also saves users an extra step (that of expanding the menu and inspecting the items
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes of 2008
Because I used Liste Rouge Paris as a bad example under Mistake #1a, I thought I'd play nice and use them as a good example here. The tailor offers 15 different collar styles (among many other options) for people ordering custom-designed shirts. Luckily, they also provide good defaults for each of
Rapid Experiments are Key to Making AI Technology Buy vs Build Decisions
As enterprises embrace AI and work towards integrating it increasingly into their business processes, one of the key decisions they are all having to make is whether to buy or build the AI components that will drive their enterprises into the future. More than 61 percent of businesses said they
The Positive Evolution of Your Business Depends on the Tech Revolution
Technology has also made it easier for everyone to stay in touch. Coworkers and employees can always be reached within minutes via texting or video chat. You can send targeted promotional email blasts to prequalified customers who are shopping at nearby businesses. Mobile technology almost
RW Q&A: Monisha Perkash, founder of Lumo Bodytech
Perkash came up with the idea for Lumo seeing her co-founder and CTO, Andrew Chang, suffering from debilitating back pain. Perkash is married to a spine and sports physician, so she could understand how important posture really was. Perkash advised Andrew to attend a posture class and as a result
Elements to Help You Develop Emotional Intelligence
The routine begins to make us feel as if we are filled with anxiety and stress, and we allow that emotion to control us throughout the day. If there is an emotion which is present in your mind or body at any one moment, it’s because we created that emotion to be present there. By knowing where
a look back at the 2018 wp engine summit
9 Steps to Assess Whether a Startup is Suitable for Investment
Also, keep in mind the presence of earning potential, sustainable competitive advantage and potential market share. Finally, the “what” is focusing on the questions regarding the list of top customers, strategic relationships. Suppliers need to be considered, as well as on the thorough analysis
How to Manage Conflict at Work
Did you know that 36% of workers in the U.S. are stressed? The loss of productivity from stress-related issues ends up costing U.S. businesses $30 billion annually in lost workdays. Stress is one of the major factors affecting people on the job, and, unfortunately, it’s also a common cause of
A Look Back at the 2018 WP Engine Summit | Simplicity Wins over Abundance of Choice
Simplicity Wins over Abundance of Choice
Filling up a cup with soda is an activity that usually takes less than 10 seconds. With these fancy machines, some people need more than a minute to complete this simple task. New customers struggle to figure out an unfamiliar touch interface consisting of multiple menu levels. And some end up
Homepage Design Changes
Although both versions have 7 tabs, the newer design's tabs reached all the way across the page and the color scheme indicating the selected tab was changed. More important, the actual navigation categories were also changed. The 2002 IA categories were Front Page, Enterprise, E-Business
Can Hated Design Elements Be Made to Work?
That said, PDF has its uses — they're just not in the realm of interactive information access. When people want to download a report for later reference, PDF shines. Indeed, I use it myself for this purpose. (As an example, see our report on social media usability, which is available for free
