The Concept of Brand: A Lesson from Edward “Blackbeard” Teach
Edward Teach, the pirate better known as Blackbeard, is one of the most infamous pillagers in history. More relevant to our interests, however, is that he was also a man who understood the importance of creating an enduring impression. In short, he understood the value of brand.
Before a siege, Blackbeard dressed himself in a dark heavy coat and captain’s hat to accentuate his domineering stature. He strapped pistols to his chest and tucked lit, smoking fuses under his hat and in his beard to create an image reminiscent of the devil himself having just emerged from some smoky brimstone...
Visibility of system status The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. (Read full article on visibility of system status.) Match between system and the real world The system should speak the users' language, with words
High-level managers often have pressing decisions to make after a merger, and thus, they may step away from the day-to-day, detailed intranet-design decisions. This lack of management attention allows the intranet team to dig and work, eliminates (albeit temporarily) some of the politics associated
You can always blend the two methods! You could conduct a synchronous ideation kickoff meeting to talk through the issue at hand and perhaps capture some of the team’s initial ideas, then open up a shared document or thread for people to contribute additional ideas asynchronously for a designated
Businesses Broke Ground on Blockchain. What Can Civic Groups Learn?
Nonprofit civic advocates aren’t short on ideas, either. One of the boldest is from Democracy.Earth, which wants to create a blockchain-based social network where users can spend “vote tokens” to indicate their preference on any number of private and public issues. A homeowner’s association
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
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’
How to Report Errors in Forms: 10 Design Guidelines
If the same error occurs repeatedly (usually 3 times or more in a single form-filling attempt), it is often an indication of a serious problem in the user interface. Quite possibly, your error messages are insufficiently helpful, but there could also be another mismatch between the design and
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Slider Design: Rules of Thumb
When designing a usable UI we must consider the context in which the interface will be used. For mobile design in particular, users often hold their device in one hand while doing other activities—watching television, walking, or even driving. In such circumstances it can be daunting to tap and
Instructional Overlays and Coach Marks for Mobile Apps
Users cannot be expected to read a manual before using your app. People do not launch an app to spend time learning how to use the interface, but rather to complete a task in as short an amount of time as possible, using the least amount of effort possible. This is the paradox of the active user
Good UX: What I Learned While Working in Restaurants
No one likes to be surprised by some rigid rule that prevents them from getting what they need (or forces them to accept something they don’t want). Explain the policy, but meet customer needs within reason. Mashed potatoes instead of fries? Hold the special sauce? Not a problem. Don’t be that
6 Rules for Persuasive Storytelling
Along with understanding the terminology of your audience, you need to know what your audience members care about. Are they only interested in how much money the product will cost? Do they have a strict timeline they need to adhere to? These are concerns that will be running through their minds as
Decision Making in the Ecommerce Shopping Cart: 4 Tips For Supporting Users
The minicart pattern also eliminates the step in the shopping process where users can confirm what items are in the cart and make any edits, selections, or deletions. Editing the cart becomes secondary to proceeding through checkout, and as such, may become a distraction during the checkout
Mobile's New Power Couple: PWA and AMP
Soon, everyone got on board and organizations began creating mobile versions of their site. However, inefficient and clunky infrastructure left users dependent on their desktop. Finally, the mobile web reached a point of maturation with the creation of Responsive Web Design. Using the same code for
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WP Engine Culture Recognized at Greater Austin Business Awards
The annual Greater Austin Business Awards competition, presented by The Austin Chamber of Commerce, is designed to honor excellence in all aspects of business. In order to promote awareness and perpetuate good practices, the Awards recognize companies and organization in the Austin region for
WP Engine Raises $30K for Central Texas Food Bank
WP Engine employees are rarely hungry. Our office kitchens are fully stocked with cereal and snacks, and lunch is catered Monday through Thursday, every week, for the entire team. Unlike the 46,000 people who rely on Central Texas Food Bank for food assistance every week, our employees don’t have
Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens
The site type influences user expectations. For example, teens expect ecommerce and brand sites to look professional, and informational sites to look simple and polished. For the latter sites, presenting interesting content in a clear manner is much more attractive than experimenting with new
Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability
In the ideal process, you'd first conduct competitive testing to get deep insights into user needs and behaviors with the class of functionality you're designing. Next, you'd proceed to parallel design to explore a wide range of solutions to this design problem. Finally, you'd go through many
Design Thinking Builds Strong Teams
This shared vocabulary comprises words, concepts, ideas that refer to common team experiences and processes. For example, during the empathize phase of design thinking, the team strives to understand what users think and do when they try to accomplish a specific goal — “Sam is our new user and
3 High-Tech Ways Companies Are Fighting Cybercrime Right Now
This is particularly worrisome given the massive recent increase in ransomware, in which cybercriminals demand payment or will lock users or companies out of their data or systems. In fact, according to the Cisco’s “2017 Annual Cybersecurity Report,” ransomware is growing 350 percent each
Data Lake vs. Data Warehouse: Which Is the Best Data Architecture?
Complicating things further is the “data marketplace.” Unlike the first two concepts, this isn’t an architecture but rather an interface to a data lake that enables those outside of the IT team, such as business analysts, to its contents. Through a search function, it allows users
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
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
The hardest thing about the re-design was integrating the tableless CSS design into Radio Userland. I had to do some jiggery-pokery with the Radio Userland templates and macros, and the CSS implementation is not yet complete. I’ve had to temporarily remove my blogroll and topicroll, along
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8 Major Legal Risks Faced By Startups
One of the most important decisions that new business owners have to make is regarding an appropriate legal type for their new venture. The legal type of business chosen has an impact on the funding options for the company, its tax responsibilities, and the personal liability of the owners. The
Standardizing “Tribal Knowledge”: It’s Time for Your Company to Grow Up
Time and time again, I’ve noticed that information gets locked inside the minds and computers of employees, and, as a result, not shared with wider teams. That lack of communication can inhibit both ongoing operations and further innovation and expansion — and it becomes an even more
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age | No More Pogo Sticking: Protect Users from Wasted Clicks
No More Pogo Sticking: Protect Users from Wasted Clicks
Pogo-stick behavior on the Redbox website: After specifying a kiosk location, the list of movies still included options not available to rent at the chosen kiosk. This did not match the expectation set by selecting a location, and forced me to pogo stick through each movie in the list until an
Website Logo Placement for Maximum Brand Recall
There is no formula that can tell you exactly what your website should look like. But it’s clear from this research that you can’t rely on shortcuts like disregarding standard web conventions to make your site look special. People are attracted to novelty, but we’re also creatures of habit
Website Response Times
In a recent study for our work on Brand as Experience (now a full-day training course on branding and UX), we asked users what they thought about various websites they had used in the past. So, their responses were based not on immediate use (as in normal usability studies), but on whatever past
