Matt Mullenweg delivered the State of the Word in Nashville, Tennessee this past weekend. The speech was almost immediately following the release of WordPress’ new editor, Gutenberg. The editor’s progress and release have been much anticipated by the WordPress community. This State of the Word was the first time Mullenweg had addressed the WordPress community since Gutenberg’s release just two days earlier.
Mullenweg began the talk by offering the audience a perspective. “With so much going on, I’d like to give WordPress a chance to reintroduce introduce itself,” he said. “WordPress isn’t a physical thing, it’s not a set of code. It’s kind of an idea. It only exists in...
Created in 2002, The Stevie Awards honor and generate public recognition of the achievements and positive contributions of organizations and working professionals worldwide. Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevies are awarded during The Annual International Business Awards, an international
Earlier this year, we honored Webby for Good nominees using WordPress to bring positive changes to the world. On November 15th, 2018 industry experts and technology innovators from across the EU will meet for the Webby’s European sister show, The Lovie Awards. Winners are selected for creating a
Domain Name Servers (DNS) are the equivalent of The Yellow Pages for the Internet. They store and maintain a directory of domain names and translate them to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Humans access information online via domain names like wpengine.com and web browsers communicate via IP
How Blockchain Can Solve Major Problems for Gig Economy Freelancers
The modern workplace includes a ridiculous number of freelancers and third-party service providers. Despite this prevalence, a survey by the Freelancers Union shows that 50 percent of freelancers have trouble getting paid for their work. Delayed payments are the main issue, though one-third of
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
These days, many healthcare institutions are using the power of technology to help patients stay in their homes and out of the hospital. Big data and the Internet of Things have advanced to allow remote monitoring for patients in their own homes. Entrepreneurs taking the helm of app building for
When Will You Be Able to Use Cryptocurrency to Buy a Pack of Gum?
One of the best reasons to hitch your wagon to cryptocurrency is its ability to curtail, if not eliminate, identity theft. Crypto is protected by a private key that should be known only to the owner. If you never share the key, it theoretically should never be stolen. However, the anonymity that
Store Finders: Why People Still Need Locator Links
FAQ pages are also often an appropriate place to turn users toward the locator tool. For instance, when researching how to print a photo on canvas on the FedEx website, a study participant read through the FAQs for the print-on-canvas service and found a link to the locator within the answer to the
recapping the state of the word 2018
Why Personas Fail
Personas do work — or, more accurately, they often work. But humans have a great ability to generalize from a single observation, so it’s understandable that somebody could sour on personas (or any UX technique) if her one experience was a bad one. You can appeal to the logical side of most
‘Our Users Are Everyone’: Designing Mass-Market Products for Large User Audiences
Imagine you’re designing the website for a city-transportation system used by both local commuters and tourists. If you plan a usability study with 10 people and let anyone participate, you could easily end up with 9 commuters and 1 tourist. (Or even worse: 10 commuters, if you recruit a
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Don’t expect to get “buy-in” and foster interest in your journey map by simply sending a lovely graphic as an email attachment. Make it a living interactive document that people can be a part of. Bring up your story in meetings and conversations to promote a narrative that others believe in
Confirmation Dialogs Can Prevent User Errors (If Not Overused)
There is admittedly a tension between guidelines #1 and #2: you want to warn against serious consequences, but you don’t want to warn so often that the warning is overlooked and the answer becomes an automated behavior. The solution is to conduct a task analysis to determine the severity of
Radio Buttons: Always Select One?
Some designers fear that people won’t see a default selection option. Or an organization’s attorneys or federal agencies mandate that users actively click and accept a choice. In some of these situations designs offer radios with no default selection. The user may be unable to submit a form
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
The entire point of the journey-mapping process is to uncover gaps in the user experience (which are particularly common in omnichannel journeys), and then take action to optimize the experience. Insights and ownership are critical elements that are often overlooked. Any insights that emerge from
recapping the state of the word 2018
Text Scanning Patterns: Eyetracking Evidence
The commitment pattern demonstrates traditional reading, not scanning. In this pattern, users fixate on all or most content words in the text passage. This pattern usually occurs when users are very interested or very motivated to read the content (for example, because they are studying for a test
Don't Force Users to Register Before They Can Buy
This doesn’t need to be the case. When a user is making a purchase, typically all the information needed for registration is already being requested of the user. Sites normally ask for information needed for the transaction, including name, shipping, and billing information. In addition, sites
Iterative Design of User Interfaces
The cash register system was a point of sales application for a chain of men's clothes stores in Copenhagen. A computerized cash register with a built-in alphanumeric screen allowed sales clerks to perform tasks like selling specific pieces of merchandise with payment received as cash, debit card
Adding an Item to a Shopping Cart: Provide Clear, Persistent Feedback
Stay away from disappearing overlays that quickly fade from view. The transient nature of these popovers prevents users from easily reviewing what specifically ended up in the cart — were the size and the color right? Viewing the feedback popover becomes a race against time and can create stress
The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
Icon labels help people make decisions faster: they give good information scent about what will come next. Labels should still be used for newer icons, such as the three-line menu (hamburger) icon. The map-marker icon is another icon with a still cloudy meaning and inconsistent use. Sometimes it
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
Quick Streaming from Anywhere: 10 Best VPNs for IPTV
This specific VPN software is often used by people who wish to have their content streamed at a blazing fast speed. The connections of IPVanish have a superfast speed that would allow you to watch videos without them slowing down. In addition to this, IPVanish also provides its users with advanced
To Prevent Fraud, Healthcare Organizations Must Streamline Their Data Processes
In 2018, Venmo suffered from a high volume of fraudulent transactions. Instead of taking measures to tightly control its data, the company responded by simply eliminating certain features. Only 2 percent of customers conducted transactions via the Venmo website, but the website accounted for 15
Despite What You Hear, You Don’t Need VC Funding
Doing sales yourself also demonstrates a commitment to your customers. On one hand, they’re likelier to make a purchase when they have the ear of the company founder and can get potential issues addressed rapidly. But more importantly, they’re likelier to refer you to other customers. This
recapping the state of the word 2018
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
5 Ways Blockchain Startups Can Appeal to Enterprises
A well-designed governing body has the incentive to improve the network, grow the network, and create a fair return for all users. Fair return is only possible, though, if the network has rules for data management, code management, and node control as early as possible. It can only grow if everyone
Recapping the State of the Word 2018 | Needy Design Patterns: Please-Don’t-Go Popups & Get-Back-to-Me Tabs
The exit popup can’t tell the difference. Imagine that a user is engaging in page parking to help her research a topic. She starts with a Google query, and then opens up several results into new tabs rapidly. The user begins moving through each tab, closing some that are irrelevant, but saving
UX Research Cheat Sheet
User-experience research methods are great at producing data and insights, while ongoing activities help get the right things done. Alongside R&D, ongoing UX activities can make everyone’s efforts more effective and valuable. At every stage in the design process, different UX methods can keep
Centered Logos Hurt Website Navigation
Based on these observations, it’s clear that left-aligned logos are better than centered logos for supporting user navigation to the homepage. Note that the left-logo sites in this study still caused some homepage-navigation errors (although far fewer than the centered-logo sites). This is
