Last week, WP Engine employees from our Limerick and London offices came together for the bi-annual All Hands event in Limerick. All Hands is a 2-day event where employees come to engage with, collaborate, and strategize with employees from other offices. This year’s theme was “Boldly Go” in honor of the famous sci-fi sagas Star Wars and Star Trek. In addition to discussing goals for the upcoming year and new strategies for success, the team took moment to have a good time.
Events on the agenda included team lunches, Q&A sessions with executives, information sessions, and a company party with a talent show. Next week, employees in US offices will come...
This year, WP Engine partnered with The Lovie Awards to bring Lovie For Good, a project highlighting digital experiences bringing positive change to the world. From an algorithm to promote compassionate leadership to campaigns recognizing the importance of fresh air, these winners are using the
The award itself was inspired by recent research conducted by Great Place to Work, which surveyed about 500,000 U.S. employees at nearly 800 public and privately-owned companies—mostly based in the U.S. Employees were asked how often they were included in larger, strategic decisions, whether they
In this segment, we highlight Untire, an application that helps cancer patients and survivors reduce cancer-related fatigue (CRF) symptoms and regain life. CRF is a common side-effect of cancer and related treatments; patients describe it as a paralyzing level of fatigue that leaves patients
Robotics and Big Data are Transforming Nursing: 4 Key Insights
Sensors, apps, video chat, and other data-based healthcare tools allow nurses, doctors, and loved ones to monitor patients outside of the hospital. The FDA approved the adoption of a swallow-able pill — a digital smart pill — that stays in the system — monitoring any medications
5 Tips for Protecting Your FinTech Data Assets
While making use of the most basic security measures seems like a no-brainer, many investors fall prey to hackers because they neglected to follow basic security measures. For instance, cryptocurrency investors should set up a separate account for each exchange. This way, if a hacker does gain
Blockchain Supercharged with AI: The Next Revolution
If a network is decentralized, it means that the blockchain stores data on a vast network of computers, which regularly verify the information with each other, making the data stored on the network immutable. In case a hacker gets into one computer and manipulates the data, the abnormality is often
Remote Ideation: Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
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
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
Brand Vocabulary in the Context of UX: Key Terms Defined
Today, due to complex digital user experiences and two-way dialogues (e.g., social sharing and user-generated content) brand is a complex, multifaceted notion. The language used to refer to key brand concepts can be ambiguous and confusing, especially when it comes to those terms’ relationships
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
This is what level-1 people can do: “Tasks typically require the use of widely available and familiar technology applications, such as email software or a web browser. There is little or no navigation required to access the information or commands required to solve the problem. The problem may be
Design Thinking 101
Despite these (and other) early examples of human-centric products, design has historically been an afterthought in the business world, applied only to touch up a product’s aesthetics. This topical design application has resulted in corporations creating solutions which fail to meet their
Scrolling and Scrollbars
When pages feature both vertical and horizontal scrolling, users have to move their viewport in two dimensions, which makes it hard to cover the entire space. For people with poor spatial visualization skills, it's especially challenging to plan movements along two axes across an invisible plane
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
The OECD project looked at a broad range of job-related skills, but of most interest to us is the test of technology skills. For this part of the study, participants were asked to perform 14 computer-based tasks. Instead of using live websites, the participants attempted the tasks on simulated
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
Usability and utility are equally important and together determine whether something is useful: It matters little that something is easy if it's not what you want. It's also no good if the system can hypothetically do what you want, but you can't make it happen because the user interface is too
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
Informational Articles Must Ask For the Order
The Iams kitten food page contained a clear link to Feeding Tips for Growing Kittens , which was highly attractive: all of our test users clicked it. The article was also very interesting and informative: all users scrolled through four screens of text. At the bottom of this fairly large page
Why User Interviews Fail
Your research question should always dictate which research method you use. For example, if you want to know whether users would be able to use a design, then you should watch them interacting with it instead of interviewing them. On the other hand, if you want to understand people’s thoughts
Web Page Footers 101: Design Patterns and When to Use Each
Some companies are so massive that they own or preside over dozens of other companies. Some use universal navigation to connect these child companies with the parent one. It can also be helpful to include a list of subsidiaries and brands in the footer to reinforce awareness of other brands or
Narrative Biases: When Storytelling HURTS User Experience
It’s easy to overlook sample size and instead look for a story that provides some reasonable explanation for why events happened. But a few instances should not be presumed to represent meaningful behavior patterns, unless there is specific contextual information to the contrary. (For example
Why Zen Mode Isn’t the Answer to Everything
One of the arguments that zen-mode proponents make is that, over time, frequent users will eventually learn how to access the UI. Yes and no. We know the number of repetitions necessary to learn an interface affects how learnable it is. As proven by the original Windows 8 interface, in the absence
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
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
Groundbreaking Tips for Managing Big Data
Big data is the type of data that is characterized by informational and technical features. A huge and ever-growing data volume, variety of data formats and log of records nature belong to the informational aspects. Traditional solutions were no longer suitable for capturing, storing and processing
How to Choose a Startup Investment
Now, there are so many ways to interact with startups that you may want to invest in, which is a good way to feel out whether an investment is the right one for you or your company. For example, there are pitch events, hackathons, and startup industry conferences that put the founders in front of
wp engine all hands spring 2019: emea
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
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
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: EMEA | Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
Beware Horizontal Scrolling and Mimicking Swipe on Desktop
However, because horizontal scrolling is a lot less common on desktops, users often have no idea that they can discover content by “swiping” on large screens. Since people interact with mobile and desktop devices differently, the one-size-fits-all approach can backfire. The key point is that
Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time)
The original release of HTML was simple enough that many people learned it without any problems. Frames are another matter, though. Newsgroups like comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html are filled with questions from web authors who desperately need to know why their frames don't work as intended
Official Olympic Website: UI Silver - but UX DQ
Another example is even more grotesque: The site's homepage features a promotion to buy the official souvenir program for £10. So if you click this link, what would you expect? A page about the souvenir program, with a button to add it to your cart. After all, the web's one fundamental rule is
