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 another. This year’s theme was “Boldly Go” in honor of the famous sci-fi saga Star Trek. This event agenda was full of events to help nurture growth at both the individual level as well as company-wide. Not to mention, we got to have some fun!
Events on the agenda included team lunches, information sessions, inspirational speeches, a Hackathon, advice panels, trivia, and...
At the end of September, we held our 2018 WP Engine Summit in Austin, Texas. Last week, agencies, brands, and digital innovators from EMEA came together in London for the WP Engine EU Summit. Attendees discussed the future of digital experiences, Gen Z’s perception of the Internet, and the
Diversity has long been an important topic for WP Engine. CEO Heather Brunner often says “diversity attracts diversity.” This means that as a company naturally attracts and retains diverse talent, that diversity is sustained from the inside by employee referrals. Ultimately, the
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
4 Ways to Enter the Blockchain Industry
The Internet combined with the decentralized framework of Blockchain now allows anyone in the world to start a business. Anyone — anywhere — will be able to execute transactions securely. Before the Internet, this kind of powerful encryption was inaccessible to many small business
Freewheeling Freelancers will Dominate the Future Jobs Market
Fortunately, as more people turn to this form of work, so too has the attention of regulatory bodies around the world. Writing for Forbes, Abdullahi Muhammed expects to see increased pressure in the coming years on local, state and national authorities to recognize the fledgling form of freelancing
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
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
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
The Impact of Tone of Voice on Users' Brand Perception (Nielsen Norman Group UX research)
Each tone sample was written as realistically as possible. The language used came from real-life websites, but was adapted to remove any extraneous differences that could become confounding variables. For example, both of the bank pages had to have identical APY rates, because if one had a better
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
Designing Effective Infographics
Infographics are a hybrid medium, however, and there is room for creative license here. Elements of visual interest such as illustrations, photos, and icons are acceptable and even expected in the medium. Using a visual theme may ground your piece in a metaphor that makes abstract concepts easy to
Assessing the Usability of a User Interface Standard
Note that ISO 9241 will eventually have 19 parts. The pagecount given here is a projection on the basis of drafts of six of these parts, assuming that the remaining parts will have the same average pagecount as these parts. Also note that the complete set of ISO standards applicable to user
Help People Create Passwords That They Can Actually Remember
Using chunking with passwords maybe be difficult for some people because there are no standard characters, such as dashes, used to visually separate the chunks or numbers or words. While some people can do fine with no separator (such as, “mypasswordisthis”), others may be stymied. In my
User Need Statements
As their name suggests, user need statements articulate the end user’s problem we are going to solve, and why it is worth solving. They are a tool to help us stop thinking about users’ needs as nouns and start thinking about them as verbs. When done collaboratively and correctly, they can serve
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Why User Interviews Fail
The color preference affects the user's overall perception of the product. Even if users actually do like, dislike, or feel some emotions related to the color, it doesn’t mean it will affect their overall perception of the design or organization to any meaningful degree. A background color is
Accot-Zhai Steering Law: Implications for UI Design
When designing other UI elements that involve path-steering tasks, such as sliders, scrollbars, and video playback heads, remember that users will have a hard time achieving precision with such controls. Therefore, for precise tasks, supplement these UI elements with other secondary controls that
Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age
While “branding” products with an identifying mark (definition #1) has been around since people first began trading and selling goods, the use of brands to differentiate products — to truly attempt to influence consumers’ perceptions and choices within a market (definition #2) — is a
Design Charrettes & Team Sketching: ½ Inspiration, ½ Buy-In
In an intranet design, the HR representative sketches a section page with 90% of the above-fold space dedicated to the benefits of the open-enrollment period. When explaining her design, she says that this year there will be no print mailings to employees, and that people already get so many
Design Charrettes & Team Sketching: ½ Inspiration, ½ Buy-In
You can successfully conduct and use information gleaned in design charrettes at any time during a project cycle. Of course, set realistic goals for the session based on what can be done now. For example, don’t set a grand goal when your website is almost complete. Conversely, set sights high
These Are The Concerns Slowly Killing Ad-Tech
Black Mirror, recently bought by Netflix, is a hugely popular TV series that is a dark, twisted but spot-on portrayal of the possible ramifications of technology in the future. Advertisements for the show are ironically targeting ad block users, and some argue, are “intentionally creepy.” For
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
Quick Streaming from Anywhere: 10 Best VPNs for IPTV
Most people are familiar with IPTV services that are the recent replacement to the tradition cable TV. This latest technological trend, IPTV delivers users with fast streaming service of their favorite video content. Internet Protocol Television operates through your internet service which means
JS-Kit Score: Turn Your Site into a Localized Digg
Widget provider JS-Kit has released their latest widget this morning, Score. Score adds a thumbs up/thumbs down-style ratings widget to any page content, and then aggregates the data across the entire web site into an info box that can highlight a site’s top content. It can also integrate
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Free Up the World’s Best Entrepreneurs to Keep Inventing
Thomas Edison wasn’t just known for his startup, the Edison Company. He was known as an inventor — and a prolific one at that. He contributed to innovations, including the phonograph, the light bulb, the motion picture camera, and others. In generating ideas and inventions that had a profound
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
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US | Official Olympic Website: UI Silver - but UX DQ
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
Placeholders in Form Fields Are Harmful
In this pattern, labels are placed within the form field as placeholders until the field becomes active and the user moves the input focus into the field. At that point, the placeholder label moves to the top of the field. As a result, the floating label (also known as an adaptive placeholder) is
We recently ran a usability study in the U.K. where one user was attempting the following task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on washing machines?" Without much trouble, the user arrived at this homepage for Siemens Appliances in the U.K.: User task: "Does Siemens have any special deals on
