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...
Because you are in a safe, copied sandbox environment, you can safely test the Gutenberg editor here. Take a look around the new editor and make sure the editing experience makes sense, and that any custom fields your plugins or theme have added to the editor page still appear. After running these
In addition to the work we’re doing with new Genesis themes, we’re also creating ways to make content blocks more efficient, performant, and portable across child themes as part of the core Genesis framework. Part of this effort includes looking at how to leverage the block options that
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
How Can Blockchain Help Secure IoT Data?
Originally, people only used blockchain for trading in cryptocurrencies. It is valuable as a ledger where individual members make the entries with the consent of other members. The data gets stored in different blocks across the chain. In this ledger, it is not easy to create the blocks. There is a
The Blockchain Talent Shortage May Be Nearing Its End
For starters, there are more ways to learn blockchain-related skills, and more ways to find people who have those skills. Platforms like Coursera are offering courses in blockchain basics, due partially to high demand, while platforms like CodementorX are allowing businesses to hire freelance
2 Billion Downloads Later, Apple’s App Store is Still Going Strong
It would be nice if Apple gave us a better breakdown of the kinds of apps it actually delivers (free vs. paid, games vs. utilities, etc.). This kind of transparency is obviously not in Apple’s DNA, so we depend on data from third-party services like AdMob for this information. According to
Teenager’s UX: Designing for Teens
Despite usability improvements, we observed users struggling with the same issues as in previous years — as well as new issues created by emerging features and design approaches. Thus, both traditional and new guidelines must be considered as technology and people continually evolve; our new
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps
Next, determine the specific experience to map. This could be an existing journey, where mapping will uncover positive and negative moments within that current experience, or a “to-be” experience, where the mapper is designing a journey for a product or service that doesn’t exist yet. Make
Intranet Design After a Merger or Acquisition
Keeping multiple intranets up implicitly tells employees that either one is valid and leads to duplication of processes, applications, policies, and other types of content. If people followed the wrong process or act on the wrong information, the consequences could be catastrophic. Instead, do a
Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks
Rather than hiding irrelevant actions, disable them so that users won’t have to try to find where menu items disappeared, nor will they have to determine how to get the system back in the proper context to reveal a specific command. Also, make sure that you include all options (instead of just
Top 10 Application-Design Mistakes
It’s really rare for icons to stand on their own, with most users able to understand them immediately. Even icons that might seem universal (such as the hamburger menu) are not as familiar to users as most UX practitioners would expect. It gets much worse if your application has icons that are
Layered Interaction Analysis of Direct Manipulation (Jakob Nielsen)
Even though the directness of a mapping cannot be measured exactly, the concept of direct mappings can still be used to gain a better understanding of several forms of directness in user interfaces. In the rest of this section, direct mappings are used as a unifying principle in the discussion of
Comparison Tables for Products, Services, and Features
Anker’s comparison table has attributes that are useful in the context of comparing portable power banks: battery capacity in mAh, charging speed, and weight. What really makes this a good comparison table is the fact that it translates those attributes into things that would be meaningful for
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Why Personas Fail
Get a core group of advocates to help lead the charge. Do a lunchtime roadshow, or a series of lunch-and-learns. Visit teams and introduce the personas, where they came from, and how to use them. Teach them how to recruit representative users for testing, how to write scenarios for design
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
The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design: Pros and Cons
And yet, some patterns emerging today break these fundamental guidelines. The magnifying-glass icon saves space, so more websites use it. It’s OK to be flexible with previous guidelines, so long as we acknowledge that the users’ needs remain unchanged. People don’t care what the search area
The Sketch Test: Test and Improve Your UX Deliverables and Other Documents
The sketch test can help surface two types of problems with deliverables: (1) content that is not easily perceptible in the document (e.g. using blue text to annotate a screenshot made it difficult to notice against a similar background), and (2) content that is not comprehensible (e.g. the purpose
While a couple of users appreciated that they didn’t need to make a purchase to benefit from personalized recommendations, most wanted their direct activity such as past purchases, saved items, or entered profile information to be weighed more heavily than simple browsing. They felt that not all
In Mark Zuckerberg We Trust? The State and Future of Facebook, User Data, Cambridge Analytica, Fake News, Elections, Russia and You
Facebook really wants you to know that it doesn’t sell user data to advertisers. But, it also acknowledges that it could have done and will do a better job in helping users understand Facebook’s business model. Mark said that users want “better ads” and “better
To Prevent Fraud, Healthcare Organizations Must Streamline Their Data Processes
For example, an anesthesiologist could claim to administer more units of anesthesia than he or she actually did, then pass fraudulent billing onto the insurance companies. Similarly, a dentist could write multiple insurance claims for X-rays that patients never received. It’s unrealistic to
Microsoft-GitHub Purchase’s Huge Price Tag Belies Big Competitive Worries
When programmers and developers create software, theyneed some place to store the code which project members can access as well as some way of tracking changed—or a distributed version control system, to use the lingo. GitHub is the dominant open source platform that provides a repository
How to Battle Anxiety and Depression as an Entrepreneur
The rise of depression amongst entrepreneurs is growing to an all-time high. A 2015 study from researchers at Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UC San Francisco showed that 72 percent of entrepreneurs experienced mental health concerns, with 49 percent experiencing chronic mental illness (including
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
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
Top Outsourcing Destinations in Latin America for 2019
For companies seeking to keep costs down without sacrificing the quality of work, hiring development teams in Latin America is an advantageous option. Certain countries in Latin America, such as Mexico and Colombia, are the top choice for IT outsourcing due to their proximity to the U.S. and high
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US | Shopping Online for an iPhone Plan Is Painful
Shopping Online for an iPhone Plan Is Painful
When users want to shop online for an expensive item such as a house, a car, or a two-year service contract, they spend more time researching their purchase beforehand. Research shows that for costly products, the actual purchase may occur many days after the initial visit to a site. Shoppers start
Minimize the Need for Customer Service to Improve the Omnichannel UX
If a user contacts customer service, it means your online channels have failed to address that user’s needs. Aim to eliminate the customers’ need to contact your organization. Not because you don’t want to support your customers, but because you want your customers to be empowered to complete
The Illusion of Completeness: What It Is and How to Avoid It
It is less common that an entire website be laid out horizontally, requiring users to use a horizontal scroll bar to view all of the content. Occasionally designers and creative businesses take this direction on their sites to showcase their creative design abilities. For mainstream
