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...
In April 2017, the UNICEF Somalia and East and Southern Africa Regional (ESARO) offices were looking for a new way to raise awareness about the drought affecting millions of people in Somalia. The crisis was getting worse by the day, with thousands of Somalis fleeing home in search of water
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
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
CSS conversion of my Radio weblog
I’ve done a re-design of my Radio weblog, using CSS. Look ma, no tables! Yes, it’s now a tableless design. I’m doing my bit for the web standards cause, although I haven’t yet achieved 100% XHTML validation. For my re-design I used a CSS Zen Garden design by Michael Landis
Optimizing Business Decisions With Blockchain Technology
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) is the name given to the organizations where decisions are made electronically through the blockchain and smart contracts system.When a business operates in such a system, it is governed by rules established through open voting with the weight of each
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’
The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think
You might say that you’re not designing for the whole of the OECD. You’re only designing for the rich and privileged country in which you most likely live. Fair enough, but the conclusions don’t change much, even when we look at the richest countries, as shown in the following chart (which is
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries
Take Uber for example. While the experience is hugely popular and generally pain free, there is room for enhancement — especially for large groups travelling together. Currently, a group must problem-solve in order to figure out how many “ubers” to call and and how many passengers can fit in
Cognitive Maps, Mind Maps, and Concept Maps: Definitions
Cognitive mapping can help UX researchers understand users’ mental models of a system or of a process. This understanding can be crucial when researching complex systems or even when embarking in the design of a new product. Mental-model elicitation is usually carried out through individual
Help People Create Passwords That They Can Actually Remember
People naturally choose personal information when creating passwords, sometimes so personal—pets’ names, a wedding anniversary and street address—that they become easy to infer and mar the system’s security. But we can encourage people to instead use details that are not easy to guess
Contextual Menus: Delivering Relevant Tools for Tasks
Swipe gestures are not deployed consistently in all lists, so people don’t always think to use them and as a result, the gestures become less discoverable. Swipe actions are accelerators intended to speed up interactions for power users, but the actions available through the gesture should also
Closeness of Actions and Objects in GUI Design
That mainstream corporate websites make blatant usability mistakes is understandable because most members of their teams aren't grounded in graduate degrees in human-computer interaction. (That's why I have recently added foundational courses, such as The Human Mind, to my usability conference
Helping Users Find Physical Locations
To assess the usability of location finders on the Web, we conducted usability studies of website locators for 10 major companies: Andersen, the American Automobile Association (AAA), Bank of America, BMW, Caterpillar, Charles Schwab & Co., The Dow Chemical Company, Toys R Us, Verizon, and
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
3 Design Considerations for Effective Mobile-App Permission Requests
Interruptions at the start can be overwhelming and confusing. First impressions are formed when users install an app. Asking for all permissions (like Viber does on Android) is like asking for a donation without telling people anything about the charity. A better modus operandi is to ask only for
Profit Maximization vs. User Loyalty
Even though standard economic theory says that you should employ both of these strategies, I warn against them due to their impact on user loyalty. It will quickly become known that different people are charged different rates and those customers who have been charged the higher price will rebel
The Impact of Interaction Design on Brand Perception
In interactive systems such as websites, the way people interact with the user interface obviously has a strong impact on their feelings about the system. We know that people prefer designs that are easy to use. But as this research shows, the impact of interaction design goes deeper than simple
Variable Fonts and Wide-Screen Layouts: Adopting Data-Driven Progressive Enhancements
The tradeoff between aesthetics and performance is especially apparent when it comes to typefaces: rendering text in a custom font can significantly increase the visual appeal, but comes with delays due to the extra time needed for browsers to load the custom font files. The delay is even greater
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
Data Science Careers: From Fragmentation to Necessity
Over the past decade — the concept of being a data scientist has become a “normal” occupation title. It is no longer an unusual way to phrase the job description in data analytics. Now this to the industry standard term for a swath of data careers. Data Science. Like any career
Hackers are Ready to Exploit Zero-Day Flaws; Companies are Slow to Act
One only has to look at the market share of operating systems to see how resistant users are to change. Windows 7, which was released back in 2009, still accounts for over 40 percent of the market. Users chose to stick with the older version even when Microsoft offered free upgrades to Windows 10
Operational Technology in Industrial IoT Can’t Tolerate IT-Style Patching. “Threat Analysis” is a Safe and Powerful Solution
A recent Forrester survey of IT and OT/LOB leaders showed IT and OT managers evenly divided on whether IT or OT is responsible for security, according to InformationWeek’s DARKReading. As an alarming result of this standoff, reports Forrester, an unacceptably large number of companies – 59
4 Unique Growth Tactics for 2020
The answer is number two. Personalization is currently critical and will continue to be in 2020. But, how can you take it to the next level and create unique experiences for your potential clients to help you grow? By building personalized landing page campaigns. What’s is a personal landing
wp engine all hands spring 2019: us
5 Key Metrics You Should Be Tracking in Your Business
In order to make decisions that are truly in your business’ best interest, you will want to get as full of an understanding of your financial situation as you possibly can. By paying attention to these valuable metrics, your business will be able to decide whether assuming a new project is
How Start-Up Chile Helps Entrepreneurs and Chile Alike
So what impact has Start-Up Chile had on a global scale? From Cabify to CargoX, the accelerator has supported some of the most successful companies that are operating in Latin America today. Many of these startups have expanded globally, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, and have dominated
WP Engine All Hands Spring 2019: US | Scoped Search: Dangerous, but Sometimes Useful
Scoped Search: Dangerous, but Sometimes Useful
Sainsburys.co.uk (one of the largest supermarkets in the UK) defaults its search to Groceries, which is likely to go unnoticed. Even worse, the drop-down scope selector only has two categories, which do not represent the full range of products that this company sells. Shoppers looking for other
Low-Contrast Text Is Not the Answer
As we get older our vision degrades. Millions of people around the world have some type of vision impairment, including presbyopia (difficulty focusing on close objects), macular degeneration, glaucoma, and cataracts. But not only low-vision users are affected: cognitive conditions that impact
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
