Classic. He’s use jQuery to do it all.

For more humor, view the HTML source.

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Your company's written words "speak" for your business. Does your writing present a professional image, or are your materials filled with typos, misspellings, grammatical mistakes or other errors? No matter how good you are at what you do, documents containing obvious errors will erode your credibility…whether the errors are in your "formal" marketing materials or your "informal" emails and letters.

Here are some tips for effective proofreading:

1. Check Your Spelling. At a minimum, be sure to use your word processor's spell check function! Although this won't catch all errors, it will catch many (for example, spell check won't notice the mistake if your typo is an actual word, such as "mop" instead of "map").
2. Read It Out Loud. This is probably the most important step for successful proofreading. Hearing your document being read out loud makes it easier to notice awkward sentences, repetitive phrases, grammatical errors, typos that weren't caught by your word processing program and other mistakes.
3. Take a Break. If time permits, set your writing aside and revisit it later. You'll come back to the piece with fresh eyes and a new point of view.
4. Print It Out. Next, print out a hard copy of your writing and read it again. Sometimes you'll notice errors "in print" that you didn't see on screen.
5. Ask for Help. Once you are happy with your editing, ask someone who has a good understanding of spelling, grammar and punctuation to review the document for you. Even after checking and double checking, it's easy to miss an error in your own work that may be obvious to someone who is reading it for the first time.

Whenever you write something that's not just "for your eyes only," be sure that thorough proofreading and editing are integral parts of your writing process.

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How to measure social media can be a tricky thing. Chris Lake at eConsultancy has a good article about measuring it with this step by step guide.

Take a snapshot

Before you start the clock it is a good idea to benchmark where you're at…

1. Make a note of the obvious numbers (number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Digg links, Delicious bookmarks, and referrals from social media sites, plus existing website traffic).
2. Make a note of the less obvious benchmarks (such as SEO rankings and referrals, customer satisfaction scores and other business data).
3. Make a note of ROI benchmarks. How much are you paying to acquire customers via other marketing channels? How vast is that advertising budget, and how is it being split up? And what proportion is being directed into channels that you cannot accurately measure?

Enjoy.

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As presented by Internet Explorer 8.

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In real estate they say the three most important things are "location, location, location." In marketing you could say its "benefits, benefits, benefits." Why? Because all your potential customer really wants to know is "what's in it for me?" You need to give a reason to buy that will make someone want to do business with you and not the competition. How will your product or service solve their problems, meet their needs or improve their life? Nothing else really matters.

Features vs. benefits

Many business people make the mistake of focusing on their product's features instead of its benefits. What's the difference? A feature is a fact about the product, while a benefit explains or demonstrates how the product will benefit the customer. For example, "made of heavy-duty plastic" is a feature; "guaranteed unbreakable" is a benefit.

Put your benefits front and center

Every time I visit a website or pick up a flier whose headline reads "Welcome to XYZ Company" I cringe (well, actually, being a marketing copywriter, I see a sales opportunity). Why? Because "Welcome to XYZ Company" doesn't tell me anything about the company, what they're offering or why I might want to buy. Your company's benefits (or implied benefits) should be blaring from the headlines and subheads of all your marketing materials.

So take a good look at your marketing materials. If you're focusing on features instead of benefits, it might be time for an overhaul!

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You just can’t make this stuff up.

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I have to admit. For awhile now, I secretly thought that Twitter was just a tool for a lot of self-indulgent people. I’m not the type to follow Ashton Kutcher’s daily rants. I wouldn’t even follow my BFF’s twitters for that matter. It seems as if we spend every second of our day pushing buttons on devices and adding to the noise of virtual reality rather   than living in the physical here-and-now. To what extent do we  build and use  technology for technology sake rather than enhance the quality of our lives?

Then, along came  Kogi, the twittering food truck that has revolutionized fast food. Apparently, the hottest place to eat in L.A. right now is on the sidewalk, next to a food truck that serves Korean BBQ tacos. People follow Kogi on Twitter to track the truck’s location and to find out the specials for the day. All of a sudden, people are hanging out on the street, eating and socializing. Don’t get me started on the whole Korean Taco thing. It’s so multicultural, so “Melting Pot,” so  “We are the World,” so “United Colors of Benneton.”

Technology that actually gets people to go outside and interact with one another rather than hide behind their online personas? Who would’ve thunk?

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Welcome a to podcast with Michael Vincent, a software and process consultant based out of Orange County, California. His site is MVA Software. Today, we talk about the how the agile culture and Scrum methodology can fit within the User Experience process, and some real life Scrum experiences. Additionally, he will be presenting at a Microsoft Event April 30 in Irvine, California; one of the topics will be Agile and how it fits with Team Foundation Server.

Download the MP3.

[podcast]/_podcast/usabilitycounts.com-007.mp3[/podcast]

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If you were to interview a UX specialist, what questions would you ask? What skills would you look for?

This was originally published in the IA-55 Meetup list by Ha Phan, an author here at Usability Counts. This seemed good to share:

I would ask questions that probe the person’s ability to think strategically about design. Also important is understanding their process and their role in specific projects.

Here are some sample questions I’d ask a senior UX candidate:

• What is your process for gathering requirements?
• How do you determine or prioritize features and requirements that are to incorporated in the design?
• If there are no user analysis data or personae available, what methods, (if any) do you use to get a better understanding of your end user and to assure that your design meets strategic goals?
• How do you measure the success and failure of your design?
• Please show us a project where you’ve executed the User Centered Process
• In the past, how have you worked with visual designers? Where does UX end and skin design begin?
• How do you address scope creep?

What questions do you think should be added?

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After talking to a bunch of recruiters and other managers, it looks like User Experience is going to making a comeback in hiring. We are the leading indicator for a lot of things. (You can’t start a website application project with proper user experience, right?) So, this is a good thing for all technology workers. However, if you have questions on what to look for or how certain factors play into people’s interest level in your organization, here are a few answers:

What should I look for in hiring a user experience designer?

It is a combination of deliverables and people skills. Not only do the user experience designer have to have the skills to design a solution, he/she must have the skills to sell that solution to multiple stakeholders. Due to the salary levels available to skilled user experience professionals, the market also has become a breeding ground to project managers, bad designers and other people with good sales skills and not much else. This not only creates the “Well, I don’t have much money because the last guy screwed it up”-situations, but this also creates a sense of mistrust of the next candidates. But, when you meet a real user experience designer, you’ll know.

• Look at his/her wireframes. Are they clear? Do they make sense? Can you walk through them?
• Ask to see personae. Is there data backing it up?
• Have them give a presentation. Is his/her thinking structured? Can he/she speak well.

A user experience designer should be able to explain the reasoning behind his/her thinking (e.g. we tested the solution, it’s best practices, statistics backed it up.)

What should I look for in hiring a user experience manager?

Hiring a manager is a much different task than hiring an  individual  contributor, and the roles require much different skill sets. I’ve seen situations where companies had manager positions open for months, or years, and this happens because there are a few internal team members that shoot down any decent candidates that come in.

Remember, you are hiring for a leader (read: former President William J. Clinton) versus someone that just maintains status quo or screws it worse (read: former President George W. Bush). Managing a set of wireframes is a much different task than managing a group of user experience professionals, all of whom are used to having their own way because that’s the way it’s been.

Corporate culture affects how people manage, so factor this into the type of manager you hire. Joel On Software has a wonderful post about this. I recommend having other managers in the organization interview versus the people that are going to be managed. A senior user experience architect may not realize that the skills to manage people are much different than the skills to build a wireframe and usually don’t judge the candidate accordingly.

The level of candidate may differ, depending on the size of the team. If the team consists of four members, you will want more of a working manager who is more tactical versus one who manages a division of 25. This is because strategy is more important.

Why can’t I find good candidates?

As much as user experience professionals are motivated by pay, they are not necessarily motivated by pay. It could be a combination of several factors, like the type of work your organization does (In one place I worked at we did intranets, — try attracting talent for that — and we were still able to grow the team to 25.), the size of your company or the project lacks integrity.

Outside of pay, what is most important to a user experience professional is the environment, because that is where people are going to be spending at least 40 hours a week. User experience professionals are in the industry of categorizing and judging people’s skill level, so they quickly detect whether or not they are going to do well in an environment.

A few questions to ask yourself before moving forward:

• Do the interviewees get a sense the hiring manager is qualified? There is nothing worse than interviewing with someone who isn’t qualified for the job you are interviewing for, much less being a manager. The hiring manager should be forced to go through questions that are not on a prepared list, because interviewees pick up on lack of experience. There is nothing worse than the a hiring manager who requests, “We’ve had this business problem for six months, solve it in 15 minutes.”
• Are the company politics evident during the interview? In some agencies, the politics are so deep, it is like having two jobs: dealing with the client and dealing with the internal personalities. Some people like that. Think whether or not your company is slow-moving with micro-managers galore, will it turn candidates off?
• Is your company a comfortable place to work at? If you are placed in the back corner or have a cubicle that is the middle of everything, that is not a place you probably want to work. Why expect a candidate to do the same?
• Are the projects interesting enough? Certain people are suited to certain environments. While you might want to attract the best talent, you may not be able to keep them because the work is not fast-paced.

How much should I pay them?

This also depends on what you have to offer and which market you are in. At the end of the day, it is what the market can bear. As the economy recovers, this will change.

If the job can be performed mostly offsite, they might be willing to trade some flexibility for pay. Same goes for a the project is interesting and has a lot of upside. Boring, less  glamorous  projects may actually cost your organization more to attract talent; because while it is  boring, it is also very profitable.

The real answer:

• Look at the market. What costs you $100 per hour in the Bay Area might cost $40 per hour in Omaha. Talent that is also too cheap is a bad sign. Whomever you hire should have the track record to go with the pay.
• Talk to candidates that might be willing to do the onsite/offsite thing. It might not seem like a lot but, in certain  metropolitan  areas, that two hours of commute each day translates into 10 hours a week, which could be used doing other things.
• Most importantly, construct the job so it fits real-world people. If you are trying to hire senior level people and the pay does not match, good luck. Also, if you have to overpay to get anyone in the door because decent candidates are avoiding you, read some of the tips in previous questions.

Constructing the right team is hard. Take your time with it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your team shouldn’t be either.

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