User Experience Will Trump Ubiquitous Content
The balance of power within digital media is shifting again, this time to the experience that envelops the content. In the same way that musicians are now making money again by going on tour and entertaining their fans at real events, online content that is packaged as a social experience will be more in line with consumer web use trends than mass-market online content portals.
From Tech Media Today:
More ads equal more money, right? Wrong. According to the research, the best performers across the network displayed an average of 4.7 ads on the home page. Meanwhile, the lower performers with an average of 9 ads per page saw 50 percent fewer click-thrus. Just as publishers struggle to break through the noise of a crowded ecosystem, so too do advertisers.
Interesting. Read on…
I have a background as both a web and print designer (something I revisit occasionally to remember how much I don’t enjoy it). I have hired them and have managed them. A friend of mine complains about the lack of good designers in San Francisco, and I find the same things in other places.
I have a stack of about 2,000 resumes, and many of them fail at the basics — typography, composition, use of color. It’s even more frustrating, because I depend on good designers to get the results I want and am frequently disappointed in the outcome.
Anyone can open Photoshop, Illustrator or Dreamweaver, but it takes a good designer than can communicate and grow with clients. The reality is the most valuable designers are the one’s that understand the needs of the project first and are creative second.
The hardest part about working with clients is communicating with them.
Words don’t adequately describe what we need to be designed, so designers and lay folk meet in this awkward common ground where the results are not so common.
When a designer meets someone that understands the craft, there is an importance to following instructions that is much higher than working with a normal client. Also, knowing what’s appropriate for a task (a ten hour logo versus a full branding exercise) is something that should be asked. Many clients are looking for the right amount of effort on a task and will pay for it.
So here’s a tip: sit down and draw out what the client or manager wants by sketching it on a piece of paper — even if it means getting a user experience designer involved. Then ask, “How much time should I spend on this? Is this a one hour task? One day task? One year task?”
You’ll be surprised at the clarifications you’ll get.
Learn to Adapt to Other Styles
The vast majority of work on the web is not designing new sites: it’s maintaining existing sites and designs. This means that if you are a designer, you’re going to be picking up the designs of someone who’s the art director or a previous designer on the project.
This is hard.
Unless you have a distinct design style that resonates (Saul Bass and Andy Warhol come to mind), you’re going to work in situations where there’s going to be either an Art Director or Creative Director that’s going to lay down the line before you.
This means that you have to copy other artists work, which is not necessarily a bad thing. You learn how to deconstruct other styles and, in the process, will probably improve your design skills. I think colleges and art institutes spend too much time on teaching students how to develop new designs and should spend more time teaching how to copy current designs to illustrate what makes them effective.
And seriously, do you think your own designs are all that original?
Copyists in the art world get paid well, and there’s a whole career called conservator that involves preserving and restoring artwork in its original form and intent, even if that form is missing. Learn how to replicate other styles. Not only will you learn, but it will keep you employed.
This is the hardest one, because creative folks are creative folks. This is the way I explain it: the NHL stay at home defensemen are slow, lumbering bruisers that work best on their end of the ice, disrupting and doing one thing: stopping the puck. However, when required to score, they don’t get much further than the blue line at the offensive end, because they are always trying to get back.
They also don’t take a lot of initiative — doing only what they know how to do. Designers are the same way.
In big corporate environments, having one skill can work, but when you’re in the real world, clients are going to ask for CSS skills or if you know a bit of Flash or can do some data entry into a content management system.
I don’t think designers have to know everything, but each skill that a designer has over “I can use Photoshop” is another skill to use when billing out to clients.
No matter what someone says, typography is more important than ever on the web. Yet I see portfolio after portfolio where typography is average at best and poor at work. Love for typography goes well beyond knowing the difference between Tahoma and Arial or watching the movie Helvetica. Designers should know how to use type both to communicate and as an interface tool.
Here’s a challenge that will help any designer learn great typography: start with only Arial or Helvetica. Learn how to use contrasting weights and sizes to direct the users eye without using any other type styles.
I Love Typography has a great guide on how to use type on the web. They have the following quote:
First, it’s worth noting that Typography is not just about choosing a font, or even distinguishing one typeface from another. In recent experiments, trained monkeys were able to correctly identify Helvetica 90% of the time.
Grids are equally as important on the web as in any medium. The truth is that most designs are closer to mathematical equations than something overly creative and have to use white space and composition to: a) fit in a lot of content, b) be engaging with a call of action and c) look good. Not as easy as it looks.
Designing on a grid helps solve a lot of these issues without a lot of thought, and grids can also be used to establish design styles and visual structures.
There’s nothing worse for a client or a manager to hear than having someone who says, “That’s something I don’t do,” especially when it falls right in the middle of their skill set and when they are junior to other designers and workers in that group.
Data entry. Sure.
Picking up work someone else is doing, but too busy to complete? Sure.
Doing production work to resize 70 logos to the right size? When do you need it?
Web design isn’t all glamour and glitz (how glamourous can a home page be?), and it isn’t all redesigning websites for the clients. Sometimes we have to remember it’s a job. Sometimes you’re just going to be changing the oil, but you’re still getting paid for it.
I’m not going to take credit for this one — this is a great post from Laurie Ruettimann over at Punk Rock HR. It’s one of my favorite blogs of all time because of her common sense. Her comments in a few posts that are classic, and furthermore, I absolutely agree with.
The original post is here. Enjoy.
I like social tools and websites. I started blogging in 2004, I opened my first Twitter account in 2007, and I’ve joined every social networking site on the planet. I even co-founded a social network for HR professionals because I think technology is fun & interesting. I wanted to learn.
Unfortunately, there are days where I want to quit Facebook and go back to my real world.
I don’t mind your Farmville updates or your Mafia Wars invites. I can delete those requests and hide your activity in my feed. What bothers me is the hyper-aggressive use of social media to spew emotion, feelings, and opinion. People who are otherwise sweet & kind will comment on my wall and write the most idiotic, racist, and sexist stuff in defense of an otherwise irrelevant position.
I’m like Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace. I find myself yelling, “Get off my lawn!”
Here are my guidelines for Facebook. Let me know if you have others you would like to add.
I love social tools and value the online connections in my life. I like seeing pictures of your children. I want to hear about your pets and your job. This is important to me and makes my life better.
Very simply, I hope that aggressive users of Facebook will mature, slow down, and chill the heck out.
What you can use Messenger Connect for
Messenger Connect enables three core scenarios for websites and app developers:
- Identity – makes it easy for users to sign in and sign up to your web site using their Windows Live ID
- Social distribution – lets users share the things they do on your website with their friends. Activities appear in Messenger, Hotmail, and across Windows Live properties, and other places Messenger social is displayed (including Windows Phone 7 and the very popular Windows Live Messenger iPhone app)
- Realtime shared experiences – lets users share an experience in real time with their friends
What’s new in Messenger Connect
Many of the components that have evolved into Messenger Connect have been around for several years (Messenger Web Toolkit, Live ID Web Authentication, Delegated Authentication, and the Windows Live Contacts API), but this is the first time we’ve delivered a suite of standards-based, self-service APIs as a package. To understand how Messenger Connect works, from authorization, to the different interfaces and controls, to the emerging standards/specifications we use (OAuth WRAP, Portable Contacts, ActivityStrea.ms, and OData), check out this post.
From Angus Logan, the Windows Live blog:
We believe that you should be able to choose to take your Windows Live data with you when you travel the web. Messenger Connect allows you to do that by providing a way to sign in to third party web and client applications using your Windows Live ID. Messenger Connect allows you to bring your Windows Live profile and contacts with you; easily share with your friends and enable Windows Live Messenger-based chat within third party applications; and access your photos, calendar, and more.
In order to enable third party applications to ‘connect’ and interact with Windows Live accounts, we needed to design to help to ensure that customers’ data is protected and accessed in a manner consistent with customers’ expectations and desires, as well as enable great partner experiences.
Owning your data. Interesting concept.
This is for a friend of mine at Yola. Send your resume and portfolio at jobs@usabilitycounts.com.
Key Responsibilities:
Experience:
A strong candidate for this role will match many of these criteria:
Please respond with a resumé and a link to an online portfolio or examples of work.
Must have skills:
It would be useful if you had:
I’m not going to take credit for this one — this is a great post from Laurie Ruettimann over at Punk Rock HR. I’m currently on the prowl for more work (you know, life of the consultant) so that means a lot of back and forth with recruiters. I have my favorites (Mindy Worel, where are you?), have a different opinion of some others. They are a necessary evil, but can be a wonderful asset.
Great recruiters are as interested as finding work for you as you are.
Punk Rock HR is one of my favorite blogs of all time because of her common sense. Her comments are classic and I absolutely agree with.
The original post is here. Enjoy.
I love it when someone sends me an email and asks, “Do you know this recruiter? Is he a good guy?”
Believe it or not, I don’t know every HR professional or recruiter. I just know a few — but most of them are good people. (Sure, some of them are chumps but there are scam artists and losers in every industry. Look at sales.)
You need to use your brain — and your smarts — to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Here are some thoughts.
Finally, I think it’s important to know where a recruiter is submitting your resume before the resume is sent. You can ask for this specific information — it’s not rude.
Remember, a relationship with a recruiter is like any other business arrangement. Do your research, ask thoughtful questions, and operate with integrity. Don’t forget that a recruiter is risking his reputation on you, too.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
If you're a UX Designer in San Francisco, ping me at Twitter. I want to add you to a list I have there.
