My name is Marianne Sweeny and I am a recent addition to the FatDUX gaggle. My specialty is search optimization, organic, paid and enterprise. Eric is generous to share the FatDUX blogspace with me on occasion so that I can share my thoughts, guidance and tips on making search engines work for you. Because, that is the way it is supposed to be with the machines working for us. At least, until Robert Heinlein’s vision of the future becomes the present.
Search engine optimization (SEO) has been around since the introduction of Web browsing, millennia in Internet-years. Unfortunately many practitioners are still using techniques from when the Web looked like this:
Apple Website 1996
We don’t live in that Web world any more. The “publish-anything-you-want-anyway-you-want” Web world started about 10 years ago and now most of the Web looks like this:
Soon everyone, not just the pornography industry, was trying to scam the search engines. In their defense, search got smarter until, with the advances in hardware and algorithmic computer science, they became
very smart. Consequently, search engine optimization had to become smart and strategic (more on strategic SEO in another post).
Like millions of others, I belong to a number of professional SEO groups on Linked-in. Most of the posts are from SEO practioners and qualify as shameless self-promotion. Occasionally, a civilian posts an honest question, like the one that became the title of this blog, and it seemed like a good starting point for my debut. These are not meant to be “tablets from the Mount.” They just work for my clients. I would very much like to hear how your experiences with search engine optimization worked for you.
Questions to ask yourself or the prospective SEO consultant:
- Will I know more after the consult delivers the initial meeting than I did before? I try to set my client's expectations by giving them a framework of understanding. This entails a brief primer on how search engines work and, most importantly, why they work that way. The Semantic Web has been here for quite some time and semantics are a fundamental start for any search optimization engagement.
- Is the approach strategic? Many SEO consultants are still relying on the brute techniques that hold over from the early days of search engines. Anyone who has used a search engine in the last 10 minutes knows that things have changed. Yes, there is still a need to have the query term in the content and yes placement does have impact (browser title, headings, etc). Links do still count. However, search engines are a lot smarter these days. Context has achieved a strong position. Link quantity is no longer a key driver in relevance ranking. The quality of the link is now a factor. And don't even think about buying them.
- Is the approach holistic? SEO success is based on a broad array of factors, content, linking, page code, visibility to search technology, user behavior and more. If your consultation does not contain a performance review (against a competitor or two of your choosing if preferred), metadata strategy, content strategy, linking strategy and page code recommendations, you are not getting a comprehensive treatment to search issues.
- Will the SEO report contain clear, concise, prescriptive and actionable steps? Ask to see a sample of their deliverable. I read a report with recommendations that alternated between the incomprehensible to unachievable. I think the consultant was asking the client to completely re-architect their content structure with dubious justification. So, now the client is looking for another SEO consultant to translate the initial investment into practical and actionable steps.
- Do they speak in absolutes? (i.e. "no JavaScript" and "must have H1 heading on the page") There are few absolutes in SEO and there is always a workaround. If you like having your messaging in Flash, the SEO consultant should be able to find a workaround. If you need iFrames, the consultant should be able to compensate.
- Will I know how to keep your site optimized after the consultant goes away? This is the hoary old "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" rule. As a consultant, I want you to be able to sustain the work that I've delivered. This means teaching YOU how to: craft good <title> and Description metadata, read your site analytics tea leaves, use online tools to study customer behavior around key phrases that pertain to your product or service.
- Will the consultant available for follow up questions? Likely, we’ve all had “movie response” (thinking up the perfect retort after the conversation has ended). This is often the case when delivering complex reports with questions that come up long after the meeting has ended. If your consultant bills for time to answer reasonable questions that emerge after you've had time to digest the report or start on the recommendations, they may not be right for you.
Oh, and before you take any consultant’s advice about software products that they recommend, make sure that the consultant can demo their own version of the product as well as the software manufacturer. If your consultant is not using the software themselves, how can they recommend it for you?
The Danish appliance retailer, Punkt 1, has just released an ad that sums up the problems of the online industry in 31 seconds and two boobs (or four, depending on how you define "boob").
Summary: Are you confused by the offers for cheap appliances? Look here. Pris = Price (i.e. low price). Prut = Haggle (name your own price). WWW = WWW.
"Confused? I know what you're feeling. Come down to Punkt 1, we make sure you go home with the right product at the right price."
Curiously, after having characterized competing media/techniques as something from a cheap sideshow, Punkt 1 immediately offers vacuum cleaners at a 20% discount (Spar = Save). Uh...and you claim you don't belong to ANY of these groups? Hypocrites!
But there are three more serious problems. All of them relate to the portrayal of the web as an air-headed bimbo.
First, the clear suggestion is that the web is merely a sexually driven con game, which it certainly is not. Searches on Google for business-to-business and business-to-consumer information now outnumber searches for porn.
Second, the advertising agency that produced this crap apparently believes this (and the Punkt 1 marketing team bought into this goofy concept). In general, ad agencies steadfastly refuse to accept the dynamics of online communication and do their best to twist electronic media until it looks like print. Sorry, things don't work that way.
Third, the Danish business community continues to ignore the fact that the WWW is now the number one source of business intelligence. Stick that in your marketing mix and smoke it.
Two days ago, I heard from a well-rounded business executive that "we see our website as our subsidiary in cyberspace." Yikes. I wrote this 11 years ago in
Practical Information Architecture. This notion has been out of date for at least six years. Today, your website needs to be an integral part of your business plan. Think, are your telephones your subsidiary in the communications infrastructure? Hardly!
Punkt 1, you should be ashamed of yourselves for promoting these various myths. You are harming your business (when I bought my expensive dishwasher a few months ago, I didn't even visit Punkt 1 because your site was so lousy). By espousing this uninformed attitude, you are actually harming Denmark's GNP (Gross National Product). And I won't even go into the matter of sexism.
Friends of the user-experience community: we will never grow and mature until our potential clients understand that crap like this particular advertisement are ultimately not in anyone's interest.
Punkt 1, for what it cost you to produce this abomination, you could have put together a website that actually built your brand and contributed actively to your bottom line. Rethink your strategy. There is money to be made.
Contrary to popular belief, Apple Computer didn't invent gesticular interfaces. Take a look at this short clip from the Warner Bros. Vitaphone production
Gold Diggers of 1935 (at the 27 minute mark of the movie). Choreographer Busby Berkeley seems to have figured out some key movements back in 1935.
In this scene, tenor Dick Powell is taking poor-little-rich-girl Gloria Stuart shopping in the basement arcade of a swanky new hotel. I apologize in advance for the quality; I simply used my camera to record my iPad in a decidedly analog fashion. (Don't even ask why this movie is in my iPad to begin with).
Notice, too, the graphic incorporation of metadata. Each department is coupled with the name of the woman in charge. For example, in "Lingerie", we find "Annette". Pretty sophisticated "menu" considering that this footage predates the birth of the web by 65 years.
If you want to see the entire number, here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=076OAOvEMJI&feature=related
The discussion at FatDUX this morning focused on Nescafé. And which spoons each of us used to make coffee (note to self: we have a perfectly good, very expensive coffee maker. Why are folks drinking this instant crap?)
It seems that coffee measures are not standardized. They're not even close. In various drawers, I found no fewer than six different measuring "instruments". And their capacities ranged from less than 1 gram to over 10 grams. No wonder our morning coffee ranges from dishwater to mud.
Here's what we have:
From left to right, we have a very expensive coffee spoon from Georg Jensen designed by Arne Jacobsen, followed by a more traditional silver teaspoon. Next, we have a miniature scoop. The wire-handled measuring spoon is an Ole Palsby design from his Eva Trio series of kitchen utensils. Finally, there is a black plastic scoop that came with a bag of coffee, and a smaller, white plastic scoop that came with some tea.
Let's see what they can hold (the first number is heaping, the second is level), measured with real, ground coffee, not the instant crap.
Jacobsen <1 gram (<1 gram)
Traditional 3 grams (1 gram)
Scoop 4 grams (3 grams)
Palsby 9 grams (8 grams)
Black plastic 10 grams (7 grams)
White plastic 4 grams (< 1 gram)
The directions on our instant coffee suggest "one heaping spoonful per cup".
Hmm. How many different cup sizes do we have...?
How this relates to interaction design
In the field of interaction design, we know that standardization often improves usability, although it can stifle creativity and innovation in the hands of pedantic rule-followers. Could it be that we should be chosing our standards with greater care? That there are some generic patterns that benefit from standardization and "best practice" whereas there are others areas that should be avoided if they impinge on artistic value?
Take for example, the Ole Palsby measuring spoon above. It holds more coffee than almost all the other devices. In terms of volume, it doesn't equate to any of my standardized cooking measuring spoons (teaspoon, tablespoon etc.). So where did this design originate? Did Palsby pull the size out of thin air? In truth, he could have chosen a more reasonable size without compromising his design. I wish he had - my wife insists on using one scoop per cup, plus "one for the pot". When made with this scoop, her coffee can be used to patch bicycle tires.
On the other hand, Arne Jacobsen's spoon was designed for stirring, not measuring. To change this design would also mean changing its basic function, which would be wrong from an artistic point of view (and a usability POV as well).
So, what do YOU think should be standardized? And why? Does anyone have standardized rules for standardization? If so, I hope you'll share them here.
OK. Here’s the deal. You’re shipwrecked on some desert island. Lots of coconuts, fish, and other food - plus a magic spring that spouts water, beer, wine, cocktails, and Coca-Cola. There is also a power outlet for your iPad.
Alas, your iPad has very limited memory and there is no wireless. So which 10 movies would you want to view over and over again until you’re rescued? Here’s my list:
Footlight Parade (1933)
Casablanca (1942)
The Big Sleep (1946)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Some Like it Hot (1959)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)
The Godfather (1972)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Good Night, and Good Luck ( 2005)
Believe me, I have a zillion movies I’d like on this list. But honestly, if you really had to narrow it to 10, what would they be?
I'm a pack rat. I admit it. My wife, coworkers, casual acquaintances, and even strangers on the street tell me to throw stuff out. But I never do.
So, here I am cleaning up in the FatDUX Copenhagen server room. Loads of artifacts from my previous lives.
Basically, what you see here is every mobile phone and every laptop I've owned since the early 90's. We'll take the laptops first, starting in the back row, moving to the front, left to right:
MacBook 160. The very first MacBook. Good machine. I wrote two books on it. This was one of the very first MacBooks in Denmark, purchased in the fall of 1992 in the U.S. Keyboard converted to Danish about a year later.
Powerbook G3. The so-called "Wall Street" model without a USB port. Very inconvenient, but the machine did serve me well for a couple of years. About 1997.
Acer TravelMate 350. Fantastic machine, fast, lightweight, but a crappy keyboard for touch-typists. This is what happens when hunt-and-peck engineers try and squeeze the three Danish letters (a, ø, å) onto a small piece of keyboard real estate. Note the optional wireless card sticking out the left-hand side. About 2001.
Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7010. The best computer I've had. Bar none. But the hard-disk died and my supporter cost me EUR600 before concluding that the machine could not be fixed. About 2005. So that led to...
Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook P7230. The upgraded version (2007) of the previous machine. But not without some quirks. In the meantime, I did manage to get the old hard-disk replaced on the P7010, so I'll probably go back to the older machine.
Apple iPad 64GB 3G. Wonderful for sharing photos, listening to music, and surfing the net. I do like it, but not for serious work that requires typing. Also seriously lousy presentation capability. The FS P7230 is still the workhorse that follows me to conferences. Summer 2010.
And now to the phones:
Motorola "brick" - about 1990. Very clunky, but a real "gee-wow" piece of kit back when everything else in the world was wired. Very
Gordon Gekko. Actually, the correct name for this is a "CommNet 2000, ultra Classic by Motorola". Today, it really IS an ultra classic. I can't remember, but I think this might have been an NMT telephone rather than for the GSM network.
Motorola Micro Tac 5200. World's first flip-phone. The antenna is actually a placebo - it does nothing at all! About 1994. This was the first dual-band phone. "TAC" stood for "Total Area Coverage".
Ericsson GH 174. Really heavy piece of crap. Never liked this much - but it was a company phone so it wasn't my decision. About 1994. I can't remember why we got this phone, which was actually an out-of-date model by the time I got it.
Nokia 2110. Absolutely one of the best phones I've ever owned. And a true classic in terms of keyboard layout. This phone set the standard for much that followed. About 1994-5. I switched to a Nokia 3210 in 1999, but I forgot to include it when I took the photo.
Motorola Timeport. My first tri-band telephone that enabled me to work in the USA. Very sexy blue screen, but an unfathomable menu structure. Summer 2000.
Sony Ericsson T68i. Notice the natty clip-on camera. This was my first telephone with a color display. Very poor resolution (101x80 with 256 colours), but hey, color was incredibly neat back around 2002. And it had Bluetooth! I also owned the earlier Ericsson T68 (prior to the merger with Sony).
Nokia 6670. Still one of my favorite phones, despite the early S60 operating system, which qualifies it as one of the very first smartphones. Never got caught in your pocket thanks to the rounded corners. And the 1.0 megapixel camera was pretty good, too. Good MS Office integration. About 2004.
Nokia E70. Another great phone. With the advent of SMS, this phone was great as the keyboard unfolds like two wings on either side of the screen for really fast QWERTY input. Summer 2006.
Apple iPhone 1st generation. We bought a bunch of these in the U.S. and jailbroke them. Fantastic bragging rights back when no one else in Europe had them. I gave this one away to one of our art directors because I was constantly looking for somewhere to charge it, which drove me crazy. My friends at Apple told me, "Eric, you know better than to buy the first generation of any of our products..." Even so, three years later, the unit is still in service. Summer 2007
Nokia E71. Although the Symbian 60 operating system is still difficult to work with, this phone basically did all of those great phone things that I needed - like making phone calls. And it almost never needed to be recharged. Spring 2009
HTC Desire. This is an Android 2.1 smartphone. Devours power like I devour marshmallows. I'm constantly looking for a power outlet. But it can do a lot of stuff when it feels like it. (FatDUXling Andrea Resmini tells me to turn off the Wi-Fi to conserve energy). Unfortunately, European data-transfer rates are crazy, so I'm forced to turn off pretty much everything most of the time. For example, if I just leave the phone on for a day, it will download about 93 MB of data. I don't know where this data comes from or where it goes, but it's a lot. And when I go to the United States, 1 MB costs about USD 10. So, at a potential cost of USD 930 a day, this thing scares me to death each time it beeps. So much for smartphones. Spring, 2010.
Now, that I've showed it to you, I've really got to get rid of this crap...
Over the years, I've personally written over 30 mission and vision statements for clients throughout Europe. As internal documents, these are incredibly important. We (management and I) invest a lot of energy in defining the business position and the strategy that will help achieve this. But, to be honest (and despite the current fashion), these mission/vision documents don't really stand up very well when companies broadcast them on a website. An internal tool is just that - internal.
Vision statements are particularly dangerous. Like watching two people make out in a darkened cinema, the better the content, the more distasteful it is to an outside observer:
"We're going to be number one in our market by...[action item]."
The more effective the action item, the less likely it is that you'll want to broadcast this information to your competition.
"Don't write naughty words on walls if you can't spell"
The "boilerplate" text printed on the rear cover of a brochure, or the front of a website is equally political. Enthusiastic sales reps and other unskilled laborers think that adding useless adjectives and overworked buzzwords will improve the message.
I just looked through some of the strategic mission/vision stuff I've written the past 10 years or so. Curiously, the text that was screwed around with the least, often belongs to the companies that have done the best.
As a public service, I have glued together some of the blather and buzz I've witnessed into a single, universal boilerplate.
About [the company]
Headquartered in [someplace], we are leaders in [something]. Since [sometime], our client-centric core competencies have represented the highest standards of quality and reliability, coupled with service that truly delights. We align our customers’ needs with current best-practice usage paradigms and thus enable people to seamlessly leverage their abilities and maximize their efficiency in a truly proactive manner. Our ongoing commitment to sustainable innovation ensures that we will remain the preferred supplier for our clients around the [world, region, country, neighborhood, wherever].
Use it with my blessing. It's free and could save you thousands of euros in short term copywriting fees. But hey, no one reads this anyway...or do they?
My two cents...
1. “There is no definition, so we can make up our own.”
No. The definitions are there, although the details may differ. User experience (UX) deals with how people interact with stuff – it represents the sum of their reactions and subjective perceptions. So, don’t go off on your own until you’ve bothered to do a simple search on Google. If nothing else, it will keep you from making a complete fool of yourself by confusing UX with usability.
2. “If the experts disagree, then the discipline isn’t really mature.”
No. Experts disagree in all fields. Doctors argue about the best treatments. So do designers. If you’re looking for a “mature” field, stick to horseback riding, which hasn’t changed much the past couple of hundred years. Instead, consider that most fields are “evolving”. User experience is one of these.
3. “User experience is only about computers and stuff.”
No. User experience is all around us. Eat a freshly picked strawberry. That’s a user experience, too. The problem seems to stem from the word “user”, which turns up in “user-friendly” and other computer-worldly clichés. But until we find a better word, it will have to do.
4. “If it’s on a screen, it must have something to do with IT.”
No. Just because a book is printed on paper, it doesn’t mean Tolstoy was working for the lumber industry. Granted, computers may be involved. But in the online world, UX focuses on what goes
on the screen and less on how it got there.
5. “User experience is a subset of [some other discipline]”
No. User experience is the umbrella under which many other highly structured activities take place – from information architecture to service management to graphic design to usability evaluation. If you put UX on equal (or lessor) footing with other disciplines, it’s easy to ignore it in favour of something more tangible – yet the forest continues to exist even if you only focus on the trees. And like a real umbrella, you'll first notice you’ve lost UX when it starts to rain.
Got a myth to add to the list? Post a comment - the floor is yours.
I counted the number of dishwashers I have personally purchased over the past 25 years.
Five.
Two of them have been great. Three of them have been lousy. The last one I bought (about two months ago) is the worst of the lot. You’d think I’d learn to choose a good one, but this just hasn’t happened.
What I want from a dishwasher
I figure a good dishwasher should do four things:
- hold a lot of dishes
- wash dishes
- dry dishes
- not break dishes
As someone in the user-experience industry, I don’t think this is an unreasonable set of basic requirements.
“Easy to use” is also a good quality. I’ll get back to that.
Usability testing in real life
My mom had an old GE dishwasher which served her faithfully for over 30 years. When it broke a couple of years ago, I bought a new GE for her. But she insisted the dishes didn’t get clean. So I investigated the next time I returned for a visit. It seems you have to slam the door shut much harder than a 90-year-old is able. Honestly, I practically had to kick it shut myself. In other words, the machine never actually washed the dishes because my mother lacks the strength to shut the damned door.
Lesson One: Make sure you can actually start the machine.
The decline of civilization
In 1985, I bought my very first dishwasher for myself. A Bauknecht. Good German machine. Very quiet (39dB). And it was a dream to operate. It did everything you’d want a dishwasher to do. The first time I used it, I was convinced that every dish in the world deserved a ride in this wonderful contraption.
Ten years later, it died. Don’t know why. Just did.
I bought a new Bauknecht. Twice as expensive. There were several icons on the panel I never did figure out. Although touted as having the lowest noise level on the market, it was a lot noisier than the unit it replaced. In-depth interviews with my dishes indicated that they were satisfied with the quality of the washing, but not ecstatic.
Lesson Two: Don’t believe the brochure.
New house, new dishwasher
A year later, my wife and I sold our flat and moved to a house where we immediately started remodelling the kitchen. And we bought a Danish-made dishwasher from Vølund – completely hidden front panel, very elegant.
The Vølund was brilliant. The best machine yet. Easy to load, intuitive affordances (e.g. I could figure out where to put stuff inside the beast), great results. In fact, the only minus was that any Martini glass placed in the front-left corner of the upper rack would ALWAYS crack.
Two months ago, our Vølund died after 14 years of faithful service. Again, no particular reason, the dear thing just stopped working. Weeks passed before I could bring myself to let someone take it to the dump.
The trip to the store was a...trip
My wife and I liked the invisibility of our old Vølund (fully hidden front panel). So down we went to the local appliance store to find a replacement. Sadly, Vølund doesn't make dishwashers anymore.
Why does a dishwasher WITHOUT a cabinet cost more than one WITH a cabinet? By a factor of about 25%? Price moves up to around EUR 600 for the cheapest “integrated” model.
“Ohh. You don’t want to buy that one. It has a nasty cheap plastic pan at the bottom. You really want a full-stainless
washing chamber,” said the helpful salesman. Add another EUR 200 (and a new expression to my growing "I know all the cool technical stuff" vocabulary).
Lesson Three: stainless is better than plastic (I guess…)
LG – “Life’s Good” – for someone else
We briefly considered Miele, but I had worked in an ad agency that went through Miele dishwashers at the rate of one every three years (as we were doing their advertising, we felt obligated to use their products). So, in search of genuine quality, my wife and I decided on an LG from Korea. It cost on the wrong side of EUR 1000 but, hey, it was top of the line. Only problem, it doesn’t really do any of the stuff a dishwasher should do.
“Low noise level” says the brochure. But this is noiser than that 1985 Bauknecht.
“Saves energy.” Only if you don’t use it. The “eco” program doesn’t get the dishes clean. The “auto” program takes hours and hours to complete unless you want to dry stuff by hand.
Lesson Four: see Lesson Two.
Affordances…meh
The insides are arranged so that it holds lots of dishes, but I wish LG would send me a photo showing me how they intended the various 21st-century racks and shelves and baskets to be used. I can’t figure it out. In practice, it holds about 20% fewer items than my dear old Vølund. I'm seriously wondering if Korean dishes have a very different shape than Danish dishes.
Glasses break. All kinds of glasses. In many different locations within the machine. That’s why Martini glasses get washed by hand these days. Always. Think about it: I just spent EUR 1000 on a device that is now making me wash glasses by hand!
When this contraption runs, it smells like there’s some plastic burning. I’m afraid to run it at night or when we’re leaving the house. The smell makes me nervous, even though the installer says this is “normal”. Does that mean all my other dishwashers have been “abnormal”? Just asking…
Back in 1985, I just went out and bought my Bauknecht. And it was great. Today, there are too many choices, too many controls, too many decisions to make.
All I want is clean dishes. Is that really too much to ask?
I just came across an article suggesting no fewer than 60 ways to attract Twitter followers (
http://is.gd/7maoX). It comes from
@technotip (who is worth following).
I'm completely jazzed. I want followers. I
crave followers. Followers are now my
raison d'etre. Follow me
@elreiss. My ego is suffering from hunger pains. FEED IT NOW!
Oops. Did I get carried away? (must remember to Tweet about this - check it out
@elreiss)
Penis envy in cyberspace
You really have to laugh at some of these tactics. Number of Twitter followers seems to have become the social media equivalent of penis envy. And some of these scams are clearly the cyber-equivalent of a
penis-extender. Henceforth, anyone who even
considers running a Twitter contest will be added to my personal blacklist.
Why the tasteless self-promotion, @elreiss?
This is an experiment. OK?
In addition to retweeting stuff from folks smarter than I am and recommending articles, I occasionally have original thoughts. Looking through some of the past year’s tweets, I found around 50 that seemed to stand the test of time better than most.
WTF, @elreiss? Get to the point!
I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but I would like to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. So please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work. I'm keeping track of follower stats from day to day. Read 'em and weep-or-whatever.
52 tweets I (@elreiss) wrote and like
Will the iPon be a brand extension of the iPad?
Why follow your Twitter followers if you don't care what folks say?
This is a day for avoiding real work. Which is why I've been pondering cross-dressers who wear burkas. How would anyone know?
I wish it was as big a crime to be dumb as it is to be dishonest.
The more time I spend on social media (Twitter and beyond), the more I'm convinced our society is in deep shit.
Not all pithy thoughts can be compressed to 140 characters no matter how hard you try.
If the meek inherit our earth, it’s because the strong have abandoned them.
I'm more convinced than ever that "unwired" has become the new "organic".
TV news interviews are great reality programming. There's nothing as dumb as an "expert" if you get them off their area of expertise.
If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even more dangerous to listen.
Good design can never rescue bad strategy. When did pretty uniforms last win a war?
If your competition sells cheaper, it's called "dumping". If you sell cheaper, it's called "supply side optimization".
America's infatuation with reality TV suggests that many viewers can no longer differentiate between talent and celebrity. Scary!
False friendships are the emotional downside of most current social media offerings.
I love teaching. I learn so much.
Do arbitrary rules really deserve more than arbitrary compliance?
Ahh. What would the world be like without rhetorical questions?
Packaging designers should be forced to clean and organize a larder once in a while. Valuable lessons to be learned.
If I always knew what I was doing, I'd never learn anything. A little adversity can be a really good thing.
Changing the world is easy. Changing it for the positive is the real challenge. That's because no one agrees on what's good.
If you think you can, you can. If you think you can't, you're right.
Still trying to change the world, but I'm more and more convinced that the world would prefer that I just butt out.
Pitting UX against IA is like having your toolbox pick a fight with your wrench. UX is a cognitive container for a variety of skills.
How come "altruistic" is never a value word for companies? Sometimes you've gotta do stuff simply because it's the right thing to do.
Words of wisdom: Don't burn your bridges before you come to them.
Looking for statistics to confirm my fear that the idiots now officially outnumber those of us who know what we're doing.
I'm frustrated that there are so many folks in the UX business who are famous just for being famous, not for any work they've ever done.
Call yourself an expert? Do you really have 10,000 hours of experience, or just one hour, repeated 10,000 times?
Are you passionate or provocative? Passion comes from the heart. But most provocation seems to stem from ego.
Rules are created when people take advantage of that which is unwritten.
If content is king, is context the kingdom?
Bailouts have become the back-button of the financial industries.
How long is "new media" new? Are we now working with "middle-aged media"?
Jakob Nielsen talks about designing his tweets:
http://bit.ly/KLmzf. This is what most people call "editing".
The blogosphere is the Gong Show of Generation Y.
“Thought leadership” means thinking about a community of practice, not thinking about leadership.
No discernable correlation between your popular searches and your popular pages? You have a serious information architecture issue to solve.
Never judge a book by the taste of the binding.
If you want to be a thought leader, it’s best to start your career by fine-tuning your thinking, not your PR.
"Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer." But does that really mean you have to put up with their silly twitter-chatter?
Words to live by: be nice to the people you meet on the way up. They're often the same ones you meet on the way down.
The biggest threat to the future of the web is the neighbor's kid, who is programming crap sites for legit businesses using FrontPage.
Maybe we designers ask too many questions. Maybe we threaten potential clients. Maybe folks don't care if their website contributes to their business.
I'm seeing incredibly incompetent shops getting web work while really talented folks are out of work. What are the idiots doing right?
Responses to yesterday's Twitter denial of service attack lead me to believe that some folks have serious addiction problems.
Ultimately, insistence on formalized processes and standardized deliverables strives not to collect answers but to obliterate questions.
The sooner our pitches reflect the fact that most business decisions are made emotionally and not rationally, the sooner we will get rich.
Political correctness is just another way to hide prejudice behind euphemism. I far prefer straight talk and honesty.
UX certification? Reminds me of Groucho Marx’s comment: “I wouldn’t want to be a member of a club that would accept me as a member.”
Gonna take flak from the American consultants...but...IMO ”It depends” is just an unnecessary click in the verbal clickstream.
Mashups can be SOOOO ugly. Here’s a new acronym: TIDE (Tight Integration of Diverse Experiences) Goes nicely with AJAX.
Amateurish SEO drives me mad. Keyword density is the worst fairydust of all time. Fact: you cannot bore people into buying something.
Again, if you like these, please follow me for a couple of weeks
@elreiss and see if I continue to live up to expectations. If not, that’s cool – I’m not really out to build a huge follower base, but to experiment a bit with the “content is king” notion. And please remember to “unfollow” if my tweets don’t contribute in some useful way to your own life and work.
Hey, you can also comment right here! Let me know what YOU think about Twitter.