Digitalia: 2015

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Transnational HCI: Understanding Immigrant Web Usage

By Filipp Sapienza Published: December 21, 2015 “Mobiles phones and the Internet help immigrants to maintain ties to their homeland. As a result, immigrants develop a high degree of cultural and technological awareness.” Immigrant Web users comprise a huge demographic for User Experience. According to the United Nations, there are more than 230 million immigrants worldwide—more people than the entire population of Brazil—and according to the United Nations International Migration Report 2013, the numbers are projected to increase in the 21st century. Mobiles phones and the Internet help immigrants to maintain ties to their homeland. As a result, immigrants develop a high degree of cultural and technological awareness. Many identify with multiple cultures at once: the new culture, their homeland, and a third, hybrid identity that is shaped by the technological connectivity between cultures. As immigrants navigate multiple societies, they find that they practice the customs and language of their culture of origin primarily, if not exclusively, in specific situations and among certain people.

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Efficient UX Design Within an Organization

By Peter HornsbyPublished: December 21, 2015 “As UX designers, we spend a lot of time helping other people to be more effective. This is the heart and soul of good design.” As UX designers, we spend a lot of time helping other people to be more effective. This is the heart and soul of good design. Is the new approach making users more effective in what they do? If not, it’s failing. While there are countless articles about how to understand users and design and test applications, I want to take a look at how to make the design process itself more effective, particularly within the sometimes neglected context of designers working within—rather than contracting with—an organization. While your circumstances may be different from those I’ve experienced and this column is likely to be more helpful to designers earlier in their careers, I hope it provides some value to more experienced designers as well.

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UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want

By Jaime Levy Published: December 21, 2015 This is Part 1 of a sample chapter from the book UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want, by Jaime Levy, which O’Reilly Media published in May 2015. UXmatters is republishing this chapter with Jaime Levy’s permission. Copyright © 2015 Jaime Levy. All rights reserved. From the back cover: “User experience (UX) strategy requires a careful blend of business strategy and UX design, but until now, there hasn’t been an easy-to-apply framework for executing it. This hands-on guide introduces lightweight strategy tools and techniques to help you and your team craft innovative digital products that people want to use. “Whether you’re an entrepreneur, UX/UI designer, product manager, or part of an intrapreneurial team, this book teaches simple-to-advanced methods that you can use in your work right away. Along with business cases, historical context, and real-world examples throughout, you’ll also gain different perspectives on the subject through interviews with top strategists.”

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Why Design Isn’t Just Lipstick on a Pig

By Traci Lepore Published: December 21, 2015 “Teams are again treating design like an embellishment, a superficial veneer whose purpose is to cover flaws—that dreaded lipstick on a pig. I blame this sorry state of affairs on agile and Lean methods.” Does it sometimes feel like design has become a four-letter word? As I interact with product teams lately, design seems to have become a bit of a groan inducer. And I had thought we were beyond that! It had been a while since I’d encountered this particular issue, but it is starting to creep back in. Why are we experiencing this déjà vu? Simple. Teams are again treating design like an embellishment, a superficial veneer whose purpose is to cover flaws—that dreaded lipstick on a pig. I blame this sorry state of affairs on agile and Lean methods. These so-called iterative processes are all the rage. Their focus is on fast execution and ditching documentation. But in focusing on production, some teams set up a situation in which they fail to think and plan. And, without any vision, teams are heading down a treacherous path.

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UIE Article: Goal Challenges and Tool Challenges

In today’s article, I discuss how to design for two types of challenges. If users are distracted by controlling the interface, they can’t pay attention to the thing they came to do. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Two Dots’ designers also needed to put in tools to control the play of the game, such as changing levels, […]

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UIE Article: Extraordinarily Radical Redesign Strategies

In today’s article, I discuss three radical redesign approach strategies. Here’s an excerpt from the article: It’s your most loyal customers who will hate your flip-the-switch redesign the most. Designers are quick to declare, “Users hate change.” But that’s not it at all. Your loyal users have invested a lot over the years mastering your current design, […]

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Lessons Learned In Big App Development, A Hawaiian Airlines Case Study

Introducing Term Meta Data In WordPress And How To Use Them

Why Performance Matters, Part 3: Tolerance Management

Why Passphrases Are More User-Friendly Than Passwords

The User Experience Delusion

Reimagining Single-Page Applications With Progressive Enhancement

Optimizing Your Design For Rapid Prototype Testing

What The KGB Can Teach You About Data-Driven Marketing

Guest author Leo Sadovy is the director of global marketing at SAS.

During the Cold War, the KGB was so good at identifying undercover CIA agents that officials worried that there was a highly placed mole in the agency. But as Jonathan Haslam, a professor at Princeton University, wrote earlier this fall, that wasn’t the case at all.

It turns out that the KGB was quite effective in mining data. The KGB gathered publicly available information on deployed U.S. Foreign Service personnel, along with observations and data from allied countries, analyzed it, and discovered how the agents’ housing and pay patterns were markedly different than those of the State Department officers the agents were posing as.

Data, Analysis, Insight

The KGB’s Yuri Totrov was able to find 26 independent indicators which invariably distinguished CIA agents from the genuine and otherwise harmless State Department field service officers, or FSOs.

For example:

The CIA pay scale was significantly higher than for FSOs.
FSOs could and typically did return home after a 3–4-year tour. Agents did not.
When agents did return home, they did not show up in State Department listings.
FSOs were always recruited before the age of 31. Agents could be older.
Only real FSOs attended the three-month training session at the Institute for Foreign Service.
Field agents might be reposted within a country. FSOs never were.

This wasn’t rocket science, and it didn’t require a high level mole as the more paranoid CIA chiefs suspected. No, the patterns and insights just popped right out of the data when the right analysis and investigative techniques were applied.

These same sort of insights are available to businesses, although they may be hidden somewhere in a pile of enterprise data. There are a number of descriptive analytic approaches, data mining and classification techniques, available to handily tackle this problem. The most well-known include clustering, market basket analysis, and decision trees, much of which can even be accomplished visually and without the need for specialized skill sets.

Let’s use customer marketing as an example. Concealed within customer demographics, purchase history, service calls, and product data lie the equivalent of Totrov’s 26 attributes and indicators.

Which customers leave after the introductory period and which will renew?
Which customers will upgrade to the next model automatically, and which will switch brands at this point?
Which customers will buy directly online versus those that buy in the store after doing online research?
Which customers are typically motivated by an online discount versus those interested only in particular features?

The Buyer Who Loved Me

Totrov used his knowledge of a few known CIA agents to extrapolate into the unknown. The same approach is available to businesses that have known customers with known behaviors and attributes, which can be applied to an unknown market.

Knowing that a certain age group, gender, ZIP code, length of service, method of purchase, method of payment, etc. is the key attribute signaling customer churn or an upsell opportunity allows sales and marketing to target various promotional investments more productively.

Here are a few examples of how organizations can take full advantage of customer data:

A retailer can execute different marketing strategies based on a segmentation of seasonal versus year-round customers, maximizing the value of the latter while targeting, say, a Christmas-gift buyer at exactly the right time.
A sports franchise can detect attendance and secondary market trends to identify which season-ticket holders are at risk (and lure them back), and which regular fans are the most likely candidates to become new season-ticket holders.
An online retailer can use website traffic analysis to distinguish uninterested browsers from those whose online behavior suggests that they will become buyers with just a little timely nudge or incentive.
A telecom provider can select the best second product to offer, understanding that customers who buy multiple products or services have a lower churn rate.
A bank can use their customer data to recognize distinctly different paths to cross-sell and upsell based on the customer’s initial interaction with the bank. The next best offer to a first-time loan client is different from that of a savings account holder.

Totrov’s undertaking was the big-data project of its time. It may not have consisted of terabytes of data, but it was still a comparatively difficult task using the manual tools and techniques of the day. Today’s businesses, by contrast, have powerful tools that can mine far more data in mere hours.Customer and marketing insights won’t have quite the same intrigue as unearthing Cold War spy networks, and it likely will never be made into an action thriller starring Matt Damon or Daniel Craig, but it might help close a sale.

Still image via The Spy Who Loved Me

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10 Household Hacks That Go Beyond Your Hairdryer

Security And Convenience Are What's Making Homes Smarter

How to Stop Worrying and Love Content Inventories and Audits

Do the terms “content inventory” and “content audit” strike fear into your heart? Never fear, Paula Land is here to make these important topics not only less scary but also downright enticing. Continue reading →

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Future Watch: Expert Talks Social Media Ideas for 2016

Social media expert Ian Cleary explains some fundamentals that marketers still can’t seem to master, as well as six next-horizon ideas that you should consider. Learn what you should know and do about social media in 2016. Continue reading →

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What Content Marketing Will Look Like in 2016: 40+ Predictions

Will 2016 be the year when content marketing becomes the center of the marketing universe or will big changes shake the very foundation of this already-dynamic discipline? Over 40 thought leaders in the industry make their predictions. Continue reading →

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Why You Shouldn’t Care That One-Third of Readers Despise Your Content

Over 35% of readers who download long-form content spend less than 30 seconds on it. Should you care? No. Here’s what you should really care about – and how it can make your content marketing more effective. Continue reading →

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Monday, December 7, 2015

12 ways to improve sign up conversion

The Sign up process is pretty damn important. Here are 12 ways to improve sign up conversion so that you can get as many website visitors as possible signing up for your product or service.

The post 12 ways to improve sign up conversion appeared first on UX for the masses.

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5 Ecommerce Content Marketing Trends for 2016

Trends in organizational structure, machine generated content, and video content could drive changes in ecommerce marketing next year, as small and mid-sized retailers increase their ...

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How Far Is Far Enough In Brand Advertising?

Any brand manager worth their salt is looking to cultivate and manage a brand that is noticed and valued. But how far should a brand go in that quest for distinctiveness? Interestingly, the answer doesn’t just come down to taste. Differentiation is a word much used and little understood. It requires your brand to deliver […]

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UX Advantage: Infusing Design Into Our Organizations

Organizations need to approach every problem and decision from a design viewpoint. Jared connects the UX Advantage themes together to form a framework for how we tackle the amazing challenges ahead of us.

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Why Content Reigns Supreme In UX Design

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It's been nearly 20 years since Bill Gates declared that "content is king."

Read Full Story

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The Future of Living and Work According to the IKEA Laboratory

Lab, exhibit space, ever-growing community—Space10 questions how we work now and how we'll ultimately work in years to come

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A Look Inside PSFK’s New Future of Retail 2016 Report

Letter from PSFK Founder, Piers Fawkes, on connecting today's retailers to the customers of tomorrow

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Brands Grant Travelers Access to Experiences Before They Book

The Future of Travel 2016 report examines how virtual tech can provide customers with instant access to products and services

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Sephora’s New Brick-And-Mortar Retail Model Is Very YouTube

The beauty mega brand gets a phygital makeover via its concept store in San Francisco

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IBM Watson: Brands Should Plan for Extreme Personalization and AI Expertise [Future of Retail SF 2016]

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Keith Mercier, Global Retail Leader at IBM Watson, spoke at PSFK’s Future of Retail 2016 San Francisco Event about the value of expert know-how in guiding customers to the perfect purchase

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How Global Retailers, Like Neiman Marcus, Are Developing the Customer Experience

The Future of Retail 2016 uncovers best in-store practices—like smart mirrors—that deliver value and drive sales

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Conceptual Design for Interactive Systems: Designing for Performance and User Experience

By Avi Parush Published: December 7, 2015 This is a sample chapter from the new book Conceptual Design for Interactive Systems: Designing for Performance and User Experience, by Avi Parush. 2015 Morgan Kaufmann. Chapter 9: Conceptual Models Matter!: Implications to Human Performance, Usability, and Experience Earlier in the book, after introducing the four calendar applications, we asked what the fundamental differences between them are. Moreover, do those fundamental differences matter? The discussion of the conceptual model using the layered framework addressed the first question in depth. However, what about the second question: do those differences matter? In order to discuss why the conceptual model matters, let us distinguish between human performance, on the one hand, and usability and user experience, on the other hand. Human performance refers to perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and physical processes and behaviors. Usability and user experience refer to the effectiveness, the efficiency, and the subjective experience associated with users interacting with an application in order to accomplish goals.

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Confessions of an Ex-Unicorn

By Rachel Daniel and Amanda Stockwell Published: December 7, 2015 “The magical UX Unicorn—a single person who is an expert in interaction design, visual design, content strategy, information architecture, usability, user research, and coding.” Most of us in the world of User Experience have heard of the magical UX Unicorn—the generalist who is able to master the entire UX spectrum and perform every specialty with ease, even if that sometimes presents conflicts of interest. This means a single person who is an expert in interaction design, visual design, content strategy, information architecture, usability, user research, and coding. Unsurprisingly, companies love the idea of hiring one person cover do so many tasks. In fact, many expect that they can hire UX Unicorns by the dozen. Nearly every UX job description seems to include everything from usability testing to JavaScript. Many of us have felt the pressure to become a UX Unicorn. Review analytics! Design a workflow! Learn to code!

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How to Combine User-Centered Design and Agile Development

By Danny Bluestone Published: December 7, 2015 “How do you go about combining agile with user-centered design (UCD) so you can enjoy the benefits of both approaches? On the face of it, they should work well together because both philosophies are iterative, incorporating testing with users and refinement.” Agile development has recently captured the imagination of many software development teams—and with good reason: its focus on producing working software quickly is well suited to today’s fast-paced markets. But how do you go about combining agile with user-centered design (UCD) so you can enjoy the benefits of both approaches? On the face of it, they should work well together because both philosophies are iterative, incorporating testing with users and refinement. But in practice, they often conflict with one another. An agile approach such as Scrum tries to minimize up-front planning in favor of producing working code quickly. Plus, agile generally prefers in-situ workshops for gathering requirements, while UCD largely favors up-front user research. Agile also uses working software as its primary measure of progress, while UCD focuses on whether users can easily achieve their goals—with or without software. To add to these discrepancies, because agile is typically led by developers, while UX professionals usually drive UCD, the differences between these two approaches can result in political conflicts in many companies.

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What UX Roles You Need and Why

By Christian Rohrer Published: December 7, 2015 “When thinking about what UX roles a given team requires, so much depends on the nature of the company and the type of project. But there are definitely some UX roles that most teams need when designing and developing applications.” When thinking about what UX roles a given team requires, so much depends on the nature of the company and the type of project. But there are definitely some UX roles that most teams need when designing and developing applications. Let’s start with the most obvious, then work our way to those that are more obscure. Finally, I’ll describe the soft skills that all UX professionals need to succeed. Typical Design Roles The visual design function is absolutely necessary on most UX design projects. The reason for this is not because visual design is the function most central to User Experience. Actually, relative to many other roles, the visual design function is more peripheral to what User Experience essentially is. Rather its importance stems precisely from the fact that visual design is the first thing most stakeholders think of when they think about User Experience. Therefore, visual design is a primary role on a UX project team. More importantly, an application’s visual design is also the first thing users notice, so providing a design that has aesthetic appeal and high quality is critical to the legitimacy of a design solution, in the eyes of both its intended users and the stakeholders who review our work.

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Key UX Roles and Core Soft Skills

By Janet M. Six Published: December 7, 2015 Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in UX. In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel discusses the key UX roles on a typical project team, as well as the core soft skills that UX professionals need to succeed. Because there are many factors in a project’s success, it’s necessary to consider which of the many UX skills and roles are essential to the success of a given project. Of course, a team needs to consider what user research methods would help a team to understand the design problem a project is addressing, the application or Web site’s design—both the user interface itself and the information it conveys—and usability testing to validate that design. On a macro level, it is also vital to consider how a project’s design strategy can ensure that a design solution fits a product line, as well as a company’s overall business and brand strategy. And, of course, business analysis considers how a project will meet business needs and connect to the bottom line. The best design solution in the world provides no business value unless a company can successfully bring the product or service to market.

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3 (Easy) Ways to Truly Surprise Your Audience

Year after year, marketers say creating more engaging content is a top challenge. This year, we asked our B2C roundtable members for their counsel. One of their unexpected answers? Surprise your audience. Then they shared how. Continue reading →

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5 Keys to Developing a Strong Tone of Voice in Your Content Marketing

One of the biggest branding mistakes that companies can make is to not pay enough attention to their tone of voice. “Voice” is one of those concepts that sound high-minded, doesn’t it? More suited for the literary world rather than … Read More »

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Thursday, December 3, 2015

UIE Article: For an Edge Condition, Seeing the Problem is a Problem

In today’s article, I discuss how to design a great experience even while troubleshooting. We must design for the solution, not the problem. Here’s an excerpt from the article: If they understood the situation, they could interview the mechanics, pilots, gate agents, and operations personnel after the fact. However, that presents its own problems. It’s […]

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Technical SEO 2015: Wiring Websites for Organic Search

P Vs. NP: The Assumption That Runs The Internet

A Guide To Simple And Painless Mobile User Testing

Getting Back Into The (Right) Deliverables Business

How do we diversify our content?

Five Ways to Refresh Your Web Content Using similar language and a strong consistent voice in your web content is great for branding. But talking about the same thing in the same way over and over can be a bore. And it can hurt your credibility, stickiness, and search results. So what do you do? Here are a few suggestions for your writers and editors to refresh your content (existing and new content) — for websites, blogs, email and newsletters — and make it more interesting, more valuable, and automatically SEO-friendly (without the damaging keyword stuffing): Try on new perspectives....

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Data: The Missing Piece in Your Content Marketing Strategy

Optimize your content marketing strategy by setting goals, getting it in front of the right audience, and understanding its impact. To accomplish that, follow this three-step, data-based framework – context, connections, and clarity. Continue reading →

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32 Content Marketing Posts We Are Thankful For

We are thankful every day to be part of such an amazing community of content marketers. To express our gratitude, we've shared some of the posts we consider indispensable resources on the path to greater content marketing success. Continue reading →

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Learn How to Engage Gen C (It’s Not Just Millennials)

You’ve heard of millennials, but have you heard of Gen C? Google Think dubs it a “powerful new force.” It’s a generation built for content marketing done well. Follow these five tips to engage this generation with your content. Continue reading →

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Content Metrics: Assessing the Real Impact of Curation

If you’re a marketer relying on curated content as part of your content marketing strategy, you should know the best metrics to measure content curation effectiveness. Here’s what you should care about – and what you shouldn’t. Continue reading →

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Agile Principles + Content Marketing = Long-Term Success

Stop working in triage mode. Put the brakes on those unexpected immediate demands to adjust your content production. Create the infrastructure for effective long-term content production, and ensure it incorporates agile marketing. Continue reading →

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Rachel Andrew on the Business of Web Dev: It’s the People They Know

I was never supposed to be doing the job that I do. Via a series of fortunate events and chance encounters, I’ve built a career in an industry I that love and that still interests me today.

When I was at school, the web didn’t exist. Like many web folk of my age I stumbled into my career of the past 19 years accidentally. I might never have discovered this career had a PC World salesperson not upsold me to a computer on interest-free credit. It was 1996, and my aim was to get a word processor so I could take in typing work while pregnant and taking care of my baby. The computer enabled me to earn money typing while it opened up for me this new world of the web. My journey from new computer owner to web developer is a story for another day, but that salesperson will never know what he started by making his targets that day!

It was by chance that I came to have access to the web at all, and I might have remained someone who liked to play around with computers, who built websites for fun, had it not been for people who asked me to build websites for them.

My first paid work as a web developer came via friends of friends who needed websites. I would talk about the things I had been teaching myself. I had my own site online and a couple of sites I had volunteered to build for charities I was involved with. One by one, little jobs arrived, always because someone had mentioned to a friend of mine that they needed a website. All the things I learned building those small sites—learning Perl to add functionality, learning Linux so I could install a web server locally—enabled me to find a full-time job, and then leave again to set up on my own.

My husband and business partner Drew McLellan has similar stories. The first website he was paid to create came about while volunteering at the local amateur dramatics society. He met someone who was setting up a new business and needed a website. He was someone who she trusted who built websites.

I asked some fellow freelancers if anyone else had these stories of chance, or of the unusual ways we find work or contacts who are instrumental in our business success. Andrew Areoff had already written up a tale that spanned over 40 years, documenting how a man from Rhodesia is connected to the success of his business and that of his best client. Harry Llewelyn of Neat in Somerset, UK, told me how he made a friend in the USA via posting photography on Flickr. While staying with this friend he was introduced to another friend—a web designer who ultimately outsourced front-end work to Harry, bringing enough regular work for him to make the leap into full-time self-employment.

Jonathan Rawlins of Pixel Pixel Ltd had a story of how a Christmas Eve flood at home resulted in a painter and decorator being in the house while he was working from home. They chatted and Jonathan explained what he did, and discussed setting up a simple site for the decorator’s business. The site for the decorating business never materialized, but the two stayed in touch. Around two years later the decorator got back in touch about an idea for a much larger project. Jonathan is now working on this project in stages—helping to grow the application as the business grows.

Another freelancer had a lovely story of how a project he was working on with a friend failed due to the friend having personal issues and needing to get his life back on track. Despite the failed project, he supported his friend, who then introduced him to another contact. That contact has become a great client, and also brought interesting new possibilities.

There are common themes in all of these stories of chance and opportunity. They show that it is always worth talking about what it is that you do, even if the person you are speaking with doesn’t look like an obvious fit as a client. You then need to be ready to follow up leads that come from an unusual source. Even more than that, opportunity often comes to those who are willing to give freely. That giving might be in terms of your skills as a designer or developer, but might be in doing something else entirely. It might even be in terms of being supportive of a business partner or client when things don’t work out.

One thing I know for sure is that the more generous I am with my time and my knowledge, the more good fortune seems to come my way. This isn’t due to any mysterious karma at play, but simply that people talk to one another. As one of my contributors to this piece wisely pointed out, “it’s not the people you know, it’s the people they know!”

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Planning and Organizing Workshops

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Distinguishing Yourself as a UX Professional

By Janet M. SixPublished: November 23, 2015 Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in UX. In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our panel discusses how to distinguish yourself among a growing population of UX professionals. Seeking a career in User Experience seems to be fashionable right now. Unfortunately, some who claim to be UX experts, in fact, do not have the experience or expertise it takes to be effective in this field. Worse, the advice of UX posers is often counterproductive and actually degrades product designs, which gives our profession a bad reputation. Now that more and more companies are looking for UX experts—and there are more people who actually are UX experts to fill the jobs—how can you stand out among the crowd? Our Ask UXmatters expert panel offers some suggestions.

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The Softer Side of UX Consulting

By Baruch Sachs Published: November 23, 2015 “The focus of my presentation was not entirely on the so-called soft skills that are part of consulting. My presentation was really about the challenges around enterprise user experience….” Recently, I gave a presentation to a group of User Experience graduate students. (I had graduated from the same program a dozen years ago.) While I found doing this professionally and personally satisfying, it was also refreshing to look at what has changed in UX education and consider what still needs to change. During the Q&A session after my presentation, a student commented, as follows: “I was really interested in hearing about the soft skills of UX consulting, but to hear you tell the stories of sitting in a room for hours with the business and IT folks and hashing out project issues… well, that just sounds horrifying to me.” Understandably, this statement was met with numerous nods and smiles of agreement. The focus of my presentation was not entirely on the so-called soft skills that are part of consulting. My presentation was really about the challenges around enterprise user experience. It highlighted the path I had taken in an attempt to help others entering the field to understand that this type of consulting exists in the world of User Experience. But, even though my presentation did not focus primarily on the soft side of UX consulting, soft skills are an important part of what any successful consultant must do.

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Is Your Experience Strategy Science or Alchemy?

By Ronnie Battista Published: November 23, 2015 “A pervasive challenge in our industry is conveying the value of a well-planned strategy for creating a user experience.” A pervasive challenge in our industry is conveying the value of a well-planned strategy for creating a user experience. Anyone who has been a UX professional long enough has at some point been asked, “How do you convince companies and executives that they need to invest in UX?” Were the answer to that question as obvious as it feels like it should be, our jobs would all be a lot easier. Of course, there are countless articles on this subject—notably, one by Jared Spool that I read to remind me I’m not the only one who struggles with this message. So, in this column, I thought I’d share a simple concept I’ve been thinking about in relation to communicating the power of UX strategy. The hypothesis of my experiment: we need to do a better job of communicating that what UX strategy provides is science. When I say science, I mean that the tenets of UX strategy are based on the scientific method.

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On Building Digital Capacity And Attracting Talent

Search vs. Social Media: How Audience ‘Intent’ Can Affect Content Marketing Performance

Want to rank high in search and earn high social engagement? You can’t do it with a single piece of content. Learn how understanding your audience’s intent –on search or social – can make a difference in your content marketing success. Continue reading →

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How to Get in Front of the Podcasting Trend [Growth Tips and Tools]

Could podcasting be the next big thing? With only 3% using podcasts, it’s an underused tactic that should appeal to marketers who target a more educated and higher-household-income audience. Here’s how to get in front of the trend. Continue reading →

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User Research With Small Business Owners: Best Practices and Considerations

The majority of our work at Google has involved conducting user research with small business owners: the small guys that are typically defined by governmental organizations as having 100 or fewer employees, and that make up the majority of businesses worldwide. Given the many hurdles small businesses face, designing tools and services to help them...

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Rolling Out Responsive

Frameworks

Thursday, November 19, 2015

trendwatching.com | 5 TRENDS FOR 2016 | Consumer Trend Briefing | December 2015

5 actionable, delight-inducing trends to run with NOW.

Read the 5 Trends for 2016 Consumer Trend Briefing from trendwatching.com »

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The Future Of Shopping Is . . . Second Life On Acid?

British designer Allison Crank imagines a virtual-reality mega mall to replace the social element shopping has lost to e-commerce.

When Victor Gruen invented the shopping mall in 1956, he wanted to give suburban citizens a sorely needed third place to socialize and shop. Today, malls have been usurped by e-commerce. And while the ease of one-click shopping fulfills the consumerist part of Gruen's equation, it ignores the equally therapeutic leisure element.

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Brands Evolve With Faceting Strategy

Some experts will tell you that a brand should present a consistent identity and should not change, at the risk of losing its loyal franchise. The risk, however, is that after a period of minor incremental changes the brand will become increasingly irrelevant, and this kind of a static approach ends in the need to […]

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