The Fundamental Higher Ed Website Issue: Centralization vs. Decentralization

You can’t talk about centralization unless you first talk about how things currently work under a decentralized system. So I’ll address that first. Many traditional universities (most? all?) take a decentralized approach toward their websites, both in terms of creation and maintenance. It’s thought that a decentralized structure where each division, school, college, department and …

Now That’s What I Call Diligent Customer Research

Get out of the building indeed: I specialize in [designing] downtowns, and when I am hired to make a downtown plan, I like to move there with my family, preferably for at least a month. There are many reasons to move to a city while you plan it. First, it’s more efficient in terms of …

Denver Startup Week Panel Session

I had the privilege to sit alongside visual designer Geoff Thomas, developer Sean Dougherty and fellow UXer Jim Orsi as the panelists for the Caffeine, Bits & Pixels: Design & Tech Breakfast Panel, one of the many great sessions during this year’s Denver Startup Week. The discussion covered a lot of ground, but was grounded in a common …

Photoshop’s blend modes explained

I’ve used Photoshop for so long, I used to keep a backup copy of it on a floppy disk. Nonetheless, I’ve never really known how the blend modes worked. I simply experimented until wither my file looked the way I wanted it or I abandoned the exploration altogether (which was usually the case). Decades later, …

Tips on Search Marketing

Organic search is becoming less important than paid search. Consider the typical sales funnel: awareness > research > consideration > decision Search works best in the research phase, it’s not good at awareness SEO advantages No incremental cost to traffic People click on them more Once you reach ranking you don’t have to do much …

Book Notes: Playful Design

Here are some highlights I took from John Ferrara’s book Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces. The elements of great game UX Motivation: There needs to be a reason to play, a goal. Meaningful choices: You need to be able to influence the outcome of the game through your choices. Partial ambiguity can …

State of Social Media at DU

As I make my exit from the University of Denver, I’ve decided to write one last series of posts outlining what I consider the state of social media at the university. To do so, I’d like to use The Community Roundtable’s Community Maturity Model as a starting point. The model is part of the Roundtable’s 2012 State of …

Book Notes: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum

Cognitive friction: the resistance encountered by a human intellect when it engages with a complex system of rules that change as the problem changes. “#1 goal of all computer users is to not feel stupid.” Larry Keeley’s three qualities for high tech products: Capability: what can be done? Supplied by technologists. Viability: what can we …

Mastering Difficult Situations

Aside from the ever present issue that decks aren’t nearly as good without the accompanying audio, this is still great advice. And since the audio is missing, I like to add audio in my head as I read the slides. For this one, I chose Marlon Brando’s slow and deliberate pacing that feels nonchalant yet …