UX

  • August 9, 2021

    Serve Your Customers to Help Yourself

    I’m a big fan of automations. Generally, they are “set it and forget,” and I don’t have to worry about them working. When they break, I spend a fraction of the time troubleshooting that I would performing the task manually. A great, easy automation for anyone is post new content to Twitter. And while there are a TON of WordPress plugins for this, I thought the simplest solution would be an IFTTT1 integration. But when something didn’t work, they decided they’d rather use the opportunity to advertise themselves instead of serve the customer.

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  • There are 2 absolute truths about me when it comes to books: I love reading and I don’t read enough. I try to read 18 books a year but generally end up around 12. I’m also of the opinion that I don’t read enough fiction. I focus mostly on Business books and US History. There have been a bunch of great books I’ve read in the last few years that really shaped my approach to running a business and how to grow it into something more sustainable without killing myself in the process. They’ve been so integral in the way I do things that I want help other people in the same way they helped me. That’s why I’m giving away 4 of my favorites. Enter after the jump.

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    August 8, 2018

  • March 14, 2016

    5 Things Every Business Website should show on the Homepage

    You have definitely been here before. You’re on a website for a restaurant or store you perhaps what to visit. You look for some information that will help you, but all you see is some blurb about the business, maybe a slider of images, and other miscellaneous information. But that’s not what most people need – especially if the business is a brick-and-mortar business. And while I’ve written about websites for small businesses before, I’d like to talk about 5 things every business’ website should show on the homepage.

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  • July 29, 2014

    Use Input Masks for Better UX and Easier Validation

    Recently I was developing a few forms for a project at work and wanted a fairly specific format for the input of one of the fields. It was a time of day, and since the <time> element isn’t very well supported in browsers yet, I opted for my own text input and validation. While I do provide some examples for users and check the input on the server side, I opted for input masks on the front end of development to make the form validation easier, and more importantly, to make using the form easier.

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  • July 26, 2013

    The Web Designer’s Guide to Google Glass

    Yesterday, Web Design Tuts+ (@wdtuts) published a somewhat lengthly article I wrote about designing websites for Google Glass. I cover quite a bit, from device usage, to UX, to Mobile First and RWD. From the article:

    …we as web developers should be mindful of how we develop our websites. As it turns out, the principles I’m going to discuss aren’t all that new, but suggest a future-friendly approach to web design; important as devices like Glass (or even Apple’s fabled iWatch) are released to the market.

    I will also be releasing an e-book sometime in the near future delving more into this topic, along with some sample code. For now, if you’re interested, check out the article!

    The Web Designer’s Guide to Google Glass

     

  • July 25, 2012

    Asking the Right Questions

    In the fall I’m picking up another course at the University of Scranton, as well as 2 web-based courses I’m currently developing content for. Since my current website is better suited for the single course I’ve been teaching for the past few years, it’s time for a redesign. It has been a few years since I’ve been a student myself and frankly, most professors’ websites are not great, so I’ve decided to ask current and former students how they use their professors’ websites. It’s all about asking the right questions.

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  • July 3, 2012

    Mobile Browser Testing

    So this Responsive Web thing is all the rage these days, and rightfully so. As mobile browsers get more powerful, we can do a lot of great things that used to be thought of as only possible on  the desktop. We no longer need to have redirects on mobile that take our users to a separate site; we can have it all, no matter what device they are viewing our sites from. I recently updated both my site and my blog to be responsive (I’m still working some kinks out of the blog- I’m sorry for the mess). However, as mobile browsers are becoming powerful and plentiful, we run into the same issues we’re seeing on the desktop- we need to test our mobile friendly versions in several different browsers across multiple platforms.

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  • June 29, 2012

    An Event Apart Boston 2012

    Last week I was afforded the opportunity to go to An Event Apart Boston, a conference I’ve wanted to attend for a few years now. I attribute most of what I know to the fine folks that run with that group, including Zeldman, Dan Cerderholm, Ethan Marcotte, and Luke Wroblewski, all of whom would be speaking. Now that the dust has settled, the photos have been posted, a my notes have been typed up, I’m ready to talk about what I’ve learned.
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