2009 Archives
In software, an API is a way to get data into or out of a system. It stands for “Applicant Programming Interface” and basically allows outsiders to access or manipulate the information in the software.
The Twitter API lets you access tweets, search users, post tweets, and so on. The A...
December 03, 2009 — 0 Comments
Every project has its ups and downs. Sometimes it’s pretty predictable. This bingo kit is for any web project manager, designer, developer, writer, freelancer, or anyone else who works on website projects.
Rules
Pick a project, any project. Each team member gets a card (reload to refresh t...
November 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
Higher ed loves conferences (as do I). My boss has been live-tweeting the AMA Higher Ed Marketing conference for the last day or two. We’ve sent people to eduWEB Conference, South by Southwest Interactive, CASE, EDUCAUSE, RubyConf, RailsConf, and plenty of others.
But these things cost mone...
November 17, 2009 — 0 Comments
In pushing social media on campus (including an institutional blogging platform to hold personal/professional blogs), the question arises: Who owns this content?
I want to explore a few scenarios. Please post to the comments and share your own opinions on these.
1. You post to your personal blog ...
November 13, 2009 — 2 Comments
This week I presented to our team at AgencyND about Mobile – what’s the deal and what’s coming. I call this the Mobile Horizon, as a nod to the Horizon Report which aims to inform higher education about the future technologies and their implications. Mobile is all the rage, and ...
November 05, 2009 — 0 Comments
If higher education is to avoid a painful death in the coming decades I have a relatively simple plan: create an R&D process.
Add it to the Strategic Plan
Executive leadership, the board, deans, and officers of the University must be aware of this effort. The goal isn’t survival –...
November 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
It’s a hot topic. It’s been a hot topic for over a decade now. The dramatic societal and cultural shifts that have come with nearly ubiquitous technology and connectivity have permeated every facet of our lives. We’ve seen how this shift has had dramatic effects numerous industr...
October 25, 2009 — 0 Comments
I recently looked at using Ning to power a private social network, but one little red flag was a deal-breaker. From the Terms of Service:
You hereby grant Ning, during the course of your usage of the Ning Platform, a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, sublicenseable a...
October 13, 2009 — 1 Comment
In researching and writing an upcoming post, I came across this prescient quote from the President Emeritus of the University of Michigan, written in 1997:
“Who needs specialists in an age where intelligent software agents may soon be available to roam far and wide through robust networks ...
September 15, 2009 — 0 Comments
If people want to do something great but don’t have the tools, support, processes, or resources, that’s an infrastructure problem.
If people don’t want to do anything great, or change at all for that matter, that’s a culture problem.
Infrastructure is easy to create, but c...
September 03, 2009 — 0 Comments
On my non-profit blog I write a lot about strategic planning. But it’s clear that most people don’t understand what a strategic plan is or why it’s important.
Strategic plans aren’t just for big organizations. They are useful to departments, small groups, or even individua...
September 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
I’ve written and spoken on website usability testing plenty of times. But recently, our team at Notre Dame has begun to seriously investigate other methods, tools, and concepts to improve every part of our projects.
Special thanks to Kate Russell, our information architect and usability coo...
August 29, 2009 — 8 Comments
From July 20-22, 2009 I attended (and presented at) eduWEB Conference 2009. Go check out my presentation slides on Budget Usability Testing.
Things I Noticed
There’s a wide spectrum of experience, beginner to expert. Some sessions are designed more for one or the other, and it’s not a...
July 22, 2009 — 0 Comments
I’ve been working on my upcoming talk at the eduWeb conference in Chicago next week. I’ve held workshops and given plenty of speeches… and as my colleagues at Notre Dame know, I have no trouble filling an hour or three. But I’ve never spoken at a normal conference – ...
July 13, 2009 — 3 Comments
Client: “I need a website in two months!”
It takes our group an average of 5 months to produce a website. Damn… clients get some serious sticker shock when they find that out.
So I share our project schedule document, which was supposed to be internal but shows exactly how we ar...
July 01, 2009 — 2 Comments
Robert Stephens, founder of Geek Squad, famously said that “marketing is a tax you pay for being unremarkable.”
I have this quote taped to the wall of my office. Sometimes I stare at it, wondering what I can do to be more “remarkable” in my work.
As a marketer, I find the...
June 29, 2009 — 0 Comments
I have a confession: there are entire days – maybe weeks – when I don’t actually do any work.
Yeah, I show up at the office, go to meetings, do paperwork, and read, write, and forward a lot of emails.
But that’s not work.
In a typical day, I spend about five hours in meet...
June 15, 2009 — 2 Comments
One of the frequent debates in web projects is around naming of elements. When our team recommends a label or title we usually do so from an outsider’s perspective. We make a lot of arguments for our position, but sometimes there’s resistance.
So we do some user testing. Usually, it&#...
May 19, 2009 — 3 Comments
On Sunday May 17, 2009, the University of Notre Dame held its University Commencement Exercises. Unlike previous commencement events, it was surrounded by controversy and buzz. A highlight of the ceremony was the commencement address by President Barack Obama. His policies and positions on aborti...
May 18, 2009 — 0 Comments
Working in a higher education environment can be really tough. It’s often accepted that the pay is lower, resources are scarce, and the culture is risk- and change-averse. It can be tough.
But there are some great things about working in higher education, too.
Learning
Online learning from...
May 14, 2009 — 0 Comments
Higher education is often a slow beast, lumbering forward amidst a fast-paced world of technology and innovation.
Karine Joly asks, Why don’t we talk more about the mobile Web and its possibilities for our field?
But it’s not just mobile Web, is it? Why is higher ed so slow to adopt n...
May 06, 2009 — 6 Comments
This afternoon I led a workshop for an industry association for amusement operators – the folks responsible for creating, selling, supporting, and maintaining jukeboxes, arcade games, pool tables, and other coin-op stuff. They’re a really interesting crowd, but they don’t pull a...
May 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
I’ve been working with clients since college. I’ve always had a client-service type of job, working on projects of all sizes. And I’ve learned a few things about how to do great work – in spite of the difficulty of working for clients.
1. Set Expectations
The absolute key...
April 21, 2009 — 0 Comments
Why aren’t you invited as a keynote speaker at the top design conferences? Why aren’t the biggest design firms falling all over themselves to hire you at exorbitant prices? Why don’t you charge $500/hour for your time? How many interview requests do you get each week?
There̵...
April 14, 2009 — 0 Comments
If software requires a manual, it’s too difficult.
We’ve been looking for some decent agency-minded project management software and frankly, it’s been frustrating. What we need most is solid resource management; we need something to help us forecast our workload out for the com...
April 05, 2009 — 0 Comments
I get asked this question all the time: how often should you redesign your website?
The answer? When you need to.
Recently, a client compared it to a car: sure, you can get a new car every three years, but if it’s still meeting your needs, isn’t that pretty wasteful? Then again, you c...
April 01, 2009 — 5 Comments
We often forget that our higher education institutions are not-for-profits. They rely on fundraising and program fees to make ends meet. They succeed and grow based on their reputation. And transparency is critical as donors and participants demand higher performance and accountability.
Not only ...
March 31, 2009 — 2 Comments
Notre Dame is a great place to work, and AgencyND is on the forefront of a lot of trends in both higher education and the web industry in general. We’ve won a smattering of awards and we’ve had a lot of fun doing it.
We’re hiring a web developer to help us keep moving forward. ...
March 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
New to usability testing? Want to get a quick start? Check out my post on how to start a usability testing program over at eduStyle…
What you don’t ask during a usability test is just as important as what you do ask. Tests can take a long time and should be considered carefully R...
March 23, 2009 — 0 Comments
According to TwitterFacts.com, the first tweets were sent March 21, 2006. Happy Birthday, Twitter!
I went back in time to find my first tweet:
Giving in to the twitter side
8:56 AM Feb 24th, 2007 from web
What (and when) was your first tweet?
March 22, 2009 — 2 Comments
On Monday March 9, 2009, I tracked every single tweet that came through my Tweetdeck. I categorized the tweets according to their use and intent and content. Nothing fancy or scientific here, just a quick label. After all, I do still have a job (until my boss reads this).
Quick notes – of c...
March 12, 2009 — 0 Comments
It’s more important that you fit into the party than it is to get in the door.
Perry Belcher uses the metaphor of social media as a series of parties. (Aside: This guy makes me want to grill some barbecue.) How to Make Money with Social Media
So social media is a big party. And at a party, ...
March 09, 2009 — 0 Comments
The How of Mobile
Mobile development in 30 seconds:
Schools create separate websites for mobile access. Some schools use special stylesheets on the same content. MIT establishes a platform-specific approach to serving content to mobile devices. Stanford students create an iPhone app suite for Sta...
March 08, 2009 — 0 Comments
When you get a chance to introduce people to social media, what do you cover? What resources do you recommend?
I had a meeting today with a new-to-social-media-but-diving-in-headfirst communicator on campus and we covered some pretty basic stuff like Twitter, Google Analytics, and Technorati. I o...
March 06, 2009 — 0 Comments
In large companies, there’s a top-down mentality that allows leadership to issue edicts and expect them to be followed. Or, you know, you’re fired.
In higher education, though, there’s a notion of academic freedom that allows academic entities – centers, institutes, colle...
March 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
A must-read for designers and anyone who works with designers: The ten commandments of Dieter Rams. Some favorite quotes:
The most important task of design is to optimise the utility of a product.
This which are different in order simply to be different are seldom better, but that which is mad...
March 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
We dislike HTML emails, so they must not work.
We abhor Flash on websites, so we shouldn’t use them.
Tables must never be used except for tabular data, so anyone who uses tables for layout must be the devil.
We’re so high and mighty on our self-made pedestals that we forget that nobod...
February 28, 2009 — 0 Comments
From the Chronicle of Higher Education:
A new company called Academic Earth offers free online videos of lectures from some of the world’s most renowned scholars teaching at leading universities. The company has simply grabbed the videos off the universities’ own Web sites and plans to offer too...
February 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
Content management means a lot of different things. Consider these:
HR policies that need to get updated and revised
Video content that is consistently tagged with appropriate metadata, that feeds to multiple delivery channels
Institutional information such as award winners or past presidents...
February 24, 2009 — 0 Comments
This post is dedicated to oAk and Jim.
Let’s imagine a white wall in a dimly lit room and a subject standing in front of it (who was recently lying in bed and made it to the photo shoot just in time). Let’s further pretend that this photo will be taken on a cell phone or a point-and-c...
February 18, 2009 — 4 Comments
When I talk to clients about social media, I hear two common responses:
I’m too busy.
I have no clue what you’re talking about.
That’s fine. These aren’t social media experts. Heck, they usually aren’t even professional communicators. They’re folks who have...
February 17, 2009 — 0 Comments
Maybe you’ve heard it before: you should give your visitors what they want.
But what if that’s not in line with your goals? Aren’t you spending all this time and money to achieve your goals?
So the advice should be: you should find a way to make your website mutually beneficial ...
February 16, 2009 — 1 Comment
Web content management systems can be many things… free to super-expensive, lightweight to ultra-complex, clunky to flashy. Today, I want to focus on one particular range: self-explanatory to 850-page manual.
The Infinitely Extensible
This kind of CMS is super-customizable, doing anything ...
February 16, 2009 — 0 Comments
.eduGuru has a good post about the three different approaches to data-driven work:
You’re doing your designated task like a happy hamster on a wheel, when someone else reads a new article, goes to a conference, talks to a vendor, gets a random complaint, or whatever, and it’s time fo...
February 15, 2009 — 0 Comments
When I write about admissions recruiting, donor communications, or any of the dozens of usual topics I cover on this blog, I sometimes wonder:
Am I going to get in trouble for this?
I rarely write anything specific to my work at Notre Dame. I don’t mention many specific clients or projects....
February 14, 2009 — 0 Comments
I’ve been mercilessly teased lately for calling myself a “social media advocate.” As oAk says, there’s no title easier to adopt than that of “social media expert.” Congratulations, you use the web.
I call myself a “social media advocate” because I e...
February 11, 2009 — 1 Comment
Today, I joined the good folks at eduStyle.net as a contributor to their blog. I’m really excited about offending even more designers and developers than I do during my day job.
Check out my first post, Web Design is the Fastest Way to Ruin a Website:
Web designers and developers are an ar...
February 09, 2009 — 1 Comment
The funnel is a common visualization tool borrowed from the business world, where customer acquisition may follow a similar path.
Many have applied this model to the admissions process, helping them to identify conversion points where schools can change their strategies for recruiting students.
...
February 09, 2009 — 1 Comment
Some morning wisdom from an unlikely source (emphasis mine)…
“You know,” says a [Muzak company] spokesperson, “pollsters have done research of the electorate, and they found that there’s a certain percentage that is just anti-everything. You have a hard core that...
February 07, 2009 — 0 Comments
Go read Top 10 Higher-Ed Web Design Mistakes in 140 on eduStyle. While you’re there, go ahead and create a profile and vote for all of my team’s sites.
February 05, 2009 — 1 Comment
About three years ago, we launched a website where the main audience was ages 40-65. One of the exciting “new” features we offered was an RSS feed.
Everyone knows that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, right? Okay, that’s not fair. But RSS isn’t exactly gaining...
February 04, 2009 — 3 Comments
I’m a stats whore. There, I said it. I often check my Feedburner subscriber counts throughout the day, even though I know they are only updated once a day. Not only that, but I get really excited about finding usage stats for other sites. It’s an obsession.
Stats can help tell a story...
February 04, 2009 — 0 Comments
In real life, I tell a lot of jokes. I make a lot of faces. I do weird voices. Sometimes, I screech and do my best impression of a velociraptor.
I rarely do this on my blog. I’m only a little better about showing my personality on Twitter.
And I’m not sure why this is.
A personality i...
February 03, 2009 — 0 Comments
Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics. Universities won’t survive. It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book. Peter Drucker, Forbes
That was 1997.
Today, students don’t need to memorize because they can pull it up on Google.
They c...
February 01, 2009 — 0 Comments
Jakob Nielsen has introduced a lot of helpful guidelines and research for the web industry. But as the industry shifts, the many of these guidelines should shift as well. But people remember these slogans. And they repeat them for years, unaware of new research or trends. (See Where the Fold Exis...
January 31, 2009 — 3 Comments
I had a fascinating conversation with my boss, an experienced marketer from an agency background. The argument (because any conversation with either of us is typically an argument) sprang from my question:
What’s the goal of our homepage?
Looking at a handful of other higher-ed sites, we de...
January 27, 2009 — 2 Comments
The United States Air Force has developed a flowchart to help individuals decide how to participate in online discussions. Even for experienced web users, just having some guidelines can help cooler heads prevail and act appropriately.
Download the PDF here.
(I found this via Jeff Brooks’ ...
January 26, 2009 — 0 Comments
Content Management Systems are always a hot topic in higher education, especially those of us who manage web. CMSes (ideally) let us create and update content on websites without a lot of technical know-how or staff expense. But we’re a greedy kind of folk, and we want to get the most of ou...
January 25, 2009 — 0 Comments
Yeah, you heard me. Though I often post skeptical, cynical posts about low social media adoption rates or why social media isn’t worth your time I am very much interested in (and invested in) social media.
Slate magazine points out that Facebook has passed 150 million members. TechCrunch re...
January 23, 2009 — 0 Comments
There’s a post bouncing around called 11 reasons you can’t ignore social media in 2009. There are some great points. But to continue my “I’m a self-hating social media guy” pattern, here are my 11 reasons you should ignore social media in 2009:
1. The wrong people ar...
January 22, 2009 — 3 Comments
I’ve been trying to find usage and adoption rates of different technologies, especially in certain demographcs:
Do high school students use Twitter?
How many college students use feed readers?
Do faculty members have Facebook profiles?
I’ve seen surveys and research done on organ...
January 20, 2009 — 0 Comments
Recently, my designer friend, Oak, asked me: what’s the point? He is starting out his blog at the bottom. He’s not “Internet famous” and doesn’t have a following. And there are millions of design blogs out there that are all competing for the same visitors.
So the qu...
January 12, 2009 — 0 Comments
In Moving the Needle, Part I I wrote about avoiding the Kool-Aid effect when you read a new book or blog post and speaking in platitudes.
At the end of the post, I included a final note: “Do something: move the needle.”
This was the most important part of the post, and it was buried a...
January 08, 2009 — 0 Comments
Henry Ford is rumored to have said “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”
So don’t listen to customers.
Henry Ford has also long been rumored to have said that customers can have any color car they want, as long as it’s black. (Or som...
January 06, 2009 — 0 Comments
A garden requires attention: one must carefully consider what will be planted and where, weeds must be pulled, and it will need regular water and fertilizer.
A blog is no different. I redesigned my grundyhome.com blog a while back. I can’t leave it alone. I tweak it constantly, changing li...
January 03, 2009 — 3 Comments