Category: business
Make them dance, make them dance.
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Design is a (hard) job.
DESIGN WAS so much easier before I had clients. I assigned myself projects with no requirements, no schedule, no budget, no constraints. By most definitions, what I did wasn’t even design—except that it ended up…
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You got this.
I’M LEARNING new tech and it’s hard. Maybe you’re in the same boat. Through the rosy lens of memory, learning HTML and Photoshop back in the day was a breeze. It wasn’t, really. And CSS,…
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On Teaching (plus Monday links)
TEACHING is a great way to find out what you know, and to connect with other human beings around a shared passion. It’s an energy exchange as well as an information one, and the energy…
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Beyond Engagement: the content performance quotient
Recently, Josh Clark, Gerry McGovern and I have been questioning our industry’s pursuit of “engagement.” Engagement is what all our clients want all the time. It’s the ? 1 goal cited in kickoff meetings, the…
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A beginning consultant brings skills, an experienced consultant brings value.
A beginning consultant brings skills, an experienced consultant brings value. Early in a good career, you establish that you write the best code on your team, have the deftest touch in UI design, produce more…
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Why don’t nonprofit sites convert?
Living in New York and working in media, I talk to nonprofit organizations a lot. Big or small, they all say the same. No matter how much work they put into their apps and websites,…
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It’s just lunch.
I HADN’T heard from her in years. Suddenly, there she was in my in-box. Tentatively proposing coffee. Maybe lunch. A dam broke inside me, releasing a flood of warm memories. Our first, tentative contact ten…
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Big Web Show ? 159: If You Can’t Stand the Heatmaps, Stay Out of the Conversion, with @nickd
NICK Disabato (@nickd) and I discuss heat maps, conversion rates, design specialization, writing for the web, Jakob Nielsen, and the early days of blogging in Episode ? 159 of The Big Web Show – “everything web that…
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Buy a piece of studio.zeldman
We’ve got some exciting news to share. Web and interaction design studio.zeldman is moving, from our digs at 148 Madison Avenue to a new location on Fifth Avenue. As of June 1, we’ll be designing,…
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Big Web Show ? 158: Old Men Shake Fists at the Cloud – with Jim Coudal
Internet veterans Jim @Coudal & Jeffrey @Zeldman on the death of blogging, the birth of Field Notes, the virtues of a subscription model, and much more. Begins in tears, ends in triumph. One of the…
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How We Write Proposals in My Design Studio
AS THE HEAD of a newish design studio, I spend a fair amount of time writing proposals. And here’s how I like to do it. I do it like a conversation, and that’s how we…
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Automatic check-ins and the old, personal web
Basecamp 3’s automatic check-in feature can build community and help you design your career and your life. It even brings back some of the joy we once derived from the days of the personal web.
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Measure Customer Time, Not Organization Time: Gerry McGovern
We need to manage speed on the page, not just the speed of the page load. Manage the customer’s time on task. We won’t become customer-centric until we change our metrics—focusing on customers’ time to…
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Ten Years Ago on the Web
2006 DOESN’T seem forever ago until I remember that we were tracking IE7 bugs, worrying about the RSS feed validator, and viewing Drupal as an accessibility-and-web-standards-positive platform, at the time. Pundits were claiming bad design was good for the web…
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Introducing studio.zeldman
studio.zeldman is open for business. It’s a vision I’ve been cooking up, a new studio supported by some of the most talented people in our industry and everything I’ve learned in two-plus decades of web…