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Thoughts from Blend Interactive
One of Blend’s core values is a dedication to advocacy and progress — to expand upon and give back to the community that fuels us. This is where those thoughts live.
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Design Through Discovery: Blend's Strategic Design Philosophy
Blend’s strategic design philosophy is one of Design Through Discovery: we design in a way that's usable, useful, and collaborative with those who will use and maintain the final product.
So ... What Is Discovery?
Building a website is like building a house — each decision is built upon the decisions that came before. Just as an architect doesn’t just throw a number at you and begin working on blueprints, we don’t begin working on a project until we fully understand the scope. We do that through our discovery process.
Chapter 7: Know Your Content Off-site link
One of the challenges in rebuilding any website is figuring out what to do with the existing content. But before you can make any decisions, you simply need to know what it all is. And once it’s unearthed and exposed, then you need to decide what information is relevant and worth recording, determine a method to store this information, and decide how (or if ) you want to keep it updated over time.
Understanding Customers: Data, Journeys and Insights
In advance of Now What? Workshops, we’re featuring short interviews with our smart and wonderful workshop speakers. This week, we talk to Jon Crowley about analytics and metrics — and how to use metrics to make better content decisions.
Clarifying our Vocabulary: The Words We Use Off-site link
The chasm of understanding between consultant and client is a dangerous hurdle. Our job as content experts is to understand that, despite the promises and assurances we make in terms of a client’s content, our own explanations and processes are tangled, weirdly worded, and sometimes impossible to decipher.
Empathy and Content Strategy: on Teaching, Listening and Affecting Change Off-site link
Content strategy practitioners – and, really, the entire UX umbrella – serve a unique role in the life of a web property, in that we act as an advocate for people we may never know. But there’s another element of this process that can often be overlooked, and it’s the audience we know and understand and work with on a daily basis: the client.
Audiences, Outcomes, and Determining User Needs
Every website needs an audience. And every audience needs a goal. Advocating for end-user needs is the very foundation of the user experience disciplines. Corey Vilhauer explains the threads that bind UX research to content strategy and project deliverables that deliver.
Building Confidence: The Hidden Content Deliverable Off-site link
When we sign a contract for content work – whether it’s working with a client as a consultant or accepting a position within a large company – we do so with the expectation of deliverables. But what if the biggest deliverable is simply to help clients understand what they're expected to manage in the first place?
Turning Card Sort Lemons into Content Strategy Lemonade Off-site link
If there’s one skill that is too often overlooked in the web strategy industry, it’s the act of continuing to find useful information in what seems to be rubbish data.
Beyond Blend.
Blend doesn’t just write here: we also write books, create videos, and dive deep into our individual disciplines. Check out some of our external sources of knowledge.
The Web Project Guide
A phase-by-phase look at the web design and development process, providing context to each step.
Coding with Bob
A YouTube series by our director of development, focusing on .NET coding and Optimizely development.
Eating Elephant
A blog about content strategy, information architecture, and understanding user needs.