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Kill Your Processes
The small details and the specific tools definitely matter. But there’s a need to break away from tools and begin learning to act on the fly.
4/5/2015
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We spend so much time learning the small details and tools needed to do our work — but do we spend enough time talking about the larger process? Are we too tied to our methods to break away and do what's best for the client?
This month, Blend’s User Experience Strategist Corey Vilhauer wrote about just this over at The Pastry Box Project:
As a content strategist, I spent a lot of time in the beginning learning about content audits and style guides. I defined the landscape around me by reading everything I could, creating a gigantic document, and putting my new knowledge to work. I wanted definition to shape my expectations. I struggled to find the edges of the industry.
Once we’ve found those edges, though? That’s when things get dangerous. We know all of the tools, but we haven’t quite learned how they interact. We know the terms, but we don’t know how to adapt them on the fly.
We know what we can do, but we don’t know what we should do.
Check it out. And while you’re at it, make sure you catch his entire series at The Pastry Box Project this year.
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Episode 8: Gather Insight From Your Metrics (w/ Jon Crowley) Off-site link
Corey and Deane talk about the first time they tracked analytics on their blogs in the early 2000s. Then, Jon Crowley, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Diamond Marketing Group, talks to us about the balance between data and insights — how to focus on questions rather than raw numbers, how to look for answers rather than “trying to be correct,” and a when we can take data at face value. (He also gives us a tour of his shoe collection.)
Flexibility First: Designing for Mobile and Beyond
There’s a lot more to building a mobile-friendly and responsive site than just saying the words “mobile-first” and willing it into being. What does it mean? How is it done? In this article, we take a look at the process behind designing for mobile.
Episode 7: Know Your Content (w/ Paula Ladenburg Land) Off-site link
Corey and Deane talk about Blend CEO Karla Santi’s recent selection as Small Business Person of the Year for South Dakota. Then, Paula Ladenburg Land, author of The Content Inventory and Audit Handbook and principal at Strategic Content LLC, joins the podcast to talk about content inventories and content audits, including what separates the two, when and how to worry about auditing, and her first ever content inventory, which arrived as a spreadsheet on one-and-a-half inches of printed paper.