And yet every week, without fail, the most interesting email that lands in my Inbox is the Quora Weekly Digest. It’s a simple email, just 5 Quora questions along with the first hundred words of the “best” answer. But what makes the Quora Weekly Digest so awesome is that those 5 questions were chosen just for me, and every week at least one of them teaches me something I didn’t even know I wanted to learn.

Last week, for example, I learned why so many white people who study Chinese hate a white Chinese-speaking television character named Dashan. The best answer, which examines the hatred of Dashan from several different angles, was written by Dashan himself, Canadian Mark Rowswell. “There has always been something of a Mr. Rogers quality to the Dashan character,” he writes. “He’s such a nice guy you sometimes wish he’d make a cameo appearance in a horror movie just so you could watch him get ripped to shreds, and then replay it over and over on YouTube.” I was immediately sucked in.

In a perfect world, all the weekly emails I receive would be this interesting. There’s no doubt my overabundance of curiosity makes me more receptive to an email full of trivia and minutiae, but I think every site that sends out regular emails could learn a thing or three from Quora.

Less Is More

Quora doesn’t try to cram everything in. 5 articles is all it takes—and all that anyone has time to scan in their Inbox.

High Quality Content

The best answers (as determined by the Quora community) are really, really good. Quora’s ability to get authors, experts, or celebrities to answer questions about their work makes their content some of the most interesting stuff on the web today.

Relevance is Everything — But it’s also Relative

The thing that impresses me most about the Quora Weekly Digest is how it surfaces so much interesting content while knowing comparatively little about me. Even if only 1 of the 5 articles is a home run, that’s still better than almost any other site I interact with. I’ve rated nearly 1000 movies on Netflix, for example, and wouldn’t say that 1 out of 5 of its suggestions are super interesting to me. (A problem that I can sympathize with.)

I’m very curious about the algorithm Quora uses to pull this content. Few of the topics in my Quora Weekly Digest are in categories I follow, but they’re still great. Fuzzy matching, or are they getting lucky? Something like the match.com algorthim perhaps?

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But alas, not everything can be perfect. There are still a few ways Quora could improve my favorite newsletter.

Stop Including Content from my Network

Almost all the duds in my Quora Weekly Digest turn up because someone I follow participated in the thread. They’re a smart and diverse set of people, but just because I follow someone doesn’t mean every answer they post is insightful or interesting. Social content is a fad right now, but the algorithms have to get better or it’s just useless clutter.

Stop Trying to be Facebook. Or LinkedIn. Or worse, Google+

As I was writing this, Quora switched up their email format to put a list of “People You May Know” at the top of the email. WE GET IT ALREADY!

My presentation on Sophisticated Web Design was aimed at both new and experienced designers who are looking for ways to break out of the tried-and-true and add more depth and detail to their web designs. It’s easy to fall into a rut of doing what’s always worked before or what we see working for other people, but that quickly leads to repetition and a portfolio of stale work. I thought it’d be fun and inspiring to talk about ways we can push our designs further while improving the usability of our sites for visitors.

This was by far the longest and most in-depth presentation I’ve given so far. It took significantly more work and preparation than I expected, and even though it was well-received there are still ways I think I could have done better. Nevertheless, I’m thrilled with the positive response I received and looking forward to tackling more speaking engagements in 2012.

edUI 2012 is scheduled for September 24-26, 2012 in Richmond, VA. You should plan to check it out.

I was really impressed with the quality of the content that attendees offered this year, and am already looking forward to going back in 2012. Here are some of the highlights I took away from the sessions I attended:

Steven Fisher: Architecting Social Experiences

Steven’s presentation hinged on a very simple idea: not all of your users are alike, so your site should offer paths/features/affordances for many different types of users. Some users want to browse. Some users want to search. Some users will only access your site from a mobile device. Plan for diversity among user behavior, not a homogenous single User. Good suggestion, right?

But this presentation started to go off the rails at Slide 14, which broke users down into 4 groups: Matures (65+), Baby Boomers, Gen X (1965-1980), and Gen Y (1981-1991). Steven offered observations about each group and how they currently use technology. Gen Y doesn’t use email, for example: they text instead, and access sites via mobile devices. Baby Boomers, however, still love email. Matures are the most rapidly growing group of Facebook users, and have fallen in love with the iPad. His observations were pretty general, and were offered as a way of illustrating how current designers (most of whom are Gen X) shouldn’t assume that their own ways of interacting with websites and applications are true for everybody else. After all, you are not your user!

Some folks in the audience, however, felt these generalizations were unfair to their particular generation (Baby Boomers), and offered themselves as exceptions to the behaviors Steven had outlined. “I am a Baby Boomer and I use text messaging! I am a Baby Boomer and I access websites via mobile devices!” And so what started out as a presentation about diversity among users turned into a somewhat heated debate over generalizing about Baby Boomer internet behavior. Yawn.

My takeaway: Baby Boomers don’t like it when you make assumptions about their user patterns based on their age, but they will get quite huffy when a site doesn’t take their preferences into account. Tread cautiously.

I sang Steven a few bars of The Hero of Canton on my way out of the room, and discovered that he’s one of the masterminds behind Browncoats: Redemption. Proving once again that Joss Whedon is the key to soothing hurts and finding friends in almost any situation.

Brian Talbot: The U(X) Files

Brian’s session was an open discussion offering “An informal look into some new, abnormal, or just plain weird design patterns and interactions happening in web and digital interfaces today.” I thought Brian’s reference to The X-Files in the session title was clever, and he did a great job of leading the discussion and offering his own examples.

Our group spent at least 35 minutes discussing infinite scrolling, particularly as executed by Tumblr and Twitter. We identified at least 6 different ways a user can scroll down the page of a website: clicking the scroll arrows, dragging the scrollbar, using a mouse scroll-wheel, using the page-down key, using the space bar, and dragging down on a touchpad. (And those don’t even take into account touch interfaces!) Several people expressed frustration at the bugginess infinite-scroll sites frequently exhibit—and why wouldn’t they, considering how many different scrolling behaviors developers have to test and de-bug for?

My takeaway: UXer’s (myself included) can obsess about scrolling for much longer than I ever expected, and that’s what makes us awesome.

Zack Naylor: UX and Start-ups

Zach lead an informal discussion based on his experience working at ModCloth.com and Pikimal.com. He offered a client-side perspective on working for start-ups and the challenges that poses, as well as identifying what kind of start-up is a good fit for you as a designer. I described some of my experiences working with start-ups from the agency side, such as the difficulties of designing for a company that hasn’t finalized its business strategy, and several other UXers and Project Managers chimed in about how they handle the constantly shifting sands of a start-up environment. I found it really helpful to hear that other designers have experienced many of the same challenges I have, and to discuss how projects can be structured to account for the specific needs of start-ups.

My takeaway: Designing for start-ups is hard, but rewarding. There’s a big difference between a start-up created by an experienced founder, and an online business started by someone who’s never worked in the digital space before. Experienced clients have more appreciation for the value offered by UX and design.

Andrew Nacin: UX and Open Source Projects

Nacin was drafted in to one of the last slots of the day, and did a great job throwing together some slides using this cool WordPress Presentation Plugin. He offered an insider’s view on how the WordPress team makes decisions that affect the User Experience of the platform, from design to UI to introducing new features.

I’ve admired the simplicity of WordPress ever since I moved from Blogger to b2 cafelog (from which WordPress was eventually branched) back in the day, but I’d never really thought about what it takes to maintain that commitment to simplicity as a product grows in scope and complexity. Nacin discussed the Philosophy behind WordPress, which serves as the guidepost for every decision the team makes. One of those principles, “Decisions not Options” may be the coolest UX concept I’ve learned in quite awhile, and I find myself bringing it up in conversations about product design over and over again.

Overall, this discussion clarified (for me) why WordPress is such a great product and why I love it so much. “Design for the Majority” and “Strive for Simplicity” are principles I apply to my own work, and I enjoy using a product that aligns with my own values so well.

My takeaway: Building a product with exceptional UX requires an unwavering commitment to the principles that form good user experience. The team behind WordPress is doing one hell of a job and making it look way easier than it really is.

You can check out my slide deck below, or at Scribd.com.

Starting from Scratch: An Introduction to Building WordPress Themes

For those of you curious about the Plugins I recommended, here’s the complete list:

Plugins for Any WordPress Site

• Akismet
• All-In-One-SEO
• Google XML Sitemaps
• Fast Secure Contact Form
• WPTouch iPhone Theme

Plugins for Blogs or Content-Heavy Sites

• Author Highlighter
• Comment Timeout
• SEO Slugs
• Thank me Later
• WordPress Related Posts

Plugins for using WordPress as a CMS

• Custom Excerpts
• Search Permalink
• Search Unleashed
• WP-PageNavi
• WP Super Cache

Reset stylesheets have become increasingly common in the last few years as they’ve found their way into frameworks like Blueprint and popular WordPress themes. Yet some designers still don’t understand the purpose of reset.css, or know that using one means several common HTML elements will need to be restyled. Too often, the use of reset.css results in strange behavior from infrequently-used HTML elements, like bulleted lists.

Below are 5 things you absolutely need to do whenever you use a reset.css stylesheet. Most projects will probably require that you do more than this, but make this your starting point for avoiding future HTML wackness.

1. Style headers and paragraphs

A reset stylesheet normalizes h1-h6 and removes the padding from p tags. Create some basic styling for each of these, even if you don’t think you’ll use them.

h1 {font-size: 28px;}
h2 {font-size: 24px;}
h3 {font-size: 18px;}
h4 {font-size: 14px;}
h5 {font-size: 12px;}
h6 {font-size: 10px;}
p {font-size: 12px; padding-bottom: 18px;}

2. Style ordered and unordered lists for body copy

Reset stylesheets include list-style: none for both ul and ol list-items. This is great for creating semantic menus without pesky bullets floating around, but you’ll need to add support for bullets and numbers in your content area.

.post ol li {list-style-type: decimal; padding-bottom: 0.85em;}

.post ul li {list-style-type: disc; padding-bottom: 0.85em;}

(Should you hang your bullets in the margin? Yes. Or no. Personally, I don’t think it works on the web, but whichever you choose, make it intentional.)

3. Style strong and em

Reset stylesheets return both strong and em to font-style: normal Bring styling for these tags back with

em {font-style: italic;}
strong {font-weight: bold;}

4. Style blockquote

I know it’s old-skool, but blockquote isn’t going anywhere; Tumblr and WordPress themes both need it, and it will be included in HTML5. (Learn more about blockquote and how to use it correctly – it’s not just for indenting!) Give your blockquote the CSS love it deserves with indentation and maybe a little background color.

blockquote {margin: 0px 36px; background-color: #f5f5f5;}

5. Style :focus

If you’re using Eric’s reset.css that includes :focus {outline: 0;}, pay attention to his comments and remember to style the :focus on your form fields. Your users still need a visual affordance that they’re interacting with your form fields.

It’s nice to be able to look back in the morning and see how everything went wrong.

Rule #1: Posting Facebook updates to Twitter sucks. Don’t do it.

Twitter is not the ugly step-sister of Facebook. It’s user base is smaller, but made up of influencers – young, mobile, urban professionals who consume, create, and distribute information at a rapid-fire pace. If you’re going to have a Twitter account, it’s worth taking the time to do it right — that means creating unique posts for Twitter instead of cribbing from Facebook.

If you want to tell people on Twitter about your blog post, just link to your blog post. Don’t link to a Facebook post about your blog post. That’s one extra click to get to your content, which means one more chance for your audience to abandon you.

Rule #2: Posting Twitter updates to Facebook sucks. Don’t do it.

That’s right, I said it: automatically posting your Twitter updates to Facebook sucks. Why? Because it annoys the people who follow you thru both channels and gives them a reason to unfriend or unfollow you on one of them. Why would anyone subscribe to duplicate content? Also, it’s LAZY, and everybody knows it.

If you’re auto posting FB to Twitter or Twitter to FB, it means you don’t have a differentiated strategy for your social media. And the reason you don’t have a differentiated strategy? You don’t understand your audience, i.e. your customers, which is the whole point of social media. ^[1]

3 Steps to a Balanced Social Media Lifestyle

Now that I’ve told you what not to do, this is where I tell you what you ought to be doing. Don’t worry, it’s super easy, and conveniently packaged for you to add to a Powerpoint presentation that your boss will love.

Step 1: Identify the critical content that you will tell all your friends & fans about.

When good stuff happens, you want to shout it from the rooftops. So when your company lands a new client, tell everybody. When you’re nominated for an award, go crazy. Even when you’ve updated your blog or posted a video to YouTube — it’s cool, we’re all interested. Plan to post this info across multiple channels, just don’t post it word for word with the same updates. (See above: lazy.)

Attention Bosses of the World: This should be the smallest amount of your social media content, not the largest. Spamming everybody with every little update is not okay. Make a list of what content qualifies and STICK TO IT.

Step 2: What do your Facebook fans want to hear from you? Figure it out.

You’ve got Facebook fans – awesome. Hopefully this group contains some actual clients and customers (and not just your Mom, your wife, and your intern), so what are they here for? Behold, I offer you 6 suggestions for Facebook exclusive content.

• Photos of products you sell or manufacture
• Photos of your office, your employees, your recent trade show booth, etc
• Special deals/discounts for FB fans
• Info about industry events you’re participating in
• Articles about trends in your industry that clients would want to know about
• Mini case-study: profile one of your clients and how they’re using your service

Adapt to fit your business, and don’t be afraid to try stuff out. Remember, the key is knowing your audience. Give the people what they want!

Step 3: Talk to people on Twitter

Yeah yeah, we’re all tired of hearing “Twitter is about conversation.” But even though it’s been said ten thousand times before, I know a lot of people are still confused about how to jump in.

Remember, your Twitter audience is different than your Facebook audience. It hopefully has your clients and customers, but it also contains your competitors and peers. Proceed accordingly.

Here are 6 ways to have a conversation on Twitter.

• Learn your Twitter tools. Do you know where to click to see if people are talking at you or about you? Do you know how to search for your company’s name? The links are in the sidebar of your Twitter home page. Use them.
• Find people to follow. Follow people in your industry. Follow people in your city. Follow people with the same last name as you. Just follow a bunch of people and then — LISTEN.
• Post updates that encourage conversation. Good examples: posts that share new information, express an opinion or ask a question.
• Post links to articles and info about your industry and interests. This can include retweeting (RT) good stuff you find on Twitter. Work on finding the right mix of serious articles and funny cat videos — it will depend on your industry and your followers.
• Reply to people who post nifty things or ask questions that interest you.
• Reply to people who reply to you!

If you’re doing all this, you won’t even need to steal content from your Facebook page. You’ll have plenty of activity happening on Twitter to keep your followers interested and engaged.

One final word

Is handling social media really this easy? It is and it isn’t. Beware posting too much personal content in your business FB or Twitter updates, and always remember to be professional and courteous, especially to unhappy customers. But for most companies, there’s only one real challenge to engaging in an effective social media strategy: finding the time.

[1] Then why can you update Twitter with Facebook and Facebook with Twitter, if it’s such a bad idea? Because these two companies are in the midst of a fierce competition right now. Would you pour Pepsi into your Coke? I didn’t think so.

This sounds like a job for….sketchy wireframes

Boxes & Arrows recently posted a great article about sketchy wireframes, i.e. wireframes that are created digitally, but which look somewhat rough and hand-drawn. The unfinished look and feel helps clients understand that what they are seeing is high-level overview of architecture and strategy, rather than a design treatment, while the digital assets make it easier to revise and iterate than traditional paper sketches.

Clearly, my clients are very focused on design at this stage, but I need to be able to talk about functionality choices from the start. Sketchy wireframes can get that discussion started without leading us off into irrelevant details.

Why Wireframes Are Important

I wireframe every site that I design, though oftentimes only in rough sketches on paper or a whiteboard. Drawing out page elements helps in a number of ways:

1. Nothing gets left out
   It’s always frustrating to design a site you love, only to be asked later to come back and shoehorn in 4 new items that weren’t in the original plan. Wireframes help you and the client keep track of every link, button and callout that needs to be included.
2. Makes problem areas obvious
   Once you start wireframing, it quickly becomes clear which areas of function and interaction haven’t been completely figured out. This often results in a longer wireframing process than planned, but it pays off in faster design and development down the road.
3. Gets clients on board
   Some shops don’t like to show wireframes to clients, but if handled correctly (see above: sketchy wireframes) they can be a great way to finalize content choices and solve functionality problems early on, without time-consuming design revisions. And because you can make changes to wireframes quickly, you can update clients frequently and keep them engaged in the site’s progress.

Wireframing like a rock star

(video by Michael Leis)

Too often, I admit, I start my design projects without a perfectly clear sense of the content I’m designing for. If I had a dollar for every wireframe I’ve created that sheepishly says “Callout Here” in a little box towards the bottom of the page, I could buy a round of drinks for my whole office. And yet, it’s the reality that we live with as designers, even when we know better.

This site is my chance to create content, again, for the web. To write about the things I do well and the challenges I face, the people who inspire me and the random happy internet things that make all the stress and effort worth it.

I started my first website in 1999 as a hobby, then walked away from it a few years later. During the heyday of personal weblogs, the obsession with stats counters and blogroll links became too much, enough that I forgot why I was doing this thing in the first place. I gave up having a personal site, but I never gave up my love for the web or for design.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’m happy to be back.