September 28, 2017 — We all want to design and build better projects—to feel proud of what we’ve made and to have our end users love it too. Sometimes our projects afford us research budgets and sometimes they don’t. So how do we build in a better user experience when our clients don’t want to pay for those line items?

In this talk, I’ll share some practical tools and tips to “sneak in good UX” as one of my bosses used to say, with minimal impact on your budget but a positive impact on your team’s understanding of key problems to solve.

August 30, 2017 — In this talk, I’ll share some practical tools and tips to “sneak in good UX” as one of my bosses used to say, with minimal impact on your budget but a positive impact on your team’s understanding of key problems to solve.

March 31, 2017 — When timid users step up to your site and are spooked by the ghosts of content past, or those who dare to enter become lost in a maze of composted navigation, a dusting just won’t fix the years/decades of content rot. You know you need to pull everything out to figure out what you have, what to keep, and what to toss—but that can be a daunting and overwhelming endeavor.

In this talk, I’ll equip you with the tools and approaches you’ll need to face the overwhelming content beast head-on, to organize it in a way that is not only useful to your visitors, but actually feels welcoming. This talk introduces information architecture techniques, best suited for site owners, designers, freelancers, or small teams lacking dedicated content strategists.

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August 14, 2016 — You’ve built a shiny, new WordPress site. You asked your grandma and your client if they like it and they both do. However, you’re lying awake at night wondering if you’re missing something—because you know you’re not the end user. You yearn for actionable feedback.

In this talk, I’ll distill my background in usability research into a how-to framework for taking your site and conducting your first moderated usability test. I’ll cover what to look for, best practices in facilitation, tools on the cheap, and how to glean the most from a brief window of time.

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July 18, 2016 — There are many popular page builders out there—CornerStone, Beaver Builder, Site Origin’s “Page Builder,” Velocity Page, Themify, Divi, and more. Some are free. Others have multiple price tiers. This session won’t get into the ins and outs of which are best for production code, but I’ll demo a couple I’ve found helpful for quick turnaround projects.

In this talk, I’ll take a couple of my favorite page builders and show you why I like them, why I feel they’re good for your clients, and how to use them as a foundation for your own UI prototyping library.

Take aways:
The benefits of using theme builders outside of the typical development process.
How to get started and what to focus on.
How to build a reusable toolkit to save time on future projects.

Presentation Slides »

April 18, 2016 — You’ve built a shiny, new WordPress site. You asked your grandma and your client if they like it and they both do. However, you’re lying awake at night wondering if you’re missing something—because you know you’re not the end user. You yearn for actionable feedback.

In this talk, I’ll distill my background in usability research into a how-to framework for taking your site and conducting your first moderated usability test. I’ll cover what to look for, best practices in facilitation, tools on the cheap, and how to glean the most from a brief window of time.

Presentation Slides »

December 20, 2015 — In this talk, I share how our work-from-home team overcomes technical and social hurdles, to mirror natural, in-person creative ideation (sketching, wireframing, etc.) with a mashup of hardware and cloud tools. This talk is best for teams allowing or considering telework, as well as freelancers who want to impress their clients.

Presentation Slides »

December 12, 2015 — It’s 2020 and the majority of Internet traffic is mobile. Billions of the world Internet users have never owned, touched, or seen a computer larger than their pocket. Just as we were inquisitive kids, tinkering with Kid Pix and Geocities themes, the digital natives of today will be builders on the same platforms they use for consumption. Can you install and configure WordPress via your phone? Theme it? Create custom plugins? Launch it? Spoiler: I did, and I’ll show you how.

This talk is both a trend forecast thought piece and a proof-of-concept demo. I’ll share some technical learnings, discuss why they matter to our profession, and hopefully inspire you to attempt something just as crazy.

September 20, 2015 — In this talk, I share how our work-from-home team overcomes technical and social hurdles, to mirror natural, in-person creative ideation (sketching, wireframing, etc.) with a mashup of hardware and cloud tools. This talk is best for teams allowing or considering telework, as well as freelancers who want to impress their clients.

Presentation Slides »

May 23, 2015 — This session introduces a framework for approaching your WordPress project’s situational analysis from many perspectives, to create success goals that resonate with everyone on your team—including your client’s wallet-bearers.

Presentation Slides »