Katie Jamison's Blog

Katie Jamison

Project Manager

Bridging the gap between clients, developers, and designers here at Newfangled since Dec. 2007.

Katie Jamison's Blog

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Despite all the tremendous benefits using an HTML based, interactive prototype (which we will sing praises for til the end of time), I often find that if we begin with HTML alone, we're more likely to cling to a certain layout simply due to the time (and pride) put into crafting a complex HTML structure. This is why I begin nearly all template layouts with a number of hand drawn sketches or whiteboard layouts before we even begin with HTML.

In this post, I'll share an example of how paper prototyping played a critical role in how we approached a redesign for winwithoutpitching.com.
read more...

Tags: prototyping redesign grayscreen paperprototyping

Emusic makes Scheduled Downtime a little more Courteous

July 9, 2009 at 2:00 pm by Katie

A number of us Newfanglers are big fans of eMusic. They do a lot of things right, like DRM free music, an amazing selection, great design and social media tools. Despite the flack they've received for their acquisition to Sony, they still consistently deliver one of the best usability/customer experiences I've come across online.

Today I noticed another thing they do better than most: the dreaded maintenance downtime. Along with their message notifying me why the site was temporarily unavailable, they also added a feature that let me plug in an email that would be notified as soon as they're available again.

Emusic Maintenance Message

This is one of those genius yet no-brainer ideas I hope other online services begin to offer. I'm much less likely to become annoyed at a service I pay for if I don't have to continually check on it throughout the day, only to find they're STILL unavailable. It's like the equivalent to the beeper device restaurants give you when waiting for a table. The amount of time you wait is no different, but you're never as frustrated.

It's the little user-centric details that eMusic has that will make its userbase stand by them, even when they occasionally scale back offerings.

Tags: customerservice, design, usability, development, emusic

How to Deal with (and prevent) Project Fatigue

May 7, 2009 at 1:20 pm by Katie

In a recent project management meeting, each staff member cited a weakness they'd like to improve. Several answers related to challenges with those few projects that tend to go far over schedule and how to get it back on track, within budget, and keep morale high (for both us and the client) long after the project kickoff.

With a few of these kinds of projects under my belt now, I've learned a couple ways to both prevent and work through these phases.
read more...

Tags: project-management clients goals scheduling

How to Use Twitter well

March 6, 2009 at 10:00 am by Katie

We've had a healthy debate at the Newfangled lunch table for several months now about the value of Twitter. I've been an advocate for Twitter while Mark and Chris (like many people) are not big fans. I signed up for Twitter several years ago and felt similarly. At that time, there wasn't a critical mass and I had no clue about the ins and outs of how to communicate with other members.

In the past few months I've increased my Twitter usage and I'm getting a lot out of it both personally and professionally. Here are a couple of reasons why I'm firmly rooted in the Pro-Twitter camp at our lunch table.

read more...

Tags: twitter, socialmedia, blogging,

SEO Friendly Site Images

January 14, 2009 at 5:18 PM by Katie

When it comes to training clients on basics of SEO, it's easy to focus exclusively on textual content. However, proper use of image tags and accompanying descriptions is one easy way to take otherwise empty real estate in Google's eyes and convert it into valuable SEO fodder. This is especially true for agency designed sites that tend to be image and graphic heavy. Here are 4 good tips to follow:

1. Use the alt attribute!

The first and most important rule of optimizing your site's images for SEO is use of the alt attribute. This is dirt simple, but if you do a view source on any site it's astounding how often this is ignored. To Newfangled CMS users, this means using the 'image description' field found in the Insert Image option in the formater.

Screenshot of how to add Image Description in Newfangled CMS

Screenshot of how to add Image Description in Newfangled CMS

The best way to think about how write your image "alt" description is to consider describing it to someone who is unable to see the image. This text is read both by search engines and text to speech readers for the visually impaired.

2. Name files appropriately

Second, name your files appropriately. When managing tons of files, naming each descriptively can be a huge pain. But if you take the time to describe the file name in a way that ties into the page title, page content, and alt tag, google will look upon this favorably. After all, it makes perfect sense ... if you're searching for 'world's cutest puppy' and the page is loaded with images titled 'monster trucks' or the old reliable 'IMG123.jpg', that page won't be a great search match.

3. Don't embed text inside images

Third, (sorry to break it to you, designers) don't embed text within images. Embedding text within images is as good as having no text at all to a search engine. While your users may think that custom font is beautiful, if they can't find your site to begin with it's worthless. If you are dead set on using custom font within images, be sure to accompany alt text and consider tying in a text description right next to the image. Another good option is sIFR, a flash based font option that allows you to customize the font type but remain indexible by search engines.

4. Group non-content images in a separate folder and block it from indexing

Lastly, if you have a graphic heavy site but most of the images have nothing to do with the content, consider grouping these generic image files into a separate folder and block these from search engines. This tip came from Vanessa Fox's blog Jane and Robot. She explains that "non-content images" like arrows, bullets, etc. are all images that search engines will take the time to index. They're not going to help out your page rank so you might as well remove them from the search engine's view. She explains:

A good way to block non-content images is to place them in a separate folder from your content images and then block that folder using robots.txt. For instance, if you place these images in a folder called no_index_images, your robots.txt file would contain: user-agent: * Disallow: /no_index_images

Based on the comments on Vanessa's blog, it seems like this tactic's value is still disputed but makes a certain amount of sense and I'll be keeping it in mind for the next graphic heavy interface we build.

There are many more options for this but the above seem to be the most important strategies. Fighting for the top rank of a standard google search is a constant battle, but focusing on these small optimizations can help. Plus, top billing on a google image search isn't a bad place to be either!

Tags: images