Learning from Teaching “What Works on the Web”
Achievement unlocked! Helping marketers practice wireframes.
That was a blast.
It, for some reason, was one of the most nerve-wracking talks I’ve given. I was nervous about talking about “product” topics to marketers. Which is not a “fear*” that I was aware of before.
Achievement unlocked, though! I never thought the day would come that I would teach wireframing to Marketing people.
That was the craziest thing, for me. I was able to see marketing people take apart and compose a wireframe. Multi-page wireframes at that.
Thank goodness that they were amazing and got the point.
That — to understand what you need to plan for the web — you need to get into the shoes of the people who will make it.
That’s besides needing to get into the shoes of the people who will use it — which is for planning the functions, content and spirit of your site.
It is tedious; and there are a lot of copy points, and links, and elements. But that’s why it’s important to have clarity. And a clear userflow and user tasks.
Listing down the spontaneous samples I needed to interject during the lecture, and some notes to improve on:
1. On balancing business objectives and user objectives.
A visualization of how a re-prioritization would impact a design would be great.
Example they liked: business objectives that users hate. And what to do about them.
2. Design patterns.
This is the group who would have benefited from the most common design patterns and how or where to find them.
3. The technical things that I would need to brush up on
for this type of topic: Is “cloud hosting” more secure than traditional hosting? What are the usual bandwidth’s needed for a website?
I did say that is usually the role of a System or Dev Ops expert, but at least I know that I need to be ready next time.
4. The example of how choosing only a specific part of the customer journey, results in peculiar but clever design decisions.
And, the reverse: how designing end-to-end, when it isn’t what your users need, may result in wasted investment.
5. The most badass responsive design I’ve seen so far:
USA Today.
6. A/B Testing:
Live versus Guerilla Moderated
7. I think maybe I drove home “clarity” too much
without showing a clear example of an unclear design.
8. Growthhacking.
It’s not as if I’m a crazy fan. But, this is probably one of the most relevant themes to someone who would mostly be handling promotional websites.
9. And, a-ha! Apparently, there will be a way to weave in-flow and out-flow into the lecture.
All the succeeding questions were about “landing pages”.
10. There’s something in the flow that I feel I should reverse…
I’ll still figure it out. But somewhere between teaching about user journeys and conversion, there was much room for tighter storytelling.
11. A-ha! And, what I feel is a gap — if I needed to break down a product planning workflow further:
prioritizing features systematically on an interface.
12. Oh, and my personal favorite thing to keep letting people know, which I should formally weave in:
It’s not all about the homepage
(Precious man-hours are used up for a page template that is important, but may not represent the main landing page).
13. The PRC Website example,
and why I think it’s unfairly judged.
14. And, my biggest frustration — I didn’t get to talk about how behavior is more important than self-disclosed feedback.
15. Zootopia for accessibility.
Just needed to get thoughts and learnings out while they’re still fresh.
*I think it was a fear of…
- presenting something I probably disproportionately care about,
- to a group that may not need to hear the whole of it,
- because, then, they might get lost in the topic, and then
- I’d lose the chance to help them see the bits that were relevant to them.
And, also, maybe because I have not done a class or presentation solely for Marketing people in…2 years, since I now work with mostly product people and business owners.
As I mention in weeknotes I write, I’m a fan of open design. If you want to follow the things I’m learning along the way, as a researcher, strategist and teacher, follow me on Medium or subscribe to our yet-to-be-regular newsletter.
