- posted on
- July 22, 2007
- by Liz Danzico
How Not To Get Noticed
Later today, I’ll be giving a talk at WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco on “How Not To Get Noticed,” an analysis of the usability for WordPress. The analysis is part of a larger project I’ve been working on over the past few months, and I’m excited to talk about it with the people attending.
Yesterday was focused primarily on user topics, while today is focused on developer topics. Since I’m always brought into a project as the user advocate, it’s different for me to be speaking on developer day. But since the users I’ve been concerned with are developers themselves, it makes great sense.
Attending WordCamp versus other kinds of conferences has been like the difference between attending graduate versus undergraduate school. With undergraduate education, students are there because their parents paid for them to be there; not everyone is there by choice. But in graduate school, everyone has chosen to be there—it’s not required—so everyone’s really into it. WordCamp is kind of like that. Because the cost is so low, there is probably a lower number of people here who’ve been sent by their company or feel like they have to be here. It’s quite awesome.
If you stay around for the afternoon sessions today, please say hello!
Update
The slides from the presentation are now available.
John Pozadzides is also starting to post videocasts of the all the presentations. There’s lots of good stuff here, so take a look!
Great presentation Liz, thanks for looking into this for the community!
Great presentation. Will you be posting your slides?
In addition to your slides, is there any other details you’ll be sharing about the analysis you did? I found your approach with users and the conclusions you came to wonderful and accessible.
Agreed. The presentation was excellent and I’d love to see your slides posted. It will be exciting to see WordPress Administration evolve over time based on your findings.
Enjoyed your talk. Can you please post your keynote presentation? Thanks
Add my voice to the chorus for slides! :)
I also very much enjoyed your presentation, and like the previous comments’ authors, encourage you to share your presentation slides. Great Job!
…possibly through Rashmi’s SlideShare
[...] Liz Danzico of Happy Cog Studios spoke today about her consulting with Automattic on the design of the WordPress admin interface. [...]
I throw in another “great presentation” and say again that I’m looking forward to reading about the actual studies you’ve done for this analysis (I’m the guy who asked about this after your talk). Thanks!
Thanks everyone! I’ll be posting the slides mostly likely using Slideshare. And I’ve gotten some requests for the research reports as well. I’d be happy to talk about any of the details of the personas or user research. And, I believe, all videos of the presentations (with embedded highlights of slides) will be posted on the WordCamp site and the WordPress blog as soon as they’re edited.
Just another quick thank you for an excellent presentation. I’m really excited about the work you’re doing with WordPress to make the Admin more usable, and I picked up a few tips about design that I know I’ll be able to use.
FYI, you’ve linked to slideshare.com above. The correct url is slideshare.net.
Fantastic! And thanks—the link has been updated.
I was very impressed with your presentation today, Liz, thanks for coming. I’m even more impressed that WordPress (andor Automattic) hired your company to help with the admin design. It proves to me that WordPress is in the game for the long haul–not that I was concerned they weren’t–but it helps build trust.
Looking forward to the implementation of your findings in WP 2.4 !
Thanks again.
Great presentation today. Very excited to try the new admin.
Great presentation. I definitely think the wordpress admin could use a little work.
I didn’t get a chance to speak up about it, but I felt the need to let you know my biggest annoyance with the wordpress admin.
It has to deal with the primary vs. secondary navigation at the top of every admin page. There are many times that I want to access a specific page in the secondary navigation, but to do so I must first click the primary link (which takes me to a page I don’t want to go to) just so that the secondary navigation with the link I am looking for is activated.
For example…If I knew i wanted to write a new page, I must first click on the “write” button. This takes me to the “write post” page. I must then click on the “write page” link in the secondary navigation to get where I want to go.
Perhaps there is a plug-in out there that already fixes this, but I do not know about it.
My proposed solution would be either some kind of drop-down navigation or perhaps some type of javascript/ajax solution where a menu of secondary options pops up once you click on the primary link. The flickr admin navigation menu does something like this if you want to see an example. I think a menu that functioned in this way might have a greater learning curve, but it would be quicker to use once you figure it out.
Whatever the solution is, I think some consideration should be given to the fact that the current navigation menu forces users to waste time loading pages they do not want to.
[...] this, we were treated to a discussion of design and user-testing with Liz Danzico as it related to the redesign of WordPress’ administration interface. One aspect that I found [...]
[...] of other volunteers) who put on a great, informal conference. Love the vibe. In addition to Liz Danzico, Rashmi Sinha, Robert Hoekman, Matt, Om and several others gave great presentations. Really well [...]
Liz, great presentation, and a pleasure talking with you at Wordcamp. It’s great to get a glimpse behind-the-scenes at the process for making a great tool even better.
Evan: Great suggestions, and ones we are considering for sure. Allowing people to navigate WordPress more efficiently is one of the primary goals for both Matt and Happy Cog.
There are some plugins that do this already—we reviewed some in thinking through the navigation options for the admin. I’m not the best person to point you to the latest plugins, but the new plugin directory should be of help.
[...] “How not to get noticed“ [...]
[...] the afternoon talks, I have to mention the talk by Liz Danzico of Happy Cog Studios, Usability Analysis of WP. She is helping the WordPress team to re-design the [...]
[...] time and effort to really take it to the next level. A number of the screens that were shown during Liz Danzico’s presentation on WP Usability were very impressive and addressed a number of long standing [...]
Oh, and did not know about it.
Thanks for the information …
[...] evidence about this fact could be found at the WordCamp site and also hinted at Liz Danzico’s blog. Liz is the information architect, usability analyst and editor at Happy [...]