BlogmyQuery – BMQ

Most know the saying, ‘laughter is the best medicine’, and even more know that there is a lot of truth in those words. There is little that can uplift the spirit as quickly as a flurry of infectious laughter. Many who work from behind the camera’s lens know how powerful humorous photography can be.

Often unexpected, these comedic captures take our breath away, as do so many well shot photographs; however, these often do so because we are laughing too hard. More often than not, these photos are set up, first in the photographer’s imagination and then physically. Though sometimes, it is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time like always.

We went out to find captures that would do just that for our readers, and we think the laughs will come. No laughter track needed. So take a look through this comedic collection of humorous photography and hopefully get your day started, or turned around, with a smile and a gentle chuckle.

Make ‘em Laugh!

Mr T by ShakilovNeel

Squeaky Clean by ulorinvex

Its stuck by Cherri-cakes

Pirates daydream by ShinyHeels

Thumbdoka by TheAnna

Unpacking by Balakov

Bite it! by ESSUU

Humor)). by foxintao

Mangled again! by funborat

When the gummy bears attack! by golemdude

Kuroshitsuji Paper Childs by BetOx

Mashion! by blizzardstar33

Battle buddies by REDNOBLE6

Russia with a sunflower by Otaku2803

Dadaism is alive and well….. by jennystokes

Mixed reality V by adrianserghie

There needs to be a stronger government. Literally by FawnspiritForever

Perrito y Celular by White-Wolf-13

Stand by me by immortalspycat

Problem? :troll: by AnnaKamoroff

What is that? by joanatrex

Jeremy Pewdies disappointed by Lostloveartist87

Warning: Dracula Is Back by Grimmichou

Omena. by FrankDaniel

Java The Hut by BigRedCurlyGuy

XXXXXXXXXIII. by Alltagsgift

The Crash by BennyBrand

Hugs by Balakov

Troll Cookie by Alephunky

The spy by Alephunky

The Last Laugh

The laughter is over for now, but that doesn’t mean there are not more laughs to be had. Share with us some of your favorite humorous photos in the comment section. Just drop us a link, or let us know which of the photos in this collection tickled your funnybone!

(rb)

An important part of our job is staying up to date. Technologies don’t really change that fast — HTML5 and CSS3 take a long time to be specified and implemented. But the ideas surrounding these technologies and the things we can do with them are constantly evolving, and hundreds of blog posts and articles are published every day. There’s no way you can read all of those but you’ll still have to keep up to date. Here are some tips on doing that while still having some time left to work.

Filtering

The hardest part of staying up to date is not reading too much. So many articles are published on a daily basis, so you’ll need filters. It’s unfortunately hard to make a living by reading articles all day, so you don’t want to read marginally interesting stuff, and you don’t want to read too much. You only want to read relevant stuff. You could try to automate this filtering, but I found that the best filters are actually people and time.

People

Some people produce lots and lots of ideas. Not all of these ideas are worth your time, but some of them are excellent. If you follow these people directly there’s a lot of noise you have to filter and you need a good sensor to recognize the good stuff. A very easy way to solve this is to not follow them directly but only follow the people surrounding them — they will do the filtering for you. If there’s an excellent idea, they will link to it. So in order to keep your sanity, don’t follow loudmouths (follow their more silent friends).

This tip works very well for Twitter, but it works for blogs as well. Don’t follow overactive sources, follow the people who follow these sources.

Soulmates

A few years ago I noticed that my RSS feeds started to dry up — especially blogs with opinionated articles. Articles where many people would leave their comments were all of a sudden gone. These discussions had moved to Twitter overnight. That’s the reason why I started tweeting (although I have to admit that I was addicted to it within a week). If you tend to your Twitter stream with care, it can become a very valuable source of good and relevant information. But if you follow the wrong people, or too many people, it will be exactly the opposite. My stream consists of mostly people who generally agree with each other. This means that it usually isn’t filled with tedious discussions about irrelevant details that can easily grow to gargantuan proportions. Now, I don’t say you shouldn’t listen to people you don’t agree with, I just think that Twitter is not the right place to follow these people.

Emotion

Related to this Twitter-management (where I try to avoid heated discussions) is this other excellent filter I use: time. I almost never read articles the moment they are published, I wait a few days, or weeks or even months. If they are still interesting after a period of time, they are worth reading. You’ll see that lots of stuff is outdated even after a few days. Many articles are written in an emotional state, and many responses to these articles are written with even more emotion. These rows can certainly be entertaining, but they are rarely interesting after a week. I use Pinboard to create this buffer of unread articles, but there are many other handy tools available like Instapaper or Pocket (or you could just use your browser’s bookmark functionality).

Being up to date isn’t about knowing the latest trends and keeping track of all the gossip, it’s about knowing the right stuff by reading only the right stuff. But it isn’t just about reading the right stuff, it’s also about remembering it.

Backup Your Knowledge

The good thing about our current era is that we don’t have to learn everything we read by heart: we have computers these days to do the remembering for us. We just have to make sure that our computer can find the stuff we want it to remember. So create a database of the links to interesting articles that you read. I always write a small comment with these links when I save them to Pinboard, this way I can easily find them when I need them. You could buy the archival option from Pinboard, this makes it even easier to find older articles. I also created some IFTTT rules to backup these links to Evernote and Dropbox. I don’t want to depend on one tool, so I spread my knowledge around.

Use Your Knowledge

A very important part of understanding a new technique or design trick is by playing with it. You could of course immediately start using it in a big-production website (or you could also just first try it out). There are many tools out there that make it easy to test some snippets of code, like the amazing Dabblet and the incredible JS Bin. Playing around with code snippets that you find in articles will greatly improve your understanding of how things work.

Tools

There are many tools you can use for gathering and keeping your knowledge (and I already named quite a few). Here are a few more:

Twitter

I use YoruFukurou as my Twitter client. It’s an unobtrusive client with some very handy tools for power-users, like muting certain words. It has some very handy advanced custom filter options as well. Tweetbot is a similar tool which works especially well on iOs devices. I fave every tweet that might have an interesting link (yes, that’s why I fave all of your tweets, but I’m not stalking you). All of these faves are automatically stored as unread items in a Pinboard account.

RSS

I read my feeds using the excellent self-hosted feed reader Fever. It has a feature that detects what articles are hot by checking how many people link to it. It uses the clever principle of Sparks — feeds that link to interesting things, but are not worth following to determine what’s hot. You can save articles for later (and yes, these articles are also saved as unread items in my Pinboard account, as well).

Pinboard

As I mentioned before, by creating some clever filters you can make sure that your list of unread articles is manageable. But reading the articles and actually doing something with that knowledge can be pretty time-consuming. Every now and then I hit one of my two Pinboard bookmarklets that either show me the oldest unread item or a random one. As I said, many articles are outdated after a few days (but still many remain to be read). If an article is small, I read it right away. If it’s very long and very interesting, I either e-mail it to myself or I save it to Instapaper.

I save every article that is worth remembering to a second Pinboard account using Delibar, with a small comment and a few tags attached to it. There are many more ways to better organize these links, but this system works for me (I usually find a link I need within a few seconds).

IFTTT

IFTTT is a very handy tool that connects Web services. I use it to store my bookmarks on as many locations as possible. For instance, every article I save to my second Pinboard account is saved to Evernote and Dropbox. This makes it easy to access all these bookmarks from every device I use with specialized tools like nvAlt.

Talking

This whole article is just about staying up to date by reading articles, but one of the best ways to stay up to date is by talking to people. In real life you can talk to colleagues or attend conferences and workshops, as there are many regular meet-ups of like-minded people all around the world. You can use things like Twitter or IRC to start discussions or ask questions, or post your question on one of the many online fora out there.

Other tools

There are many other tools out there that can help you with staying up to date. Many people use Instapaper, Delicious or Pocket to collect links. Others use email to send these links to themselves. Some people use the native bookmarks of their browser and others write their own bookmarking service.

Sources

Professionally I am specialized in HTML and CSS, and I have an interest in Web Design and some other areas. Since I have expert knowledge of CSS, it doesn’t make much sense for me to follow websites that offer CSS tutorials for beginners. So on this particular subject I follow the real experts and even the people who write the specs: my knowledge about CSS has to be more than up to date. Bas Poppink, a colleague of mine, calls this principle following the sources of your sources until you found the headspring. I call it the Poppink-principle. So if you’ve outgrown tutorials, ask the authors of these tutorials what websites and which people they follow.

What sources are right for you depends on a lot of things, like your experience and your fields of interests. Below you’ll find some of my sources. You might find some interesting stuff in there…

My Sources

My main source of information comes from people who tweet something that might interest me. Twitter is also great for discussing articles and opinions, or asking for advice. But there is more…

Feeds

There are some feeds I rely on: the bookmarks saved by Jeremy Keith, Kazuhito Kidachi, Peter van der Zee, and Paul Irish. They usually add a helpful description to their bookmarks. There are a few people who regularly post high quality reading lists: you should definitely follow a few of those too, if not all. The rest of the links are distilled from a somewhat random collection of ancient and newer RSS feeds that definitely need some weeding. Do you really want to know what they are? Here is the OPML file.

But you’ll probably be better served by the excellent collection of Front-End and Web Standards feeds that Paul Irish curates. He also points at these great weekly email newsletters about JavaScript, Web design, CSS and HTML5. Definitely worth a follow if email is more your thing.

Your Own Sources

Whether you want to be the very best in your profession or someone who is good enough, staying up to date is essential for every professional. The exact people and feeds to follow depends on your own interests. Just take your time to find and collect them and be sure to critically look at them every now and then. Also, what tools you choose to use in order to stay up to date is totally up to you, as there are many more ways to stay up to date than I described here. I hope that this article somehow helps you in finding the right sources and in creating your own, better, flow of information.

Image source of picture used on front page.

(jvb)

© Vasilis van Gemert for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

Typography is not just about the arrangement and placement of letters and words, rather it has become a field of art where artists can express themselves solely through the use of different styles of fonts with varying sizes. Typography has continued to expand as an art, though one must always heed the design principles behind it. Then one finds themselves freer to explore the more artistic sides of this element.

Many designers make use of Photoshop to generate some stunning text effects that bring their typography to life or to make their text more down-to-earth. In this round up, we have compiled an exciting collection of more than 40 brilliantly dazzling 3D text effects Photoshop tutorials with a little help from Illustrator. Enjoy!

3D Text Effects

3D Type with Repoussé in Photoshop CS5 Extended
In this tutorial you will learn how to create some stylish 3D Type with Repousse via the talented crew at Abduzeedo.

Create Glossy, Plastic, 3D Text in Photoshop CS5 Extended
This tutorial will explain how to use Repoussé inside Photoshop CS5 to create an amazing 3D text effect without the need for any other 3D software. Many different material values will be modified to accomplish the final result, and some adjustment layers will be used to enhance the outcome as well. Let’s get started!

3D Ribbon Wrapped Text Effect
This tutorial will explain how to use the Opacity texture map to create a ribbon-wrapped 3D text effect in a Photoshop CS5 environment. Then, it will explain how to create the confetti brush and its layer styles.

Create a Realistic Wooden 3D Text Image
There is a lot of typography-based artwork recently with more people getting their hands on 3D programs. However, creating 3D text with just Photoshop takes a certain amount of craftsmanship and skill. Leaving all the little details in your hands instead of letting the computer do all the work. So, in this tutorial we are going to take a few 2D textures as well as a few Photoshop techniques to create a realistic 3D text image.

Create a Tasty 3D Typographic Illustration
In this tutorial, author Mark Mayers will show you how Photoshop CS6 Extended’s new 3D tools can be utilized to create a typographic illustration that includes lots of sugary treats.

How to Create Glowing TRON-Inspired 3D Text in Photoshop Extended
Create glowing 3D text and beautiful effects using only non-destructive Photoshop techniques. This tutorial will show you how to create 3D text, give it a futuristic blue glow, and finish it off with a modern bokeh and grid background. There are also a few really cool Photoshop tricks scattered in this tutorial.

Create 3D Style Lettering
In this tutorial, Marcelo Schultz will explain how to create “awesome” 3D-style typography using illustrative techniques in Photoshop. This tutorial does not utilize any 3D apps or tools and relies heavily on a good sketch as well as your ability to apply proper light and shadow.

Colorful Plexi Text Effect using Photoshop
In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, we are going to show you how to create a cool looking colorful Plexi text effect. Throughout this tutorial we’ll create letters separately, getting some help from the Actions. Have Fun.

How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text
This tutorial will show you how to create the 3D text shape and give it a high quality metal look using pure Photoshop. Check it out!

Create Awesome Text Made of 3D Blocks
In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, we are showing you how to create a cool 3D effect. We’ll create a 3D object from a 2D depth map texture first and then create diffuse and self illumination textures. You will need Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended for this one. Have fun.

Create Convincing Text-Shaped Buildings
Creating convincing buildings that appear like text in a cityscape can be a challenging task. In this tutorial we will learn how to create building-shaped typography in Photoshop using photos that you have taken yourself. Let’s get started!

Cool Dots Text Effect
This Photoshop tutorial explains how to design a three-dimensional text, which consists of dots and a blurred extension.

Create Earthy 3D Typography
In this tutorial, author Ed Lopez will demonstrate how to create an earthy 3D typographic piece using Photoshop’s 3D tools.

Create a Spectacular Style Text Effect
In this tutorial we’ll create a cool looking 3D Style text effect that will come in handy for any number of projects.

Create Super Glossy 3D Typography
In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a glossy 3D typographic image using both Photoshop and Illustrator.

Unique 3D Text
In this tutorial you will learn how to create a unique 3d text effect. Definitely one you will be wanting to dive in to.

Use Google Sketchup and Photoshop to Create 3D Typography
Photoshop is a powerful application on its own merits. Its power, however, can be significantly increased by using it in tandem with another application like Illustrator, Cinema 4D, or in this case, Google Sketchup. Today, we will create some cool 3D text using this free architectural application.

Create Elegant, Glassy, 3D Typography
In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to create elegant, glassy, 3D typography using Photoshop and Illustrator. Feel free to apply this effect to any logo, text, or shape. Let’s get started!

3D Layered Text Effect
In this Awesome Photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a 3D text effect using actions, basic transform operations and filters. This is an intermediate level, approximately 2 cups of coffee long tutorial.

Create an Extruded Glossy 3D Text Effect
People love 3D effects. They also love the look of shiny, glossy, graphics as well. Here, we will combine those two popular styles and create an extruded 3D glossy text effect in Photoshop.

Create a 3D Text Scene Using Photoshop
In this tutorial we’ll create a realistic 3D text scene using Photoshop with a little help from Illustrator for the 3D text.

Create an Awesome 3D Text Effect with Abstract Brush Decoration
In the tutorial, the artist will show you the processes he used to create an awesome 3D Text Effect with Photoshop. This is an intermediate tutorial so some steps can be tricky, but why not have a try.

How to Create A Realistic 3D Typography
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a really smooth looking 3D text in any version of Photoshop. This tutorial will create the illusion of 3D without the use of any 3D programs; we will only use the raw power of Photoshop.

How to Create Abstract New Year Illustration with 3D Typography
In this tutorial, we are going to show you how to create an abstract New Year illustration with 3D typography using new 3D tools that Adobe has included in Photoshop CS5 Extended. Let’s get going.

Create 3D Type Art Using Photoshop CS5
The 3D tools in Photoshop CS5 are more advanced than ever. In this tutorial we will use the new Repoussé tool to extrude some text in a way previously only possible in a full 3D application.

3D Text on Fire
In this tutorial we will create a fire effect 3D text with Illustrator and Photoshop.

Floral 3D Text Effect
Learn how to turn a simple 3D text into a beautiful yet simple floral design. This tutorial will show you how to retouch and apply effects to 3D text and use floral Photoshop brushes as a quick way of enhancing the look.

Stunning 3D effects in 30 minutes
In this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create stunning 3D effects in 30 minutes.

Design Soft Stylized 3D Type
The use of 3D type is an increasing trend in design today. In this tutorial, we will teach you the basics of creating polished 3D type using Illustrator and Photoshop. Let’s get to work.

Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography
In this tutorial, we’re going to create a 3D Typography based design. All the elements will revolve around the centerpiece and theme: dreaming. The word will dictate the entire layout and control the space by allowing everything else to emerge from within.

Create a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text
Take typography one step further by having text falling from the sky in a burning inferno. Yes, this is the text-on-fire tutorial to end all tutorials. It uses a little Illustrator for the text and a lot of Photoshop to burn up the screen!

Create 3D Text with some Extreme Lighting
Here we are going to take an object/text, change it from 2-D to 3-D and give it some realistic effects. We are going to use Illustrator to create the object, and then bring it into Photoshop to add highlights and shadows.

Create Stunning 3D Text in a Grungy Landscape
The more you can learn about blending images and different elements together in Photoshop, the more freedom you will have in creating whatever pops up in your imagination. In this Photoshop tutorial, we are going to go over different digital-image-editing techniques in order to create a beautiful grungy and grainy composition that has 3D text as its centerpiece.

Create a Dark Grunge 3D Text Scene
In this Photoshop tutorial, you are going to learn how to create some 3D text using only Photoshop. The mood we will strive to incorporate in our piece is dark and grungy. We are going to use consistent lighting, layer styles to create shadows for our type, Photoshop filters, and more.

How to Create Remarkable 3D Text
In this quick and easy graphic design tutorial, you’ll discover a handy process for generating attention-grabbing three-dimensional typography with the help of Photoshop and some creative techniques.

How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect
In this tutorial we will be designing a cool retro text effect, which is growing more and more popular in today’s design. Here you will learn how to use the Perspective tool to create depth and how designers can use default gradients in unusual ways!

3D Text effect
This tutorial shows you how to create a nice 3D text using only Photoshop 7.

Create Astonishing Nightclub Themed 3D Typography
3D graphics are often created using several applications. Here, we will use Photoshop, Illustrator, and Cinema 4D to create a stunning nightclub themed 3D composite. Let’s get started!

Create Dazzling 3D Text Effect
In this tutorial, you will learn how to create 3D text in Illustrator then transfer it to Photoshop to apply the effects. You’ll learn how to apply styles to regular 3D text to create a stunning design.

Kaboom! Exploding Text
Explosions are always nice to watch, but it’s even better to blow up stuff yourself. This is why we are going to teach you how to make your own exploding text that you can show off to your friends.

Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed browsing through this amazing and fun collection of 40 excellent 3D text effect Photoshop tutorials, and will have more fun using the techniques in your work. If we have missed out some useful tutorials, then drop us a line letting us know and we will try to include those tutorials in our next collection. Enjoy!

(rb)

This is a personal request from your user, a rallying cry from a compatriot. I personally love WordPress. I make my living from it. The average user, though, couldn’t care less about it. They just want to run their business, tell their family history, organize their church, share their photos or live their life online with a minimum of impedance. In its evolution from simple blogging tool to CMS, framework and software ecosystem, WordPress is losing its way. It needs us to help bring it back and cultivate simple genius.

My agency married WordPress in 2007. We’d been dating for a number of years but were still seeing others: some serious flirtation with Joomla, a blind date with Drupal, a summer romance with CMSMS, even a steady five-year stint with a custom CMS that we lovingly named Rocinante (after Don Quixote’s loyal steed). We tied the knot with WordPress for one single reason: about six to nine months after most of our projects, we would get the fateful call. “The only person who really understands how to use the website you built just left the company, and we need someone to train us!� It was almost inevitable, except on WordPress. No one ever called for help after a WordPress project except to share their excitement and book the next project. They just figured it out. It was easy and obvious and beautiful. Our clients loved it, and that was something you could grow a business on.

Then, WordPress started to grow up. New features like the menu manager, theme editor and sidebar widgets made WordPress more robust but more complicated. The ecosystem of plugins exploded. WordPress plugins are harder to use than they should be. Ask your users. We did. It was quite illuminating and a hint embarrassing. We decided to act on Tom Ewe’s call to arms and lead by example:

“I find it astonishing that WordPress developers haven’t worked harder to create usability guidelines for plugin development. Even experienced WordPress users are often left guessing as to where they should go to work with a new plugin.

One of the key drivers of WordPress’ success has been plugins, and yet they are not actually that easy to use. They appear as being stapled onto WordPress, as opposed to integrating seamlessly. Surely there should be some common usability rules when it comes to plugin development?”

— Tom Ewe

We Lack Conventions, And This Is Why It’s A Problem

Three weeks ago, we brought on Joyce to our customer team at Modern Tribe. She’s smart, she has a real power-user’s/light themer’s grasp of WordPress, and she had never used our free WordPress.org-hosted plugin, The Events Calendar, nor any other of our add-ons. She came back after looking them over and said, “This is far harder to set up than it should be.� I asked her whether she had read the new user primer or the set-up instructions. “No, I didn’t. I bet most of your users don’t either.� I had to admit that Joyce was probably right. Rather than try to list all of the things that she thought might or might not work, she pointed me to Steve Krug’s SxSW talk “Rocket Surgery Made Easy.� I couldn’t turn it off. I’ll boil it down to a few paragraphs for you, but if you develop a plugin or theme or have a product business, this is a must hear.

Krug argues that hiring usability experts is unnecessary (heck, let’s be honest: most of us don’t do it anyway). The real value of a usability test is in getting together (ideally with sushi) and observing the experience, not hearing an expert’s interpretation. Within 15 minutes of watching the first user try to use our plugin, a handful of long-running arguments were resolved and some incredibly simple hurdles were exposed. I’ll walk you through the process that we followed for a remote usability test of The Events Calendar.

Our Remote Usability Test: Step-By-Step

• Total time invested: 6 hours
• Set-up: 1 hour
• Testing: 3.25 hours
• Notes: 0:45 minutes
• Team review: 1 hour

1. Find three participants. We had enough users and visitors that a blog post generated about 15 willing offers. We gave away a free copy of The Events Calendar Pro in exchange for participation. Make sure that the criteria for participation are explicit. Krug insists that you really don’t need more than three users, and that turned out to be spot on. By the third user, we were accurately guessing where they would fail. Schedule the test to last about 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the tasks, and give yourself time in between to clean up your notes and deal with other details.
2. Think of some process or features you want to explore. We were curious to see how first-time users experience our core Events plugin. With that in mind, we made a series of nine steps that we knew were pretty common for setting up the calendar. Make sure to write them out, and give goal-based instructions, not actual steps. Think, “Create a new event,� rather than “Click the new events menu to make an event.�

   
   Here are the steps we chose for our usability test to explore the first-time user’s experience.

3. Set up a domain with WordPress and your plugin or theme on it. If you are testing a plugin, decide whether the problem or feature set that you defined in step 2 is best served by a fairly vanilla build (for example, 2011 theme + minimal plugins + no content) or by a more real-world build (perhaps use your demo content if you have one or a user’s website backup). Configure the whole website precisely for the first step. Run through it once entirely to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything obvious.
4. Back up the database of the website so that you can restore between tests.
5. Grab a copy of Join.me or your favorite screen-sharing or VoIP tool (such as GoToMeeting or Adobe Connect). We found that Skype just wasn’t stable enough to carry us through the screen-sharing portion of our test run. Join.me functioned amazingly well, except for an issue with voice echo caused by laptop sound cards during one test. The fact that it was free was appealing. Make sure that both screen-sharing and voice are available in whatever set-up you choose and can be recorded together. We used ScreenFlow to record the test so that it could be reviewed later.
6. Do a quick test run with someone on your team (or your mom), and make sure that the kinks are worked out.
7. Get the whole team ready and present. Do whatever you can to get people to participate. Everyone on our team who participated was blown away by the experience. Buy them fancy snacks or digital beer. Fire up a chat session if your team is remote (one that the test participant is not privy to) so that your team can chat freely. If you are co-located, make sure the team is not in the room where the test is taking place. Twelve people hovering over someone’s shoulder will unnerve even the most confident person.

   
   Discussing the user’s choices and challenges with the developers in real time.

8. The introduction and set-up are key. Krug has a great script that we just followed. The first key: explain to the participant that the plugin is being tested, not them. There is no wrong or stupid choice. If something is hard or confusing, it’s our fault and we apologize. Secondly, encourage the participant to speak out loud and share their thoughts; i.e. provide a guided monologue. Give them a copy of the steps (paste them into the chat session or email them beforehand), and read them through together once.
9. Read a step. Watch. Shut up (bite tongue). The goal is to watch them as if you weren’t there, so don’t help them. This can get crazy awkward, but observing the various choices they make in trying to accomplish a goal becomes very informative. Consistently ask questions to get them to speak out loud, such as “What are you thinking?� and “What did you expect?�

   
   Observing user 2 figure out where to add events to her menu. (Large version)

10. Have the moderator and the people observing take notes on what they see, and discuss together.
11. Once all of the steps were completed, we asked a bunch of probing questions. We were surprised by how much two users employed the admin bar, so we asked more about that. We were curious why no one clicked the tutorials, despite having the answer in the title. And on and on.

    
    Usability has to do with more than what’s in a plugin’s admin settings. We probed why none of the users took advantage of the tutorials. It turned out that a blog loop has no useful organization, so we made a quick page to group the posts by topic. (Large version)

12. Time to pay the participant in money, karma or free goods and get ready for the next test. Reset the website’s database.
13. Take some time to condense your notes. Ask everyone who observed to pick the three most important things that can quickly be fixed based on the test. The goal is not to do a redesign; we are looking for quick course corrections. Then we test again in a new cycle.

    
    Notes were broken down into observations, user recommendation and bugs. (Large version)

Findings From Our Tests

A number of our major debates were instantly answered. For example, we had had a prolonged disagreement about the placement of the menu item for the plugin’s settings. The majority of the development team felt that it belonged in WordPress’ main “Settings� tab because that is a de facto standard. A minority of developers and all of the community team thought that putting it in the submenu for the Events custom post type would be more intuitive.

Both sides had great arguments. For the test, we put it in the WordPress settings, and then we watched three users in a row fail to find it there in a reasonable timeframe. One found it from the top admin toolbar (we put it there, too), one eventually looked in WordPress’ “Settings,� and one gave up despite looking right at it three times. Standards are great, but we all had to admit that functionality has to supersede a poor standard. We explored putting it in both places, but ultimately we decided to move it to the Events menu for now due to technical limitations.

We moved the “Settings� menu item from WordPress’ general “Settings� menu to the menu for the Events custom post type, which is where our users expect to find it, despite WordPress’ standards.

We also saw how hard a time users had finding the events calendar on the front end of the website, despite it being in five locations. By seeing where people looked for it, we came up with a game plan that took five minutes to implement, and we hope it will make it a whole lot more intuitive.

We added “View calendar� links to the admin bar at the top of the “Events� menu and in the settings.

The usability test was so valuable that Paul, one of the developers, asked if we could do it every month. Usability testing has, without a doubt, provided the best feedback we have ever gotten on our product, it cost very little, and it has now been added to the monthly production schedule. We will be testing these updates next week to see if they truly did improve the experience.

I’m continually amazed by a community’s ability to reach the same conclusion at the same time. Last week, Dave Martin posted for the first time to the core UX team’s blog:

I’m just getting my feet wet, and quite honestly haven’t a clue where to get started, so I thought I’d set up a quick user test (I’m a big fan of user testing). I set up a temporary WP install, and ran a user from usertesting.com through a couple scenarios.

Check out the video. It almost hurts to watch her struggle. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to see the core team paying attention as well and engaging quickly. It is a great start.

Call For WordPress Human Interface Guidelines

The average website has over five plugins installed (according to PressTrends) and often a theme options panel. For a great experience to continue throughout the website as people actually experience it, we need to establish strong standards for the rest of the community to follow.

I am calling all WordPress plugin developers and themers. You don’t need to guess what your users might want or how they will experience your product. Just watch them. We know it: if we focus on usability, stability and then value, we can make products that users will line up for.

To the core WordPress team and the community at large: Let’s get together and create WordPress human interface guidelines for those who contribute by providing plugins and themes for the world to use. Apple gave us a rock and upon it built a foundation that few can deny. Google finally got around to it with Ice Cream Sandwich, and I expect to see drastic improvement in the wild west that is the Android application landscape. Help us help WordPress.

In the words of Matt Mullenweg when he saw Dave’s first post:

Thank you very much for this, I think more frequent and more transparent testing will allow us to make much better informed product and UX decisions. If we do this right we should see the videos get better and better (shorter and less confusion) from release to release.

Code is poetry. So should be your user’s experience.

(al)

© Shane Pearlman for Smashing Magazine, 2012.

Ask almost any designer about custom colors and the name that will probably be waiting on the tips of their tongues would be Pantone. Such a rich selection of patented hues rest under the Pantone umbrella, but their reach does not end there. Far from it, in fact. Pantone’s custom color service has given brands the world over the ability to coordinate in style.

Today we are turning that inspirational spotlight towards the wide reach of influence that Pantone has had over designers the world over. Below is a collection of both concepts and fully realized products that have been modeled after and honors the Pantone brand. We hope you find this as inspiring a collection as we do.

The Pantone Hotel

The Pantone Hotel invites you to experience the city of Brussels through a lens of color and a spectrum of comforts. From the moment you arrive, our “hotel of colors� will awaken your senses to an array of delights and playful surprises.

Impeccably designed by Michel Penneman and Olivier Hannaert, The PANTONE Brussels showcases the color of emotion with a distinctive hue on each colorous guest floor. From vivid to subdued, for business or leisure, our unique boutique hotel perfectly suits your savvy palette and colorful imagination.

From a design perspective, The PANTONE Brussels is built on an exceptional use of contrast; a white canvas provides clean space for saturated colors to pop. Guest rooms feature unique photography by esteemed Belgian photographer Victor Levy.

Pantone Universe

Pantone Universe is a design-led collection for the home, the workplace and the road… Accessories and apparel you need and designs you want – and in colors you love, by Pantone, the author of the universal color language.

Sephora + Pantone Universe Eyeshadow Pallete

Pantone Wall Stores

Pantone Twin Markers

Pantone Barbie

Pantone Mugs

Pantone Folding Chairs

Pantone Artist Acrylic Paint

Pantone Storage Boxes

Pantone Coaster Set

Pantone Notebooks

Pantone Contact Lense Case

Pantone Postcards

Pantone Toothbrush Set

Pantone Eco Pencil Tubes

Pantone Christmas Ball Ornaments

Pantone DIY

Pantone Flower Pots

Pantone Knitted Swatches

DIY Pantone Easter Eggs

Pantone Chip Cookies

Pantone Colored Tarts

Pantone Stained Glass Window Door

Pantone Concepts

Pantone Digital Leather Chair

Rubitone

Pantone Stamps

Pantone Nail Polish

Pantone Eye Shadows

Pantone and Gap Clothing Booth

Share Your Thoughts

Thanks for joining us for this collection, but before you go, share your thoughts with us via the comment section. What were some of your favorite interpretations or applications of the Pantone color wheel? Do you know of other pieces or projects that were left out of our showcase? If so, point us in that direction.

(rb)