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remys-lucky-franc · 4 years ago

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I’m Bringing Sexy Back (To Regency England) - Immortal Heart Society

So this happened because I referred to new series IHS’s baddie Lord Montague as ‘Lord Timberlake’ due to the coiffuring similarities and it made @aquagirl1978 LOL and she made me this:

See how alike they look though?! I’m not crazy.

Literally no one in the world wants this fic, and it’s just stupid, but I had a giggle writing it, so 😆 Also, I genuinely know nothing about JT, if any of you are superfans and I’m way off, it’s just a bit of fun, no ill intent or offence meant 💕

Also it’s just in time for all the good old memes... (At the end if anyone needs a ref point)

Word Count ~3500 (yeah, I’ve gone off)

[MORE] [[MORE]]

In the grandiose but soulless marble bathroom of the Boston penthouse, Justin squeezed his eyes tight-shut, splashing his face with frigid water. He inhaled sharply as the moisture hit his skin, opening his eyes and staring intently at the reflection mirrored back at him. It had been quite a night so far. He’d been courted by ‘The Society’ for a couple of months now and on receiving their latest invite, he had finally acquiesced. Over the course of the evening he’d exchanged pleasantries and mingled with a fusion of intriguing individuals - all very different, very separate people, but all who clearly had gotten the memo: convince him to join. Justin suspected before he arrived, from the exclusive address on the invite alone, the sort of members The Society would have on its roster and he wasn’t surprised - even if most of them were no more than masked silhouettes. Initially when he had exited the elevator and caught sight of all those shaded faces, Justin’s heart stuttered: had he inadvertently accepted an invite to some sort of sexy party? How would he explain this one? ‘Hey Honey - funny story...’ But it didn’t take long to deduce that the disguises were all part of the prestige and served as identity protection rather than a conduit to anyone having any real sort of fun.

The mixer itself had been entertaining enough, but the hushed secrets shared in the drawing room were what had piqued his interested and saw him hiding in the restroom searching his own soul for answers. He’d been trading anecdotes with a handful of members before he was interrupter by a well dressed blonde and ushered through a side door, where he was greeted with a firm handshake by one of the top men within the society (apparently), Richard - Something. Initially Justin had smiled but internally rolled his eyes as he considered how these shady types only ever give out their first names - and how that felt particularly unfair when everyone here knew fine well what his surname was... Richard was perfectly charming and charismatic - in the same faux-caring, calculating way politicians are as they try to snare floating voters. His smile was bright and his words were warm, but his eyes were a stark contrast. The Society’s hoi-polloi were obviously deemed to have played their part in warming him up and now Richard was here to give him the hard-sell: and sell he did.

And at first, it sounded relatively normal. At first. Until Richard started with tall tales of how society members held all of the power in the world through power stones. Initially Justin got to his feet and scoffed - weren’t crystals just for spa days and hippies? This had to be a set up. He scanned the room looking for any clue of a hidden camera, Ashton Kutcher’s sneakers showing from behind a curtain perhaps - but nothing. It all sounded truly ridiculous, but as Richard stood, laying a firm hand on Justin’s shoulder, directing him towards a plush chair, pouring him two fingers of whisky, something held him; fascinated him. Stopped him from barging straight out of the room. Justin observed in silence as Richard thumbed through various documents, showing him photographs, pulling up search data online... Explaining. Convincing. Persuading. Justin didn’t trust the suave smarmy suit as far as he could throw him, but the more Richard divulged of the spiderweb of societal involvement in major global events and current affairs, the more sense it made... And in spite of himself, Justin started to succumb to this strange reality. Every word out of Clever Dick’s mouth was revelational, peeling away one layer after another, after another, until Justin’s mind was blown; his brain hurt the same way it did the first time he watched Inception. He couldn’t bend his mind around why Richard was telling him all this, or why a collective more powerful than The Walt Disney Company would want a musician to join their ranks? Richard shrugged coolly as he continued to play for Justin’s buy in, simply smiling and saying that, as a big pop star, it would be quid pro quo - a very mutually beneficial arrangement. The society had access to the best labels, the best A&R departments, they could get Justin as much airplay, fame and publicity as he wanted.

Justin couldn’t deny it sounded appealing - but what did they want in return? So far it was all ‘quid’ and no ‘quo’. He had to ask. Even the easy, practiced grin on Richard’s face couldn’t offset the glint of ice in his dark eyes and menace in his voice that chilled Justin’s blood.

“Justin, come! Everyone knows that music is what shapes the youth of today! The influence wielded by artists, the loyalty inspired by them, their marketability, it’s simply insurmountable! Think about it, dear boy? If The Society control the music, they control the populace.”

Justin cleared his throat as he sized himself up, readjusting his skinny black tie and squaring his shoulders. Richard must be insane. The Society’s logic was fatally flawed: they couldn’t seriously think that it was possible control the entire world’s population through having a singer in their ranks? It was infeasible. Impossible. But what they were offering him in exchange? Now, that was a very attractive proposition indeed. If he agreed to join, and got all of that out of it, it would be worth it? The Society would surely realise at some point that they couldn’t rule the world through the power of song? Yes, the power of a one-line harmony had already been proven by McDonald’s to sell a shit-tonne of burgers - and while it was a pretty convincing argument, selling fast-food to hungry people was one thing - but full-scale global domination?? That was something else entirely. But if he could ride along on their coat-tails and reap all the benefits until they realised just how crazy that idea had been in the first place...

—- two years later —-

Cash carded his hand through his dark hair, exasperated as he listened to Alana’s latest report, “You all understand that Timberlake is completely out of control, yes?”

Emilio grunted flatly as his head fell into his crossed arms on the table like a five year old ready to play heads-down-thumbs-up, “Yeeeeees.”

Cash bristled further as he looked to Rafe and Kiran for their input, both simply nodding back at him as though to say, ‘yes, we know.’

Alana looked down at her phone, worrying her full bottom lip between her teeth, “It’s worse than you think though, Cash.”

He was instantly on his feet staring at her, Rafe and Kiran leaned forward and Emilio raised one weary brow from his slumped pose, concern evident on all their faces.

Kiran was first to speak, “Alana how can it be worse? Richard’s vanished off the face of the earth. Justin’s last billboard count had him go multi-platinum - again, and his lyrics are becoming...”

Rafe offered flatly, “Odd.” He stood, cracked his neck from side to side and headed towards the small stove, absentmindedly filling a saucepan with water and a packet of instant noodles.

Cash shook his head at Rafe then turned back to glower at the rest of the Inner Circle, “Thank you all for the recap. It’s bleak, we know. Alana?”

Green eyes fixed the room as Alana cleared her throat and mouthed, “One hundred and ninety-four.”

Dumbfounded silence filled the room; jaws hung slack. Until Kiran broke the spell, a spluttering cough turning into an uncomfortable laugh, “One hundred and ninety-four what? Because I know you definitely can’t mean stones. We know the exactly location of over fifty percent of them? They’re safe?”

Rafe, back at the table with his ramen by now, paled as Alana shook her head at a loss for words, red curls bouncing around her shoulders, “How is that possible?”

Alana threw her hands in the air, confessing “I honestly don’t know. But he has ones that we knew the location of, and more besides.”

Cash paced the room, clearly agitated as he cursed and barked,

“That’s every stone in existence, except ours and one other.”

Alana puffed out her cheeks before huffing out the breath sharply, “Correct. He has the lot, excepts ours - and the Garnet.”

Emilio’s hand slid under his shirt, a double-check to be sure his Alexandrite remained firmly on the chain hidden beneath the dark fabric, fiddling with it like a child with a comfort blanket as he spoke, “I- I just don’t understand. How? How did he get so many without us knowing?”

Rafe shrugged as he shovelled a spoonful of noodles into his mouth and chewed thoroughly before answering, “Richard’s protege. His pet project. Nothing surprises me when he’s involved. Everything he touches gets tarnished.”

Alana sighed sadly, “Justin seemed like such a sweet guy when he first joined. I really liked him. I thought he could have been part of our Inner Circle someday.”

Rafe shot her a rueful smile before looking down into the noodles, “Same. He changed. Fast.” Coiling his fork in a thick helping, he swung them into his mouth without ceremony.

Cash pinched the bridge of his nose, stopping pacing for long enough to stare and snap at Rafe,

“What is it with you and those blasted ramen noodles??”

Rafe shook his head silently as though to say, ‘I don’t know’: he wasn’t entirely sure why, but every time someone mentioned Timberlake, he couldn’t stop himself from carb-loading. All he wanted a big bowl of ramen in his belly and he couldn’t think about anything else until he was full of noodley-goodness. He’d eaten more instant ramen in the past couple of years than he did during college, and that was saying something.

Kiran cut through the atmosphere between the two men, venturing, “So how are we going to shut him down?”

—-

Richard had been missing for months, and although all trails had gone cold and no one was one hundred percent clear on what had happened to him, there was very strong suspicion within the group of five that Justin had something to do with it. How else had he managed to acquire almost every power stone in existence? He must have dispensed of Richard and taken them for himself - there really didn’t seem, to be any other explanation. The Inner Circle had been aware that Richard was hoarding stones, but his haul had escalated significantly and quickly with Justin by his side - at the Circle’s last count maybe six to eight months ago, Richard only had sixty-five stones in his custody. The dirty duo had been busy.

Emilio shuddered solemnly as he thought about what must have happened to the rightful owners of those stones. He was at the tower with the Inner Circle, minus Cash. Cash would arrive soon, bringing Justin to the table with him. Creating a rouse of support, and then double-crossing him to recover the power stones had been deemed the only feasible plan. Emilio watched the rest of the group: Rafe stirring at a saucepan at the small kitchen set up, Kiran flipping aimlessly though a fashion magazine and Alana tapping at her cellphone. They were all feeling nervous about this, the stakes had never been so high. He scrubbed his brow as he ran through the various scenarios of what could possibly happen with Cash and Justin arrived.

He didn’t have long to wait as the door opened and laughter reverberated around the room. Cash was manoeuvring Timberlake expertly, and Justin seemed to be lapping up everything he said. A round of smiles and handshakes later everyone sat around the table, eyes expectantly on Cash.

“Justin, firstly, thank you for joining the group here today. As you know, with Richard... Let’s say, elsewhere. I’ve been standing in as the ‘interim leader’. And I’ll be frank, Justin, I always thought it would be for me, but it’s not. And it takes a lot for me to admit that. I can do the decision-making, the negotiations, but what I cannot abide is dealing with attitudes and egos all day long.”

Rafe chortled, “He thinks he should be the only one allowed an attitude and an ego!”

Justin grinned and visibly relaxed within the larger group.

Clearing his throat irately, Cash gestured towards Rafe, “Exactly what I’m talking about. Justin, my calling doesn’t lie in leading The Society. I am more interested in having a less ’public facing position’ shall we say, where I can really put my true talents to use. And that’s why I invited you to sit with us today, Justin.’

Timberlake nodded enthusiastically, “ I see.”

Cash stood, wearing a trail in the carpet as he walked back and forth,

“What are your goals, Justin? We understand you must be distraught about Richard’s disappearance, you two seemed close. Do you have aspirations for The Society’s Leadership? We’ve been observing you for some time, and feel that we could all benefit each other within this little group, everyone here wants to progress and wants ‘more’. And we feel like you may have some ideas that could help us all to achieve just that.”

Justin leaned back in his chair observing the group sat around the table. Of course he knew what his goals were. He’d never really considered leadership of The Society until recently - his mind had been consumed with his plan for ultimate pop domination over the past two years. And he’d progressed so far that it was within his grasp - and that was when he and Richard had begun to clash. Badly. Richard’s vision was so- So limited. He couldn’t see Justin’s potential past being a Society tool used to control the public. Justin knew his worth, he was more than a tool for Richard to implement as he saw fit. He felt the anger bubble inside him as he recalled the final fight with Richard. They could have controlled the entire world together: why couldn’t Richard have seen that? Why couldn’t he have got on board with Justin’s plans? As he sized up the twelve eyes watching him, he thought about the dozens of power stones locked securely in the safe in his apartment: these people could see his strength. His power. His star ascending. He leaned forward, his decision made,

“I have acquired many power stones and my plan is, to use our time-travelling abilities to go back in time and wipe other pop stars from existence, so that I am the single biggest pop star in the world today. Then with my influence, The Society will control everything. We, friends, will control the world.”

Alana and Kiran eyeballed each other as the men nodded at Justin.

Kiran interjected,

“There’s no doubt that The Society would benefit from that sort of influence, but what about all of the damage that would be done to culture and humanity without artists?”

Justin looked confused as he stared at her, “But they’d still have me?”

Kiran chewed the statement over before asking, “And who are you going after? Are we talking about Elvis? The Beatles? Frank Sinatra?”

Justin waved a hand as though he’d practiced this very conversation in the mirror a hundred times, “No, no. Only today’s artists. I can’t disrupt anyone who directly or indirectly influenced my career. Butterfly Effect and all.”

The Inner Circle nodded sagely as Justin continued, “And when my plan is complete, who, I ask you, will be the biggest pop star in the world??”

Alana glanced up grimacing, “I don’t know Justin, I mean Lady Gaga is pretty huge? Iconic, even.”

Emilio shook his head, “Right now, Ariana Grande’s the biggest artist in the world, I read it somewhere.”

Justin fixed them both with an affronted stare, “But think about it, if none of them ever existed... Then who would be the biggest pop star in the world?”

Alana and Emilio exchanged a world-weary glance as Justin cackled, “Guess what? It’s gonna be me.”

Rafe scrunched his nose, confused, speaking through a mouthful of ramen, “May? What? Are the Emmy’s not always in September?”

Cash shotshim a withering glance before grinning at Justin, “You’ve thought a lot about his haven’t you?”

Justin, visibly flattered, shrugged off Cash’s praise, “Just a little.”

Cash leaned towards Justin conspiratorially, “So tell us, what more do you need to make your dreams a reality, and how could we, as a group, facilitate that?”

—-

Over the next few weeks the Inner Circle had planned for two consecutive missions. One intricate scheme with Justin, that involved him travelling back over two hundred years to Regency England to secure the Garnet power stone from a Lady Foxworthy. And their own private secondary mission that involved luring Justin back to Regency England where there was no power stone to be found.

When the day to venture back in time arrived, Justin paraded around the tower preening in the mirror at his era-appropriate garb. Kiran had stitched it to perfection, a beautifully embroidered waistcoat over his cravat, fitted cream pants and a midnight blue, velvet long-tailed coat that really made his eyes pop. Rafe let out a low whistle, winking at Justin’s reflection in the mirror, “Looking sharp! Nice work Kiran.” This look was a definitely a step up from double denim!

Kiran moved around Justin turning him, dusting down his shoulders, “Oh hold up, you have a thread. Let me just get that for you. Can’t have you looking less than perfect!” She reached for her scissors and touched the back of his jacket whilst swiftly clipping a tuft of hair from the back of his head.

The corners of Cash’s mouth quirked upwards at her almost imperceptibly as he spoke, “Very elegant, good Sir. You look quite the part.”

Justin gave Cash a delighted twirl to show off his new threads before performing a low, sweeping bow - completely unaware of his missing locks - speaking in a haughty-sounding English accent, “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr Tarkhan, I am Lord Timberlake.”

Alana had to swig at a cup of water to stop herself from bursting into peals of laughter, it was like the only English person he’d ever heard speak before was Queen Elizabeth herself! Cash raised an eyebrow in her direction before addressing Justin, “You’re definitely comfortable travelling back alone, because it would only take Alana here a few minutes to change into something suitable and accompany you?”

Justin waved a hand dismissing the suggestion, quite honestly he didn’t want anyone cramping his style. It wasn’t Justin’s first time in Regency England - when he and Richard had travelled there previously he’d had a ball. He had exactly eight hours to get there, get the Garnet, have some fun in a previous era and get back - and then. Then a whole new era would begin. His era... Leader of the most powerful Society in the world and the biggest pop star in history. Justin grinned as he stepped forward, placing his hands around the ornate pocket watch and beginning the arcane chant to begin his voyage through time. The rest of the Inner Circle joined the chant, turning back the clocks within the tower as Justin’s world started to blur at the edges, drifting backwards through two hundred years of history.

After Justin was gone, a series of stealthy grins were exchanged around the group. Emilio breathed a sigh of relief, “We did it.”

Kiran tossed the little velvet bag with Justin’s hair inside to Cash - their insurance policy, should he need to be dealt with ‘more permanently’ at a later date. Today’s plan didn’t involve the singer being turned into a surprised-looking statue, just giving him an extended stay in Regency England instead... The garnet wasn’t there - in fact, there were no stones left there. It was common knowledge within the Inner Circle where the garnet was: firmly on the finger of Richard’s blissfully unaware and estranged daughter - passed down by his long-missing wife. A point that Timberlake was sadly remiss of: they all had banked on Richard never disclosing a topic so sore as his failure as a father out of pure pride and vanity - and they’d been correct...

Now there was nothing more to do than wind all the clocks back to the correct time, then sit and wait until Justin would try to get back.

—-

Seven and three-quarter hours later, the group within the tower saw a blurry portal loom in the corner of the room. Suddenly alert, they listened intently as Justin’s voice crackled through,

“Rafe, Cash, guys! Are you there? Help me! I can’t... I can’t get back! Alana?? The ritual, it’s not working, I’m not fading back through??”

Cash drawled as he examined his fingernails, looking thoroughly bored,

“Ah, so our little ritual worked then. Good to know.”

The passage through time became narrower and narrow as a sickening realisation suckerpunched Justin, panic rising like bile in his throat, “You... You did this on purpose!! You screwed me over!! You bastards!!!!”

As the portal flickered and shrunk to no more than a pinhole, echoes of the roars of their names reverberated around the room, until the gap sealed itself trapping Lord Timberlake in Regency England for ever more. Silence settled over the tower for a few moments, until Rafe glanced up at the rest of the group thorough his sweeping fringe, a smirk slowly stretching from ear to ear as he shrugs,

“Cry me a river...”

#immortal heart society #lovestruck

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alazyamateurgamedev · 4 years ago

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Inaugural Post

I’m going to ramble a bit about some basics of game design on a far too philosophical level, but I think it is something to consider if you are considering game design. I end up feeling like this is something developers end up ignoring when they develop their games. For this particular rant, I’m going to focus mostly on video games, since by and large, they don’t have to involve other people, which makes the overall experience much different. So as I refer to gaming below, think mostly of video games, but I also think it still applies to all kinds of game design.

First of all, games are, by my definition at least, a form of art. This is at the core of a lot of my musings about gaming, and it supplies the main challenge in making something good. Sure, they have an extremely technical requirement in terms of making it, but it is still basically a form of art. I’m sure a lot of people who don’t get gaming would say “Oh its not art!”, but really the goal with a game is to achieve some sort of emotional response (IE Fun, joy, fear, etc) or possibly intellectual response (IE “Let me stop and think about this), and that is all I think any artist who is trying to achieve. In this particular case, I am defining an artist as anyone who creates some sort of creative work, and can include art, literature, music, movies, architecture, etc. Medium is not important in this context.

Now, I am also going to focus on the idea that a game designer wants to try to a) Share their game with anyone interested and b) make money. Now, there are many reasons to make art, and some of them don’t involve public exposure, for example, painting or drawing as a form of therapy. If that is the case, this discussion isn’t targeted at you. In completing your project, you have hopefully achieved what you wanted. So if you are designing and building a game for some personal reason with no real intention of exposing it to the public, then this does not apply to you. However, I presume most people who publish a video game are trying to achieve something else like making money, accolades of people, or just sharing something they think is fun. The first two may seem self-serving, but I don’t think it is wrong. You should get credit for the work you put into something.

Because it is a form of art, that makes creating something “Good” much, much more difficult. In engineering, you can pretty often easily define “good”. Your basic goal with a non-artistic product (say a refrigerator) is to make something that does what is expected (It keeps the inside cold at a fixed temperature), and mainly to do it for a profit. So, you can define your general goals pretty easily, and then test against them to know “Hey I did a good job” or “It does a bad job”. Things like “Does the temperature stay constant while it is running?” “Does it stay on?” and “Do the doors fall off if I open them too much?” are all things you can define and test against. This is a bit of an over-simplification, as the appearance of your fridge is quite important and subjective and also because it isn’t always easy to define what parameters are acceptable, or how to define the parameters, or how to test for them, but hopefully that doesn’t happen to you as an engineer, or if it does, that is why you are paid the big bucks.

Now, this long-winded explanation leads to why gaming is hard to design. At the core of almost any game is the idea that it should be “fun”. But it is extremely hard to define “Fun”. What is fun? As a baby, sucking on your toes could be considered fun, but most of you probably do not consider it fun now. Some people think hiking or running is fun, but I do not. So fun is different to different people, and different to the same person at different times. This means you have an impossible to define goal post when trying to design a game, at least from an engineering standpoint. I bring this up, because this is probably why you see major AAA game publishers publish substandard products, and sometimes why you see Kickstarter funded games take 3 extra years to develop (more on Kickstarter in future rants). For a software company, the company’s goal is to make money, and so to make a profit, they will need to sell enough copies of the game to cover the cost to develop it. Part of that cost basically boils down to time, since it costs money to pay employees, and the more time you take to develop a game, the more it costs the company, and the more copies they need to sell.

This is just an educated guess (I’m lazy, so I’m not going to do any research on this, but I’m sure it exists), but I expect many of the “Terrible flops” were actually the company defining some sort of timeline for the game’s development that ended up not working out. They either skimped on Quality Assurance (QA, also known as testing) and the game didn’t work right, or they skimped on development, and so the gameplay just wasn’t good. Sometimes, it is just a flawed design, and you figure that out too late, and you’ve already sunk a ton of money and time into the project and need to decide what to do about it. Do you go forward with a crappy design or do you go ahead and release a substandard product in hopes that you can make some of your money back? Most larger companies will choose the latter, because they need to stay in business. A handful do not, and they are interesting cases: Blizzard before they merged with Activision and Valve. Both were notorious for not releasing games quickly, and I think you can see the polish in the Diablo and Warcraft (But not World of Warcraft) series, as well as the Half-Life series. I made the possible mistake of playing Half-Life Alyx before any other VR game, and its beautifully defined controls have spoiled me as compared to other similar VR titles. However, I’m pretty sure they worked on that for ages before releasing it as perfect as they could. However, they have loads and loads of cash and can wait. Looking at Cyberpunk 2077, to me that looked like they ran out of testing time, and thus why it was such a buggy launch, despite the delays, and they were forced to launch. Finally, I expect the entire lack of tangible Diablo 4 news is because they think they are missing some major component to make it what they want it to be.

My overall point on all of this is that it can take time to develop something fun, especially something that can be as complex as a game. And on top of that, a game has technical challenges that other forms of art do not. Not only do you have to create a fun system, but you have to make it work, and do it in a visually and acoustically engaging way. So not only do you have to make the Art, sounds, story, gameplay, but you also have to make sure it all works right. There are some ‘shortcuts’ you can take, like using established game engines (Like the Unreal Engine or Unity) so you don’t have to invent from the ground up, but that both adds cost and a possibly restrictive framework to work in.

Now, you are probably asking why am I rambling about all of this? This goes back to what I was originally rambling about, which is why are you making a game. You are probably aiming for your game to be well received, and either make some money off it, or at the very least, get good reviews and encouragement. So my point is if you wish to be successful, please make sure your game is, at the core, fun. If, after you make it, you look back on it and think “I would never play this.” Or “I’d be bored with this after two minutes”, you probably didn’t do a good job. Most of this blog will probably revolve around this idea of what is (and isn’t) fun, so I hope you’ll keep reading it. If you take anything away from it, I think you should aim to make a game that is fun to the audience you want it to be fun for, but just remember that the more restrictive your audience, the less successful game you probably will have, and really to make sure your game is, in fact, fun.

#gaming #dev #development

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ruoyeming · 5 years ago

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My Fav Books, another chaotic list

Another quarantine review fest! I know I ranked my top anime but this is seriously too hard so I’m just going to list them to avoid hours of debate. Enjoy!

1) The Skulduggery Pleasant series

This whopper of a series (now at 15 books jesus christ I didn’t know there were that many I’ve only read about twelve) has a special place in my heart. I was FULLY obsessed with it throughout my tween - and teen - years, and for a reason. This shit just butters my bread like nothing else. The story follows a young girl Valkyrie Cain (who eventually becomes a young woman through the series) and her partner in crime, a fashionable living skeleton called Skulduggery Pleasant. They’re MAGICAL DETECTIVES!!!! Bitch!!! They use elemental magic - water, earth, fire, air - to fight off magic-wielding bad guys and look good doing it. The duo is hilarious and seriously shaped my sense of humour, the dry wit and comedic writing style stuck with me and influenced my own writing style to this day! As the series progresses we get a massive cast of characters but to me they’re all memorable, likable (mostly) and well-developed so that’s not an issue. I have no fukcing clue how Derek Landy comes up with his stories because every book in the series has an absolutely wild (yet unique) plot with its own twists and turns. It gets REALLY dark and depressing at times, gory, brutal etc etc especially in the later books I have no idea why this is labeled as a kids series.

10/10 for badassery, humour, and MAD codependency issues

2) The Feverwake series

This bitch is one hell of a YA series. It’s actually only a 2 book-series which is rare, but that’s not the only thing that sets it apart from other creations of its genre. It’s hard to explain the setup without waffling so I’ll just quote the blurb of the first book: “In the former United States, sixteen-year-old Noam Álvaro wakes up in a hospital bed, the sole survivor of the viral magic that killed his family and made him a technopath. His ability to control technology attracts the attention of the minister of defense and thrusts him into the magical elite of the nation of Carolinia.

The son of undocumented immigrants, Noam has spent his life fighting for the rights of refugees fleeing magical outbreaks—refugees Carolinia routinely deports with vicious efficiency. Sensing a way to make change, Noam accepts the minister’s offer to teach him the science behind his magic, secretly planning to use it against the government. But then he meets the minister’s son—cruel, dangerous, and achingly beautiful—and the way forward becomes less clear.”

As you can tell from this, the series is heavy on its politics but in a grounded, realistic and relevant way which is different to many other YA series. Marxist theory is brought up, and you can make some pretty strong links between the books and real events. The magic also has a semi-scientific explanation which is cool and adds to the realness. Anyways this series is action packed and full of twists, plus there’s a bisexual main character and queer romance at the core!! Wig!!! Very good for moral debate - how far is it acceptable to go to protect the oppressed before you become one of the oppressors? Dark and exciting series.

10/10 queer representation and political themes.

3) Spin the Dawn

It’s probably obvious that I’m biased towards YA books but they’re just so exciting and cool! Anyways this is about a girl living in a kind of alternate universe ancient China where magic exists. Maia Tamarin is a skilled seamstress who dreams of being the Imperial Tailor, a position that can only be held by a man. She poses as her brother to go to the royal palace and enter a competition full of skilled tailors, all vying for the role of imperial tailor. She also meets Edan; a mysterious, annoying, but SEXY mage who seems to know her secret identity? Oho? IMO this would be an elevated book if Edan had been a girl but that’s just me being gay. As the final challenge Maia is tasked with making 3 dresses from the sun, moon, and stars - a mission that takes her to the ends of the world in search of these magical materials (obvs Edan goes with her and they kiss kiss fall in love). It’s a fairly classic YA plot and characters but the combination of Project Runway, Mulan, and kind of Lord of the Rings(??) vibes makes for a very entertaining read. It’s also really fun to imagine what the clothes look like, plus the romance between Maia and Edan is very cute. Second book is yet to be published but sounds lit.

10/10 magic fashion and romance (despite its heterosexuality)

4) Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Usually I steer clear of angsty gay stories because I’ve consumed too much of the depressing narrative which is all about suffering because of being gay, but fuuuuuuck this book is like the definition of bittersweet. Mostly bitter to be fair but it has a happy ending which was lovely after the emotional torment of the book. It’s about two teen boys - Aristotle is angry and repressed, Dante is eccentric but kind, and the two eventually form a strong friendship after meeting at the local pool. It’s kind of obvious that Ari is in denial about a few things, which leads to some real sad boi hours. There’s also a devastating moment around halfway (not sure) through with a car accident which makes the whole thing 10x heavier. Despite all this, the book has its sweet moments - parents play a big role, but not in the way they usually do in queer stories - and like I said the ending is the bandage for your broken heart. I’m not sure what it is about the writing style, maybe the way it just cuts between scenes randomly or perhaps the way the dialogue and actions are so realistic, but it’s so different to any other book I’ve read that it’s stayed in my mind for a while after reading it.

10/10 really good philosophy plus supportive parents

5) The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

Okay if this was a ranked list, this bad boy would be on its way to the top spot. It’s got everything: historical setting, gays, pirates, alchemy, humour, adventure, angst, character development, and some healthy second-hand embarrassment. It’s not complicated or philosophical but reading this book all in one go is like taking five shots and diving into a pool. It’s exciting and witty, but deals with darker themes like child abuse too. One of the MCs also has a disability and doesn’t treat it as something to be cured, which is a lesson our protagonist has to learn. Speaking of protagonists, Henry ‘Monty’ Montague is a great main character. He’s obnoxious, oblivious, and hedonistic yet quick-witted and passionate, and he has a good heart. Sometimes you just want to grab him by the shoulders and shake him for being such an ignorant idiot, but throughout the book he grows and learns to open his mind more (as well as becoming more humble). He’s a great example of a flawed yet likable main character. He is also a bisexual icon.

Oof forgot to even talk about the story. Monty embarks on a tour of Europe, usually taken by lads his age to get all cultured before they settle down and inherit the family company or whatever. With him are his younger sister Felicity, a girl with a brilliant mind for science who isn’t taken seriously by anyone because of her gender, and the lovely Percy, Monty’s lifelong best friend (and crush). Monty ends up stealing a very valuable object that turns the Tour into a manhunt across Europe, and drags the trio into a big ol’ conspiracy involving something that may or may not be the philosopher’s stone????

Issues of race, gender, and disability in historical context are really well done, and it’s an absolute banger of a book.

10/10 very exciting adventure, plus GREAT GAY ROMANCE

6) Heaven Official’s Blessing

HOOOOOO BOY. This is probably my absolute fave on this list. It’s a webnovel (originally Chinese but the full translation is online). Set in ancient china in the cultivation world (difficult as shit to explain if ur not into all of that but I’ll try), basically there’s three realms - the heavenly realm, the human/mortal realm, and the ghostly realm. If a mortal reaches a certain point (good deeds, power etc), they ascend to become a god - or if they fall far enough, they become a ghost.

I’ll just quote the author’s description again cause I don’t have the brain cells required:

“Eight hundred years ago, Xie Lian was the Crown Prince of the Xian Le kingdom. He was loved by his citizens and was considered the darling of the world. He ascended to the Heavens at a young age; however, due to unfortunate circumstances, was quickly banished back to the mortal realm. Years later, he ascends again–only to be banished again a few minutes after his ascension. Now, eight hundred years later, Xie Lian ascends to the Heavens for the third time as the laughing stock among all three realms. On his first task as a god thrice ascended, he meets a mysterious demon who rules the ghosts and terrifies the Heavens, yet, unbeknownst to Xie Lian, this demon king has been paying attention to him for a very, very long time.”

It’s hard to describe the enormity of this story and all the emotions it encapsulates, you really have to read it for yourself. But bitch the undying, pure, Hozier-devotion-level LOVE is by far my favourite part of this story. If you’re looking for an epic, god-tier gay romance, then this is it baby!! This story has comedy, action, and downright harrowingly depressing moments, but throughout is this achingly beautiful love between fallen god and last believer.

I don’t wanna give too much away cause there are some big ol’ plot reveals, but oooh this shit made me cry. The protagonist is MY FAVOURITE EVER I didn’t think it was possible to like a protag so much!! He’s legit my fave character! At first he seems oblivious and carefree but he’s just doing his goddamn best after all he’s been through and he’s so fukcing kind and just wants to help everyone for fuckcs sake excuse me I need to go have a breakdown.

Okay I’m back, anyway there’s a great cast of characters, even the background characters are all incredibly memorable and all given their time to shine and develop. My faves include Quan Yizhen, a rowdy himbo who just wants to fight, and Shi Qing Xuan, a friendly genderfluid god who controls the wind. Read this shit I’m not joking it’ll change your life.

10/10 for everything

#book review #book recommendations

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positivelyamazonian · 7 years ago

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You was planning to delete your blog? But why? D:

Hi Maxim! I wouldn’t call it “planning”, but that thought crossed my mind lately. I didn’t want to talk about it openly because it would sound as I’m complaining, but I’ve feeling fed up, tired and disappointed with the fandom lately. The amounts of anon hate I got in the past, the way the franchise is being managed, what has been done to Lara Croft… nothing what remains nowadays has nothing to do with the character, the heroine and fandom I used to love. I felt there was nothing left here - apart of some of you awesome guys, of course, but I meant, concerning the franchise in general.

Lara Croft is not Lara Croft anymore, Tomb Raider nowadays has nothing to do with the game I used to love and play, and most of the fandom doesn’t give a shit about it. Not the new fans who naturally, after finding the reboot at the current status of the franchise (same with the ones that started with LAU trilogy), and logically, have not the same references, but specially old fans. Lara has disappeared, Crystal killed her, they killed the game and everything that made the character and Tomb Raider special, but this fandom doesn’t care. Doesn’t give a damn. They keep buying those games and there are no consequences for Crystal Dynamics having destroyed a legacy and an icon.

Nobody. Gives. A. Fuck. That’s why we are now here, and whereas for most of the fandom is no big deal, I really cared and I’m astonished to read some opinions and the general status of the franchise out there. I feel like there is no place here for old fans anymore. And please don’t get me wrong, I respect people liking reboot or LAU trilogy despite I don’t like these eras at all. But the way Crystal has disrespected Core Design, insulted Classic Lara and the old games - not to mention the unfair treatment and opinions TRAOD gets until today, a failed project that involved people fired from their jobs and precisely, those who worked during years under a stressful schedule to bring us Tomb Raider… - it really brought me down.

Also, a very personal matter, like the way I’ve been writing fanfics for this fandom like more than 10 years now and nobody. Gives. A. Fuck. When I say nobody gives a fuck doesn’t mean that I don’t have readers - thanks God, I’ve very faithful readers and beautiful feedback despite I spent many years without a single review. What I mean is, this fandom doesn’t care about us, writers.

Everyone will reblog, like or made visible even the most little piece of TR fanart, while TR fanfiction won’t get any kind of attention. I mean in general, in this fandom. Every doodle - and I mean no disrespect with “doodle”, I like them, I share them as well - will be liked and shared and reblogged at some point, every digital artist using some digital tools will be praised non-stop and publicly acknowledged not only externally in the fandom, but also by the main accounts and forums.

Fanfic writers get NOTHING of this. This fandom doesn’t read. This fandom doesn’t care. I am not speaking just about me, there are amazing fanfics and amazing writers out there, and nobody is giving a shit about their work because THIS FANDOM DOESN’T FUCKING READ. Even the scarce written pieces that got some recognition in the past, I don’t think they are being really read by most of the fans, they just reblog news and announcements and that’s all.

All this situation got me frustrated in the past and that’s why I left Spanish fandom in 2006, when TRLegend was released and I lost Lara and TRAOD. Back then I had readers and reviews too but I got fed up with all the situation, also some harassment and bullying related with the Spanish TR forum I don’t really want to talk about.

I returned to the fandom two years ago because I had learnt English, I had translated my fics to English (now perfectly readable thanks to the help of many beta-readers) and I thought the international fandom could be different.

How naive I was.

So after two years moving around the international fandom I still see the same crap that made me leave before, in the Spanish fandom: Lara is dead, Tomb Raider is dead, nobody gives a fuck and you’ll get harassment and hate if you are vocal about it - I accept I am kinda aggressive, but I don’t harass or stalk other blogs -, even if what I do it’s just criticising the product, and the company that produced the product, and NEVER the people that likes or prefers it.

Situation of fanfiction is worse, tho. At least in Spanish fandom there was a place for every fanfic writer, so they could share their stuff and were accepted and acknowledged, got regular feedback and reviews.

So - long story short, I’m tired, sad and depressed because I don’t know what I’m doing here anymore. I never pretended anyone stop loving reboot/LAU, but I wanted to keep Classic Lara alive (somehow), get people to know and appreciate TRAOD despite its evident flaws, and over all, share my fics as a contribution to this fandom and make other fics also more visible (not only mine, of course, that’s why I’ve shared and recommended and reviewed others).

All I got, the same: anon and non anon hate, more TRAOD/Classic Lara trashing, and absolute indifference concerning fanfiction by the fandom in general - I don’t speak of the readers I already have and that I appreciate so much, please!

I’m tired and I’m not sure what I’m doing here anymore, and if nobody cares about what Lara Croft (and all her classic universe) was once. Seeing the so-alleged classic fans trashing her the same way Crystal did was the ultimate shit to witness in this fandom.

That’s why I was thinking to delete and move on to my personal stuff. I really want to be a writer and until now I’ve only managed to publish one book, and it wasn’t a successful one. Fanfiction has helped me a lot to improve my writing (not to mention my English!) so I don’t regret anything, and I would never delete them from my fanfic profiles, but maybe it’s time to move to another things and definitely leave Tomb Raider - or whatever the fuck that is - fandom.

I never planned to make “something big” here, or to change people’s preferences, but it’s sad and frustrating what happened to my main fandom. Despite I know it’s just a fictional character, Lara Croft really mattered to me, and I don’t see this enthusiasm in this fandom anymore. They will keep buying games to the company that killed her and proving them right when in 2006 they rebooted her without respecting her background, biography and spirit, and in 2013 they did it again.

So, why to be here anymore? That was my general feeling. Sorry for the long rant, but… since you asked, when I answer, I answer.

That’s all. Thank you for caring, darling.

#i wasn't enthusiastic about sharing this because #people will say i'm complaining #doing shit to change people's preferences #or writing just to get attention #and i swear to God it's neither of that #but since you asked #maybe someone out there will understand #and if not meh #i'm already used to anon hate #my answers #personal #positively amazonian #tomb raider #lara croft #just my thoughts

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terribleco · 5 years ago

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The History Of Covpark

I recently put together a blog post for the War Memorial Ramp Renovation campaign, where I explained my history with Covpark and what improvement to the skatepark would mean for Coventry. Off the back of that, I thought it would make sense to post a revised history of the skatepark which (for anyone who cares) gives more context into how it came to be, and how it got to the point where we have a huge campaign to renovate the skatepark.

Note: A lot of this information is anecdotal, shared throughout the scene over the past 20 years. This is pieced together from those involved with the build as well as anyone involved in the campaign to improve the skatepark.

Part 1: The Build

The War Memorial Park skatepark was built in 2001 by Bendcrete. As far as I can tell, the design for the skatepark is a cookie cutter pre-fab design that came from a catalogue - Bendcrete specialised primarily in pre-fabricated ramps throughout the 2000's and other examples of their ramps can be found in Wyken and Holbrooks. They built ramps like this to keep costs down and undercut prices from better park builders of the time like Wheelscape and Gravity. The downside of building ramps this way is they can easily become uneven, causing lips between ramp joints, and the pre-fab parts don't leave much room for interesting, quirky obstacles (which in general usually attract skaters from miles around).

Upon its initial build, the skatepark was well utilised on account of it being the only skatepark in the city, and because skateboarders were desperate for places to skate. The concrete park was a replacement for a temporary set of wooden ramps which were in the tennis court next to the skatepark's eventual location - the wooden ramps were poor quality, which ended up getting trashed because they couldn't withstand the weight of people doing tricks on them.

During the build, the council had planned for the park to be a long strip of tarmac with a metal bank at the end. This was the result of an expensive consultation period where they went to nearby primary schools and quizzed kids who didn't skate on what they wanted to ride. This design was scrapped when Jim The Skin got involved and convinced the council that what they had planned sounded terrible, and a concrete skatepark was the only option.

Steve Spain, another Coventry OG Skater, came up with new designs for the concrete park which would provide something affordable but interesting. He still has the physical model of these designs! Eventually the council went with Bendcrete's pre-fab design and build (stealing some minor ideas from Steve's design, but executing them poorly - e.g the moulded tacos that join the 4ft quarter pipes to the flatbanks).

In executing what was meant to be a cookie cutter design Bendcrete made some bizarre mistakes with spacing and dimensions. Funboxes were not aligned correctly with nearby quarters, meaning you had to carve to skate in a straight line. Quarters and flatbanks ended up being half their intended width in some cases. The mini ramp walls ended up being slightly too close together, creating a tight mini ramp which could be a bit of a chore to skate.

The council shelled out cash for an overpriced fence which would delaminate speeding boards. I had more boards wrecked by that fence than I can remember. Rumours suggest the fence cost half the budget of the whole build.

The changes made by Bendcrete/Coventry City Council caused a lot of frustration in the skate scene to the point that locals spray painted Mickey Mouse stencils all over the skatepark upon its opening as a statement for how the build had been mismanaged and the wrong people had been given a say on the final design.

Part 2: The Scene

Despite the build problems, the park encouraged kids in the area to start skating. A lot of locals in the younger generation of the time spent every waking hour at the park learning to skate. The scene eventually grew and a large crew of skaters local to the park spilled out into the city centre. This blog started at Covpark as a way to document what was going on down there and the skatepark was the start of a larger connection between all of the skaters in the city.

It quickly became obvious that Covpark wasn't the best skatepark in the world, but the scene was very active down there. For a long time it was the centre of Coventry's skate scene before the skatepark eventually began to degrade and build issues made it harder to skate.

In 2006 the Karma team visited for a demo, and Vans held a skate competition there. Pro skaters invited to both events were not impressed with the skatepark at all. Coventry City Council held a competition at Covpark as part of the Godiva festival one year, and the whole vibe was just lame and disingenuous - the announcer tried to act like he was one of the locals and knew who everyone was but it quickly became obvious that, just like the skatepark, people outside of the scene had been brought in to do something with skateboarding.

This prompted me to organise my own competition called Covpark Combat, with the first one happening a month after the council one. The vibe was way more fun and chilled out, and we did some silly stuff like a skateboard demo derby that became a staple of the competition for years after.

We ran 5 of these before the council got wind of it and demanded we go through them and run it as a proper event with health and safety and other bullshit that just wasn't in keeping with the spirit of the event. On some occasions we had pro skateboarders turn up to compete like (Team GB Olympic Skater) Alex Decunha, and we got sponsorship from Ride, Vans, Two Seasons and Decimal Skateshop. The competition even got advertised by Sidewalk on their website and forum one year.

On the BMX side, the popularity of BMX brought the Backyard Jam to Coventry in the late 2000's, where BMX legend Ruben Alcantara turned up to Covpark and performed some mind-blowing tricks - he managed to hit up stalls on the back rail of the mini ramp, which was a definite NBD, and completely insane to see. BMX riders were invited to later iterations of Covpark Combat, which was symbolic of the close scene down the skatepark at the time.

Part 3: The Campaign

In 2010, after almost 10 years of the skatepark being installed, the local scene was getting frustrated. We had seen a decade of growth, with skateboarding growing in popularity, and skateparks increasing in quality. The 2000's saw a wealth of new skateparks being built as the UK scene grew and skateboarding became cemented as part of UK youth culture. Skateparks like Stoke Plaza appeared showing huge, near endless opportunities for tricks and lines. Varieties of obstacles in these parks made Covpark's design flaws obvious, and Coventry skateboarders were annoyed that they had to travel to get to amazing skateparks.

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I started a campaign to improve Covpark - fuelled by the build flaws mentioned earlier. Ramps at the park were sinking, causing unsafe lips, joints were becoming exposed, the ground was rough as the aggregate started to wear and the stones in the concrete mix became exposed.

I met with council employees who looked at these flaws and admitted they had no idea this was a problem for skateboards. Bendcrete reps came down and suggested fixes for the build quality, some expensive, some cheap - the council took the cheap options. At my request Gravity were brought in to provide designs for a possible full extension/rebuild - with little funds available this fell apart, and Gravity instead came in to do the repairs Bendcrete had quoted us for.

In the years that followed it quickly became apparent that a Covpark extension or rebuild was unlikely to happen without a serious rethink in strategy. With little help from the council, and a lack of guidance to help us raise the funds for an outdoor park, a few of us regrouped and changed course. We ignored Covpark to concentrate on an indoor park idea - an idea that Lucas Healey would pick up years later and would eventually evolve into The Coventry Skatepark Project.

With the campaign for improvement dwindling, Covpark was abandoned by the skate scene with only a few locals like Joxa and Nich Horishny skating the place regularly. The scene evolved and The Herbert Art Gallery became the heart of the scene for most people - most street skaters pretty much got everything they needed from the city centre, and if you preferred transition, the sessions usually ended up at Holbrooks, or further afield. The lack of a good skatepark fractured the scene as it grew and as I got older I started to recognise less and less of the local skaters. The scene was still thriving, but with no central location for all disciplines of skater it was splintered.

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Part 4: The Next Generation

In 2018, after 15 years of operation, The Terrible Company celebrated its 15th birthday at Covpark with a big session reminiscent of the skatepark's early days. Despite the high turnout, the park's flaws remained glaringly obvious to everyone who attended.

Last year the War Memorial Ramp Renovation Campaign started - ran by local kids who skated the park along with their parents (some of whom were already involved with the Cov Skatepark Project). Almost 10 years after the campaign for improvement started, and almost 20 years after the park was first built, the campaign aims to completely rebuild the skatepark from scratch to provide the kind of facility that should have existed there from the start.

#skatepark situation

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warmdevs · 5 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://warmdevs.com/top-10-enduring-web-design-mistakes.html

Top 10 Enduring Web-Design Mistakes

Since 1996, we have been compiling lists of the top 10 mistakes in web design. This year, we completed a large-scale usability study with 215 participants in the United States and United Kingdom to see what today’s web-design mistakes are. After analyzing results across 43 sites that ranged from small, local businesses to entertainment sites to nonprofits to global organizations, we identified 10 of the most common and most damaging web-design mistakes that hurt our users. (And by hurting their users, these design flaws most definitely also hurt the websites’ business metrics.)

The big news? None of the top issues today is new or surprising. Web design has come a long way. But these persistent problems remain. Modern design patterns and aesthetics change, but underlying user needs remain the same. Users still need to find information, be able to read it, and know what to click and where it leads.

How many of these mistakes is your website making?

1. Unexpected Locations for Content

People can’t use information they can’t find. Many sites offer poor category names that don’t adequately or accurately describe the content within them. Others are arranged based on how the company — rather than the user — thinks about content. When the site structure doesn’t match the users’ mental models of how information should be organized, people are unable to locate what they need.

Involve users in creating your site structure. A little usability work such as card sorting, tree testing, or usability testing can go a long way in creating a site structure that makes sense to users.

ATT.com: Information about trading in an old phone was under Existing Customers, but users looked for it under Smartphones.

2. Competing Links and Categories

When users can’t clearly distinguish between similar navigational categories or links, they struggle to find the right path to content. Category and link names need to make sense on their own, but also in conjunction with other options on the site. If multiple sections or pages could address a specific information need, users must explore each or make their best guess. Alternatively, they may turn to search or even leave the site.

Users on BAM Construction’s site wanted details about construction projects, but weren’t sure if the information would fall under Who We Are, What We Do, or How We Do It. Most started in What We Do, but that section contained overviews of the type of work the organization offered to clients, rather than project details. Project information and case studies were featured in How We Do It.

Card sorting and usability testing can help avoid overlapping category names. Problems with links that are too similar often stem from poor content strategy. Two likely causes for these problems are:

Poor labeling: The links lead to different content, but, for some reason, they have similar labels. If that’s the case, try renaming your links to differentiate them from one another.

Poor content differentiation: If links lead to different pages with highly related information, the solution may be not to rename the links, but to reorganize and consolidate the content.

3. Islands of Information

Some sites offer small bits of information scattered around the site, with little or no connection between them.

When users find one such island of information without links to other related information, they have no reason to think that another area of the site offers supplementary material. If people need additional information, they may move to a competitor’s site or to Google to acquire it.

Users trying to revisit the information may end up in an entirely different area of the site, with a different view of content than in the first experience. Those who do locate the disjointed information, are left to piece it together. Either way, they are left with a negative impression of the site.

From an organization’s perspective, this is not only a user-experience failure, but also a content-management nightmare: information in one area of the site may duplicate, differ from, or even contradict information elsewhere.

One solution is to add related links between pages that offer related information. A better solution is to consider why information is scattered throughout the site, consolidate it as appropriate, and pick the best spot for it. Other areas of the site can refer to the primary location for content about that topic, instead of replicating the information.

4. Repetitive Links

Even if users can determine the right site location for their information needs, they can still be stymied by unexpected or lengthy workflows.

Web teams often ask how many clicks it should take to get to content. There is no magic number — the quality of the clicks matters far more than the quantity. Users should get closer to the information goal as they click through pages. Repetitive clicks that force people to select what they want again and again aggravate users and require them to spend unnecessary effort.

Teams sometimes build pages in isolation and do not consider the route to the content they’ve created. When creating new pages, review how the user will get there and to see if a more direct path is possible.

NYC.gov: Users were frustrated when they selected a link labeled Find a Firehouse only to have to select the differently spelled Find a fire house link on the next page.

5. Hidden Fees and Prices

People want to know about prices, subscription fees, convenience fees, and additional charges before or at the beginning of a process. On several sites, users had to proceed through complex interactions just to find basic information — for example, they had to start purchasing a membership on the AARP site in order to find out the membership cost. Users should be able to find information before committing to a complex process.

6. Stranding Users on Microsites

Sites that create separate, secondary sites for sections or specific types of content need to be cautious about stranding users on those sites. Many of our study participants moved to a new site or subsite without realizing it and then struggled to get back to the main site because the subsite offered no option for return. Some were able to navigate to the parent site by repeatedly using the browser’s Back button or retyping the site’s URL, but many did not even notice that they had switched sites (because of the similar look-and-feel of the parent and child sites) and wondered why the navigation they had used before was gone.

Think twice before creating a separate subsite. If you do build one, make sure that users can easily navigate back to the parent site as needed.

The British Red Cross main site (www.redcross.org.uk — top screenshot) and its training subsite (British (www.redcrossfirstaidtraining.co.uk — bottom) look very similar, use the same logo to link to each site’s respective homepage, and the same first navigational category (What We Do). Users looking for a first-aid course were moved to the training site and were disoriented when they tried to go back to the main site.

7. Poor Search Results

Users turn to search out of preference, as a last resort, or when they know precisely what they’re looking for. In any scenario, sites need to support users by providing strong search results.

Unfortunately, site search is still a major weakness for many websites. Some sites return results that do not match users’ queries. Others search only some of the site content but don’t clearly disclose that to the user. Results that are poorly named or accompanied by useless summaries leave people guessing the content behind the link. Ads interspersed with site-search results surprise users and lead them away from the site.

Regularly review search logs to learn more about your users’ search behavior and your search engine’s successes and failures. Use content tagging and features of the site’s search tool, such as Best Bets, to promote the most appropriate results for specific queries.

8. Flawed Filters and Facets

Facets and filters generally improve user experience. Users can narrow down their search to the exact resource, product or content they need. However, simply adding facets and filters does not ensure better usability. These tools need to support real users and real user needs.

Facets and filters define the search space for users, and different criteria help in different contexts. Employees looking specifically for last Tuesday’s PowerPoint presentation on sustainability can benefit from narrowing by document type and date, but also by topic. An ecommerce site might want to allow shoe shoppers to narrow by heel height and outerwear shoppers to narrow by warmth rating.

Sites create flawed facets and filters when they attempt a one-size-fits-all approach. The same criteria and characteristics may not apply across all content types. Be cautious in limiting users’ selections to an either-or approach, as well. Furniture shoppers may be looking for blue chairs, or for chairs that are any color other than blue. Both needs should be supported.

Content must be tagged correctly and reliably to produce relevant results. For instance, on the AARP site users looking for a chicken recipe were quite confused when 6 of the top 10 results did not include chicken in the recipe.

Maplin.com: Users could not easily locate Bluetooth speakers from Maplin that cost less than £50. There was no way using the site’s filters to see all items matching their price criteria; instead, they had to run separate queries for several price subranges. Users had to select each price range one at a time (such as £40–£50 and £30–£40) and then remember which items were available in each range.

9. Overwhelming Users with Information

Poorly organized information leaves users struggling to find what they need. Dense walls of text make it difficult to scan for information of interest. Overloaded pages are filled with items competing for users’ attention.

Remember that users scan, not read, online. Make it easy for users to pick out information of interest, by writing for the web: use short sentences and paragraphs, bulleted lists, headings, and bolded keywords.

The Headphone.com product description for the Shure SRH440 Studio Headphones provided quality content, but the length and presentation of the information (several long paragraphs in a narrow column), made it hard to scan for the important, differentiating features of the headphones.

10. Hidden Links

For years, our usability research has shown that users often ignore or overlook content that resembles advertising or is placed in a page location typically used for ads. This problem still exists and is even worse when content is listed alongside actual advertisements.

Site designers sometimes think that adding more design elements, such as a border, background color or graphic to a link will make it stand out. The result is commonly the opposite: The fancier the design around a link, the more users might mistake it for an advertisement.

Pitfield London included information about operating hours and a link to the menu in the right column of the page, above an animated graphic of a coffee cup and a column of advertisements leading to other sites. Users on this page had difficulty locating the café menu due to its placement and presentation. The site similarly used a banner-like design to lead to Pitfield London in the Press.

Progress Has Been Made: There’s Progress to Be Made

We can safely assume that no one sets out to create a poorly designed website. If these problems have been well-known for years, why do they persist? Potential answers to that question could likely fill a book. Some of these mistakes likely reflect a deeper, organization-specific UX-strategy failure. For example:

Problems with site information hierarchy can be tied to organizational structure or a company’s internal politics.

Content issues arise when different departments create content without being aware of each other and without following an overarching content strategy.

Poor search results may stem from poor content-management systems, flawed or missing tagging of content, or a poor search tool.

The reasons behind these problems are less important than fixing them. Many, if not all, of the mistakes listed above could be easily identified by including user research and usability testing in the website-development process and paying attention to the findings from that research.

Websites will never be perfect. No site is. There is always one more form field to be fixed, one more piece of content to be edited, one more navigational category to be determined. But knowing what needs fixing is essential to moving in the right direction.

When doing user research, hold on to old findings. As design preferences change 5 years from now, those old findings may keep you from making the same key usability-related mistakes a second, third, or fourth time.

More on how to make a website that works for your users and your business in the courses on Web Page UX Design and Information Architecture.

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berthastover · 6 years ago

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How to Increase Higher Education Student Engagement with Marketing

Planning your higher education marketing strategies is about working around two things: the rising cost of tuition and the growing number of students applying to post-secondary institutions. Not to mention, students have a lot of options to choose from.

To compete, you need to create digital marketing campaigns that:

appeal to peoples’ emotions

create a sense of urgency.

But why exactly is this the case?

Consumers attach the same personality characteristics to brands that they do to people.

Yet, this is about a lot more than creating a sense of belonging. Because your students need responsive and relevant support.

Here are some steps that you can take to improve the student experience.

Bonus resource:

Want to learn how to enroll international higher ed students? Then get our newest guide and learn about the 10 most-effective ways that’ll help you improve your enrollment campaigns in 2019.

1. Personalize your emails through making them timely

Is your newsletter not getting the results you hoped for? The issue might be a lack of personalization. It plays an important role in your students’ experience with your brand. Not to mention the fact, that it’s one of the key email marketing best practices in general, that delivers the highest results.

But what’s so important about personalization that makes it so effective?

It’s about reaching the right person with the right message at the right time.

With your students, you can do this by making them feel special…

One way you can do this is by showing your appreciation for the time and money they invested in your courses. This approach works no matter how long it has been since your students enrolled in your courses.

A great example of this is the George Brown College Continuing Education Newsletter. Since I’m one of their former students, I receive their emails on a regular basis.

A week before the holidays, they sent me a message, which showed their appreciation:

The one thing that made it effective was its timing. The email also reminded me that now is the best time to sign up for new courses if I want to enroll in the winter semester:

George Brown’s message showed up in my inbox a week before the holiday season. So, I had a head full of ideas for the new year. As a result, I asked myself “why not take another course?”

What should you do if your former students are still on your email list?

When a new semester is around the corner, remind them of your registration deadlines. But you’re likely wondering what makes former students such an asset. Cost is a major contribution; a great example of this is the emphasis colleges and universities put on international student recruitment.

To work around factors such as decreasing birth rates and shifting demographics…

The amount colleges spend on international students is increasing. Because this is happening in so many different countries, attracting international students is becoming a competitive process.

Prioritizing healthy relationships with current students and alumni will help bring down recruitment costs.

Although that seems like a lot of work, you can simplify the process. This involves setting up automation triggers, which add former students to your GetResponse Marketing Automation workflow.

Every time a student completes a course, send them an invitation to join an email list. This email list is a great way to notify students about the following:

• Registration deadlines • And course/special event news and updates.

2. Provide incentives tempting enough to turn prospective students into current students

One of the best business models I’ve come across in the higher education sector is Brainstation.

Brainstation is a company that offers courses in the following disciplines:

tech

design

digital marketing

Their students are working adults who want to upgrade their skills.

On a regular basis, they host panel discussions and events that cost as much as a cafe lunch.

So, what makes their approach so effective?

A lot of their event attendees have such a great time at their events that they register for courses. An important side note about their programs: they’re not exactly cheap. I looked up the costs, and full-time rates are $14,000 for full-time programs. Yet, they offer a scholarship program to accommodate students who can’t afford their tuition costs.

Not to mention:

Their application process is as much work as applying for a job.

And their courses are a huge time commitment. Students spend an average of ten to twelve months in their courses and certification programs.

So, everything I mentioned are hesitations that the organization has to work around.

The folks at Brainstation work around that by rewarding events with a high number of guests. Sometimes, they add event attendees to an email list and thank them for their time. This often involves offering a time-sensitive discount:

According to a RetailMeNot survey:

Four out of five (80 percent) consumers said they feel encouraged to make a first-time purchase with a brand that is new to them if they found an offer or discount.

Discounts will help you work around the biggest flaw of using events to attract students. They’re likely not ready to buy your courses right away. This is exactly where discounts can make a big difference.

Limited-time discounts encourage your students to stop procrastinating during the enrolment process.

But creating urgency isn’t always about charging less. Sometimes all people need to hear is a subtle reminder that they only have a limited amount of time to apply.

A great example of this is LinkedIn and how they sell their courses to LinkedIn users. This involves encouraging users to sign up for a 30-day trial of LinkedIn Learning:

This allows people to test drive the platform for free. It also allows them to decide if the monthly subscription fees are worth paying for.

There are also other ways to increase student enrollment. Here are some tips on how you can use PPC campaigns and email marketing for higher student enrollment.

3. Send emails that create accountability and fight against shiny object syndrome

One company that does this in an effective way is the Boss Project. Because their courses are online-based and aren’t time sensitive, they have to work around shiny object syndrome.

No idea what shiny object syndrome actually is? Here’s a quick definition from Entrepreneur contributor, Jayson DeMeyers:

It’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of a small child chasing after shiny objects. Once they get there and see what the object is, they lose interest and start chasing the next thing. This may be business objectives, marketing strategies, clients or even other business ventures.

Founders Abigail and Emily tackle this by sending emails that encourage student accountability. When students enroll, they receive an automated email that congratulates them on their enrolment. This email also provides a few bonus resources and instructions:

Two weeks later, students receive an email that shows them how to leave a review of the course:

So, how do you make your students feel accountable enough to:

finish your course?

and not switch to another course, with enticing benefits?

You need to remind them of the benefits:

An email, like the above example, will remind current students of the value of your online courses. Because it focuses on missed opportunities of not completing your courses.

The good news is that a lot of this can be automated. Once you’ve chosen the conditions and set up a workflow, your messages can be sent automatically.

Here are some examples of how you can do this with email automation.

4. Create student ambassadors who will provide honest responses to student questions

Enrolling in courses at the adult education level can be frustrating. Because answers to questions about everything from:

course prerequisites and registration

to learning what being a student is like, before paying tuition fees

can feel like a cold and uncertain process. A great example of that is this tweet in response to a student question:

Rather than providing a personalized answer…

They responded with a link to an FAQ page and hoped for the best.

Yet, managing social media as a higher education professional can be challenging.

According to Hootsuite:

The biggest challenge facing institutions is streamlining their social efforts campus-wide.

One of the many options available are student ambassador programs. Student ambassador programs include future students in a current student’s journey.

The job of the ambassadors is to use social media to capture the student experience. Because they’re students themselves, they point of view their point of view matters. But why is that the case?

Here’s an example of how an interaction with a student ambassador often “feels”:

Campaigns like these set you apart from your competition. Because they create two simple options:

Attend the university, because it aligns with your values

Don’t attend the university, because it doesn’t align with your values.

The feeling of campus life is especially important for international students. Because they are likely moving far away from home to enroll in your courses.

Encourage your ambassadors to produce content on everything from:

Information on key factors such as housing, food, and the people you’ll meet

To the experience of going to classes, writing tests, etc.

And when students have questions, encourage them to interact with ambassadors:

in person

over email

and during social live stream Q&A events

Strategies like these are essential. Because social media is the first point of contact between students and universities. So, it’s important to create a first impression that counts.

But above all else…

Students are often investing a great deal of time and money. So, it’s important to focus on making transparent information accessible to:

current students

future students

and alumni

Otherwise, they’ll change their mind and dedicate their time and money to something else.

Author:

Rosemary Richings is a specialist in blog content promotion and audience outreach strategy, who offers straight up content creation for websites and blogs. Since 2014, she has worked with diverse clients in the lifestyle and ecommerce industry. The clients that she has worked with include large organizations, such as E-bay and Yellowpages Canada, and startups/ small businesses such as Lokafy and BeFunky. She has also been published on sites such as Buffer, Search Engine Journal, the Weebly Inspiration Center, and more. Check out Rosemary’s latest in her ebook, Blog on, a blogging starter kit for entrepreneurs. Feel free to connect with Rosemary on Twitter @rosiemay_r for recommended reading material, along with news about her latest projects and content.

How to Use PPC Campaigns to Enroll More Students?

9 Higher Education Email Marketing Strategies for Better Student Enrollment

The post How to Increase Higher Education Student Engagement with Marketing appeared first on GetResponse Blog - Online Marketing Tips.

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nancydsmithus · 6 years ago

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Design System: What It Is And How To Create One Using Indigo.Design

Nick Babich

2019-04-02T12:30:58+02:002019-04-02T11:06:19+00:00

(This is a sponsored article.) Design is about scaling. Digital products are becoming more and more complex, and it is evident that product teams need to adapt their approach when designing them. To deliver well-designed products to the market, many organizations have started taking a more systematic approach to design, experimenting with style guides and pattern libraries in order to create design systems.

While product teams might face various problems in creating and incorporating a design system into their design process, one of the most common problems is integrating the different tools a team uses. Even if a team has a pixel-perfect visual design with properly handled components, they could face trouble in the design handoff and coding, all because their tools do not work properly with each other.

Indigo.Design attempts to solve this problem by introducing a unified platform for visual design, UX prototyping, code generation and app development. Using this platform increases the chances that you will create a design system that takes root and becomes an essential part of the organization. In this article, we’ll focus on just one aspect of this tool: using a design system in a visual design. But before that, it’s important to define what a design system is.

What Is A Design System?

A design system is a collection of elements that can be combined and reused to build products. This definition might give the wrong impression that it’s a single design deliverable, such as a Sketch library with UI components or a style guide. In fact, a design system is much more than that. Think of it as a process and a set of deliverables that create a shared language that everybody on the team will use when creating a product.

A design system is about communication. A well-crafted design system establishes a common shared language among team members, and this language allows the team to collaborate more effectively. Thus, the ultimate goal in creating a design system is to create both a single source of truth that can be referred to during product design and an effective shared language that all team members can use when working on a product.

What Problems Does A Design System Solve For Team Members?

Perhaps the most crucial thing that a design system brings to a product team is a different approach — members start approaching a design with a system in mind. Here are a few everyday tasks that a design system can help a team member with:

Quickly find and use the right component, pattern or style option (color, typeface, icon, etc.);

Reuse a component or pattern (either in the same product or in another product);

Know how to use a component or pattern properly (product creators will now have this guidance when creating products);

Reassure yourself that the components you are using are up to date.

What Can Motivate A Team To Think About A Design System?

There are a few powerful motivators for a team to think about a design system:

Design debt. As products and teams age, they accumulate design and development debt. Non-reusable conventions, inconsistent styles and legacy code are the most common sources of design and technical debt. Debt prevents a team from moving quickly. A design system helps an organization to reduce its debt.

Collaboration and communication problems. In large companies, a few different teams will usually work on a single project. Even with a team that communicates regularly, it’s quite common for their work to overlap (such as by creating similar components or UX patterns). A design system can build bridges between teams and make it easier to reuse work.

Repetitive work. A design system frees up time from repetitive work so that the team can focus on solving more interesting problems. The fact that team member won’t need to worry about which icon or button to choose in a particular situation not only saves valuable time, but also helps them to focus on the big picture: thinking more about how the user will use the product.

Consistency within a product family. Large companies need to design for multiple platforms and have a consistent experience across all platforms (both in behavior and interaction). Considering that an individual team is responsible for creating a design for a particular platform, this isn’t a simple task. A design system makes it much easier to design a consistent experience across all platforms.

The Key Qualities Of A Well-Functioning Design System

Regardless of the technologies and tools behind it, an effective design system has the following characteristics:

It should be adopted by the team. The system should fit the culture of the team. It should become a natural part of the design process and evolve gradually with the team’s products.

It should be balanced. The system should give team members enough freedom to contribute yet stay within parameters.

It should be consistent. The different parts of the system work well together.

It should be well-documented. The quality of documentation has a direct impact on the system’s adoption. If something is not documented, it doesn’t exist. That’s why the documentation should always be up to date.

It should be robust. Whatever the product or platform to which a design system is applied, the final product should have minimal flaws.

It should be highly reusable. All components of the system should be able to be reused in many contexts.

Last but not least, it should be cost-effective. An effective system can make the design process more cost-effective.

How Does Indigo.Design Simplify The Process Of Building A Design System?

Starting a design system can feel daunting. It’s evident that a great design system cannot be built overnight; there are too many things to consider. Even with all its benefits, it’s hard to get buy-in from the teams involved in design and development, mainly because the system will influence the way designers and developers work. Let’s see how Indigo.Design can improve this process.

The key thing that differentiates Indigo.Design from any other tool is that it’s a unified platform for visual design, UX prototyping, code generation and app development. Usually, design systems are created by product companies for their own products.

As a result of the significant number of user requests and expertise in building UI controls, the Indigo team has identified the component and pattern needs of a great number of clients from various industries. Thanks to this knowledge, Indigo.Design’s system goes beyond regular design systems that are created for specific product needs; rather, it is a ready-to-use design system that can be easily adjusted to the needs of a particular team. Users can use Indigo.Design’s Sketch UI kit as a starting point to build their own system using the premade components and patterns.

Indigo.Design consists of three parts: components, patterns and styling. All three parts are integrated as Sketch libraries and are perfectly synced. They will appear in the ‘Symbols’ section in Sketch.

Components

Components are the building blocks of user interfaces. Think of components as LEGO blocks that you can use to create a product. Avatars, cards and dialogs are just a few examples of components.

Components range in complexity, from simple components such as a “Submit” button to more complex components such as interactive cards. Usually, the more complex a component, the fewer the scenarios to which it can be applied.

Component-based design and development bring a lot of benefits to the design process, reducing technical overhead by making design and code reusable.

Because components are designed and built in code, for each component, it’s vital to describe both:

visual language (visual appearance),

functional behavior (code).

Indigo.Design provides a flexible way of working with components:

The design library has over 50 components:

A robust array of components are available in Indigo.Design. (Large preview)

Indigo allows you to modify everything about a component in a structure way. Individual properties, such as size, styling, icons, fonts and events, can be modified in the Overrides section of a component. For example, for avatars, we can select a different shape of the object, changing it from a circle to a square. With overrides, it’s possible to create unlimited design combinations to drive your team’s productivity.

The components of a design system are interdependent. When we introduce a change in one place, the change will be inherited throughout the system.

Indigo makes it easier to translate design into code. All components map to the Ignite UI for Angular components. Data from the DataProperty field will be passed through to the code generator.

Below, you can see a layout with an input component. Sketch’s Overrides section contains the properties of the selected component. Modifying each property in a structured way is easy; basically, everything from styling options to events can be easily adjusted.

Each component can have a different list of Overrides based on its capabilities. For example, for the input field, we notice a DataProperty field, which can be translated directly to a code generator.

Use Overrides to modify the properties of a component. (Large preview)

Patterns

Many designers think that patterns and components are the same things. They are not. The idea of a design pattern was introduced by architect Christopher Alexander. In his book A Pattern Language, Alexander gives the following description:

“Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice.”

Similarly to architecture, we use patterns in interface design to solve common problems. For example, many apps have contact lists. It’s possible to create a contact list using components, by pairing avatars and text sections.

Create a contact list using Indigo.Design’s avatar and text component sections. (Large preview)

But there is a much easier approach — use a pattern called ‘List’.

Use Indigo.Patterns’ list for people. (Large preview)

Patterns empower designers, allow people to use their previous experience when interacting with a product. Because many design patterns are familiar to users, they will enable a design to be understood intuitively.

Components and patterns form the language of a product’s interface. But a design system should contain not only patterns, but also techniques and practices for using and iterating on those patterns. For many companies, a pattern library typically lives in a wiki, which means it’s difficult to keep up to date. What makes things worse is that patterns are also shaped by the conventions of platforms (for example, iOS and Android).

Indigo.Design solves these common problems by providing easily customizable UX patterns for a brand’s needs.

Adding elevation for the article details pattern (Large preview)

With the last release of Indigo.Design, it’s become much easier to customize styling options: You can apply your styling options for the entire design all at once using the Theme plugin.

Indigo.Design’s Theme plugin allows you to apply style settings for all elements in a design. (Large preview)

Styling

A style is something we use to create a certain kind of aesthetic and to strengthen the emotional connection between a product and its users. Indigo.Design makes it really easy to create an elegant design that matches your brand.

Indigo-Styling.sketch is a representation of the theming engine. It is separated into two parts, represented as different pages in the library:

Icons are a collection of over a hundred Material icons that you can easily extend.

Colors are a rich collection of primary, secondary and special colors, as well as shades of gray and levels of opacity.

(Large preview)

The styling library allows you to do custom branding (changing colors, fonts, etc.), and it is also inherited by the design. With just a few clicks, you can create and reuse a theme.

Change the text color of a form’s active elements to the product’s primary color using Overrides. (Large preview)

(Large preview)

Indigo.Design’s Theme functionality lets you take care of most of your styles in a systematic way.

Conclusion

Design systems have changed the way we design and build applications. They are quickly becoming a cornerstone of an organization’s digital product strategy. And it’s extremely important to select tools that allow you to set a solid cornerstone for your product’s design process. Indigo.Design offers a ready-to-use design system that can be adapted to your individual needs.

(ms, al, il)

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cynthiatherrera · 5 years ago

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How alternative data can lend clarity amid uncertainty

When conditions are not only unusual but evolving at a furious pace, as they have been since the novel coronavirus was identified early this year, clarity can seem an impossibility.

During such times, official data is often a mix of slow and noisy observations ― making it difficult for investors to develop a holistic and clear picture of the state of play. At the same time, many companies have been withdrawing guidance amid heightened uncertainty, making analysis at the industry and company level even more challenging.

Against this backdrop, alternative data and analytical tools take on new importance in identifying emerging economic and market trends that traditional sources can be slow to efficiently isolate.

What is alternative data?

Alternative (or big) data is physical, unstructured (text) or non-financial data generated by the technologies of our everyday lives ― smartphones, GPS and smart home devices, to name just a few. When aggregated and analyzed in the right way, alternative data can provide valuable insights into country, industry and company prospects.

The BlackRock Systematic Active Equity team has been using various forms of alternative data for more than a decade. Some data sources have proved particularly valuable this year, especially when analyzed with the right context in mind. Here we look at three examples and how they have been additive in assessing the macroeconomic and investing environment during the global coronavirus pandemic.

1. Foot traffic

Foot traffic around shopping facilities was one of the original big data metrics embraced by systematic investors early on, though its relevance has gradually diminished as a significant share of shopping has moved online.

Online buying is even more prevalent amid coronavirus-driven closures, yet foot traffic patterns have reasserted their importance in new ways. Differences in social-distancing policies have led to wide dispersion in activity across countries. We find that comparing foot traffic activity at various points of interest has provided a faster read on economic activity across countries and industries. Our readings at the end of May, for example, showed movement in China was more than two-thirds back to normal since re-openings began in March and April.

2. Natural language processing

Natural language processing (NLP) of text has proved especially useful in gleaning insights from analysts, many of whom were relatively slow to update their earnings estimates for the first quarter of 2020. This is understandable, and similar to what we saw during the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, as point-in-time numerical forecasts are difficult in a world with tremendous room for error. While an analyst may take some time to update a numerical forecast, analyzing the text of their reports helps paint a more complete investing picture in the absence of a definitive arithmetic stance.

NLP also has been helpful is getting an early read on fiscal policy, allowing us to parse analyst language for a sense of how policy is moving across countries. We then lean into those with easing tendencies, such as the U.S. The chart below shows the magnitude of change in fiscal policy direction as determined from sentiment measures gleaned from thousands of analyst reports.

3. Job postings

Hiring trends can reveal important information about both industry- and company-level growth prospects. During the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve extended our coverage of job postings to emerging markets where data scarcity would normally make it less informative. But given the velocity of change today, even lower-breadth measurements have proved useful in identifying potential winners and losers. We also have been able to identify firms seeking skillsets that support work-from-home and accelerating digitalization in general. First movers may have opportunity to gain market share versus competitors.

icon-pointer.svgGet Jeff’s views on Navigating an uneven road to recovery.

From big data to meaningful insights

We have seen this year ― and over our long history using alternative data ― that different insights tend to add value at different times. Some are more effective around earnings releases, while others pick up on slow-moving trends that play out over several months. We have experimented with timing but found that the most effective approach is having diverse and differentiated insights to inform our investment decision-making.

Ultimately, all alternative data sources have flaws and the goal is to get better, not perfect. Our experience has taught us that having multiple datasets to draw from can reveal inconsistencies and anomalies just as well as potential trends. All of this together helps us to develop a picture of the backdrop before it is evident in the official data. This is the type of information edge than can make a difference when the world and the opportunities and risks in it are changing fast.

Jeff Shen, PhD, is Co-CIO of Active Equities and Co-Head of Systematic Active Equity (SAE) at BlackRock. He is a regular contributor to The Blog.

Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Stock values fluctuate in price so the value of your investment can go down depending on market conditions. International investing involves risks, including risks related to foreign currency, limited liquidity, less government regulation and the possibility of substantial volatility due to adverse political, economic or other developments. These risks may be heightened for investments in emerging markets. This material is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast, research or investment advice, and is not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. The opinions expressed are as of June 2020 and may change as subsequent conditions vary. The information and opinions contained in this post are derived from proprietary and nonproprietary sources deemed by BlackRock to be reliable, are not necessarily all-inclusive and are not guaranteed as to accuracy. As such, no warranty of accuracy or reliability is given and no responsibility arising in any other way for errors and omissions (including responsibility to any person by reason of negligence) is accepted by BlackRock, its officers, employees or agents. This post may contain “forward-looking” information that is not purely historical in nature. Such information may include, among other things, projections and forecasts. There is no guarantee that any forecasts made will come to pass. Reliance upon information in this post is at the sole discretion of the reader. ©2020 BlackRock, Inc. All rights reserved. BLACKROCK is a registered trademark of BlackRock, Inc. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. USRMH0620U-1216796-1/4 from BlackRock Blog https://www.blackrockblog.com/2020/06/24/how-alternative-data-can-lend-clarity-amid-uncertainty/

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holytheoristtastemaker · 5 years ago

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What is UX writing?

The definition

User experience (UX) writing refers to the words you see or hear in a product when you’re using it. For the most part, these words are unobtrusive, and you might not even notice them. Many UX writers believe “good” UX writing merges so seamlessly with the design, the person using the product doesn’t even realize they’re reading.

The goal

The main goal of UX writing is to provide the “user” of a product or piece of software with a positive and easy experience.

UX writers generally try to make their writing clear, concise, and consistent.

As Kathryn Strauss, Senior UX Writer at Weebly, puts it: “You don’t have to say everything.” She adds, “Talk about value to users. Invite users to act.”

According to Mike Strickland, Content Design Director at Charter Communications, “The best design is invisible. If your product exists to help someone do something, then there should be as few barriers as possible between them and what they need to do. This means a UI that is clear, unobtrusive, and as simple as the context allows, to (or approaching) the point where your user barely notices the interface.”

Ryan Bigge, Senior Content Strategist at Shopify, says, “There’s much more granularity and nuance in UX writing than I first realized. I’m now very mindful of plain language, the discrete elements of a successful error message, and the pitfalls of nomenclature.”

Where the words live

UX writing is the copy you’ll see in a user interface: onboarding flows, modals, settings, forms, menus, error messages, empty states, notifications, and tooltips. It might also include landing pages and product-related emails. For many teams, it also refers to the words in conversational and voice interfaces.

Who writes the words

Since UX writing focuses on the words, many (but not all!) UX writers have “word nerd” backgrounds in writing, editing, publishing, linguistics, or similar fields.

Depending on the size of the writing team at a company, UX writers also sometimes work on editorial strategy, style guides, marketing copy, training materials, help center content, or other projects related to content strategy.

But it’s important to remember that UX writing and content strategy both have their own sets of required skills and best practices. Marketing copy, training materials, and help center content are not UX writing.

What is content strategy?

The definition

Content strategy refers to creating and managing any “content” published on or from your website or app. It can also mean content related to your product. It might also refer to the words you see or hear in-product. Content strategy almost always takes SEO (search engine optimization) into account when creating a messaging plan.

The goal

The main goal of content strategy is to plan, map, manage, create, and publish a defined set of messages to achieve a particular outcome or set of outcomes.

Leaf Tyler Pell, Principal Content Strategist at Wealthfront, describes it this way: “Distilled to its essence, content strategy is about determining what to say and how to say it in order to achieve one or more goals.”

“Content strategy often aligns closely with brand and marketing strategy,” says Eileen Reyes, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Dropbox. “This implies a different understanding of the user or target audience that includes their emotions, needs, and wants. … Content strategy has to think about the user a bit more broadly.”

Drew Pearce, Content Strategist on the Brand Marketing team at Dropbox, explains it this way: “Content strategy involves and includes user experience, but doesn’t always live in the product and isn’t always about the product.” Content strategy takes into account “both the nature of the content and the distribution of it across multiple channels outside of the product.”

Where the content lives

Like UX writing, “content” might be landing pages and product-related emails, like transactional and onboarding emails. But it also might include marketing emails, blog posts, white papers, sales documentation, marketing or training videos, chatbots, podcasts, help center articles, FAQ, slide decks, and social media.

Even more broadly, “content” might be pictures, photos, illustrations, graphs, charts, diagrams, infographics, spreadsheets, or anything else that helps you communicate with your audience.

And where UX writing emphasizes where and how words are placed in the product, content strategy has a different aim.

According to Ryan McFadden, Content Strategist on the Customer Experience team at Dropbox, “Content strategy thinks about how to get content in front of customers or prospects. What are the channels available to us, which has the best open-rate, and click-through-rate (CTR).”

Who creates the content

Content strategists don’t necessarily create the content they’re strategizing — although many do, too. Sometimes the content is created in-house, and sometimes it’s created by vendors, freelancers, and other creative production houses or agencies, like for video and music.

Because content strategy focuses on planning, mapping, and managing a wide variety of content that isn’t always words, content strategists tend to have backgrounds in areas like journalism, marketing, library science, information architecture, teaching, or technical writing.

To make sure their language is consistent, many content strategists also manage content style guides. They might also create editorial calendars and conduct competitor audits.

How are they similar?

They both see the big picture

UX writing and content strategy both need to take into account a broad view of the entire experience with their product, no matter if the “product” is software/SaaS, ecommerce/retail, or a media site.

Leaf explains, “Once I’m armed with good context, I tend to identify opportunities to improve the current user journey given the user’s objectives and the company’s value prop. So instead of just filling in the blank, I take a step back and engage content strategy principles to suggest that the narrative arc of the experience is flawed and needs to be re-examined.”

Adds Ryan Bigge, “Regardless of job title, it’s very difficult to enact meaning improvements if content isn’t involved early and often. That’s still a primary concern — intervening at the right stage of the project, and co-designing solutions with the entire UX team.”

They both use words to help people learn about and use your product

A content marketing strategy or brand storytelling strategy starts before a person has even shown any interest in your product. The words used in those strategies help to draw people to your product. Once a person shows interest in or starts to use your product, UX writing helps them have the best experience with it.

They both work cross-functionally

UX writers and content strategists both work closely with many different teams. For UX writers, that usually means working with product designers, design researchers, product managers, engineers, QA teams, and data scientists to learn about people’s problems and define the best course of action for their projects.

As Mike explains, “Our content design team is an integral part of the broader experience design team, contributing equally to the UX of our products with our UX and UI designer peers.”

For content strategists, cross-functional collaboration usually means working with teams in marketing, communication, SEO, and legal to create and clarify messaging across the board.

Examples of critical questions a UX writer might ask:

Do we have any research on this portion of the user experience so far? If so, what does it tell us about the user’s goals and intentions?

What are the steps someone would take to arrive at this modal (error message, button, screen, whatever)? Leaf adds, “To figure out the best words to write in [this space], I need to understand who the user is, what the user journey looks like, why they ended up looking at [this space], and where they’re going from here.”

Can we make this shorter?

Is this modal (error message, button, screen, whatever) written in our company’s voice?

Is this button (link, modal, step in the process) necessary, or can we adjust the design to simplify the steps?

Dropbox UX writer John Saito adds, “How do we deal with all the different edge cases?”

Examples of critical questions a content strategist might ask:

Who are we trying to reach? Eileen adds, “What are their pain points that our company/brand/service can solve?”

What are the KPIs (key performance indicators) for this project?

Who are our strongest competitors in this area?

Why are we going with this particular brand messaging instead of this other one? Ryan McFadden asks, “How does that content fit within the broader messaging or branding framework for your company or a specific campaign?”

Where do we rank for these keywords right now?

What kind of content is going to resonate with this audience? Drew says, “Beyond the messaging itself, we ask whether it’s best conveyed via blog post, video, podcast, email, eBook, or landing page.”

They’re similar, but different!

So, it turns out my half-baked definition wasn’t completely off.

As Leaf puts it, “UX writing is a subset of content strategy — it is content strategy within the confines of the product itself.”

Or in Mike’s words, “You can have content strategy without UX writing, but you can’t (or shouldn’t) have UX writing without content strategy.”

As time moves forward, titles and roles will change, grow, and adapt to newer circumstances. How UX writing and content strategy will be defined in five or ten years remains to be seen.

For now, I hope that helps clear things up. However, it’s possible this post has just raised more questions, so feel free to respond here or send me a message so we can keep the conversation flowing.

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teeky185 · 5 years ago

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The state’s tough response to the deadly virus seems to have been effective in flattening the curve. But what comes next?The first person confirmed to have tested positive for the coronavirus in the US by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was a resident of Snohomish county, Washington.That was on 21 January. In the weeks that have followed, the state, which has a population of more than 7.5 million people, has seen over 9,000 confirmed cases, including 421 deaths.Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, has closed schools, ordered a halt to all elective surgeries and issued a stay-home mandate, which involves a ban on all gatherings and the closure of all businesses, except grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and other essential companies. Last week, he extended that order to 4 May, saying that was “absolutely the soonest we possibly could achieve our ends to keep our loved ones safe.”But though the path back to “normal�� life is still some way off, the state’s early and comprehensive response looks to be flattening the curve of coronavirus infections. With the worsening of the financial crisis brought on by the public health emergency, that has prompted the questions: when, and how, could this end?Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s leading expert on infectious diseases, recently explained that it will be clear the outbreak is nearing its conclusion in the US when the number of new infections is approaching almost zero and the number of deaths is not far behind.“I believe that in a few months, hopefully, that we’ll get it under control enough that it won’t be as frightening as it is now, but it will not be an absent threat,” he told the New York Times.Washington saw the initial outbreak of the virus in the US and, after the infection struck a nursing home in the state, reported the country’s highest numbers of cases and deaths for weeks. But the state has since moved far behind hotspot states like New York and California, which have far greater populations of almost 20 million and 40 million respectively. Today, Washington state has the 11th-highest number of cases in the US, according to the CDC.A projection from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent population health research center at UW Medicine, shows that Washington hit its peak in coronavirus deaths 11 days ago, with 24 fatalities. In contrast, New York’s peak is projected to hit this week, while California’s is not expected to take place until 17 April.Washington’s low numbers can be attributed to the simple fact that its cities are less dense than those in states like New York and California. Its communities may also be following social distancing measures more closely.But officials also tested and found cases of coronavirus early, then quickly proceeded to ramp up preparedness, explained Hilary Godwin, dean of the University of Washington school of public health.“Our hospitals have been preparing, building up capacity,” she said. “Once we got to the point where we had to do social distancing because the number of cases was so great, we were really well positioned and were able to roll those things out really systematically.”Dr Scott Lindquist, Washington state’s epidemiologist for communicable diseases, said officials are paying particularly close attention to the percentage of people evaluated who test positive for Covid-19.He explained that at the beginning of this outbreak, the state was seeing 3% of people tested test positive, but as of Wednesday last week, that had increased to at least 7%. He said over one or two weeks, he would want to see the average stay consistently below 7%, as that would make it clear the numbers are trending down and thus the situation is improving.Lindquist said officials would also want to see a clear trend that shows the percentage of hospitalizations for people with corona-like illnesses and the number of deaths decreasing. These measures would offer a very clear indication about how much coronavirus is still in the community, he said. Although hospitalizations have been increasing, deaths have been staying fairly steady.Given these current trends, how much time could it take the state to get to a point when it would seriously consider easing social distancing restrictions?“I definitely would say it’s not days,” he told the Guardian. “It’s weeks to months. But again, if things turn around very quickly, we’re talking just a couple weeks.”More than a third of the cases in Washington have been reported in King county, which includes Seattle.According to a recent study conducted by the Institute for Disease Modeling, a private research institute in Bellevue, Washington, King county has seen a significant decrease in virus transmissions, probably due to strict social distancing measures.The researchers found that in late February each infected individual in the county was spreading the virus to an average of two or three other people. By 18 March, that number had been essentially cut in half, with people on average infecting 1.4 additional people.But, of course, in order to actually see a drop in new cases, on average each individual with coronavirus would need to infect less than one other person.Godwin said when making a decision about social distancing restrictions, it’s not necessarily a matter of getting the number of new cases and deaths down to zero.The trick is to get that number down low enough so that “we would be more like we were at the early phase of the epidemic, when the health department could do contact tracing for each case and could make sure anyone who got infected was self-quarantined”, she said.However, Godwin said if Washington were to get the virus under control and removed its stay-home mandate, a “second wave” of infections could still occur.Godwin said it may be a matter of Washington officials letting up for a little bit or releasing some constraints and then having to simply see how things go. But she warned that different virus timelines across US states could hamper efforts, especially if people from states that have not contained the virus continue to travel domestically.Dr Jeff Duchin, health officer for public health, Seattle and King county, said during a recent press conference that for the Seattle area or any community to transition out of comprehensive social distancing measures, there needs to be widespread availability of testing with very rapid turnaround time, and a robust healthcare system that is both heavily monitored and has the bandwidth to care for the sick.The severe lack of testing across the US is regarded as one of the biggest failures of the Trump administration’s often confused response to the arrival of the pandemic on its shores. Technical flaws in early tests developed by the CDC set the country back weeks. And though private companies are now running thousands of tests a day, they cannot keep up with demand, and vital supplies for mass testing, such as swabs, remain critically low.But between the state’s public health laboratory and the lab at the University of Washington in Seattle, experts say there is plenty of capacity for testing. The big limitation is that medical workers do not have adequate personal protective equipment for obtaining samples, explained Lindquist.“But there are some promising new developments where we can have patients obtain their own sample in their car with a nasal swab,” he said.Duchin also said there should also ideally be proven treatments available and possibly a vaccine, although that is also very unlikely to be available in the near future.“We are constantly reassessing this strategy and trying to understand if and when it is advisable to change our strategy, to relax some of these measures if possible in a way that would allow our healthcare system to continue to treat all those who need healthcare and not overwhelm that system and allow us to get back to our usual lives as soon as possible,” he said. “But I don’t see that in the next month.”Mike Faulk, spokesman for the governor’s office, said the decision to transition back to “normal” life will ultimately come down to a judgment call.“Even when you make that call you don’t necessarily know that the disease is done or on a permanently downward track,” he said. “It’s just the most informed judgment you can make at the end of the day.”

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kadobeclothing · 5 years ago

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Why Refusing to Discuss Failure Erodes a Culture of Growth

Have you ever sat in a meeting where a project was described as a success, yet all the details of failure that led to that success were left out? Alternatively, have you ever watched while data was cherry picked to make things seem rosier than they actually are? These are common embodiments of a very common, yet little known, phenomenon called “Success Theater”.

Success theater is, at its core, an informal operating system that says to employees: “you’re expected to win, and you should only discuss wins. Failures need not be exemplified.”

More concretely, success theater describes “the efforts that we make to make things look good, even if actual performance isn’t good or getting better.” Ultimately, it is an avoidance of data that conflicts with your opinions. It’s a fear of confronting failure or uncomfortable conversations and reflection. I like this definition (and the whole article) from John Cutler: “Success Theater is celebrating hitting the quarterly goal without acknowledging the corners you had to cut and the people who will have to clean up the mess. It’s listening to someone rattle off vanity metrics. And it’s being told you’re not a team player for having some doubts about a recent ‘win.’ … And it’s rampant in our internal meetings, blog posts, and presentations.” Success theater is … exactly what it sounds like it would be. Of course, in the real world, failure is going to happen. In fact, it needs to happen in order to succeed. Tons of value can come from documenting and sharing lessons from failed campaigns. Survivorship bias can warp the expectations of both leaders and new team members, and digging up your ‘graveyard of knowledge’ can help elicit new ideas and insights that could contribute to major breakthroughs in marketing and optimization. In general, it’s best we confront failure honestly, instead of hiding from it.

The Ruinous Path of Success Theater: GE’s Horror Story One of the most popular stories about success theater is a Wall Street Journal piece on General Electric. According to the story, former CEO Jeffrey Immelt was constantly optimistic in the face of future projections. In addition to his optimism and “can-do attitude,” he and his fellow top deputies also shielded themselves from any bad news or data that contradicted that narrative. Unfortunately, the results were catastrophic:

By 2018, the stock price had dropped by roughly 44%. In the same year, they announced they would cut their annual dividend for only the second time in their 125-year history. They also announced they were taking a $6.2 billion charge in their fourth quarter related to their insurance operations and needed to set aside $15 billion over seven years to bolster insurance reserves at the GE Capital unit. Finally, they had to restate their earnings for 2017 and 2016, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began investigating them for these accounting issues. Identifying and Diagnosing Success Theater GE is an extreme example of Success Theater starting at the top and trickling down, eventually taking over the company. But smaller and subtler versions of it could happen at your company. Liane Davey outlined some signs to look out for: Everything is an opportunity (If your organization finds creative ways to describe issues to obscure the real issues, worry) Every plan is a hockey stick (If your company is always predicting that next year will be the year it all comes together, you’ve got a problem) You hit the number at any cost (You know you’ve got a problem when you start taking short-term gains that create long-term pain) You shoot the messenger (If the harbingers of trouble can no longer be heard, you have a problem) Additionally, I’ve found a simpler sign — if you notice data cherry-picking and storytelling frequently (and on purpose), that’s a strong symptom of underlying success theater. Success theater can also show up in our industry-wide narratives. You can see it in the constant flurry of 315% conversion uplift case studies shared on Twitter, and at the top of GrowthHackers (and also, of course, in the glorious rise and tremendous fall of WeWork). How to Combat Success Theater There’s no silver-bullet solution to avoid success theater, and it will probably always exist to some degree. We just want to curb it to the point where it doesn’t poison productivity. I talked to several growth leaders and also wrote down my own favorite ways of combating success theater, which I’ll share now. 1. Write About and Share Failed Experiments Our team at HubSpot places a huge value on learning, and not just on reporting our wins week-over-week.

We keep a weekly calendar spot to write down our learnings for the week. We talk about those insights during Monday meetings. We’re all encouraged to write internal posts about failed campaigns — or even mediocre campaigns. We don’t want to build a graveyard of knowledge where we’re only writing about the big winners and seeking applause. We also have a company-wide Failure Forum where we share our failures and celebrate the risks we take on the path to innovation. When Joanna Lord was at Porch, she talked about a ritual they developed at the company involving a pink fuzzy animal named Mr. Sparkles. Whoever failed the biggest each week would get Mr. Sparkles. As she put it: “You put him on your desk and it’s like this badge of honor that you like did something so bold that you literally messed up the site badly. And you know what I love? You see my CEO walk around the room and he’s high-fiving the Mr. Sparkles owner. And people are like, ‘What did you do? What did you do to get Mr. Sparkles?’ But the reality is we’ve made it a positive thing. We’ve made it a badge of honor. You are living out the Porch-y way in being bold. What can you do in your culture to make it fun and acceptable? And almost, you know, become famous for it.” In a broader industry-wide context, blogger and marketing consultant, Ryan Robinson, has long been an advocate of transparently sharing the behind-the-scenes stories of his own business failures with the readers of his blog: “I’ve launched several businesses over the past decade, and most of them have landed somewhere between mixed results and utter failure. I go out of my way to highlight those experiences in long-form stories to the readers on my blog, because it’s important to illustrate that the path to achieving meaningful results will be filled with missteps and lessons to be learned along the way. My failure-related articles are consistently the most popular with my readers.” 2. Be Careful With Case Studies I’ve ranted about CRO case studies a ton by this point, so it’s suffice to say I don’t trust most of them. Even if the data is accurate and you’re not reading about a blatant false positive on a sample size of 14, you’re likely looking at a PR piece that is almost certainly subject to Survivorship Bias.

Very few companies and thought leaders are incentivized to write about their failures and inconclusive experiments, so you’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. Sure, you can absolutely get some inspiration from case studies. But don’t look around in exasperation and think that everyone’s winning except you. It’s all an Instagram-esque illusion. 3. Embrace Transparency Shannon Callarman, a Content Marketing Specialist at ShipBob, told me about a cool ritual they’ve developed at her company to share candid feedback and ask probing questions: “Every month, ShipBob’s leadership team leads a forum called ‘Ask Me Anything’ that allows employees to ask candid questions about the growth of the business and internal operations, and they’ll get an honest answer.” When leaders embrace uncomfortable conversations and open themselves to feedback and questions, it shows the rest of the organization that it’s alright to do the same. Along the same lines, I find it worthwhile to explicitly outline and publicly post your team and company values. This helps create both an explicit and implicit operating system where your employees and leaders are encouraged to embrace your values (in this case, honesty and transparency). A great example of this is this post from BounceX’s CEO, Ryan Urban. 4. Embrace Being ‘Wrong’ In Ronny Kovahi’s talk at CXL Live a few years ago, he brought up a great point on A/B test results: the best case scenario is when you test something you thought was ‘meh’, and it wins. If you thought it was going to win, however, and it wins, you haven’t learned much. Value in experiments comes when the “absolute value of delta between expected outcome and actual outcome is large.” Yes, being wrong is the best possible thing that can happen to you when you run A/B tests! This is also the strategic basis for Andrew Anderson’s Discipline Based Testing Methodology — test a wide variety of options, some of which might be totally radical, and let the winner surprise you (you’d never expect Comic Sans to win a font test, right?). Celebrate being wrong and learning new things. 5. Hug the Messenger When leaders expect only good news, those who bring up problems or constructive feedback are looked upon unfavorably. In companies like this, the messenger is ritualistically shot. A better way to act is to embrace those who are brave enough to ask interesting questions and point out possible flaws in the data. Nigel Stevens, founder of Organic Growth Marketing, encourages an embrace of failure internally and externally:

“Whenever I only hear of ‘wins’ for a while, I start to get nervous. Because that tells me we’re not proactively sharing — and learning from — the things that don’t work.”

Stevens adds, “Fortunately, we’ve developed a very healthy culture of saying ‘hey, this completely flopped, and now I’m sharing it with others so you all know.'” 6. Lower the Cost of Failure (and Experimentation) One of the most impactful things you can do within an organization, especially if you’re working on growth or conversion optimization, is to lower the cost of failure. A/B testing does this by nature — you can only lose as much as your losing variant lost during the course of the test. However, you can further decrease the cost of failure by making it easier and cheaper for everyone to set up and run trustworthy experiments. After enough optimization, the big and easy wins stop coming so frequently, so growth looks a lot like this:

This is, of course, a riff on Nassim Taleb’s ideas on optionality — he uses a chart similar to the above to describe trial-and-error tinkering and how it leads to stark innovation. Simply put, it’s impossible to achieve any degree of outstanding innovation without a tremendous amount of tinkering. The more at-bats you allow, the more optionality/luck/upside you can generally collect. Content marketing blogger and expert Levi Olmstead mentioned this attitude (fail fast) being key in previous startups he worked at: “A core value we often repeated was ‘fail quickly and continuously, iterate quickly and continuously.’ Without failing, you can never learn from past mistakes. In my experience, many ideas have strong pillars but they’re not full-fledged ideas. To create a strong, sustainable strategy, you need to learn how to fail and how to turn those lessons into future successes.” Making experiments cheaper and easier to run isn’t an easy feat, but luckily there’s a lot of material out there on the subject (I’d start with this paper from the booking.com team). 7. Invest in Trustworthy Data Data attribution modeling is still a large digital marketing challenge today. With different data models like first-touch attribution, last-touch, multi-touch, and others, teams need to choose one and stick with it. Adam Enfroy, who runs the popular marketing blog AdamEnfroy.com, witnessed this data challenge firsthand while managing digital teams for different SaaS companies, including BigCommerce: “Success theater often runs rampant in companies when teams aren’t aligned on which data platform is the final source of truth. This leads to different teams reporting on conflicting data sources that drive the (often misleading) narrative they want to tell.” Let’s take a weekly business review meeting as an example. Consider this — the digital marketing team pulls from Analytics Platform A because the ROI looks favorable with last-click attribution. At the same time, the business intelligence team pulls from Analytics Platform B, which doesn’t look as good but is more aligned with finance. Then the partner team pulls from a different data source entirely so they can take credit for more revenue. In the end, this leaves confused executives looking at three different data sources — and listening to three different stories — while no actionable insights can be gleaned. To avoid success theater, invest in trustworthy data and align teams on which platform is the ultimate source of truth. This involves strong alignment between BI, marketing, sales, and partner teams. Additionally, seek to stress test and constantly monitor the veracity of your data. As my friend Chris Mercer always stresses, “trust, but verify.” 8. Invest in Education Old joke … CFO asks CEO: “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” CEO: “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?” This is true of any business function, but I find it particularly true in more technical fields like growth, conversion optimization, and SEO. There many ways to do this — invest in a library for your office, start a company book club, send your team to conferences, pay for training programs like CXL Institute or Reforge. HubSpot invests a ton in education and I always feel supported in learning new things (currently taking a course on Python and machine learning from Udacity). Small companies can do this, too, though (in fact, they need to). Ben Johnson, Head of Content at Proof, has seen the impact of this mentality at his SaaS company: “We’re a small team of 15, so a lot of time, you’re not going to be able to learn how to do something from someone in-house. For that reason, we’re always reading, meeting with more experienced individuals, and using our naivety as a strategic advantage.” Johnson adds, “Our leadership is great about encouraging this growth mentality across the organization — making introductions, providing funding for marketing conferences and programs like Reforge, and paying for a book per month. Overall, I think creating a culture of curiosity and helping your employees get the resources they need is a key part of building a growth culture.” 9. Diagnose Narrative Fallacy Storytelling is natural to humans, but it can also dilute efficiency and decision making. The Narrative Fallacy, popularized by Nassim Taleb, describes our tendency to ascribe a clean causal “why” to something that happened in order to simplify our understanding of the world. For example, if you A/B test two headlines against each other, you may determine that version B won “because it invoked social proof”, while someone else may attribute the win to “the clarity of new message”. A good way to transform your culture is to try to curb storytelling where you can, because while the narrative fallacy is limiting when ascribed to wins, it’s detrimental when people try to explain away suboptimal campaigns. Mark Lindquist, marketing strategist at Mailshake, mentioned one version of this is when people move the goalpost of what they define as “success” after the campaign is run (technically, this is known as the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy): “Consider an SEO who is brought into an organization to grow top-of-the-funnel leads. 18 months in, they’ve 50x’d organic traffic, but leads are only up 15%.” Lindquist continues: “A story you could tell yourself would be ‘well, this is great for our brand. We’re getting our name out there and we’re on our customer’s radars when they are ready to buy.’ That may be true, but it probably isn’t, and it certainly isn’t based on any data. Start your marketing campaigns with clear goals, and if you don’t reach those goals, don’t pat yourself on the back for accomplishing something you never set out to do in the first place. Be radically transparent with yourself and your team.” Ultimately, the purpose of experimentation is to encourage innovation and to mitigate risk, and in the process, most of your ideas are likely to fall flat of what they were intended to do. The best next step is to dust off and iterate and keep learning and trying. Success theater may feel good temporarily, but risks limiting the scope of the program. You should celebrate wins, but feel comfortable sharing failures, too.

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terabitweb · 5 years ago

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Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick

Over the last several years, as the threat landscape has continually evolved, the severity and sheer volume of security vulnerabilities and attacks has accelerated dramatically, causing the tech industry across the world to look for new ways to prevent crippling cyber attacks. In an effort to outthink and outmaneuver attackers, organizations have begun creating offensive security research teams. One well-known team in the industry is Google’s Project Zero.

Created back in 2014, its primary purpose was to make computing more secure by proactively rooting out vulnerabilities and flaws that could be exploited by hackers and nation states. Since then, the field has blossomed with organizations like Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Amazon, Oracle and others investing in offensive security research.

However, offensive security research teams are still relatively scarce. As more organizations producing technologies, products and services look to join the movement, it’s helpful to understand some best practices and challenges involved in assembling and managing a team, and how to measure success.

The Fundamentals of Offensive Security Research

First, a quick refresher. By definition, offensive security research initiatives take an aggressive, proactive approach to product security. Most organizations start by judiciously vetting products throughout the various stages of the development lifecycle and stress testing to ensure they’re not exposed to widely-known security vulnerabilities. That said, security is such a broad and dynamic field that screening for known risks only gets you so far. That’s when offensive security researchers step in.

These research teams assess the evolving threat landscape – beyond established security vulnerabilities – to identify where researchers and attackers (both well-meaning white hats and cyber criminals) will focus their next efforts. Offensive security researchers look at products through the lens of an advanced attacker, using unconventional approaches to identify weak spots that can be exploited.

Assembling Your Team

When evaluating research candidates for your team, look for these five key qualities:

A deep understanding of the threat landscape – The best offensive security researchers maintain a strong pulse on threats, and the know-how of cutting-edge attack methods in their area of expertise. At Intel we produce a wide range of diverse technologies – each with its own set of security considerations – so it’s crucial that we have security researchers on staff (and partners in academia) with high-level knowledge in each discipline. One of the visible traits of the right candidate is if they’re incredibly well-read on the latest security publications and have gotten to dissect and understand the anatomy of the vulnerability and exploitation scenarios.

Imagination and persistence in applying threat expertise to find complex vulnerabilities and novel exploits – An understanding of the latest attack techniques alone isn’t enough. Researchers must be able to take that expertise and successfully identify the areas of technology that are most likely to be attacked, prioritize them, and conduct scenario analysis to uncover new methods attackers might use to break the product. This process requires a tremendous amount of patience and persistence to navigate the complexity of the technology and the type of threat.

In-depth, systems-level knowledge – Offensive security researchers also need to be systems-level experts, with the technical chops required to operate across hardware, software, firmware and other boundaries within a technology or systems to uncover unforeseen weaknesses that might be buried within any layer of the computing stack.

The ability to recommend product-minded threat mitigations – A candidate could exhibit all of the above capabilities, but if they’re unable to come to the table with a potential solution, the jobs only half done with no tangible impact. The work doesn’t stop once a vulnerability is found. Offensive security researchers have to be able to proactively explore potential mitigations for the vulnerabilities they discover, and work with product teams to establish a solution that both eliminates the class of weakness represented by these vulnerabilities and at the same time, preserves product functionality.

Follow through to disseminate new security learnings – Lastly, offensive security researchers in a large organization must be capable of turning hidden security issues into known, quantified learnings and prevention/detection actions throughout the organization’s engineering community. Continuity across every stage of the offensive security process is paramount, with little room for handoffs to other researchers. The individual leading each project must see it through to completion. That’s how you ensure that all the critical attributes of each risk are captured, and that the knowledge of each security vulnerability is propagated throughout the organization in a way that eliminates similar issues or the entire class of issues moving forward. Beyond individual research projects, it takes a long time to build the breadth and depth of expertise needed to do offensive security research well as an organization. Employing and retaining researchers that are “in it for the long haul” is key to building that momentum.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Like any other highly-complex, multi-faceted process, managing an offensive security research group carries with it a unique set of challenges. Many of these involve bringing in the right talent, supporting their growth and getting individual researchers to work together as a unit. Deficiencies in any one of the above five talent criteria is typically a sign that a research candidate might not be ready to join the team. Another red flag to watch out for is a disinterest in how their research aligns with the company’s overarching goals.

The skills security researchers possess today leave most with no shortage of exciting and lucrative employment opportunities. Finding the right fit all starts with ensuring each researcher is on board with the organization’s big-picture motivations behind product security. Be concerned if it appears a candidate is set on satisfying their own personal research agenda over how the team’s efforts will impact the business and the overall industry/society.

Likewise, if a candidate doesn’t display an ability to communicate, learn from, and work well with others, they’re likely to end up stalling your research efforts rather than progressing them. Collaboration is essential in an industry defined by remote workforces distributed across time zones and geographies. The remote team model presents its own set of logistical hurdles, but if your organization is supportive of a location-agnostic workforce and invested in making it work, the research team will be able to attract and retain the best talent.

Additionally, the best researchers crave autonomy. Fostering a collaborative, team environment while preserving that desire for independence is another major challenge. It’s critical that you shield these researchers from the types of stifling bureaucracy (perceived or otherwise) that can be so common within organizations. The best way to do this is to ensure that each individual is committed to the common goal, while providing them with flexibility and freedom to achieve the desired outcome as they see fit.

Picking Your Battles

Once you have the right talent in place on your team, the next major consideration is determining how to prioritize your offensive security research efforts. Most organizations have a broad product and technology landscape to cover, so it’s critical that you’re careful about how you assign the expertise, time and resources available to you.

First, ask yourself, how critical is the technology in the product or platform? Consider technologies that are the most fundamental and foundational as the highest priorities. Next, identify any active research taking place for a particular type of technology or product in the industry or academia. This will help you understand what the research community is already thinking about, the common trends in the space, and what the leading methods are for exploring vulnerabilities in a given category. Finally, factor in the realized risk. In some cases, a certain type of attack or vulnerability type is repeatedly demonstrated and prevalent in the industry. You need to think through the best way to eliminate those risks from the products.

These steps should help you identify which offensive security research projects to prioritize, but it’s also important to take a measured and tactful approach to doling out assignments to the research team. The best approach is often “self-serve,” if you will. Ask researchers to conduct preliminary analyses independently, and bring the research proposals they’re most excited about back to the group for discussion. This should be done on a frequent basis to ensure that the research roadmap is refreshed regularly. By allowing individual researchers to select projects based on their unique interests, you’re able to tap into their passion for exploring a particular technology or product area.

Quantifying Success

How can you measure the success of a program? Here are four key indicators:

You should be able to attribute the security assurance of your products to the team’s research efforts. The team’s impact on product security should be direct and substantive, not just peripheral.

When executives and decision makers are assessing critical decisions related to product security, the offensive research team should be their go-to technical experts, whose opinions are requested and highly valued.

The overall trend of security vulnerabilities present in the company’s products should decrease significantly over time, especially when it comes to known threats and technology areas that have been top priorities for the offensive security team. This doesn’t mean that new vulnerabilities and novel attacks will never arise, but they should be few and far between.

Your team’s research is seen as a benchmark for innovative security research within the broader industry. Others should view your offensive security researchers as thought leaders in the market with valuable technical know-how that spurs new, ground-breaking research efforts and threat mitigations.

Today, the number of offensive security research teams across the entire industry is growing. Not only are they working to improve the security of their own organizations’ products, but they’re collaborating with one another to systematically tackle major software, hardware and firmware vulnerabilities. But, there’s much more work to be done. Consider applying these best practices and guidelines, and join the effort to improve our collective, worldwide security.

The post How to build a successful offensive security research team appeared first on SC Media.

Go to Source Author: Doug Olenick How to build a successful offensive security research team Original Post from SC Magazine Author: Doug Olenick Over the last several years, as the threat landscape has continually evolved, the severity and sheer volume of security vulnerabilities and attacks has accelerated dramatically, causing the tech industry across the world to look for new ways to prevent crippling cyber attacks.

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whatchamagadget · 7 years ago

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How to Get Smells Out of Silicone Kitchenware

A year or two ago, someone gave me a set of silicone ice cube trays, so I promptly got rid of the junky old plastic trays I’d been using. For a few months, that seemed like a great decision. Then I started to notice that my glasses of ice water were tasting more like the frost scraped off the back of my cluttered freezer. I had run into the one big flaw that had led us to initially dismiss silicone models entirely from our guide to ice cube trays: smells stick to silicone like flies to flypaper. And though no amount of scrubbing can get those smells off, ice cubes readily absorb them (it’s possible ice picks up smells directly from the freezer too, but in my experience and in our testing, silicone makes the problem much, much worse).

I came this close to getting rid of my trays, but instead, dove into researching cleaning tips and came out the other side with a solution that’s super effective, requires very little effort, and involves no cleaning supplies.

Lingering smells are not a problem limited to silicone ice cube trays; it can happen to all kinds of silicone kitchenware. The silicone gasket inside the lid of an Instant Pot (or any pressure cooker, for that matter), will absorb pungent odors like garlic, and then transmit them to the next thing you cook—a problem if you want to make, say, rice pudding. Silicone spatulas can also get odiferous, as can silicone bakeware.

A handful of solutions come up if you start Googling how to get the stink out of silicone. A lot of them involve soaking or burying your silicone in something (like vinegar, baking soda, or cat litter) and leaving it for anywhere from a few hours to a few days. But I, being impatient and loathe to buy a large quantity of something (like cat litter) that might not do me any good, skimmed past all of these. From what I could find on cooking forums, most of them didn’t seem that effective anyway.

Luckily, my unwillingness to take on an involved cleaning project paid off. After a little more time digging around on the Internet, I came across a Reddit post suggesting you could simply bake the smell out of your silicone ice trays. So I preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, tossed in the ice cube trays, and, miraculously, pulled them out about half an hour later completely odorless.

The easiest way to get the stink out of silicone

To get nasty freezer smells out of silicone ice cube trays, the easiest thing to do is just bake them off. Photo: Michael Hession

Since that initial test run, I’ve made some adjustments to the technique as it was posted on Reddit. Here’s what I do:

Preheat the oven to 250 ºF. I find that a lower temperature works just as well, though it may take a little longer. Most silicone cookware I’ve seen is oven-safe up to 500 ºF or more, and if yours is clearly labeled as such, go ahead and use a higher temperature. But because things like ice cube trays don’t usually come with heat limits, I like to err on the side of caution and treat them a little more gently. So far I haven’t had an issue.

One very important thing to check before you go any further: Make sure that whatever you’re cleaning is 100 percent silicone or otherwise heatproof. Although silicone can hold up under high temperatures, it’s not a good idea to stick most rubbers or plastics into the oven. Read more on this in “Some important precautions” below.

While the oven is heating, carefully wash your silicone item with soap and hot water to make sure it’s not covered in any food residue or oils that might get baked onto it in the oven.

Place your silicone item in the oven, either on a baking sheet or directly on an oven rack. Set a timer for 20 minutes.

Pull the item out of the oven and carefully take a whiff (you don’t want to burn your nose!). If you detect some lingering scent, return it to the oven. I like to check every 10 minutes or so until the scent is gone, and in my experience the process shouldn’t take more than 40 minutes or so. Leaving your items for longer probably won’t harm them (things like a silicone loaf pan are meant to be left in the oven for an hour or more anyway), but I haven’t tested baking anything for more than an hour, so proceed with caution when baking items like ice trays that aren’t specifically labeled for oven use.

I haven’t tried this technique on a huge variety of scents and objects, but I have used it to successfully remove smells from ice cube trays, Instant Pot gaskets, and the little silicone nub that seals my Zojirushi travel mug. It worked exceptionally well on the ice trays, and at getting the smell of soup out of an Instant Pot gasket. On the Zojirushi seal, I noticed a light lingering coffee scent, but that seemed to be tied to some residual oils I could see clinging to the silicone. After pulling the seal out of the oven, I gave it an extra scrub to remove that residue, and the scent disappeared almost entirely.

I asked Wirecutter senior staff writer and former science editor Leigh Krietsch Boerner why this baking trick works, and although she couldn’t find any studies on the subject, she suspects the answer is relatively simple. Those off smells are made up of molecules clinging to your silicone kitchenware, and just like water, those molecules evaporate at high temperatures. So when you bake silicone, you are truly burning the scents right off. This might explain why the trick didn’t work so well on those coffee oils, which didn’t evaporate in the heat. It also explains why, when I first baked my ice cube trays, I could actually smell the freezer burn wafting out from the oven.

Some important precautions

Before you go throwing a bunch of kitchenware into your oven, there are a few very important things to know:

Most important, as mentioned above, this trick works only for items that are 100 percent silicone or otherwise extremely heatproof. Please do not put plastic ice cube trays or spatulas with plastic handles into a hot oven. The heat will ruin the tool, and maybe ruin your oven. If you’re at all unsure what an item is made of, check the manufacturer’s website to find out. And note that certain materials, like the rubbery handle on our favorite OXO whisk, look and feel like silicone but aren’t and will melt.

Silicones in general are stable at high temperatures, and I haven’t noticed any changes to my ice cube trays after baking them several times. But items like ice cube trays haven’t necessarily been heat tested by the manufacturer. If that makes you uncomfortable, you should stick to using this technique only on items like silicone cake pans, which have been heat tested.

Along the same lines, if you plan to use this technique on the gasket for your Instant Pot, stick to heating it to 250 ºF. Other silicone accessories made by Instant Pot are heat resistant to 450 ºF, but the company doesn’t provide those specifications for its sealing rings so it’s best to err on the side of caution. The Instant Pot itself can reach temperatures as high as 242 degrees, while stovetop pressure cookers with similar gaskets (as well as the forthcoming Instant Pot Max) will get up to 250 degrees, so 250 is likely a safe temperature for the gasket. But because your Instant Pot won’t build pressure properly without an intact gasket, it’s important to treat it with more care than you might an ice cube tray. That being said, the gaskets on all pressure cookers eventually need to be replaced, as they wear out over time. You’ll know it’s time to get a new one when your cooker takes longer than usual to come to pressure.

About those other techniques

One of the most common suggestions for getting smells out of silicone is to soak your silicone item in a 50-50 mixture of white vinegar and water for a while. I’ve seen it in a number of forums, and it’s also what Tovolo, the maker of some popular silicone ice cube trays, recommends. But it’s only moderately effective at best. In researching our guide to ice cube trays, some of my colleagues tried soaking a smelly ice tray in vinegar and water for an hour before rinsing it, and found that the freezer smell was slightly reduced, but definitely still there.

I’ve also seen people recommend coating or soaking your silicone kitchenware in a mixture of baking soda and water for a few hours, burying it in cat litter for a few days, or just running it through the dishwasher regularly. But from my research, none of these seemed easy enough or reliable enough to try. The baking soda thing is messy, and from most feedback I saw online, about as effective as vinegar. The dishwasher might work, or it might not, or it might make your silicone taste like detergent instead. Or you (like me) might not own a dishwasher. Some people have had success with cat litter, but I don’t want to buy a whole bag when I don’t own a cat. Nor do I want to worry if cat litter has any odd additives that I shouldn’t be ingesting.

#Wirecutter: Reviews for the Real World

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lendoco · 7 years ago

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How to analyze ICO’s properly and avoid scams

Taken from https://satoshi.blog/2018/03/22/how-to-analyze-ico/

How to analyze ICO’s properly and avoid scams

If you have read my previous article on how to research a cryptocurrency, you already know most of the important things to look at before investing in any altcoin. These criterion also apply to analyze ICO’s, but when it comes to these, there are also a couple more specific things you should look into. For the sake of learning, let’s see how to analyze an ICO, from A to Z. We’ll thus revisit some principles mentioned in the article on altcoins.

Value proposition

First things first: in a nutshell, what is the value proposition of the project? Is it promising and does it have a future? What is the size of the potential market?

The technology

Linked to the value proposition, we must also ask ourselves what is the technology of the project. Is it new? Is it simply a copy pasta of an already existing project?

Functional product

Is there already some work done by the team? It may be a red flag if it’s not the case. Have you ever seen entrepreneurs asking for funding with simply an idea and absolutely no work done on the project? This is the perfect recipe for a legendary failure.

Necessity of a token/source of income

As in the case of any particular altcoin, we must ask ourselves if the project really requires a token. We have seen the emergence of several projects lately that do not require a token and even cases where the token represents a burden for the project. If so, it would obviously be ridiculous to invest in the project, especially in the case of an ICO.

Also, we should look into the profit generation model of the token. Some projects charge fees to users and redistribute it to token holders while some prefer to burn tokens to reduce the circulating supply. Possibilities are endless to redistribute to token holders but it is important to check if it’s mentioned in the terms of the ICO and if it’s realistic.

Competition

As in any other market, it is important to research the competitors to see where this ICO lies against already existing projects. In other words, evaluate if the project brings something new or if it’s only a copy of other projects.

Team

Some projects prefer to keep the team’s identities undisclosed and in many cases this is a big red flag. Think about it for a second. Would you invest in a company in which you have no idea who’s working behind? We have seen some projects performing really well and delivering on time even though we have no idea who’s working behind but it is definitely a factor to take into account when researching and deciding whether to invest or not. This increases the risk a lot in the sense that the team can bail out with no consequence at all on their reputations.

Even if the team is open about their identities, there is still some research to be done. How many are they? Do they have experience in what they are trying to do? What is their history, in crypto and elsewhere? Have they been involved in shady events in the past? Do they have a history of success?

Don’t get caught up in a scammy ICO where the graphic designer is supposedly Ryan Gosling as seen below. This is the Miroskii ICO. The worst part of this story? They have still been able to raise more than $830 000 from innocent(stupid) investors!

Advisors

Just as for the team, it is wise to review all the advisors. These people can bring a lot of expertise to the team and help them to move forward with their project in a more efficient way. For example, if Vitalik Buterin is featured as an advisor (and you verified that it’s actually true) it is a great thing in the sense that he has a lot of experience to bring to the table.

Community

Contrarily as when researching any particular altcoin, communities backing an ICO are usually much smaller than for established projects. It is still a good idea to review the social medias, look at the number of followers, trying to see if those are real or fake. Also, there is definitely some things to learn by looking at some reviews of the ICO by prominent and knowledgeable people in the crypto sphere. Some things that a beginner could not see as a big flaw, for example.

GitHub activity

If the project is open source and there is some work done already, it is wise to review the GitHub to check the involvement on it and the speed of development.

White paper

The white paper is the document where everything about the project should be explained. In general, it is around 10 to 20 pages. It is very important to read it carefully, even if you don’t understand everything, in order to really grasp what the project is about. The project has no white paper at the time of the ICO? That’s another red flag…

Terms of the crowdsale

Now’s time to look at the most interesting things. Even if everything else sounds great, this is where it could make or break. So wait a bit before investing all of your money and selling your wife and kids to buy even more of that ICO.

Quantity of tokens given to investors, founders and advisors – vesting

First, we must understand that it is important for the team, the founders and the advisors to receive a piece of the pie. Indeed, incentive to perform and thus make more money for themselves is a good thing and it always has been this way. This is why stock options are still widely used in companies. That being said, this percentage should be reasonable enough so that investors can still make a good investment by buying tokens.

Other usage of the tokens may include reserve for the future and for the use of the platform, for bounties,etc. In most cases, this is also important for the long term success of the project.

Another crucial aspect to look into regarding the crowdsale is the vesting period of the tokens i.e. when they can be moved after the crowdsale. Some projects simply have no vesting period, which means that directly after the crowdsale is done and the token is listed on an exchange, the team can dump all of its tokens. This means that they let the project die while laughing all the way to the bank. Doesn’t sound like a great deal for investors, huh?

Capped or uncapped

Another important factor is whether the crowdsale is uncapped or capped. In the latter case, then at how much it is. The disadvantage of a capped sale is that it is harder to get tokens. Certain systems can be in place to avoid that most of the supply is bought by only a couple whales. For example, we have seen some ICOs where there was a maximum contribution per bitcoin or ethereum address.

When it is uncapped, it means that the project can get as much money as investors are willing to give them, which means that there is no scarcity. We have seen a lot of projects with an uncapped crowdsale where as soon as it was listed on exchanges, tokens lost a lot of their value. This is easily understandable because all of the participants who wanted to get in were able to. Then the only people left in the market are those who want to sell, for whatever reason it may be.

Presale

It is important to look if other investors could get in before the ICO, and at which price. Most projects have a private unadvertised presale where investors can get cheaper tokens compared to the ICO price. Sometimes the presale price is so low that it’s not worth it at all to get in the ICO. Indeed, because buyers in the presale got tokens so much cheaper, they will most likely sell at market price when the ICO is done and listed on exchanges.

Inflation

It is wise to try to understand the level of inflation the token has. If investors get, for example, 30% of the supply during the ICO but that the annual inflation rate is also 30% it kind of kills the vibe because there is no scarcity and the supply increases too fast.

To sum up, make sure to analyze ICO’s thoroughly before you invest your hard-earned money. Many scams are still present in the crypto sphere but if you analyze everything carefully, you can almost be sure it’s not a scam and that it’s not another one of these shitty projects out there.

Happy hunting!

submitted by /u/trippycakez [link] [comments] How to analyze ICO’s properly and avoid scams published first on https://icoholder.tumblr.com/

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