Disqus - Latest Comments for KMcGrane

Re: Gear for Women Traveling Solo

Karen McGrane — Sun, 26 Jan 2020 22:04:25 -0000

You're missing disinfectant hand wipes from this list

Re: Why Philly Must Win the Transit War

Karen McGrane — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 09:05:45 -0000

SEPTA could improve transit within Center City by pricing trips on Regional Rail between UCity, 30th St, Suburban, and Jefferson the same as a subway fare. Eliminating transfer costs for trips within the Center City zone would enable people to use buses, subway, and rail to get around, like London does. Public transit needs to be less expensive than Uber or Lyft — a shared ride on Lyft is often about the same price as a ride with a transfer — no wonder people choose cars over buses.

Re: The Responsiveness Myth

Karen McGrane — Wed, 24 May 2017 15:03:58 -0000

We are definitely not saying the same thing. The examples you cite are NOT responsive design and your presenting these examples does not lead to the conclusion that responsive design makes the user experience frustrating.

There are many, many good reasons for using a responsive solution that go well beyond "just because you can doesn't mean you should." This is a topic I written and spoken about for years, and the truth is: a well-designed, well-implemented responsive solution will solve 90% of your problems. You may encounter some specific scenarios or pages where you need to use an adaptive solution, but those are the exception rather than the rule.

Re: The Responsiveness Myth

Karen McGrane — Fri, 12 May 2017 13:25:58 -0000

The example you give here is not responsive design, and it is not correct to say that text and images are shrunk too small to read on smaller form factors. You're describing a design that is fixed-width or desktop only, not a responsive solution.

In a responsive design the columns or components of the design would fluidly rearrange themselves across every size or orientation of screen, and text and image sizes would adjust accordingly. What this would mean, in the example above, is that the images and buttons in the right column would be placed below the text in the center column on smaller devices, and the text sizes would be proportional and appropriate.

In an adaptive design there would be a set of fixed-width designs created, so designers would need to design and develop layouts for each of the screen sizes and orientations listed above. (The limitation of that approach is that a handful of layouts will not accommodate the vast diversity of screen sizes and orientations that exist, and so a completely fluid responsive solution is more future-friendly.)

There are scenarios in an LMS where the learner may need to see two pieces of information on the screen at the same time, and where it may be problematic to need to scroll on a smaller form factor. But defining appropriate text size, image size, and layout are all easily and appropriately handled with a responsive solution.

Re: M-commerce is better, but not perfect, with responsive design

Karen McGrane — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 12:13:38 -0000

Responsive images should be mentioned here as a key component of improving performance that does not require server side/adaptive delivery: https://responsiveimages.org/

Re: Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor?

Karen McGrane — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 12:38:01 -0000

No, not necessarily, and I wish people would stop spreading that myth: http://bigqueri.es/t/m-dot-...

There are a lot of people writing about techniques for improving RWD performance (Scott Jehl's Responsible Responsive Design is a great one.)

Re: Is Responsive Design A Ranking Factor?

Karen McGrane — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 12:13:08 -0000

These are not "advanced techniques." Progressive enhancement is at the core of how a well-implemented responsive design works. Just because badly implemented RWD exists isn't an argument against it, any more than bad SEO practices should be used as an argument against good ones.

Re: Apple wants to make iPhone work better with hearing aids

Karen McGrane — Tue, 23 Jun 2015 14:54:30 -0000

I have made-for iPhone hearing aids and this article makes no sense.
1. Modern hearing aids do not have "little hearing aid volume knobs." Volume control is handled automatically by programs in the hearing aid, or can be controlled via an app.
2. Made for iPhone hearing aids already handle phone calls directly. There is no need to put the phone up to your ear because the hearing aid acts like a headset.

I'm sure there are good reasons for wanting to detect when the hearing aid is in proximity to the iPhone but what's described here isn't it.

Re: Build Different Things – Why You're Not Done When Your Website is Responsive | Distilled

Karen McGrane — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 11:39:15 -0000

If they made that NYT article responsive, it would look something like this. http://www.nytimes.com/inte...

Re: Let’s Start Talking About a Radically Different Future of News

Karen McGrane — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:17:38 -0000

A small technical note: this approach would be called “adaptive content” and not “responsive content.” The ethos of responsive is to serve identical content to the user, regardless of device. Adaptive means serving different content or layouts, targeting by device type or user context (time, location, personalization, etc.)

I've written pretty extensively about adaptive content and the publishing industry; here's one talk: http://karenmcgrane.com/201...

Re: How Cheap Smartphones Could Change Everything

Karen McGrane — Sun, 18 May 2014 05:47:14 -0000

This is an overused term in tech circles, but this is the very definition of disruptive innovation. New technologies become available to a much larger population of people, and even though they are not as good as their predecessors, they create change even at the higher end.

This is not just limited to the developing world, either. Cheap handsets will also bring connectivity to people in the US, as I discuss in this talk: http://karenmcgrane.com/201...

Re: How Cheap Smartphones Could Change Everything

Karen McGrane — Sun, 18 May 2014 05:44:05 -0000

McKinsey estimates the number at 2 to 3 billion: worldwide: http://www.mckinsey.com/ins...

Re: Competence and Likability as Keys to Success

Karen McGrane — Tue, 07 Jan 2014 07:40:14 -0000

You're welcome! This is a great piece. You might enjoy reading the original HBS whitepaper on this topic, it's excellent: http://sousalobo.com/resear...

The authors wrote a blog post about their research as well: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4...

Re: Karen McGrane on future-friendly content

Karen McGrane — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 11:28:26 -0000

I'll state for the record: I am against WYSIWYG editors that encourage content creators and web publishers to dump HTML and other formatting in with the content, so it's difficult to separate the two. I have no problem with authoring processes that encourage content creators to add semantic markup, whether they do so using Markdown or with a toolbar. Most wikis restrict the user to a handful of semantic tags, which facilitates cross-platform reuse.

I agree that the issue you're addressing is also a problem in the authoring experience. Writers benefit from a long-form blob because that's easier to work with. So how do we create an author experience that provides an editing interface that supports writers, but also supports creating structured content? In my discussions with Jeff Eaton on this subject we refer to it as "responsible blobbing." More fields are not (always) the answer. I believe that we will see an increasing need for custom semantic markup in which content creators can describe what something IS by wrapping it in tags, and then a transformation step on the display side to translate that description into styling.

Re: Why responsive design is driving mobile development tools

Karen McGrane — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 08:17:18 -0000

I'm the author of Content Strategy for Mobile, and I often write and speak about how editorial processes and content management need to evolve for a multi-device future.

Responsive design is just one technique in our arsenal to help us deal with these challenges. It's a good one! But responsive design is client side, which means that we're relying on front-end techniques to control which content objects get displayed. Adaptive design is server side, which means the CMS could target content by platform and publish via an API. Many organizations do have justifiable business needs for targeting specific content to different platforms, and in those cases an adaptive solution would be easier for content creators to maintain.

Let me be clear—in the majority of scenarios organizations should serve the exact same content to all platforms. But we still have to deal with the times when they can't.

I think it's helpful to look at responsive and adaptive approaches (and even forking on a template-by-template basis) as all equally valid in specific scenarios. They are not competing with each other.

Re: Responsive Design won't fix your content problem

Karen McGrane — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:00:55 -0000

Aww, hey, thanks! You're very kind. All due credit for the "metadata is a love note to the future" quote goes to Jason Scott, not Austin Kleon. There's a transcript of this talk on my site: http://karenmcgrane.com/201...

Re: The Rise of the Mobile-Only User

Karen McGrane — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 16:46:25 -0000

The McKinsey iConsumer survey found that in the United States, 61 percent of smartphones are used only by their owner, versus 40 percent for laptops.
http://www.mckinsey.com/cli...

Re: Karen McGrane Knows Content

Karen McGrane — Fri, 31 May 2013 18:02:45 -0000

Aww, you're nice to me! Thank you!

Re: The Rise of the Mobile-Only User

Karen McGrane — Tue, 28 May 2013 17:30:43 -0000

The Pew Research refers specifically to smartphones, and I think that's the most compelling case for making all content equally available. Many users rely on their smartphones as their primary source of access to the internet. It's problematic to assume that all smartphone users have limited time and specific needs. Some have no other way to access the internet—don't they deserve the same content?

If you are talking about optimizing content for local, on-the-go use, then call that out separately. I would suggest that optimizing for local is necessary only for certain industries (travel, restaurants, some retail, etc.)

It looks like the comment from "Daniel" is link spam, not necessarily a genuine assessments of the quality of the research coming from Google or Pew.

Re: Retrospective: Moving from an Office to a Cubicle

Karen McGrane — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:33:09 -0000

Bell Labs is often cited for having a design for their physical space that encouraged innovation. The space encouraged people from different groups to mix and share ideas. (Here's one source for a discussion of their architecture: http://www.amazon.com/The-I...

What I find intriguing is that idea sharing is expected to happen in public spaces, but there are still more private spaces for people to focus and concentrate.

Re: It’s Not about the Wireframes (Really)

Karen McGrane — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:56:13 -0000

We often talk about wireframes as a poor substitute for sketching, prototyping, or fully rendered design comps. That implies that the job of wireframes is only to communicate interaction design.

I'll spare you the well-worn rant about how we always forget about content. But it's worth emphasizing that wireframes are a fantastic tool for communicating a content model. Especially as content is reused across channels, we need a way to make the content model seem real—while a spreadsheet is usually the final deliverable, it requires more context. Wireframes are the fastest way to produce the right level of detail.

Re: Structured Content is Like Your Closet

Karen McGrane — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 08:34:18 -0000

This is fantastic and hilarious. Also, I'm convinced people can learn everything there is to know about me from looking at my closet organization, or the organizers in the bathroom.

Re: SXSW PanelPicker

Karen McGrane — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:09:37 -0000

Yes please. Rachel + Cleve = awesome.

Re: Bringing Some #bdconf Back To #dayton | Sparkbox

Karen McGrane — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:34:37 -0000

Thanks for the kind words! Really glad you enjoyed the talk.

Re: You Don’t Need a “Mobile Content Strategy”

Karen McGrane — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 10:39:35 -0000

Book titles rejected by the publisher:

Content strategy for our crazy multi-device future, including desktops, phones, tablets, refrigerators, stadium scoreboards, digital watches, and probably some things they haven't invented yet

Content strategy for The One Web, including but not limited to: responsive websites, native apps, and by god even print if you fools could just get your act together

Content strategy for desknots and desktops and print, oh my!

A book title is a terrible place to make an argument. But it's a great place to put some commonly-used words that map to a problem that readers think they have. In offices and boardrooms around the world, people are calling that problem "mobile." And so will I.

Also. The book IS about content strategy for mobile. Not in the sense of creating content uniquely for mobile, not in fragmenting the user experience. It's about WHY it's important to get content on mobile devices, and how to think about adapting editorial processes, style guides, CMS workflow, and governance practices to support a multi-device future.

Yes, I am playing off two different conceptions of what "content strategy for mobile" means, but my goal is to entice people to buy the book, and then to set up a little bit of cognitive dissonance to keep them reading so I can advance my broader argument.