The Big Web Show

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Episode 166: Floating Words and the Mechanics of Delight – with designer Michael Simmons Nov 13, 2017

Show notes

Michael Simmons, designer and CEO of Flexibits (makers of Fantastical and Cardhop) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest. Designing “professional but not professional boring” experiences. Usefulness versus “garnish.” How animation can convey brand values. Creating experiences instead of feature sets. Instagram vs Snapchat. “The car that sells itself” and marketing by letting the product speak for itself.

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Episode 165: Webfont Festival with Bram Stein Oct 30, 2017

Show notes

Host Jeffrey Zeldman interviews Bram Stein, Typekit’s director of web fonts and author of the Webfont Handbook (A Book Apart, 2017). The two designers discuss creating great font stacks, optimizing web font performance, FOUT versus FOIT, the horror of fallback fonts, and new technology including variable fonts and font-display: FOUT or FOIT.

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Episode 164: Meet Ben Jackson, Onboarding For The Win Oct 09, 2017

Show notes

Ben Jackson, founder & principal of Brooklyn advising firm For the Win, and creator of the open-source onboarding app Aloha, is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.

Ben and Jeffrey discuss service design, the opportunity cost of bad onboarding experiences, the 4Cs of good onboarding (compliance, clarity, culture, and community), the Aloha chatbot and how it fits into the broader trend of HR tech consumerization, and more.

Programming since 1992, Ben is a designer, engineer, editor, and entrepreneur, a past director of Mobile for VICE Media, past mobile lead for Longform, and past iOS lead for The New York Times. He has written and edited bylines for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and VICE; spoken at SXSW, Ignite NY, and Social Media Week; and volunteers on the curriculum Advisory Board, Coalition for Queens.

Links for this episode:

For the Win: Design-first Employee Onboarding in New York
design-first on boarding that takes the pain out of hiring
Aloha! Automated Onboarding for Slack Teams
an on boarding bot for busy admins and growing Slack teams
Tools for Startups
How to Make Onboarding Engineers a Competitive Advantage | GitPrime Blog
Vice’s Director of Mobile Apps Ben Jackson is creating his own startup advisory firm | TechCrunch
Notion – Docs, Wikis, Tasks. Seamlessly in one.
Anatomy of a Snap Attack | The New Yorker
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers: Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo: 8601300354866: Amazon.com: Books
Guide to Service Blueprinting — Practical Service Design

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Episode 163: Animation at Work, with Rachel Nabors Aug 24, 2017

Show notes

Rachel Nabors, author of Animation at Work (A Book Apart, 2017) stops by The Big Web Show to discuss how animation can help ease cognitive load in UX; creating the illusion of life; developing data to make the case for animation; pattern libraries; prototyping; and the link between animation and music.

Rachel Nabors has been an award-winning cartoonist and graphic novelist, who parlayed her storytelling skills into a web design and development career. She has done projects with Mozilla, been an invited expert to the W3C, and currently works at Microsoft. Rachel tends the web animation community via the Animation at Work Slack and her web animation newsletter.

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Episode 162: The Mysteries of UX with Clearleft’s Andy Budd Aug 09, 2017

Show notes

Clearleft’s Andy Budd and host Zeldman discuss the changing role design agencies must play to remain relevant; the rise of in-house design; working with pattern libraries (since 2008!); whether the “golden age” of web design and blogging is over; and much more.

Andy Budd has been blogging about design and technology since 2003. He was one of the leading lights of the web standards movement and his book, CSS Mastery, sold over 60,000 copies and has been translated into a dozen languages. Andy is a founding partner at UX design consultancy Clearleft; the curator of dConstruct, one of the UK’s most popular design conferences; and the force behind UX London, the UK’s first dedicated usability, IA, and UX design event.

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Episode 161: Cultivating a Creative Culture with Justin Dauer Jul 14, 2017

Show notes

As designers, we create human-centered interactions and experiences. Empathetic purpose drives our every decision. This same mentality, turned inward, forms the cornerstone of something amazing: a creative culture. Jeffrey Zeldman interviews designer, creative director, iconist, and author Justin Dauer (@pseudoroom) about his new book, Cultivating a Creative Culture—now available everywhere.

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Episode 160: Color Accessibility Workflows with Geri Coady Jun 22, 2017

Show notes

Illustrator, designer, and author Geri Coady (@hellogeri) is @zeldman’s guest. The two designers discuss blogging, learning graphic design, transitioning to web design, color accessibility tips and strategies, book writing, and the upcoming travel blog, Geri Draws Japan.

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Episode 159: If You Can’t Stand the Heatmaps, Stay Out of the Conversion, with @nickd Jun 16, 2017

Show notes

Nick Disabato (@nickd) and @zeldman discuss heat maps, conversion rates, design specialization, writing for the web, Jakob Nielsen, and the early days of blogging in Episode #159 of The Big Web Show – “everything web that matters.”

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User Interviews (Find participants for user research studies today! Visit userinterviews.com/bigwebshow and they will waive the sourcing fee for your first 5 interviews).
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Episode 158: Old Men Shake Fists at the Cloud – with Jim Coudal May 05, 2017

Show notes

Internet veterans Jim @Coudal & Jeffrey @Zeldman on the death of blogging, the birth of Field Notes, the virtues of a subscription model, and much more. Begins in tears, ends in triumph. One of the most fun (and most inspiring) episodes ever.

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Episode 157: David Sleight, Design Director at ProPublica Apr 10, 2017

Show notes

ProPublica (@ProPublica) design director David Sleight (@stuntbox) is Jeffrey Zeldman’s guest.

How do publications brand themselves when a platform removes their fonts, art, and layout? What is “journalism in the public interest” and how does it differ from traditional reporting? What is bespoke web design and how does it work at ProPublica? What’s next for the ProPublica platform? How do newspapers retain readers in the age of AMP?

ProPublica (“Journalism in the Public Interest”) was a recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting, and a 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. David is a publication designer and web geek, formerly at BusinessWeek, Pearson Ed, and consulting land.

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