Notes from DFM Web Track workshops 2012

SOME NOTES 

from my Web Track

at Detroit Future Media

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Understanding & Translating Design
Audience & Participatory Design

• Include audience in design phase (Participatory Design)

• If you want to have your audience be anyone & everyone, check out Inclusive Design. Consider the needs of the widest variety of people possible

• Reaching specific communities?  Consider User Centered Design.  Include them in the design process (Participatory Design). Don’t assume what their needs are and what they want, ask them!  Then your job is to be able to come up a design idea and ask them if that is what they had in mind or what they wanted.
• (Beta Phase of a website is limiting user access during a Soft Launch before you fully launch it.  You can get feedback from a few users before you officially launch it to the world). 
• Resources for possible special needs of audience are going to be in the Resource Box of our toolkit
• TWO CLICK RULE: If a user is not able to get what they need within 2 clicks, they will not stay on the page

Analysis/Research Design & Development

Brainstorming Tools

• design boards (might include some images for inspiration, a color pallet you like for branding, text styles you like).
• You can use Pinterest “an online pinboard” (application you can use to display your boards)
• storyboards
• site composites: could be a layout of icons

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April 10 

(3rd session of the Web Track)

*if MAMP doesn’t boot up--search in Finder for “mysqld” and “quit process”. That’s a flaw in MAMP

USER PERMISSIONS

• to add a user, click PEOPLE on the tool bar.
• authenticated user means you invited them and you know who they are. they didn’t request being a user.
• Under PERMISSIONS  tab you can see the “permissions” and “roles”most stuff you dont want people to have access to
• you may want the person to have permissions in “File entity” so they could look at a file, edit a file or administer a file (publish a file etc.)

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April 24th

RSS Feeds = Real Simple Syndication

• RSS feeds are scripted off of XML--XML feeds are based off of  ascript that has a bunch of entires that are wrapped in a tag--<id> blah blah blah </id> <title> blah blah blah </title>...

• “dynamic content” is a “live feed” like twitter or gathering (“aggregating”) feed contents to one spot (like on Jenel’s blog she has a na aggregator that puts all of our blogs feeding into one panel.

HOW TO DO IT:

• Modules--under Core, enable Aggregator and then Save
• Configuration and then Web Service and click RSS Publishing (you CAN upload a Module that will show up in the Web Service box as “Enable Twitter”)
• Configuration-->Feed Aggregator   This is a way to start importing content and then you can later go into View and create a Feed for it.
• to find the RSS html for a site you might want to “subscribe” to, go to the site and look for the little orange sign and put the feed html in the box.  then make your choices in terms of how often you want it to be updated.  Then Flush Cache by clicking the house icon on far right on your homepage.
• NYTimes probably has a specific RSS html for just Arts & Culture if you just want that specific type of content
• Use Feedburner which creates a sandbox that doesn't just pull a bunch of content from our website--if we had 20 website pulling from our aggregator every 15 minutes, it would be really taxing on our site and our host would be mad and probably it would crash their site.
• Configuration--> feed aggregator
• structure-->views-->add new views--make a name, choose Aggregator Item on the dropdown list and Create a Block--”use pager” means it lets people click a “more” link at the bottom of the block.

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May 8th

Social Networking:

1. twitter “im eating a #donut” [straight information, i wanna tell you something] Fiona said this is more nuanced and in-the-moment
1. hootsuit is an app for your phone that helps you set a timer and send out tweets every for four hours for example
2. echophone allows you to have multiple twitter accounts
3. twittilator is a twitter client
4. tweetdeck
2. facebook “i like donuts” click the “Like” thumbsup button  [less technilogical savy audience] Piper has a business page, a fan page and a personal page
1. market place -
3. foursquare [some people use it for dating]
4. instagram (pictures)
5. youtube / vimeo
6. linked In “one of my Skills is eating donuts”
7. pinterest (mini blogging with moslty pictures--organize it into boards--you could have one, for example, called “my dream job”. more and more companies are getting into it like Forbes.  But pinterest owns your images once you post them there.  They can’t post copyrighted images.) Piper says all the fashion people have a pinterest but she hates it and thinks its super corny, would rather use Tumbler b/c the pics are bigger.
8. last FM
9. G+ “im a n employee at google who likes to eat donuts” [piper says this sux]
10. tumbler [picture audience, youth]

Using social media effectively:

• it is possible to using social media “in a bad way”
• centerformediajustice.org
• has a great toolbox for messaging and creating clear strategies.
• Media How-Tos
• good ideas for making a “media plan” for Detroit Youth Volume or Detroit Music Teachers Collective: http://centerformediajustice.org/2011/06/11/media-planning/
• Example:  Identify news hooks. News hooks are timely happenings that you can plan media actions around, and may include a local take on a national issue, an anniversary, a holiday, or an event your target has planned (like an inauguration). News hooks can be issue-specific—for example, the first day of school or the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education are good hooks for an education justice campaign. Create a calendar of opportunities. You can narrow it down later when you plan specific tactics or events

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May 15th

EMAIL CAMPAIGNS 

• Janel talked about VeRticalResponse and joey talked about MailChimp
• Allows you to send out emails 1,000+ to people. 
• If you want to advertise your site and drive people to visit your site
• you can send a newsletter based on your content
• one example is ModelD newsletter which looks exactly like their site but if you click once you can go to their site

$

• charged by number of emails you send our or the number of addresses you send to
• VerticalResponse has a non-profit pricing that is useful
• They will manage bounce rates (when someone gets an email and it go to spam or it doesn’t get delivered.  if it bounces back twice that person is taken off the list.)
• if you do this thru VerticalResponse it saves you from legal issues of spamming people
• do not send too much or you will get Email Apathy, they will unsubscribe

VIDEO

• You can not embed video but it can be attached and gmail will play it for them if they have gmail

REPORTS

• Thru Vertical Response you can see the Reports
• tells you how many people you sent it to
• how many opened it--where from 16-23% is a good amount of opening
• bounce
• unsubscribe
• top links clicked
• top performing email lists
• Analytics
• total bounce rates
• open rates
• clicks
• you can use their templates or make your own
• you can schedule when you want to send send
• “Lists” are the most important.
• gather emails by having a “Join our Mailing List” on your homepage etc.  You can also manually add email addresses
• there is a widget offered on Vertical Response that you can embed onto your site
• You can also important from an Excel file

SURVEYS

• there’s an option of sending a Survey but GoogleForms is always free.  You have to pay for Survey Monkey.

MISTAKES

• if you messed up on a link but you already sent it, you can go in and change the link by clicking edit

STRATEGY

• send the email in the morning during the work week
• do not send over the weekend
• do not send after 4pm
• do promotions to get people to sign up

MAILCHIMP

• Joey used Mailchimp b/c it’s friendly-looking and it works well with the googlesuite that The Hub was using.
• Mailchimp is free if you send it under 2000 people and you can send 6 emails every month to the whole list. Vertical Response has something like that too.

FACEBOOK “PAGES”

• when you make a Page, there are analytics available