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Mike Shelton
The people margin
Prior to my time at Automattic, I worked at a direct marketing firm. We were taught to mind the data. You make a change, you test it, you check the data and make a decision from it. At the time, this seemed fool proof. Numbers and statistics are absolute after all, right? However, continually we’d…
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Mike Shelton
Testing a new editing experience with Gutenberg
With the upcoming official release of Gutenberg, a call was put out to all Automattic designers to test and review the experience. Gutenberg is a plugin that changes the page and post editing experience of WordPress to a block-based format with the promise of enhanced capability and flexibility. The challenge was to choose any post from…
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Mike Shelton
Find the right tools for you
Several months ago, after having just read a debate among designers about design software, I jumped on Twitter to vent a bit: Necessary things in design that don’t actually matter: 1. Tools and software. 2. Visual polish. 3. Opinions of anyone other than your users. — Mike Shelton (@themikeshelton) August 9, 2017 It was a…
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Mike Shelton
Balance the Scales of Influence with Design Sprints
This article was originally published on the edUiconf blog. It has been adapted for this publication. Journey with me for a moment. Think back to the last big problem or initiative you worked on. Think about the solution that made it out the door to your users. Where did that solution come from? How did…
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Mike Shelton
An open source test script
Over the years of conducting user tests my team has used and iterated on our own usability test script. We’ve refined the structure and language, optimizing for objective, unbiased user insights. When starting a new test we’re now able to mobilize pretty quickly, building off our past efforts. A big part of the efficiency is…
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Mike Shelton
Dear Junior Designer
In the US, summer is coming to an end, the weather is getting cooler and college students are heading back to school. I always get a bit nostalgic around this time of year, reflecting back on my college years and subsequently my early years as a designer. Those thoughts remind me of this sentence in…
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Mike Shelton
Unifying the UX with Emails
Consider this:Â Dinner time is fast approaching. Your pantry is bare. You need to go to the store to buy the ingredients for dinner. How would you define your journey to purchasing those ingredients? Where does it start? Once you enter the grocery store? Maybe, but you had to get there somehow. Did you drive, walk,…
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Mike Shelton
Connecting the Dots with Stakeholder Interviews
Recently, I was asked to lead the design and experience of purchasing and owning a domain with WordPress.com. Here’s my stream of consciousness as I began to survey the task ahead: Day 1: > Leading design for domains? Exciting! 😀 > We launched WordPress.com/domains recently. There is already some momentum behind domains and great growth…
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