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James Koster
In the business of building trust
2000. The millennium. Roger Federer is yet to grace the grass courts of Wimbledon. Wembley Stadium is due to host it’s final F.A Cup match before being rebuilt. Harry Potter is still a read-only experience. 9/11 is just a regular day in September. Feel old? It’s ok – me too. While momentous events were right…
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Dave Whitley
Building trust with notifications
When we launched the redesign of notifications a few years ago, it was one of the only WordPress.com features developed in tandem with all platforms. Although this exact principle wasn’t stated during development, the core values guided much of the process: Consistency builds trust. Speed builds trust. Simplicity builds trust. With these values in mind, we…
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Desiree Zamora Garcia
Why all designers should do customer support
All new hires at Automattic are required to spend three weeks as a Happiness Engineer, solving…basically anything one can create with a WordPress.com site. Plus anything that the phrase “systems thinking” adds to its scope. Many years ago, I had a stint at Apple as a Genius, which meant that it was my job to…
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Joen A.
Invisible
The best design is invisible. It is functional to the point that you forget how it works, you just use it. You might even forget it took effort to invent once upon a time. For any designer creating work for others, this can be a difficult realization to come to terms with. Perhaps what drove…
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sixhours
The Curious Mind
“Start from curiosity. Welcome and seek out difference.” The Dotcom Design team recently completed a series of user interviews in an attempt to better understand small businesses and their needs. We heard from small business owners in a wide range of fields; everything from photography to handmade crafts to coaching clients. These folks came from diverse…
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Mel Choyce
Seeking out Stories
Earlier this year, I got involved with an organization called Get Her Elected, which seeks to pair women running for office across the United States with talented, remote volunteers. I spent the year following the 2016 elections full of anxiety and despair, fearing for my future safety and the safety of my family, friends, and countless…
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Sylvester Wilmott
Test Driving Gutenberg
As part of our latest Empathy Challenge, designers at Automattic were challenged to recreate an article using Gutenberg. Gutenberg is a new block based editor designed to simplify post creation and so I was happy to try it out! Here are my initial thoughts. I chose to recreate this article from longreads.com Total time: 27…
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David A. Kennedy
Front End Design, WordPress Themes and the Future
Say goodbye to the themer. If you’re not familiar with the WordPress world, that term may not mean much. But in that space, it’s a role, usually with a front end design skill set, filled by a person who creates WordPress themes. Being a themer has always been a point of pride for many, myself…
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Gary Murray
Gutenpressure
Try Gutenberg and share your thoughts as you try to re-create a blog post – seemed simple enough. Even though I had missed the deadline for this, I wanted to give it a try to see how it worked, and here are my results. Disclaimer: I tried using Gutenberg to re-create this post that was…
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Joan Rho
How to Create a Website for Your Small Business, Part 3: Customization and Sharing
Back in Part 2 of this three-part tutorial series, we set up our website, planned out the structure of our site pages, and added in our main content. Now, it’s time to start customizing our site further by going through the following: Adding social media integrations and feeds Adding a blog with a few sample…
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