my Blog
Read my posts about UX, content strategy, technical communication, and more
Why We Need to Teach Marketable Digital Skill Sets in Higher Education
I have taught at the college level for over a decade now, and though it may be bold to say as a pre-tenure faculty member: we need to do better when it comes to teaching marketable digital skill sets. The current global economy is becoming increasingly digital,...
Practical UX Career Development: How To Network In(to Any Technology-Driven Field)
As an educator who is also a UX practitioner, I get a lot of students asking me: "how can I break into this field?" Despite what my industry counterparts say, I usually respond: "it's tough." Don't get me wrong. I don't disagree about the following things common to...
A Blogging Guide for Beginners: Everything You Need To Know To Start a Blog
Mike Wallagher is a professional blogger and internet marketer who helps beginners to make their blogs more successful. When he is not behind a computer, he is probably in the woods taking pictures of nature. Starting a New Blog Can Be Confusing… Really Confusing! But...
Intercultural UX: My Podcast With Kirk St. Amant on Personas and Intercultural Communication
Kirk St.Amant and I sat down recently with Ryan Weber, Director of Business and Technical Writing and Director of UX Programs at University of Alabama-Huntsville, for an episode of his technical communication podcast 10 Minute Tech Comm. We discussed our recent...
Focusing on Users Is the Most Basic Principle: An Interview With Susan Tacker, User Experience Manager for Teradata
Susan Tacker is User Experience Manager for Teradata Applications in Raleigh, NC, and holds degrees in English, Journalism, and Human Factors in Information Design. She founded the Houston, TX chapter of UXPA in 2013 and served as Executive Director. She is currently...
The Best Content Audit Template: It’s This One by John McCrory
After many years of doing content audits for a wide variety of websites, I've searched high and low for a simple, easy-to-use template that I can use to guide audits as well as to communicate the importance of audits to clients. Like most people who get jazzed about...
3 Ways To Learn About UX Design, Technical Communication, Digital Marketing, and Content Strategy
How do I learn about UX design? This is a question I get frequently from students, clients, and fellow practitioners alike. With UX becoming an increasingly hot field in the last five years--and with related fields like technical communication, digital marketing, and...
Developing the Vision for the Product: An Interview With Timothy Rotolo, UX Architect for TryMyUI
Timothy Rotolo is a UX Architect at TryMyUI where he does everything from usability analysis to graphic design to social media. In the past, he has taught in rural Taiwan and done research on security issues & policies in several major Asian countries. Connect...
Visual Design vs UX: What Overlaps and What Doesn’t
I recently gave a presentation for the Write Now! 2015 Triangle Area Freelancers Annual Writers' Conference with Rick Evans of RoleModel Software about visual design vs UX. Our main argument was: sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don't....