• What: “Usability Tweetup”
• When: 7pm, Saturday, July 18, 2009
• Where: Ann Arbor Brewing Company in downtown Ann Arbor [Google map]
• Why: To discuss web usability, web accessibility, Twitter; socialize; drink beer

Note that this is the night of the last day of the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair.

See you on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 when Ben Fraser and Michael Evans will be discussing the client/designer relationship at Wayne State University.

Demo night is a great opportunity to:

• share your work
• find out what others have been working on
• hear how something was built
• find out why it was built
• learn about new tools that can improve your work

Each person has five to ten minutes to demo and answer questions. Demo nights are a great way to get to know other Refresh Detroit members.

Where: Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan. We will be meeting in Room 101 at the Morris Lawrence Building (map). Plenty of free parking is available adjacent to the building.

When: Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

Interested in demoing your work? Confirm by commenting below with your name and application/design/tool/product, so we have an idea of how many people will be presenting.

For those who don’t want to demo this time (hopefully you will at the next demo night!), RSVP at Upcoming.org

Times are tough, and every visitor on your site counts. Too often, companies focus on driving more traffic to their website, and not enough time maximizing the visitors already there.

Increasing your conversion rate, even as little as 10%, can bring a significant increase to your sales, downloads, form completions, or whatever task it might be.

RSVP at Upcoming.org

Discussion Summary

Two customers come to your site, one buys and the other doesn’t, why? Why aren’t you able to generate more leads from your website? In this session we will present actionable items to consider on your site, through The Conversion Framework, in order to see significant increases in your conversion rates. We will also identify what role personas play in optimization from a lead gen to an ecommerce business via case studies.

Background

Ayat Shukairy is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company, and co-author of “Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.” Shukairy focuses deeply on website usability and has led over 30 conversion optimization projects for companies including ReMAX, HowStuff Works and Discovery.  Shukairy’s work has helped generated an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Khalid Saleh is co-founder of Invesp Consulting, a landing page optimization company and co-author of, “Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide.”  Saleh has over 12 years of experience in e-commerce architecture, design and implementation, managing campaigns for companies including Motorola, AMEX, Levelor, Citrix, WWT, Nabors.  Saleh’s work has helped generated an average 20% improvement in conversion rates for Invesp’s clients.

Company Bio

Since 1995, Invesp founders have architected, designed and deployed 22 of the largest e-commerce websites in North America.  On average, Invesp generates an average 35% ROI on conversion for its clients on optimization work. A values driven company, Invesp focuses on providing measureable ecommerce results through client focused delivery, openness and creativity.

Where: Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer Street, Detroit, MI 48202 (directions) Room 2103, The Distance Learning Room. (University map)

When: Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

RSVP at Upcoming.org

Thanks to Angelina Italian Bistro, on Broadway across from the Opera House, for offering drink specials to Refresh Detroit members after the panel discussion. Check out the great drinks offered:

• $5 for a 20-oz. Motor City microbrew
• $4/glass for a selection of wines – two whites and two reds

They’re close to the People Mover, so it should be easy to get to them. They also offer $5 valet parking during the week.

BNI is a business and professional networking organization whose primary purpose is to exchange qualified business referrals. The organization presently has over 5,300 chapters throughout every populated continent in the world. Last year, members of BNI passed over 5.6 million referrals which generated almost $2.3 billion (U.S.) worth of business for each other.

What makes BNI unique is that it allows only one person per profession to join a chapter. Thus, once you’ve joined, none of your competitors can participate.

Seating is limited, so please let me know if you plan to attend; call me at (734) 330-4142, or email (vince@vcwebdesign.com) and I will reserve a place for you! The fee of $15 includes continental breakfast. Remember to bring plenty of business cards to pass around as you will meet lots of local business professionals.

Vince Chmielewski

VC Web Design

Join Refresh Detroit on Tuesday, April 21, 2009 for a panel discussion featuring local experts offering ideas to the many different writers who create content for the web. Learn:

• best practices for writing for the web
• how users interact with copy
• copywriting for search engine optimization
• writing for social media

Panelists

• Shannon Paul, Social Media Specialist, PEAK6 Online
  A social media enthusiast, Shannon is well known for her recent work in the development and implementation of social media strategies for the Detroit Red Wings.
• Dalila Akli, eMarketing Analyst, Cengage
  Dalila helps develop the eAnalytics culture at Cengage. Formerly webmaster at Gedas USA, she has also built websites for small businesses.
• Chris Kochmanski, Partner, Marketing Strategist and Copywriter, Design Hub
  Chris has over 30 years of strategic marketing experience. Before joining Design Hub, he excelled in marketing communications, marketing management, and business development for ADP Network Services, Interface Systems, Cleo Communications, and Mechanical Dynamics.
• Evan Deutsch, Senior Writer, Wunderman Team Detroit
  Evan currently works on Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury interactive media projects. In previous positions, he has been involved with interactive projects at Campbell-Ewald and Bowne Internet.

The panel will be moderated by Marie MacNee, an independent writer and web content manager. Marie works for clients including Cengage, Google and others. She wrote her first web copy and usability studies in the 1980s, and later worked at Campbell-Ewald and Doner, where she was an Associate Creative Director.

Where: Wayne State University Law School, 471 W. Palmer Street, Detroit, MI 48202 (directions) Room 2103, The Distance Learning Room. (University map)

When: Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Cost: Free! Open to the public.

RSVP at Upcoming.org.

It’s good advice to use a pad of paper instead of a laptop to record notes in a meeting, but the more important thing to derive is that body language is an important part of the trust-building process of a customer relationship.

Personally, I’m a big proponent of the Golden Ratio, so seeing a good basic explanation of it early in the work was a big plus. He then proceeded through all the basics of design in a very common-sense way.

The typography section appears the most information-packed, and seems obsessively-detailed compared to the rest of the sections. In fact, I could almost imagine the author talking about fonts like Bubba in Forrest Gump talked about shrimp!

Altogether, this book is a very good basic primer on design for the screen. It covers all the topics — though not comprehensively in any case — and presents them in a very understandable way.

The examples serve the text very well, and as you’d expect from a design book, everything looks good to fit its function. If I didn’t know all of this already, I’d be happy to have learned it from this guide.

I will recommend this book to any friends interested in the topic, as well as to patrons at the library I work at (which incidentally already has a copy!) who may happen to ask about the subject.

Title: “New Media” – putting print in Context
- Delivery Methods are different:
– Print: Buy, read, pickup, consume, turn page for instant refresh
– Web: Search, click, type, read, consume; but there is a delay….
- Web just isnt on a computer: iphone, other phone, browser, etc.
– Web isnt just being “Read” it’s being used for handcapped, visual impaired
- What about the ‘fold’ on the web page? Above the fold…. ‘everything’ above the fold
– NO, everything does not need to be above the fold…
- How do you try to emulate print?
– Graphic design started In print
– Use ‘the grid’
– Practice good typography
– Vertical rhythm
– Design for your audience
– Us a proper line length
- What makes Web Design unique
– Semantics are as important as design
– Perfection does not mean everyone will receive the same experience
– Design for your environment
– Line length
– The browser (reading device) is in control
– Fonts, fonts fonts (cipher, and q-fonts ) look up fonts on web
– Transparency

“If you are OCD, stick with print!”

Perfection on the web = the best user experience
You don’t know what you are missing by using IE6-7 all the time!

- Design factors influencing Design Consistency Across Browsers
– Time
– Money
– User Experience
– User Environment
– PITA Factor / Your Soul
– Providing a graceful degradation for the browser (IE6)

There was an excited discussion about browser usage stats, and why folks won’t upgrade from IE6. 47% of traffic on Wordpress.com is IE6 (due to corporate America, folks wont upgrade, etc.)

- The Web is easy to automate; Print forced continuous analysis and adjustment to design.

Check out Noel’s Art Direction plugin for WordPress, which provides the ability to add styles or JavaScript to each entry, without a lot of custom code.

Automation has eased content creation, but hindered design innovation on the Web
- Print has so much more control…
- Tough part is doing some of the same things on the web (since a lot of it is automated)
- Jason Santa Maria – Site example of a site that has same code base, but multiple looks and designs:
- Another great example, Just Watch The Sky

What is CSS?
Examples of what can be done with CSS: CSS Zen Garden.
To learn more about CSS: w3 schools.

————–
Congratulations to the following people for winning copies of web design related books from O’Reilly!
- Roger Rayle – Universal Design for Web Applications
- Todd Sneed – Designing Gestural Interfaces
- Brad Czerniak – The Principles of Beautiful Web Design
- Gerald Campain – Search Engine Optimization for Flash
- Samantha Sevick – Head First Web Design

Organized by Wayne State University’s ASIS&T chapter, the recap will highlight key take-aways from the conference and discuss what you need to know as an information architect in today’s rapidly changing world.

Panelists include:

• Peter Morville, president of Semantic Studios who presented a pre-conference session on IA 3.0 at the Summit.
• Keith Instone, IBM information architecture, who helped to organize the Content Strategy consortium at the Summit.
• Chris Farnum, Enlighten Senior Information Architect, who presented on remote user research at the Summit.
• Heidi Blanton, Wayne State University Information Science student and President of the ASIS&T student chapter who attended the summit as a student volunteer.

Where: Kresge Library Auditorium, Wayne State University
When: Thursday, March 26, 11:00AM
Parking: Available at several garages on the WSU campus. For visitors, parking is $3.50 at the gate, quarters or dollar bills only.
If you are interested in attending please RSVP.

Meet and greet after the panel on the 3rd Floor of the Kresge Library, with refreshments.

Can’t attend the recap? Catch the live recording on UStream.