Blog

John Eckman on August 25, 2020 • 2 Comments

This Thursday I’m participating in the CoRise Summit — a free global startup summit to CoLearn, Collaborate, and CoRise with the community. As a panelist in a session on Building Remote Teams and Company Culture (August 27 at 12:30 PM ET), I’m looking forward to sharing some of our insights on building and managing a distributed team.

I’m also happy to be a contributor to Remote Teams Work. It’s a new book out this month that provides strategic and practical guidance on establishing and running a successful remote team, including tools and methodologies, hiring and salaries, and creating a remote culture.

As more and more companies adjust to remote work and the value of distributed teams, hopefully they can benefit from the best practices we’ve seen and experienced.

WordPress 5.5 Released, Block For Apple Maps Included In Block Library

Jeff Paul on August 18, 2020 • 1 Comment

Block for Apple Maps in the Block Directory

WordPress 5.5 was released last week, featuring automatic updates for plugins and themes, lazy-loading images, extensible XML sitemaps, improvements to the block editor, and as always, supplemental under the hood security, performance, and developer improvements. As always, many 10uppers contributed to this release.

This latest release introduces a number of improvements to the block content editor. Highlights include inline image editing that lets you crop, rotate, and zoom photos within image blocks; device previews that show how content will appear to visitors with different screen sizes; and a Block Directory that lets you find, install, and insert third-party blocks in the editor, without ever leaving the page.

GNI Ad Revenue Lab Presents Free Workshop Series For Local News Publishers

Mike Bal on August 12, 2020

Tomorrow, August 13, 2020, 10up kicks off a free, four-part workshop series covering lessons and tactics used in the GNI Ad Revenue Lab to accelerate participating publishers’ advertising revenue.

The GNI Ad Revenue Lab, which kicked off in September 2019, is a Google News Initiative project conducted in partnership with LION Publishers and 10up to establish a web-based revenue optimization blueprint local news publishers can use as a reference point for website improvements.

As part of the Ad Revenue Lab, we have been working with seven hyperlocal U.S. publishers, like Long Beach Post, to provide and measure reader revenue-focused digital strategies, often testing new tactics. From ad viewability and fill rate optimization to article markup and sitemaps to Google AMP and the optimization of ads, images, and page speed, we’ve documented our findings and are now sharing them more widely.

Gain Project Alignment with 10up’s Design Spectrum Exercise

Lea Alcantara on August 5, 2020

Design Spectrum Exercise

Effectively articulating a brand’s design aesthetic can be challenging for even the most savvy marketers. How do we take statements like “make it pop” and turn them into a more specific, shared design vision without frustrating revisions?

In my recent article, A Design Spectrum Exercise for Navigating ‘Make it Pop’ Client Requests, published on the Adobe XD Ideas blog, I share a tool — the Design Spectrum exercise — we use at 10up with government, higher-ed, and Fortune 500 teams to gain creative alignment, build trust, reduce revision requests, and earn faster design approvals.

A Design Spectrum exercise shapes intangible concepts in an approachable way that cuts through ambiguity and identifies client design preferences and taste. This creates a framework of shared understanding that establishes the foundation for a smooth design process.

If you’d like your next design and UX project driven by a creative team that prioritizes collaboration, clear communication, and caring client services, get in touch.

Bolstering Higher Education and WordPress at WPCampus 2020

John Eckman on July 29, 2020

WPCampus 2020

With a growing portfolio of clients and partnerships in higher education, we are once again thrilled to sponsor and participate in WPCampus, furthering the confluence of WordPress in academia. This year’s two-day remote conference kicks-off today, July 29, 2020; registration is free.

Presentations

On the schedule, you’ll find two 10uppers delivering presentations:

End to End Accessibility Testing

Traditionally, testing interaction has been a largely manual process because out-of-the-box automation testing tools can’t open menus, check ARIA states, click around, or test general UI and movement. Because of this, as sites age, they can quickly fall out of compliance and become slowly inaccessible.

In this session, Tim Wright, Director of Front End Engineering will discuss end to end accessibility testing. Learn how to create a long term accessibility roadmap and turn manual testing processes into lightweight automated scripts that can keep an eye on your project for years to come.

AI 101: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Educators Publish More, Faster, And Better

Artificial intelligence isn’t just for self-driving cars and science fiction. Learn how easy-to-integrate solutions can help educators publish more effective content, promote accessibility, and keep visitors engaged. In this special sponsor presentation, Phil Crumm, Vice President, New Client Strategy, will help educators, technical leaders, content creators, and marketers understand how machine learning and artificial intelligence can simplify content creation, accelerate authorship, and eliminate painful manual tasks.

10up at WP Engine Summit/2020

John Eckman on June 8, 2020

WP Engine Summit 2020

In two days, 10up is taking an active role in WP Engine Summit/2020. The Summit, taking place on June 10 from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm CDT, will feature a keynote by Robert Herjavec from SharkTank and break down open source trends, technologies, research, and campaigns that accelerate digital breakthroughs. This year, it will be held online through a combination of live and on-demand virtual content and creative networking. Registration is free.

Helen Hou-Sandi Presents At WordSesh Americas 2020

Helen Hou-Sandi on May 26, 2020

Helen Hou-Sandi WordSesh Americas 2020

WordSesh is a live, highly-curated, free virtual conference centered around WordPress. WordSesh Americas 2020, happening this Wednesday, May 27, includes 12 sessions that touch on topics like headless WordPress, client services, and communication skills.

I am excited to be a part of the lineup, sharing how developers can make the most of a development tool they are probably already using: Github.

Github is used by many developers to build and manage both public plugins and themes and private work. My session takes a closer look at GitHub Actions, a newer feature to help with automation for repetitive tasks like testing and deployment. It will cover WordPress-specific Actions, tying multiple Actions together in a workflow, and ideas for how to continually improve development processes.

Deep Dive: Gutenberg’s Create-block Scaffolding

Fabian Kaegy on May 22, 2020

Fabian Kaegy on Gutenberg Times Live Live

Yesterday, I was a guest on Gutenberg Times Live, discussing the inner workings of the Create Block scaffolding tool and the creation of new templates. The “WordPress/create-block” tool is a Command Line Application that facilitates the building and registering of new block plugins to help developers extend the capabilities of the WordPress block editor.

The discussion revolved around my pull request, Create block: Add support for external templates hosted on npm. I demonstrated how this proposed solution makes it easier to create new block templates.

You can watch the video on the Gutenberg Times YouTube Channel.

Helen Hou-Sandi on May 4, 2020

!!Con 2020 (pronounced “bang bang con”) features two days of ten-minute talks celebrating the joyous, exciting, and surprising moments in computing. This pay-what-you-want conference is happening online May 9-10, 2020 and I am excited to share that I will be speaking at 1:00 pm EST on Sunday, May 10.

My talk, Sparking Musical Joy at Home With Magnetic Stripe Swipe Cards and Tiny Code, shares how I, a programmer and not a human jukebox, used a Raspberry Pi, magnetic stripe swipe cards, stickers, and a tiny Bash script to help my children enjoy curated music on their own terms.

10up Recommends UX Research Tools On Adobe’s Xd Ideas Blog

Chris Wallace on April 15, 2020

Effective UX Research Tools

User experience research involves evaluating and capturing user behavior and interactions, and requires interactive collaboration and prototyping with participants and stakeholders. With remote work on the rise, leading UX researchers have adopted a new generation of tools that facilitate this research and collaboration without the need for in person interaction.

In the article 5 Effective UX Research Tools That the Experts Use, Adobe asked professional UX researchers and designers — including 10up’s own lead UX designers Ben Grace and Melissa Vander Wilt — to spotlight their user UX research tools of choice.

Ben shares how 10up leverages digital whiteboard and remote team collaboration software Miro to plan and prep for research, keep the team organized, and socialize findings.

Melissa highlights 10up’s use of Hotjar to perform user testing and behavior analysis, run surveys and polls, and gather insights for ongoing optimization.

If you’d like to do your next design and UX project with a team that knows how to achieve excellence without needing to be in the office, get in touch.