Digital Thinking

echnologie Foto erstellt von senivpetro - de.freepik.com

April

2020

Home Office – The Good Life?

Ah, the good life! Working in your pyjamas, eating what you want at your desk – did I say desk? I meant of course the couch, or the bed! No blah blah from colleagues disturbing your train of thought, no morning commute … just you, your laptop, and the coffee machine. Home Office is heaven, right? It’s also a privilege. So many people would like to stay at home, especially in the current situation. If you can work at home, then you are very lucky.

The Customer Journey is Just Like Your Own

März

2020

All Aboard the Customer Journey

Digital is redefining our customer experiences, the value chain, fullfilment processes, marketing, sales, and customer loyalty. As we become more catered to and become more demanding, what we used to expect in the way of Customer Satisfaction is morphing into a demand for Customer Delight.

VHS Smarte Senioren Dozent Warren Laine-Naida

Februar

2020

Digitale Kompetenz für Smarte Senioren

Menschen haben immer Technologie genützt zu Problemlösung – ältere Menschen sollten davon nicht ausgeschlossen sein. Senioren möchte auch mitreden, mitmachen. Aktive Mitgestaltung der Gesellschaft sollte für alle möglich sein. Medienkompetenz oder Digitalkompetenz ist dafür eine Voraussetzung.

Januar

2020

2020 A New Decade, and some New Resolutions

As they say – don’t think about what you have done, think about what you will do! 80% of resolutions normally fail by the second week of February, so the odds are against us. How did I do with my 2019 resolutions? How did YOU do? :o)

Dezember

2019

A Ver‘ eCommerce Christmas

‘Twas days before Christmas, but all through the classroom,
My students were working, both local and via zoom.
Mailchimp campaigns were crafted with care,
In hopes that their grades soon would be there.

Dezember

2019

eCommerce is Not an Online Shop

An important characteristic of eCommerce is that it is not really a distinct sector. When we talk about eCommerce, the concept that usually comes to mind is of course online shopping. eCommerce means enabling all of an organisation’s operations. It is not enough to just set up an online shop.

November

2019

Education and Learning in our E-World

In preparation for an upcoming class, the actual difficulty most countries are finding themselves in – ie the lack of skilled tech workers – is at the center of our workshop. If you know how many hours there are in a day, compared with how much work you have to get done, the problem of how we keep up will not be lost on you.

November

2019

The Internet is Not Free

CERN announced, on 30 April 1993, that the World Wide Web would be free to use for anyone. Free is a relative term. The Internet has been valued at around 1 Trillion dollars a year. By most standards, a Trillion dollars is a bit north of „Free“.

Oktober

2019

Let’s Talk User Experience

Websites Should be Inclusive User experience. You’ve heard of the term, and like most of us accept it to mean how you feel using a website, or accessing an app on your phone. UX defines our perceptions of aspects of a system such as utility, ease of use, and efficiency. In marketing and sales, it is […]

Medienkompetenz für Senioren foto by Metatdgt @ pexels

Oktober

2019

Grandparents can Code

The Internet and digital technologies are becoming increasingly important in more and more areas of everyday life. How can we ensure the participation of older members of society in the current digital transformation? For everyone to benefit from these technologies, it will take more than the ability to download apps to smartphones or transfer money via online banking.

September

2019

Everyone Deserves a Good Website

I googled „working for non-profits“, which many of my clients are, and I found results for 5 reasons, 8 reasons, 12 reasons, 19 reasons. I think there is 1 good reason to work for non-profits, small local businesses, and educational organisations.

September

2019

Agile, Design Thinking, Mindfulness – Embracing Small to Win Big

Speed wins. If you can do something faster, you have a better chance to succeed. If you can ideate faster, produce faster, test faster, win customers faster, and innovate faster than your competitors you will win. But, is being fast and winning necessarily the best goal to have? This month, Charlie and I look at a much more upbeat, positive side of Digital Transformation – the methodologies that are on the cusp of this transformation. Learning to fail in order to succeed, taking the time to reflect, being people-focused, and being authentic.

August

2019

Love in the Time of Digital Transformation

The idea that you could like a robot and they you might at first seem a little creepy, but is the love we have for our smart phone the precursor for spending our evenings with an android? This may seem the stuff of science fiction, however the possibility remains tied to our changing attitudes towards sex and intimacy in general, and the current digital transformation we are experiencing.

2016/06 What Is This Design Thinking Anyway?

Juli

2019

The Digital Cloud with a Silver Lining

Our Digital Society is developing faster than current infrastructures can adapt or respond. Added to the technological changes that confront us, is our extended life expectancy. Older professionals have never had a tougher time finding a job – especially in areas where, until recently, no education paths have been defined (UX and UI being two […]

Juni

2019

SEO – Build It and They Might Come

When a user enters a search query into a search engine such as Google, they expect the search to return results (websites) which completely satisfy their requirements. With the absolutely humungous amount of information on the Web (about 250 billion DVDs worth of data), the ambiguities of human language, flexible location and device usage, and the short-worded […]

Mai

2019

Changing How We Live and Work

Mai

2019

Online Shopping – Order and it will Come

Product placement via VR and AR. AI product search filter logic. Social Media shopping – feed to shopping basket. AI shopping personalisation. Drone delivery. Subscription commerce. Voice commerce. If you thought we had reached the zenith of our consumer culture, then you should buckle your seatbelt. The same technological advancements that gave us facebook pokes instead of giving […]

April

2019

Quo Vadis WordPress

Last quarter we relaunched four websites in three CMS. The quickest was of course produced (mostly on a train with wonky wlan) in WordPress. I say of course because a WordPress website is simple to build and maintain, normally works for every occasion, and is very cheap to produce. WordPress sites are ubiquitous, much like plain […]

März

2019

Are We Failing HTML 101?

When I was at school there was no HTML, no internet, no websites, but there was BASIC with which we programmed small games – and which was a hell of a lot of fun. As I have written before, learning some sort of code, markup, programming language what you will is if not very important […]

Februar

2019

Live Longer and Healthier – Read!

It has been a really hectic month, and for the first time in many years I seem to be at a loss for words. Normally a river of wordage, wanted or not, I write and verbiate at will. This week, however, I became really stuck putting together a project plan. Of the 18 hours I […]

Januar

2019

New Year, New Resolutions

Another year and another chance to do everything right. Chances are we will stick to our new years resolutions as long as the bubbles last in the bottle of champagne we opened on New Year’s Day. We shouldn’t let that get us down. Certainly looking back over the year we can pat ourselves on the […]

Dezember

2018

A Very Digital Christmas

‘Twas but days before Christmas, when all through the office, Marketing was working, our campaigns were flawless. Adwords were measured on our tablets with care, In hopes that our bonuses soon would be there. Freelancers were nestled all snug by their screens, While visions of Photoshop danced in their dreams. My boss on his sofa, […]

November

2018

Buzzwords and our Digital Discourse

If you are like me, and started work in the pre-digital years, you are probably wondering how we managed to work without all the buzzwords. It was a simpler time. We had bandwidth to work through our task cycles with our IBM compatible PC, tackling those low hanging fruit to improve the bottom line – […]

Oktober

2018

Content Marketing – Trending Since 1732

Content Marketing is one of the many digital buzzwords you cannot avoid these days. You may also have stumbled across Digital Transformation, Native Advertising, Internet of Things, Big Data, Machine Learning, Algorithm, Customer Journey, Digital First, E-Health, Micro-Moments, Geo-Fencing … While the term Content Marketing first appeared in 1996, the idea has been with us since at […]

September

2018

Agile, Waterfall, Adaptive, Pert, Lean … and Cake

I am often asked how I manage my projects, and which method I prefer. I may be an old Waterfaller at heart, but I don’t think there is so much difference between the many methods – and simply making a cake. In the first step, there are some basic questions you need to answer: WHY […]

August

2018

Your Mobile Phone Just May Save Your Life

The global eHealth market had $41.52 billion in revenue in 2017 and that is expected to increase to $220.65 billion by 2026. Growing demand for eHealth solutions and services, our use of tablets, smartphones, wearables, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), increasing usage of big data, and the demands of an ageing population are just […]

Juli

2018

Is That Digital Transformation I See Before Me?

Digital transformations have hit the skids, falling prey to poor leadership, disconnects between IT and the business, lagging employee engagement, substandard operations — just about every area required for success. That’s the conclusion of a July 2018 report from Capgemini Digital Transformation Institute and MIT Sloan School of Management, which surveyed more than 1,300 executives […]

Juni

2018

GDPR. GDPR Everywhere …

On May 27 the GDPR/DSGVO took complete effect and our websites will never be the same. The law came into effect all the way back in 2016, but we were given a two-year grace period to bring our websites up to standard. For many people the law came from nowhere and compliance was left to […]

Mai

2018

So You Want to Build an Online Shop?

I was recently asked to assist with the creation of an online shop. I have written here before about building a website, but an online shop raises further interesting questions. The website will not just be a source of information, but will be a place of commerce and legally binding transactions (above and beyond the […]

April

2018

The Digital 1%

Elysium, In Time, Upside Down – some of the many dystopian stories where a small segment of society with access to the best tech (and quality of life) pits itself against the rest (of us) who are relying on outdated tech (and probably living in ghettos). We probably notice the cool tech more than we do […]

März

2018

See Jack Code. See Jane Code. Code Kids Code!

We are moving soon to another state; one which has Latin in the school curriculum. Our son is quite good with languages, already speaking English, German, and Russian – but he is a bit worried about Latin (“Where do they speak Latin?”). No one would disagree that Education is good, but we could argue about what an […]

Februar

2018

A Shout Out for WordPress

I have been giving a lot of WordPress workshops lately, and was wondering what I should write about this month. Looking through my past posts, I saw my Shout out for Drupal and thought it perhaps unfair that I have not written anything about WordPress. So here we are. What is this WordPress CMS anyway? Here is […]

Januar

2018

Smarte Senioren

Alltagskompetenzen und Lebensstil!

Januar

2018

Beware of Technology Bearing Gifts

We have had many discussions with people both for and against having “Alexa” at home or in the office. Black Friday decided us for the small Echo Dot in the end. I mean, HALF PRICE! Alexa took a few days to train – whether she was training us or we were training her is up for […]

Dezember

2017

A Very Techy Christmas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the office,Programmers were working, their coding was flawless.Scrum notes were stacked on the tablets with care,In hopes that The Client soon would be there. Designers were nestled all snug by their screens,While visions of InDesign danced in their dreams.My team on the sofa and me with a snack,Had […]

November

2017

(What is) Responsive Design?

When people talk about a Responsive Website, they are usually talking about one that works well on a mobile phone. Responsive means however, that it should work on any size screen. Even larger ones. There are more than 200 (about) different standard size screens from mobile ohones to desktop screens. What about the screens you […]

Oktober

2017

Marketing Never Sleeps

Trying to figure out what’s the best way to communicate with prospective students? Do you use email or social media? Do you prefer telephone contact, messaging, or a written letter? What’s the best way for enrolment professionals to meet their goals in this fast-changing & highly competitive environment?

Juli

2017

I Click Therefore I am

We were recently told by a friend it was “pretty scary” how you always seemed to see items advertised on one platform which you had viewed on another platform. At some level, it probably is disconcerting. Tracking pixels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon) are one of many ways websites repeat to users what they see on another site, in the […]

Juni

2017

Do You Really Need a Responsive Website?

Recently a company relaunched their website. They had a website made for them which is neither responsive nor offers a mobile option off to the side of the desktop version. This company is not a client of ours, but we do know one of the main stakeholders. Interested, we of course asked about the reasoning […]

Mai

2017

Our Relationship with (Tech) Things

„Technology. Everyone’s so afraid of missing what’s next they never bother to fix/optimise what’s here now.“ I read this tweet by Luke Wroblewski a few days after the team had the same sort of conversation during a project meeting. We were reviewing what to keep and what to throw out of a website. The client wanted […]

April

2017

The Ghost in the Design

We may think of Mobile First and Responsive Design being in answer to a mostly mobile phone accessed internet. However, Samsung just unwrapped its new 3400 pixel monitor and kids are accessing the internet more and more from their game consoles. So how do we ensure our websites will be seen regardless of device size? Mobile Different, […]

März

2017

Our Take on User Experience

Two User Experiences in the last week stand out in my mind – one rewarding and one hellishly frustrating, and both involving accessing an account on a banking website. According to Wikipedia „User experience (UX) refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful […]

Februar

2017

Digital Culture 101

I was asked in January to give a talk to a class of students who had spent the term studying Cultural Diversity. While you won’t be able to enjoy the excitement of actually being there – touching a old ‚brick‘ mobile phone or marvelling at the super presentation graphics – the subject of Digital Culture […]

Januar

2017

A Real Game Changer

Thought your „web handicap“ was good? Well, Google will begin testing a Mobile First search index this year. What does this mean? In a nutshell, if your website is not mobile friendly – and by website I mean not only the layout and design, but also the content – your website could be indexed AFTER the website […]

Dezember

2016

Is That an App I See Before Me?

Remember the amazing world of Fax Marketing? Mobile phones that only dialed numbers? The first website you worked with? How did we manage before all this tech came along? Obviously not very well, because soon afterwards the App arrived. Google and Apple opened their app stores in 2008 and today we spend most of our […]

November

2016

The Student in the Machine

A recent article in Times Higher Education addressed big data and student recruitment. A very timely article. During the recent US election campaign, President Donald Trump spent considerably more of his budget on big data voter research (this is not polling) than Hillary Clinton. Some of his money went to Cambridge Analytica whose clients have included the UK Ministry […]

Oktober

2016

Click Me!

It is said that Higher Education student recruitment is a 4 billion dollar business – and that is just in the US. We were crunching the numbers the other day, comparing the number of freshies with the average cost of recruiting a student, and we are going to suggest that that number is probably really kind […]

September

2016

The Prior Prior Year

Starting fall 2015 American college and university students were able to apply for federal student aid based on their family’s income from two year’s earlier (this year for 2018). This will be available for all students seeking financial aid for the 2017-2018 academic year.

August

2016

A Shout Out for Drupal

Just exercising our fingers here and getting our thoughts together between support requests. Feel free to jump up and down, cheer, laugh, or bang your head on the desk, or simply raise your eyebrow – as the mood takes you. What is this Drupal CMS anyway? Here is the elevator version. Haberdashery, Sporting Goods, Ladies […]

Juni

2016

What is this Design Thinking Anyway?

Card Sorting workshops are an integral part of our (and probably your) website projects. Possibly a little less common is taking that to the next level. Our client wanted a new approach to their website relaunch, and had never tried Design Thinking. We wanted to give their team the chance to let their imaginations loose and let them […]

Mai

2016

Writing for the Web

What’s the difference between print and web writing? Print readers read, web users scan. Your audience(s) will use a different reading style for print and another for the web. Online readers are more time goal-focused and want to quickly locate the information and solutions they need.

April

2016

The Client Worksheet

So you want to have an agency build your website. Time to get ready. While it is easy to make the simple complicated, it takes skill to make the complex feel simple. We’ve put together this handy worksheet to help you capture your vision for the project. Think of this document as a business plan […]

März

2016

Defining New Defaults in Web Design

I read this really GREAT article (from 2013) while researching a talk on Responsive Design. The subject of the article is the defaults that exist in web communication and how it is important to set some new ones.

Februar

2016

To Code or Not to Code …

You don’t need a degree in Computer Science to code. In fact, some of the better coders out there have degrees in literature and languages. It’s never too late to learn code – and learning, just like any language, makes you literate – and adds another skill that might just translate into earnings. Computational thinking can aid problem […]

Januar

2016

Mobile First

While „Content First“ should be your guiding principle, the term “mobile first” means creating a mobile version of your website first and then expanding to desktop and big screen. This is a good strategy as more than half of internet access is made from mobile devices. Read more about Mobile First …

Dezember

2015

Do You Need a CMS?

So you want to build, or perhaps re-launch a website. You have copy, images, tips from your friends and colleagues, probably a good idea about what your competition is doing. You have a domain name, possibly a hosting company, you have a navigation list and maybe a design idea mapped out in pen. This you […]

November

2015

People Visit Your Site for 90 Seconds

Your website may be a visitor’s only experience with you; your design and content need to be personal and convincing throughout. Until a student actually enrolls, they are still in the decision making process, and every step of that process can either encourage them to continue moving forward – or give them cause for concern.

Oktober

2015

Planning a Successful Web Relaunch

From our workshop at the German Bundesverband Hochschulkommunikation Jahrestagungen 2015 together with Comm-Press.

September

2015

Making a Good First Impression

No matter how you slice it, students must be able to find your message, easily digest it, feel it speak to them, and then be able to quickly act upon it. Regardless of time or place, your visitors need to be able to engage with you. There is no surprise that the top trends in […]

August

2015

(Understanding) Digital (as Part of a Complete) Strategy

Far back in 2009, it was predicted that internet advertising – just one small part of a digital strategy – would overtake TV advertising by 2010. This was inaccurate – as internet ad spend outstripped TV ad spend a good three months before the end of 2009. Most companies now spend much more on online […]

Juni

2015

The Challenge of Mobile in Effective Communication

(This comes from a talk we gave to undergraduate communication majors in Bremen in February 2015.) As producers of content we generally want people to see it and to respond to it, and until fairly recently this has been simple enough to realize.

Mai

2015

Why is SEO Important?

We use the internet … a lot. Many of our clients ask us about SEO, and while we are not experts in the field, we have a good grasp on the topic. So, sit back and let us share our knowledge with you (taken from an SEO Workshop)

April

2015

Content is King

The internet knows few borders except probably poor WLAN. Content should be accessible, and if we want reach this means another language. Building a responsive, multi-language site is challenging and exciting. Drupal makes it easier too. Read more about Content Strategy …

März

2015

Open Source

„Free“ is not usually a word you think of when planning a website, but it is not a dream. Open Source CMS are free CMS. Of course, you may need a developer or two … Three of the top CMS on the market are just that – Open Source. Compare Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress …

Februar

2015

Understanding International Students

Hobsons recently released a new report called Beyond the data: Influencing international student decision making. The report is based on Hobsons’ International Student Survey and provides important insights into how international students decide where they will go for study abroad.

Januar

2015

The Promiscuous College Come-ons …

Something in the archive of the NY Times Sunday Review about the heating up of application season caught our attention. Not only are colleges marketing like crazy these days, but students are casting their nets ever wider in the number of applications they submit. The internet makes this easy.