Posts by David Poteet

Workshop: “Beyond Blah Blah” at EdUI

David Poteet will be teaching the full-day version of Beyond Blah Blah: Creating Great Content for the Web at EdUI on September 21st. In this workshop we take lessons we've learned and the best tips from our favorite experts to teach you how to:

1. Figure out what content people want in the first place. Learn how to use Mental Models, KJ sessions, Carewords surveys, search logs and more to uncover top audience goals, then organize and prioritize your content.
2. Use words that smell like goals – an introduction to information “scent." Learn how to write links and organize pages so that people can find their way to their goals.
3. Write visually. Learn how to lay out pages to support scanning, understanding and retention.
4. Say something they'll care about and remember. Learn how to get past the “blah blah filter” in your brain to reach the imagination, ultimately motivating action.

Usability Testing Hack – “Digital” Paper Prototyping

Sometimes the best ideas are born out of last minute necessity. We had an experience recently that led to a great new technique for conducting paper prototypes without the paper. It gives us many of the advantages of paper prototyping but it can even be done remotely.

Understanding the Medium: A University Looks at Publishing on the Web

This is a paper I presented at WebEdge in Austin, Texas in April 1995. I was working as a designer at Radford University at the time. I dug it up and posted it to our blog because it's funny to go back and look at where we were then, and see how my predictions turned out – David.

I was asked to speak recently to a group of public relations professionals on the impact of technology on university publications. As a graphic designer my immediate thought was obvious. Technology has altered…