Three Recommendations were published today to enhance data interoperability, especially in government data. Each one specifies an RDF vocabulary (a set of properties and classes) for conveying a particular kind of information:

• The Data Catalog (DCAT) Vocabulary is used to provide information about available data sources. When data sources are described using DCAT, it becomes much easier to create high-quality integrated and customized catalogs including entries from many different providers. Many national data portals are already using DCAT.
• The Data Cube Vocabulary brings the cube model underlying SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange, a popular ISO standard) to Linked Data. This vocabulary enables statistical and other regular data, such as measurements, to be published and then integrated and analyzed with RDF-based tools.
• The Organization Ontology provides a powerful and flexible vocabulary for expressing the official relationships and roles within an organization. This allows for interoperation of personnel tools and will support emerging socially-aware software.

All three vocabularies have been developed by the Government Linked Data Working Group, but they are applicable beyond just government data. For a list of data sources or software known to be using these vocabularies, see the “Implementation Report” linked from each document. Learn more about the Data Activity.

The following is a guest post by Zach Saucier. Zach cooks up some pretty inspiring animations over on CodePen. I couldn't be happier that he wanted to share some of the tricks he uses to create them, especially because they are things we all strive for: efficiency, reusability, practicality, and speed.

I've fallen into the habit of creating CSS animations in my free time, inspired by things I come across during the day. To create the animations as I imagine them using as few elements as possible, I've found some tricks to make CSS do things you might not know it could do. I'd like to share them with you.

#1) Jump to another state mid-animation

CSS animation makes it easy to transition properties to a new value over time. They also have the ability to jump properties to a new value virtually instantly. The trick is to use two keyframes with a very small difference, around .001% works well.

@keyframes toggleOpacity {
      50% { opacity: 1; } /* Turn off */
      50.001% { opacity: 0.4; }
    
      /* Keep off state for a short period */
    
      52.999% { opacity: 0.4; } /* Turn back on */
      53% { opacity: 1; }
    }

The following is an extreme example of this, toggling opacity and a text-shadow to mimic a flickering billboard light.

See the Pen No Vacancy 404 CSS Only by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#2) Negative animation delays

A positive animation delay is where the animation waits a certain amount of time to begin. A negative animation delay starts the animation immediately, as if that amount of time has already gone by. In other words, start the animation at a state further into the animation cycle. This allows animations to be reused across several elements, given all that needs changing is the timing.

Here is an example of that where each circle begins immediately at a different state in the animation cycle:

See the Pen Circle Snake by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

#3) Proportional animations

I try to make everything that I put into production be as responsive as possible, including my animations. Responsiveness for CSS animations is not possible for all animations I have created, but sometimes it is, using percentages and other relative units.

In many of my animations, I use elements like circles and squares which need the a proportional width and height. You might think I need to use fixed width & height values to keep them that way, but that's not the case! I am able to create them using a percentage width, zero height, and percentage padding. The padding-bottom is the trick to keep it proportional to the width, like this:

.container {
      position: relative;
      display: block;
      width: 100%;
      height: 0;
      padding-bottom: 100%;
    }

You can see this in practice on the following demo by changing the size of the window it is in. The demo also makes use of negative animation delays.

See the Pen Responsive CSS bars by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#4) Changing transform-origin mid-animation

While working on one of my animations, I was surprised to find out that not only can transformation-origin be changed mid-animation, it is also animatable! In the example below, this allows us to create one animation using rotations on different axes instead of using four separate animations.

See the Pen Change transformation-origin mid animation by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

The downside to this trick is that you can't use animation-mode: forwards; for only a part of an animation. This means that we have to re-position the element to an equivalent of its state before applying the change in transformation-origin. In the above example, this is done by using translates to mimic the rotation's effects. However, this technique can get tedious on more complex examples, as seen here.

#5) Negative transform-origins

You are able to set a negative transform-origin, which is useful for things like creating circular movement paths. Instead of specifying specific translate and rotation values using one element to create circular animations as Lea Verou describes, we can do it much more simply by using negative transform-origin values in addition to a second element or pseudo-element (one element if we want the element to rotate as well as move in a circular path). By using varying values of a negative transform origin, we can reuse the same animation for multiple elements while still retaining circular motion for each.

See the Pen CSS Circular Motion Technique by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen.

#6) Box shadow magic

For animations of simple no-content shapes, box-shadow is quite useful. The box-shadow property can create multiple borders around elements. That idea, combined with some displacement, can create new animatable "elements" out of no additional HTML elements. This enables us to create the following animation, which appears to be six circular elements rotating circularly, but is in fact one element with some offset box-shadow shapes.

See the Pen Single element color loader by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

Sadly, percents are not supported by any box-shadow properties so they are not as easily responsive as a native HTML element. However they can still be changed manually in an animation or by using transform:scale(n) on the actual HTML element which they are a part of.

#7) Using pseudo-elements

Similarly with box-shadows, pseudo elements can be used to add more content to the appearance of a single element. They can have separate animations from their parent, their own box-shadows, and are very similar to being child elements of without the HTML markup. This let's us create amazing single element creations like the one below.

See the Pen Single Element gif Recreation by Zach Saucier (@Zeaklous) on CodePen

In the example, all of the large circles around the middle flashing circle, as well as two of the smaller circles on the rim (opposite from each other) are box-shadows on the main element. The other two small circles are part of a pseudo-element's box-shadow and the ring made of dashes is an SVG applied as a background on the other pseudo element.

Some other things to note

Use transforms when you can

Transforms perform better than their non-transform counterparts as Paul Irish has shown (also). Primarily this means using scale and translate over changing the dimensions or top/left values.

Transforms also allow for more responsive design, allowing things such as scale to be used relative to their original size, as is shown in this animation by Amos.

Not using transforms can also cause problems that are hard to catch. For example, in this animation of mine the elements were being colored incorrectly in Chrome although the values themselves were correct. After switching it to use transforms all my problems were solved.

z-index can cause problems

I probably spend more time fixing z-index issues with my animations more than any other issue. Z-indexes are handled differently from vendor to vendor. In animations, the primary difference is that Mozilla does not animate z-index values, they have elements jump from one z-index to the next, whereas vendors like webkit do animate the z-index value.

Another thing to note is that if one wants their pseudo elements to appear behind their parent element, the pseudo element must have a negative z-index and the parent cannot have a stacking other than the default, which means you can't apply a z-index or anything else that takes the parent out of its natural stacking context.

One last trick dealing with z-index is one that deals with opacity. Whenever an element is given an opacity other than the default "1", it gains its own stacking context. For more information on this, check out Philip Walton's post

Get inspired

Whether it's something you see in the real world, an interesting web page that you find online, part of a video intro, a gif, or something else entirely, find things that you think may be possible to create and try to do so!

I have found that not looking at how the original author created it enables me to learn, to create it in a unique style, and sometimes even do it in a more efficient manor. Even if I end up failing at my original intention, I always become more comfortable with or learn more about the language I'm using. Often times I have something to show for it, even if it's not as grand as I would had originally hoped. Other times I'm completely surprised by how awesome my creation is when I didn't even mean for it to be!

I hope that this article helps you construct more awesome creations, even if you learned nothing from the specific techniques!

CSS Animation Tricks: State Jumping, Negative Delays, Animating Origin, and More is a post from CSS-Tricks

The RDF Working Group has published two Recommendations today:

• JSON-LD 1.0. JSON is a useful data serialization and messaging format. This specification defines JSON-LD, a JSON-based format to serialize Linked Data. The syntax is designed to easily integrate into deployed systems that already use JSON, and provides a smooth upgrade path from JSON to JSON-LD. It is primarily intended to be a way to use Linked Data in Web-based programming environments, to build interoperable Web services, and to store Linked Data in JSON-based storage engines.
• JSON-LD 1.0 Processing Algorithms and API. This specification defines a set of algorithms for programmatic transformations of JSON-LD documents. Restructuring data according to the defined transformations often dramatically simplifies its usage. Furthermore, this document proposes an Application Programming Interface (API) for developers implementing the specified algorithms.

Learn more about the Data Activity.

When it comes to lettering, there’s something about a handmade project that just stops us in our tracks. In this day and age, with so many beautiful fonts accessible to us at just the press of a button, the fact that there are still amazing designers willing to go above and beyond the norm and hand-letter their work impresses us to no end.

This dozen projects are no different; each of them made us stop and say, “Wow.” We hope you’ll feel the same way.

Lisa Nemetz’s identity for VQV

Argentina-based designer Lisa Nemetz’s identity for VQV, an organic restaurant, positively demands attention. The masterful, almost casual brushwork perfectly evokes the texture and vibrance of the food on offer.

Bryan Patrick Todd’s Shelby Park mural

I focused on a statement that reflected Shelby Park’s positive outlook and growth as a tight-knit community.

Louisville’s own Bryan Patrick Todd, a graphic designer and artist, documented the process of creating this gorgeous mural he was commissioned to create. Once the initial design and mockups were completed, he worked with a sign painter to see that the mural accurately reflected his design.

Jason Vandenberg’s hand-lettered projects

Toronto-based artist and graphic designer Jason Vandenberg initially caught our eye with his hand-drawn project entitled Earn Your Sleep on Instagram. On his website, however, Vandenberg documents each step of his process, from initial sketches and drafts, to the final, vectorized results. Worth a look!

Thomas Pena’s hand-lettered quotes

Hailing from Orlando, Florida, Thomas Pena’s impressive Behance profile showcases a knack for typography that extends across a variety of media, along with an arresting capability for hand lettering. His set of three hand-lettered inspirational quotes, edited using a faux-chalkboard effect, would make a fantastic wall decal or poster triptych.

Russell Shaw’s hand-lettering for the Illumination project

The Illumination Project is a DVD study series for small groups, developed from the video content of a live event held in Portland, Oregon. Russell Shaw’s hand-lettering takes it beyond the ordinary and creates an impactful and memorable product for young adults.

Nina Harcus’s Type Delight

With this project, Nina Harcus, a designer and foodie, features handmade typography visuals using ingredients like flour, pie dough, and other food items, to accompany the recipes in a book. These handmade visuals tell the story of a Patisserie chef named Marcelle, as he begins to fall in love with typography. As fans of typography and delicious food, we couldn’t overlook this tasty treat!

All Tropicana Co’s playlist project

Hailing from Monterrey, Mexico, graphic designer and illustrator Robba Saldaña has set out on a mission to create a different typographical representation of various songs by internationally renowned artists spanning the last several decades, and the results are astounding. From his depiction of Johnny Cash’s Hurt to The Chemical Brothers’ Galvanize, this collection is definitely one to watch.

Martina Flor’s Completely London cover

The brief was to create the cover artwork with headlines done with a visual that ties to learning.

When August Media made the decision to approach Berlin’s Martina Flor for the cover artwork for the magazine Completely London, they inspired one of the more notable covers we’ve seen to date. The minor irregularities in the lettering make it clear that Flor took the time to create this entire piece by hand, an artistic undertaking that speaks volumes about her commitment to her work.

MASH’s Chalk it Up collaboration

MASH, the collective of graphic designers and typographers Mary Faber, Alice Lo, Saranna Drury, and Haylie Gray, created this collaborative masterpiece showcasing lyrics from New Zealand musician Dave Dobbyn’s song Slice of Heaven over a weekend. Their blog entry about the piece describes the process they used to create such a large-scale monument to chalkboard typography.

MASH has been long time fans of Dana Tanamachi’s awesome chalkboard type…and we wanted to follow in her footsteps and give it a go ourselves. …We were all allocated a word or two to design digitally in Adobe Illustrator and then we used a projector to project our designs onto the custom built wall. Next we sketched our letters onto the blackboard and chalked it up!!

Be sure to watch the video for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the work that went into this amazing project.

Jason Carne’s vintage hand-lettering

The act of being “taught” how to be an artist always felt silly and counter-productive to my creative process… I decided early on that I wanted to teach myself everything I possibly could on my own to ensure that my approach and style was completely my own[.]

New Jersey designer Jason Carne may only be in his twenties, but his hand-lettered designs seem to have traveled forward through time. From film props, to t-shirts for Def Leppard, to beautifully imagined designs for small local businesses, be sure to check out the entirety of his collection.

Yulia Brodskaya’s hand-crafted typography collection

Russian-born artist Yulia Brodskaya has a unique gift for folding paper into visually compelling creations. Formerly called “quilling,” this paper-crafting technique is believed to have been used by monks and nuns in the Renaissance era when creating flourishes to adorn religious objects. Whether it’s her embellished version of a snippet from a $5000 bill or her cover for O magazine, this collection of papergraphy (as Yulia herself has deemed it) is worthy of perusal.

Axek Efremov’s doodles

So many great hand-lettering projects are the result of personal exploration. Axek’s creations, many of which feature hand lettering, are beautifully executed, for no reason other than, in his words, to defy laziness.

Have you used hand-lettering in a project? How well does hand-lettering work online? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Resize Sense + Watermark Sense for Mac – only $14!

Ever hear of shadow warehouses? Profit taking, monopolies, corruption, and the ability to disrupt international trade on an whim? Yeah, it should give the conspiracy theories plenty of ammunition. Do we really want to do that? For the sake of intellectual discussion? Yes, yes we do.

Millions of Tons of Metals Stashed in Shadow Warehouses

By Tatyana Shumsky Dec. 26, 2013

BLOOMBERG NEWS- The world's metal is slipping into the shadows.

Banks, hedge funds, commodity merchants and others are stashing tens of millions of tons of aluminum, copper, nickel and zinc in a hidden system of warehouses that span the globe.

These facilities are known to some in the industry as "shadow warehouses" because they are unregulated and don't disclose their holdings.

They operate outside the London Metal Exchange system of warehouses, the traditional home for these metals.

As of October, a record seven million to 10 million tons of aluminum were being housed in these facilities, in countries as far apart as Malaysia and the Netherlands, according to estimates from several analysts.

The amount dwarfs the 5.5 million tons of aluminum in the LME-licensed warehouses, based on LME figures as of Tuesday. Just 12 months ago, the figures were about equal.

A similar shift is taking place with other industrial metals, analysts say (NewzGuyz does not approve of using anonymous sources. What kind of analysts are these? Market analysts or business analysts? For all we know, they could be the guy on the corner who claims to be a psychoanalyst). As a result, producers and consumers are bracing for potentially wild swings in metals prices as market participants have difficulty accurately gauging supplies of these metals. With no clear insight into how much metal is in the shadow system, setting prices will become increasingly difficult, they say.

Analysts and traders (again... who are these anonymous analysts? can't you at least tell us who they work for? and now anonymous traders, too? That has to make the information more reliable! Actually, no. It doesn't) say the flow of metal into shadow warehouses already is making prices move in unpredictable ways—such as when a large amount of unaccounted-for metal suddenly makes its way onto the market.

"It's a real concern for anyone in the industry that metal can be sucked away into a nonreporting location with no expectation or date as to when it's going to be available again," said Nick Madden, senior vice president and chief supply-chain officer with Atlanta-based Novelis Inc., an aluminum-products maker that is among the world's biggest buyers of the metal (Finally, a named source! thank you!).

"The risk here is that the metal gets controlled by fewer and fewer hands, whose interests and business model is probably conflicting with that of end users," he said.

Industrial metals end up in all sorts of everyday goods—from aluminum soda cans to copper wires inside refrigerators to zinc-plated steel in roofs. Turbulent raw-materials prices can make it more expensive to produce such goods when prices spike or limit output from mines and smelters when prices drop below their cost of production.

The lack of transparency is making this shadow system increasingly attractive to institutions seeking to profit from information that other buyers and sellers don't have. Some companies also are seeking a cheaper alternative to the LME warehouses, which can be 10 times as expensive as the unregulated storage, analysts and traders say (Gah! Just when we thought you were going to start naming sources! Are these the same "analysts and traders" from earlier, or new ones? NewzGuyz wants to know!).

However, metal owners can face higher interest rates from banks if they wish to use metal stored in shadow warehouses as collateral for loans, because banks see the LME system as less risky, analysts say.

Five companies operate 75% of the LME's 778 licensed warehouses. All own shadow facilities as well, people familiar with the companies said.

In some instances, a single firm runs licensed and unlicensed warehouses in the same building, with the metal counted by the LME separated from hidden stockpiles by a chain-link fence, said David Wilson, a commodities analyst with Citigroup.

Until 2010, most warehouses were owned by logistics firms like Netherlands-based C. Steinweg Group. But as metal-financing trades became more popular, C. Steinweg was joined by units of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. as well as commodity traders Glencore Xstrata PLC of the U.K. and Switzerland and Trafigura Beheer BV of the Netherlands.

All five companies declined to comment.

Metal consumers like Novelis say that prices could increase sharply if warehouse owners buy up large amounts of metal, creating a shortage.

Alcoa Inc., the largest U.S. aluminum maker, has the opposite worry. The company fears aluminum prices are vulnerable to a shock if a large amount of metal suddenly gets moved from shadow warehouses back to the LME's facilities, said Tim Reyes, president of materials management at Alcoa.

"If one day, 2 million tons of aluminum show up and it just went from one pocket to another pocket, it has an impact on price that it shouldn't, and that's a concern for us," Mr. Reyes said.

Such volatility makes it harder to make production plans, he said.

(The article could've ended here and gotten a C. Because of the next four paragraphs it recieved a D, making it the first NewzGuyz featured article to receive such a low grade. Thanks for making your bias visible once more, Wall Street Journal.)

Many metal buyers and producers say they are worried that new rules approved by the LME in November will speed up the flow of metal into shadow warehouses.

Starting April 1, LME warehouses with wait times exceeding 50 days must deliver out more metal than they take in. The delays help boost income from rent and increase the fees paid for faster service, so warehouse owners are expected to increase LME rent charges to offset any reduction in profits.

The rules strike at a trade that has grown sharply since 2010, where investors buy the cheap physical metal and sell a futures contract on the LME at a higher price.

Meantime, the metal sits in an LME-licensed warehouse until the futures contract expires. Higher warehouse costs make this trade less profitable.

If applied today, the rules would flush aluminum out of LME-licensed warehouses holding 3.5 million tons of the metal, equal to 7% of annual global demand. Warehouses holding copper and zinc also would be required to speed up the release of their stockpiles.

In a Nov. 7 report, the exchange said one potential negative side effect of the new regulations is that more metal could end up in shadow warehouses.

The LME in a statement said it has a duty to run a fair and orderly market and that the warehouse bottlenecks posed a range of issues in terms of price discovery.

The rule changes were made following a consultation process that included an examination of all concerns raised about the possible unintended consequences of any changes, it said.

"We believe that the package of measures contained in the proposal is, on balance, the best solution for all market users," the exchange said.

Since 1989, the University of Minnesota LSSURP has overseen and coordinated several life sciences programs. The programs begin with a joint orientation weekend, followed by participation in a 10-week research project under the direction of a University of Minnesota faculty mentor and numerous special activities focused on professional development as well as social interaction. The summer research experience concludes with a poster symposium and banquet in August.

LSSURP has given students that have been underrepresented in the life sciences the experience and training that enhances their ability to pursue a career in research. This represents a long-standing commitment to increasing the impact and quality of life science research at the University of Minnesota, which is strengthened when there is diversity in our faculty and students. We strongly encourage students whose backgrounds encompass diversity in culture, disability, ethnicity, gender, and economic background to apply for our summer research positions.

Program Dates:  May 29 - August 9, 2014*

* The application for Summer 2014 is available now.

An interesting look at squatter laws from across the pond, and how some entreprenuers and frustrated commercial property owners have found a way to make money while helping out less fortunate full-time workers. Everybody wins, except the squatters.

In London, "Guardians" Live in Empty Office Buildings

By Art Patnaude, Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2014

LONDON—Nicole Vloeimans, a 31-year-old worker at an NGO, lives in the very center of this expensive city. She has a 755-square-foot floor to herself. She pays £389 a month, about $635.

"I don't really know what to do with the space," says Ms. Vloeimans. "I don't have that much furniture."

There are some hitches. No parties are allowed. She needs permission to go on vacation. There is a hole in the kitchen ceiling. She had to paint over a swath of graffiti. The four-week notice to move out can come any time.

But so great is the demand for a reasonable flat that Londoners like Ms. Vloeimans are lining up to live in empty office buildings.

London's housing market is soaring. The average price for a home in the capital was £396,646 in November, Land Registry data show. The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in central London was £1,368 in the 12 months ending in September, according to data from the U.K. government's Valuation Office Agency.

The boom has attracted growing throngs to a cheaper option: being a guardian.

Ms. Vloeimans's home is an abandoned office building once inhabited by squatters ("WE CALL IT EVOLUTION, U CALL IT A CRIME" reads graffiti in her kitchen). Squatters were evicted from her building last January. In exchange for the discounted rent, Ms. Vloeimans is meant to keep them from coming back.

The need for guardians is in part a consequence of Britain's peculiar laws on squatting. It isn't a crime to squat in an empty nonresidential building. It is a crime to remove a squatter without a lengthy civil-eviction court procedure.

So developers looking to rehab—or tear down—a building will fill it with guardians to keep the squatters away before work begins. The presence of guardians is often enough to deter squatters, because it is illegal to squat in an occupied building.

John Durkin, 55, lives in an old police station overlooking the River Thames. The condominiums next door sell to celebrities for around £2 million. He pays £450 a month.

"It's like being 17 years old, and your father tells you that he has a flat in London. 'And if you don't tell your mother, I'll let you keep it,' " said Mr. Durkin, a psychologist.

The living room has Wi-Fi and a stunning view, but his bedroom overlooking the train tracks has no electricity, meaning no heating. "I'm OK with a cold nose," he said.

Squatters were kicked out of an old brick building near Liverpool Street Station, one of London's main train hubs, in August. The front door opens to warped flooring, one dusty table, stained chairs, drums, a keyboard and amplifiers. A brown couch with yellow stuffing sprouting from its back sits against the front windows.

"They've done it up nice. You should have seen it before," said Arthur Duke, owner of Live-In Guardians, which supplies guardians for building owners. This place, at £250 a month, sits far below the usual properties he takes on.

Becoming a guardian isn't easy. "Demand is just out of control," said Mr. Duke. Live-In Guardians has about 2,000 people on its waiting list—by far the biggest backlog he has had since starting the business in 2009, he said. When a new property comes along, says Mr. Duke, 50 people will come to the open house.

Hip neighborhoods go fast. "If we put a property up on the website in Hackney, it's gone in five minutes," said Zoe Oakes of Ad Hoc, one of the largest guardian firms in London.

Guardian companies, which have guardians' fees as a source of revenue, tout themselves as cheaper alternatives to traditional security firms. Guardians need to be employed full time and can be subject to background checks.

In the city's gentrifying East End sits an "unremarkable three-story brick clad building" for light industry firms, according to a 2011 document of design plans. The building is set to be torn down. Meantime, guardians live there.

Oreste Noda, 46, is a Cuban percussionist. After moving into the building two years ago, his massive apartment became a hub for jam sessions.

"People would just come up from the street and be like, 'Man, this is great, what's the name of this club?' " said Michael Angelov, who lives in the same building. "I'd have to tell them it isn't a club, it's a home."

Mr. Angelov, a 31-year-old filmmaker, lives with his girlfriend in what he reckons was a media company's office. It is clean and has hardwood floors, nice desks and sofas.

His two bedrooms have glass walls. When friends stay over, "they're a bit like, 'What's this?' " he said. "But when it's just me and my girlfriend, it's fun."

For London's young professionals, guarding is a respectable alternative to squatting. Sam Golden, 24, who works in public relations, says he learned about property guardians from a longtime squatter—who was griping about capitalists edging in on squatters' turf (NewzGuyz doesn't really see why this detail is necessary, other than possibly an attempt to use guilt-by-association against anticapitalists).

Mr. Golden signed up with Guardians of London. Squatting "was on the fringes of the law, which is not viable for young professionals," he said. Now he lives in a once-empty building, one tube stop away from Wembley Stadium.

Other than having to take two days off work to clean the place, which included clearing a dead pigeon off one of the two pool tables, "it worked out perfectly."

Guardians do occasionally have to do some guarding. Once, the front door of a building in the southern city of Brighton managed by Oaksure Property Protection was smashed. Guardian Andrew Faley, 26, heard the sound and went down at 5 a.m. to check it out. He called it in to Oaksure's owners, and the door was fixed, he said.

Mark Ovenden, 50, has five oak-paneled rooms overlooking a central-London park. The bedroom is "about as big as any flat in Paris," said Mr. Ovenden, who lived in the French capital for six years. In the office Mr. Ovenden, a freelance television producer, has a wall-size world map detailing locations of major oil wells—a perk left over from an oil brokerage.

Getting around parts of the building without electricity requires light from his iPhone's flash. His two bathroom sinks lack hot water. And like all guardians, Mr. Ovenden is well aware that his time in the large, centrally located apartment for a discounted rent is fleeting. "I know we'll get moved out eventually. I'm prepared to make some sacrifices."

BIAS DETECTOR:

The value you bring to any project as a designer or user experience professional isn’t only your ability to execute a series of tasks. Good clients will recognize and appreciate the guidance, recommendations and opinions that come with your experience. It’s up to you to be forthcoming and to position yourself as a valuable thinker from the start.

It’s also up to you to base your recommendations on more than subjective opinion. This is especially true in the rapidly evolving world of mobile, where clients typically require as much education as they do execution.

Project-specific research provides the dual benefit of enhancing your general knowledge while improving your ability to make (and sell) decisions as the project progresses. In my experience, gaining that critical buy-in is much easier when recommendations are based on research conducted for the project.

In this post, I’ll refer to specific mobile research projects I’ve conducted and build a case for audience surveys, participatory discovery sessions and review of analytics data.

Practicality Vs. Personality

A paper from Carleton University (PDF) suggests that consumers simply have jobs to do and seek to employ the best product or service to do it. Applying this thinking to how users interact with mobile websites places more importance on “What do I need to find/do” than on anything related to their demographic. Mobile Web users have jobs to do that aren’t driven by age, gender, education, income, etc. This “practicality” is key to how I approach research.

“The jobs that customers are trying to get done cannot be deciphered from purchased databases, but rather from watching, participating, writing and thinking.” (Source of quote and image: Finding the Right Job For Your Product)

Fitting Research And Analysis Into Your Process

Mobile research is a considerable value-add that should be baked into your services to the client from the start. It enables you to make better decisions and to inform your client of what their audience expects from a mobile experience.

I recently finished guiding Loyalist College through a research phase that included a mobile component. The project is currently in production and is slated to launch early this year.

In this case, I faced unique challenges when selling the value of the proposed research to my client. Loyalist had already conducted research, but the research was more focused on uncovering general best practices and on clarifying the psychographics and demographics of its customers.

I suggested adding a more practical, goal-oriented research component (which was ultimately accepted) as a way to help us build a better product. Most of your clients probably understand well who their customers are but lack a solid grasp of what those customers want from a mobile experience.

Audience Research

The best way to determine what users expect to find and do in the mobile channel is to ask.

There are a few ways to approach this.

Participatory Discovery Sessions

The Loyalist College project included two sessions in which members of the target audience were asked, quite simply, what they expected to find and do, and how these tasks might best be performed on a mobile device. I also asked how many of the participants use a smartphone as their primary computing device. The data collection method in a session like this is as follows:

1. Ask participants to contribute approximately 10 things they expect to find and/or do when using their mobile device in the context of the products or services provided by your client. Each item should be written on a sticky note.
2. Collect the sticky notes and arrange them visibly, like on a wall or table.
3. Ask participants to review all suggestions and place a star or mark on the three responses that they think are most important.
4. Discuss the starred responses with the group to seek additional information.

Surveys

I’m working with 3M Canada on a consumer-facing mobile project that consists of multiple phases of research. In partnership with a research firm, we’re using surveys to learn more about how a very specific, targeted set of customers use their smartphones and what the probability is that they’d be interested in using the application we intend to build. We’ll use the results of this survey to define the features that will ultimately make it easier for users to do their job.

Building and distributing surveys are easy using a tool such as Fluid Surveys or Survey Monkey. If the budget is available, my advice is to seek the assistance of a research firm that can help you accurately craft the survey and find the most relevant set of participants. For a project with a tighter budget, you could certainly create, distribute and analyze a survey using a tool such as Fluid Surveys or Survey Monkey.

In my experience, once you’ve defined the purpose of the research initiative, the following are important to consider:

• Keep the questions focused and simple. Every question should tie back to the goal of the research and be focused on the expectations and habits of mobile users as they relate to the project. Keeping the questions simple lowers or eliminates any barriers to respond.
• Avoid open-ended questions. Whenever possible, pose questions that require respondents to answer yes or no, via multiple choice, or by rating on a scale. Data of this nature is much easier to analyze and allows you to build recommendations based on objective responses, rather than have to attempt to further interpret subjective feedback.
• Use incentives. A survey that I deployed for a project for the Golf Association of Ontario received over 5,000 responses. Our client was kind enough to offer an incentive of entering participants into a draw.
• Define your audience well. Soliciting responses from a general audience can be difficult, and the results are not always accurate. My suggestion is to work with your client to identify an audience (staff, customers, etc.) and to send the survey directly via an email list or other targeted communication channel.

Analytics Review

Slicing and reviewing analytics data from an existing Web presence can be an effective way to determine what mobile users are doing with the content and features available. For the Loyalist College project, I was interested in a simple report of the most popular content accessed from mobile devices.

Keep in mind, especially when using Google Analytics, that mobile phones and tablets are lumped together in the default “Mobile” group. Because mobile and tablet use cases are typically very different, I like to segment phones explicitly as part of the analysis. Here’s how:

1. Create a new custom advanced segment by selecting the arrow on the “Audience Overview” landing page.
   
2. Name the new segment (something like “Phones”).
   
3. In the “Technology” section, choose to include mobile traffic and exclude tablet traffic.
   

You can now analyze the data and create reports for phones only.

I recently used this approach in a large project for the Middlesex-London Health Unit. Part of our plan was to consider mobile as the cornerstone of a large Web redesign project and to treat the mobile experience as a priority from the start, rather than an afterthought. With access to the client’s analytics account, I was able to slice the data and reveal the following:

• On average, the website received 250 mobile visits per day.
• The most popular content for mobile users was a health-related game, information on immunization clinics and career opportunities.

Armed with information such as this, I was in a much better position not only to recommend how the content should be prioritized for mobile users but also to demonstrate the general importance of including mobile as a foundational element of the website redesign project.

I took a similar approach with the Loyalist project. In addition to identifying the number of mobile visitors and the content priorities of those users, I was able to communicate to my client that visits from mobile devices had doubled from 2012 to 2013.

Identifying Themes

Researching the expectations of mobile users has little value until the research is put to use. I like to include a step between research and execution in which I summarize the findings via a series of “themes.” Themes are a familiar concept that simplify the process of grouping findings together, while encompassing a number of tactics to be implemented in the project.

The research that I conducted for the Loyalist project revealed the importance of a centralized events calendar, especially on mobile. Using this data, I created a theme called “Events Matter” and outlined the results of the research and what the new mobile experience would do to capitalize on this theme. It’s important to be specific here and let your client know exactly what you think should be done to capitalize on the results of the research.

The themes can be used to create planning materials, like a creative brief, flowcharts or a scope of work document. Recently, I’ve found myself forgoing these components in favor of building visual concepts directly from the themes and spending more time in rapid iteration, as opposed to drawn-out planning.

Closing Thoughts

Mobile is causing the way we interact with the Web to change at an unforgiving pace, a shift that requires guidance from well-informed professionals like you. Your responsibility is not only to produce great work but to educate and guide your clients through something that most of them can’t keep up with.

Selling research as part of your process will be more effective if you can show clients specific examples of how you’ve used research in the past. My advice is to bake research into your next project as a value-add for the client. You can keep it simple by taking the following steps:

1. Conduct an analytics review, and use the data to support at least one key decision in the project.
2. Create a brief survey, and ask the client to provide access to it from their existing website. Again, use the results of the survey to support one key decision.

Continually build your research practice from project to project by going deeper with your analytics reviews, adding more survey questions, integrating discovery sessions and building complete themes that guide the project in a meaningful way.

Research is a fantastic, accessible way to increase your perceived value while helping to shape the future of the Web and ensuring that the software and websites we build keep pace with users’ ever-advancing expectations. Businesses value proof and, in my experience, appreciate a conversation that starts with explaining a body of proof before presenting a set of specific recommendations.

(al, ea, il)

© Jonathan Kochis for Smashing Magazine, 2014.