 before I dive into a bunch of specifics is this resource. I feel like this is my favorite favorite resource right now that I've been going to for about three months and one of the organizations that we work with at Square gets credit for it, which you should also check out. They're called Hosts for Humanities and they're kind of a brand new organization that's kind of the like an Airbnb but for those who are traveling because of some sort of medical emergency and the team that put that nonprofit that organization together then they all happened to work professionally within the usability space and there's been a lot that I know I've learned from them just the fact that they're the mission and what they do is benefiting so much from the fact that they have all these heuristics in mind and so I'd also encourage I know you're all in front of a computer right now to check out nngroup.com and I put the link at the bottom of that slide that nngroup.com and then their usability heuristics and I want to actually take a moment before we dive into more general broad trends to kind of walk through these when I said in the beginning about how I hope today can be a way for you to kind of see the old in a new way or see opportunities that exist. I think that the this guide and their kind of 10 usability rules in a sense can be this foundation for the way you think about and look at your work. So we'll just run through there's 10 of them and then we'll run through 10 more things of other completely separate things but I want to touch on each of these so their number one rule about the visibility of system status you can think about that as an indicator in life of like you are here on a map that if you see a map you're looking in a park you're in an airport the dot you are here in a guide for what's next and we can think about that with our systems and the technology that we're building the way we're having people flow through the environments that we engage with them online how can they know where they are what is the status that they have within the system the second one is great match between the system and the real world so anything that you are doing hopefully you're doing it in a way that you're speaking your users languages that you're using words phrases concepts that are familiar to to the user already and you're not redefining a word that already has a definition looks like I said these are kind of specific rules but if hopefully you all have the website pulled up and we'll kind of start that to look at later because I think these usability heuristics can be such a solid base for then everything else that we talk about during during this training together and so the the concept for number two is just never assume that your understanding of words or concepts will match those of your users to use what what people already know the next one is about user control and freedom and it's about how within our online spaces people make mistakes and we know that and then they can get lost or confused and that's why you have a health number maybe someone's signing up for membership or they're trying to make a donation and something unexpected happened or they navigated to a space within within your website that is not where they intended to be and so an example for what it means to give a user control and freedom is how within your digital spaces you can have kind of that emergency exit just like we have in our physical spaces how can you get out of here fourth one consistency and standards this is this is my favorite so there's this kind of this law within this usability space that people spend most of their time using digital products other than yours so so we're talking today about how you can get more attention more engagement increase the impact and we can also recognize at the same time that the people are spending the minority of their time in your space right we spend our time holistically across all kinds of different platforms and spaces and in person and so that means that a user's a user experience and their expectation of your environment is actually set separate from your environment it's set by every other tool every other space that they're using and kind of the behemoths in some way are leading that like google search autocomplete searches different standards that exist somewhere else because of some sort of massive technical team and and budget that that entity has but then because of people's experiences in those environments they take those expectations into your space and so behave like everybody else in a sense right how we how we can stand out but not have the usability of a website be something that people have to make up new within your environment and the last one here is error prevention and I used to always talk about we can solve that with help text right like if something seems confusing let's throw sentence underneath it and explain it away with help text but good design within your online spaces in whatever online space that is should be hopefully preventing errors from occurring so then you don't even have to have that sort of help text so the next one we'll get through these 10 and then we'll go kind of big picture but I really hope everyone pulls up that article and spend some time with it because it's also about can benefit even your processes internally how you communicate with each other if they're more efficient ways for you to to do the same process within your organization and not just looking at the communication that you have with your external community so their sixth rule is about recognition rather than recall which basically means minimizing the amount that your user has to remember so the longest I've worked anywhere is in public libraries so spanning all of high school all of college and I know the Dewey decimal system really well but also libraries know that other people don't and so they will like label pets you know and label cooking cookbook so someone isn't expected to remember what number in the Dewey decimal system that is so how can you offer help within the context that it's needed within your environment another way to do that is with their seventh rule of flexibility and efficiency for use we can think about that with shortcuts and how people if they are really tech savvy maybe don't need to go through a whole process that you have within your website and that there's certain processes and maybe an online form or an application or a membership signup an example of this would be often you can give people quicker access to things if they can first log in to your system and then they can much more efficiently complete an action instead of having them first go through this whole process fill in a bunch of information that they already know about you so think about those shortcuts and the way that can divide your audience into kind of two different groups those that are completely new to you though versus those that are have a known relationship and that you have information about them the the eighth is about design right it's less is more that and we know that and I think design standards and you see that with the beautiful templates and square space or Wix how much more simple the interface is in comparison to looking at a website from the 90s which is a small print and the long menu options lots of words and that that I think is becoming more and more the standard and we see that changing even with new app development or your space and so always holding that in priority with less is more and you'll we'll get to some specific audiences then when we get into more of the what's ahead to know why this especially matters when you're when you're reaching out to a new audience and then the the last two are pretty similar about helping users recognize from their own errors so basically this is where your your tech partner comes and play you know if there's a way to if there's an error message have it be in English and not code and what can be done if a user is experiencing some sort of error within your system how can that be expressed within plain language and give them a way out to take the action that they are intending to take and then lastly that the best system doesn't need any documentation right that it's it's very obvious how to use it and so whenever possible then if you do need to provide help support guidance in some sort of form or application process or donation flow that you present that support within the context and in the moment that the user is taking that kind of action just to minimize the things that a person is having to juggle and think about in order to engage with you so now that we've kind of taken an immediate side trail because this has been like I said my favorite resource for the last three months because I think these usability guidelines they touch on so many different things that we do within our work and I do think that spending some time with them can create this kind of foundation for how you're thinking about interactions and what you're building where you're spending your money and your technology investments and then also as a backdrop to now everything we're going to talk about ahead so let's shift gears a little bit and kind of look at the some 10 of the marketing trends so we're staying virtual I officially as of last week signed up and then now paying money for virtual yoga I was holding out all last year and it's like the best $40 a month now I'm spending and it's not it's not strange at all so I think there's a benefit where we're all getting more used to the fact that this is how this is where we've had to be