 I'm Dave Kennedy. My friends call me DK. I'm a theme ringler at automatic and I have the fun job of making the making themes on WordPress.com the best they can be and ensuring users can find a theme that they love. And speaking of themes one of the reasons I love themes is they're so central to the WordPress experience right right after we install WordPress one of the first things we do is start looking for a theme or activate a theme and start fiddling with it to try to customize it. And despite themes being so central to the WordPress experience some of them aren't particularly easy to use. They're a struggle for a lot of users. And I think that that's where we have to start. We have to think about users when we're creating themes. So, me, Michelle. Michelle is an example of a user persona. And user personas are representations of goals and behavior of a subset of users. And they're typically based on combination of different types of research like surveys, interviews, et cetera. And Michelle is pretty typical for most WordPress users. She wants a website for handmade purses and handbag accessories. She really wants to use her site to showcase her creativity. And she really wants to photoblog about her creative process. And all the cool things she does to make those accessories and handbags. And one of her big goals is she wants to build a community of followers around her site so that they can become potential customers. It sounds like Michelle is like a perfect WordPress user, right? And she does what a lot of us do when she starts out. She starts looking around for a theme. Maybe she visits the WordPress.org theme repository. Maybe she goes around a little bit. And she stumbled across a theme that she loves. That looks like the one. It looks perfect. And she visits that theme's demo. And she sees something that just looks amazing and awesome for her site. And she thinks, wow, that looks so good. I'm not sure I can do it. But she moves forward. And she follows standard WordPress instructions to set up a static page for her homepage because she wants a landing page for her site to go along with her photoblog. And so she sets up this custom template for her homepage. And she activates the template, saves it. And she visits the front page of her site. And she sees nothing but a blank page. Nothing but a blank page. We've all had this happen, right? And unfortunately, it's because that page is a combination of widgets and post types. And we have different data coming in from everywhere. So Michelle is absolutely lost. She doesn't know where to go and what to do and how to get this theme looking like the demo that she saw and she was so amazed by. But undaunted, she moves on. She thinks, I've read about these, the customizer. I think I know that's where I need to go to customize some stuff to make this happen. So she clicks customize in the toolbar. And she lands on a screen that is just panel upon panel, tons of options. And she doesn't know where to start. She fiddles with a few of them. But she doesn't see much changing in the customizer. And she certainly doesn't see much changing on the front of her site. And unfortunately, Michelle is not alone. A lot of WordPress users leave themes that they love behind because they can't get them exactly how they want. And even WordPress.com users. So these are a collection of quotes, real quotes from real users who bought a premium theme on WordPress.com and then returned it. So I thought I could make my page look professional on my own, no way and blank. This is for the technologically savvy only I suppose. So this this user was so frustrated, they resorted to profanity. This user summed up last user's frustration and only five words too hard to use disappointed. And this one is probably the one that makes me the most sad. Lovely theme, but I just don't have the time and patience to learn it. And what that says to me is they actually took time and had a little patience and gave it a go. And they still couldn't get it exactly how they wanted. And so they gave up. And why does this happen? This happens because we're kind of built to resist complicated. The chief instrument that we use to build our sites and create our content is our is our brain. And the brain actually resists a lot of complication. One way to resist is that so there's a part of the brain that sort of runs how you run through task. And if you're running through a long list of tasks, and they're really detailed and hard, your brain can actually that part of the brain that runs that can actually shut down. And when that happens, you're more prone to make silly mistakes, you're prone to make errors, you're prone to forget things that you perhaps read in documentation somewhere. So what you're left with is, you know, not exactly what you expected. The second way that we really struggle with complication is something that psychologist Barry Schwartz calls the paradox of choice. And there's a fantastic TED talk online by the same name if you want to check it out. And in that talk, he highlights two really, really important points. The first one is that imagine this, imagine you're you walk into a grocery store, and you go down the dairy aisle, and you're there to buy yogurt. And you hit that dairy aisle and you see that wall of yogurt. And it is choice after choice after choice. We have different flavors, different varieties, Greek fruit on the bottom, different ones with different fat contents. There's so many choices that what happens is that people become paralyzed and it becomes almost impossible to choose at all. And Michelle faces this too, when she saw the theme options panel. The second point that Barry Schwartz makes is that even if you get over that hump of all those choices, and you actually select something, your expectations for that yogurt becomes so much higher, because you put so much time and effort into selecting it. And you you kind of come away with it if it doesn't satisfy your needs. It's really bad because you blame yourself. Oh, it's my fault. I should have picked a better flavor of yogurt. I should have picked a better theme that I would have been able to customize and get exactly how I want. The third part of this is in her book 100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People, Susan Walszczyk highlighted a study that basically said people focus better when they focus on what's left. So what that means if you if you have a shorter list, your users will be more engaged with that shorter list and be better able to run through it and get all the way through it. So if your theme setup is shorter, they're more likely to get to the end of it and feel good when they get to the end and stay motivated throughout that process. And related to having something less complicated is that good user experience means more profit. And I think we'd all like a little extra money in our pockets. There was a there's a hotel chain here in the States called Le Quinte N. And what they did is they ran or they launched a number of user experience improvements to their site. And before this, they ran a number of surveys and gathered data. And what they found is that once they launched those improvements, they saw an 83% increase in their bottom line. And then they didn't stop there. They compared that they did a competitive analysis with some of their competitors. And they found looking at some of the same data points, their competitors only saw a 33% increase in profits over that same time period. So good user experience can really affect your bottom line and can really help your users want to buy more from you. So how do we bring this into theming? It's all comes down to process. I think the typical theming process might look like this. We have that idea that perhaps we saw somewhere on Pinterest, and it gives us that spark. And we started exploring that spark. We might start sketching. And then we move into design. And we, you know, take out Photoshop or sketch or whatever tool we like. And we start trying to design. And then we when we get to something we like, we start building, we start coding. And then we launch. And we hope that the download counter goes up, and the money pours in. But it's really not that simple, right? The trouble the trouble with this type of process is that Michelle's nowhere in here. There's no place in this process for a user to give you feedback. So I think a better theming process looks like this. There's three big parts. The first part is the discover phase. And that's where you do your research. And you gather data and statistics. And you figure out who you're building for. The second part is a really big and broad part is the build phase. And that's where you do sketches and wireframes and prototypes. And you actually start coding out your end product. And the third phase is the evaluation phase, where you kind of go back and you look at your assumptions. And the data that you gathered during the discovery phase. And you see what's changed. You look for what you learned. You look for any differences in the patterns. And what this what's great about this type of process is that it's small and it's agile. And you can use it throughout your your seeming process. So you're constantly gathering feedback from your users. So let's dive into these steps in a little bit more detail. The first step, like I mentioned, is the discovery step. And I'm going to give you a few examples of things that you can do to gather data. Certainly not an exhaustive list, but a few. So one way is to look at your analytics. So let's say you're a theme shop. And you have a number of themes for sale. And you look at your analytics, and you realize that your users are searching for a fashion blogging theme. You know, maybe the search terms that are coming in that you're seeing are fashion blogging. And that's a real easy way to realize, especially if you don't have a fashion blogging theme, hey, my users are coming to my site, this is what they're looking for. So that's an easy win. You can you can start working on that and give that to them. The second part of this is talking to your staff, especially your support staff, they are on the front lines, communicating with users each and every day. And they know the pain points that your users face. They know the difficult things that they struggle with within your themes. At automatic, we do a support rotation. Each team does a support rotation once a year. And about two months ago, I did mine. And I had to walk a user very similar to Michelle, through setting up a very complicated template pit front page for her for their site. And there is no quicker way to learn how broken something is or how complex something is, then explaining it to someone who's never done it. It's a really eye opening experience. The third part of this is interview your users. There's different ways that you can talk to your users, whether it's in forums, whether it's through surveys, whether it's through direct interviews. And you can create personas like the one we saw earlier with Michelle. And that really enables you to target who you're building for, and what you're building for. So the second part of this is the build phase. And this is the fun part, right? Like this is actually where we get to create. I always like to start with pencil and paper. I always like to sketch first before I do anything else. And I like to start with a pencil and paper because one, I'm like the worst sketcher known to man, no matter how hard I try, everything looks horrible and sloppy, but that's okay. What that means is I'm not really worried about the details just yet. I'm just worried about getting my ideas down on paper. And you can even test things with the sketch, you can put those in front of users or colleagues and see their action and get feedback. From there, I like to move into wireframing. My favorite tool is Buzalmic. Again, I think the tool doesn't matter so much as picking something that you're productive with and you're able to get a good output from. So I like Buzalmic and I like to then build on my sketches and make them more detailed and build out different parts of the theme that I'm working on, especially if I have a new pattern that I want to get into this theme that I perhaps have never used before. And the third part is prototyping. And one of the tools I like to use for that is code pen. It's an online playground for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. And code pen is great because you can build out small bits and pieces of things without even worrying about getting into like the itty bitty of WordPress code. And so as an example, let's say that you have a new mobile menu pattern that you want to try out. You can build that out in code pen and code pen gives you an online demo of that that you can then put in front of your users and test out and see if what you're after actually works. And after all that, you're ready to start, you know, you've built some prototypes, you started theming. You can actually start evaluating this stuff. And in this phase, what you want to do is repeat the test and repeat the things that you found in the discovery phase and look for any new patterns. Look for anything that sticks out to you that doesn't make sense. Focus on the big broad things rather than getting down into the weeds and the details. So what does this really mean for theming when we actually bring this iterative process into our workflows? It means that themes become more focused. They are built for instead of being built for everyone, they're built for someone in particular. Because when we build themes for everyone, we really build them for no one. Theme options become just that optional. I don't have to worry about going into my options to set them up once I activate the theme because the theme will look great right out of the box. And the theme options really start to enhance a theme's purpose. So looking back at Michelle, who's a fashion blogger and wants to photo blog, maybe the theme that we built targeted to her has some special effects on the photos that really highlights them and makes them pop. Documentation for your themes becomes easier to write and maintain. If we're building less complex themes, we have less documentation to write and worry about. And lastly, probably one of my most favorite things is documentation becomes not required reading for users. We've all hit that point when we were setting up a theme where we kind of don't know what to do next and we have to go to the documentation to figure it out, to guide us. But with less complex themes, that doesn't happen. And your screenshots and demos set realistic expectations. So unlike what Michelle faced earlier, when a user activates a less complex theme, they see what they saw on the screenshot and that provides a sense of comfort and it gives them confidence in moving forward. So how do we take this forward? Before you theme, research and establish a focus for what you're building and creating. While you're theming, build in chunks. Test as you go and experiment and revise. Don't be afraid to learn from your mistakes. And after you theme, always ask yourself, what did I learn? What can I change? What can I make better? The thing I love the most about themes is that I fundamentally believe a good WordPress theme opens up an entire new world to users. It opens up the open web and it allows them to express themselves. And it also lets the world see something completely unique about them. We need more of that on the web. And it doesn't happen unless we start using and creating themes that just work. Thank you very much. So the details for... I have a blog post that kind of goes into all this and it's on my site, davidacanity.com, slash speaking, and the slides are there as well in a PDF format and available for download. And we have time for questions, so I'd be more than happy to take questions. There is a microphone in the center aisle. What do you think about using page builders, keeping the themes very simple, but allowing the users to add the elements in the things like visual composer? That is a good question. I think there's use cases to that. There's use cases for that. I think when it all depends on your user and what they're trying to build, I think that if you have a pretty complex site with different types of page types, with different layouts, that that type of setup might be ideal. It all comes down to training and ensuring the users that are using that type of setup are able to do it. I do think the average user who, which is a lot of the type of user we see on WordPress.com, that's a pretty tough thing for them to do. A lot of folks are just looking to get out there and get on the web, whether it's starting up a blog, whether it's having a site for their small business, and some of that stuff gets in the way. But I do think there's use cases for it. Would you say during the discovery part of that cycle, so when you're planning out how to make a theme, would you say that user roles are important, just like user personas you talked about, like considering the front end user and the back end user, and would you have anything to say about that? Yeah, definitely. I think I focused on themes for the WordPress.com user who's just looking to get out there and publish, but I do think that user roles for the back end administrators can be helpful too. I think this comes into play if you're an agency or you're a freelancer and you're building out really bespoke and custom themes, I definitely think that that can help because if the themes and the interfaces that are used to create all the content are easier to use for the users who are there every day, they're going to have an easier time doing what they really need to do, and that's put their content out there. So I definitely think there's a use for that as well. I'm curious, is someone yourself, as someone who has seen a lot of themes and deals with a lot of themes and sees the users interact, how they interact with themes, what are some of the more effective ways that you've seen that theme developers have implemented those walking through their users, the initial setup of the theme? Do people like checklists? Do they like videos? Do they like the little pop-ups that kind of lead them through the steps? What are some of the more effective means that you've seen people use for that? Right. In a perfect world, you wouldn't need any of that. The theme, I like looking at themes in layers, like the theme setup process in layers. So kind of how I alluded to here, I think all themes should look great and work out of the box. And I think if you visit, like if the theme has options, or if it integrates with other plugins, you can be able to go there and add that layer on, but you don't need that layer to make the theme in your site look good. And you asked me what I think is the most effective. I think again, I realize I feel like I'm dodging some of the questions, but it all depends on the user. We've seen some users like the video tutorials, particularly if it's something that's quick and easy, but I think like straight documentation tends to work pretty well for everyone because you can go to it and you can kind of read at your own pace. I think that the sort of setup wizards, I think work for something that's like extraordinarily complex and tough, like say setting up a e-commerce store and making sure that integrates well with the theme. I think that's a good use case for it, for those type of things. So yeah. Thank you. I've struggled before with the nature, the new kind of concept of the themes being the appearance only in no functionality and tried to pull all functionality out of the theme. However, I find that it becomes difficult sometimes to provide functionality that I think should be in there, whether it's interactive templates or something that something automagically happens. It makes it sometimes simpler for the user to use something if the functionality is in there versus they have to add a plugin or add something else. And how would you suggest kind of resolving that? Yeah. I think there's use cases for that type of thing, depending on who you're building for. I think what we saw when we saw the big movement toward put everything in plugins is that people were losing data. So they had, if there was custom post types that were activated within their theme and they switched another theme, they suddenly can no longer access that content within the admin. So I think those decisions are kind of the decisions that you have to make when thinking about that type of stuff. If a user switches themes or installs this other plugin, is it going to affect any of the data that is really vital to what they need to do every day? And I think rolling some functionality into themes, there's use cases for that. But it all comes down to making it as easy as possible for users so they can get in and out of the theme without losing any data. And also without those options kind of getting in their way. Thank you. You're welcome. Sure. We got two more. Okay. I noticed a lot of the themes are using short codes. How do you feel about the use of short codes? I think they're useful, especially if you're trying to put code on a page that may not have a widget available. Yeah. I think short codes are useful. I definitely have used them in some cases. I think, again, going back to the same point, the tough part about it is hopefully your short codes are kind of coming in a plugin. So you can kind of keep using them because if the short codes are baking into a theme and you switch your theme, suddenly you've got brackets, short code, whatever, all over your site. And that's not fun because your content's just been damaged. So I think there's use cases for short codes. I really advise them to be controlled via plugins. Very good presentation. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I have a very simple question. I'm a user, not a developer. So I go in and I see thousands and thousands of themes with all this complication like you mentioned. What is the process that I, as a user, should go about trying to select a theme that's good for me and my consulting business? Okay, it's not as creative as Michelle, but it's business to business kind of thing. What is the process? And I'm trying to struggle with that and can't seem to find an answer. All right, that's an awesome question. So I think you have to think about what your goals are for your consulting business. Like what do you want your users who come to your site to be able to do? Maybe you want them to be able to contact you. Maybe you want them to find out about your services. So I'd really look for themes that kind of are tailored to that specific, your specific goals. And it might be like business-related themes because it sounds kind of like what you're after. But really think about what you want your users to do when they come to your site and then find a theme that sort of enables that. Does that answer your question or is that too vague? Oh, that's good. Good, good. Okay, you're welcome. Well, thank you guys so much for coming. I really enjoy this. This is, I'd never been to a word camp in San Francisco. So this is my first really big word camp and it's an honor to talk to you about themes today. Don't be shy if you want to learn more about themes. If you want to talk themes or accessibility, come up and say hello. Thank you.