ZURBlog is where we discuss product design, business and strategy.

Getting stuck thinking about process is an easy trap for designers to fall into. Sure you'll solve problems, but without effective methods, those results will be … well, uninspiring. That's why at ZURB we focus on methods, not process.

Methods are the backbone of the design process. It's deadly tough to build products effectively without developing a few design methods first. Sketching uncovers interactions, brainstorming sparks ideas, critiquing pushes the envelope of designs, and analyzing discovers what people do with your products. Without these methods, we'd be a little lost.

Which is why we've pulled back a bit, digging deeper into our own design methods. We asked ourselves: Why does brainstorming get our ideas flowing? How is concept testing useful in gathering data? Why do we user test? More importantly, how do these methods help design better products?

It's not enough to ask these questions. We had to keep talking about these methods. We also had to write them down. By writing them down, we can continue to refine and shape those methods. We even went one step further and put them all in a place where we could share those methods with others who are working furiously to build awesome products.

Check out a few of the methods we've published by clicking on the titles below:

These methods aren't the only ones we use and we'll be putting more up soon. By either using these methods or developing methods of your own, you'll be able to build awesome products more effectively.

In the past, designers tended to work only with other designers. That's no longer the case in this day and age. Designers who build awesome products need a strong support team. That's something we know firsthand at ZURB, which is why we're looking for a great marketing team to give our designers the support they need.

We're looking for a Marketing Lead and a Product Marketer. The dynamics of these two new roles will shape the way we do things here at ZURB. And we're super stoked at the opportunities this dynamic duo will create.

Marketing Lead

The Marketing Lead will lead (pun fully intended) our marketing and communications efforts, and provide backup for our business development. Not only that, but the lead will book our ZURBsoapbox speakers and set up outside talks for other ZURBians.

Product Marketer

The Product Marketer will be the Marketing Lead's "partner in crime" who'll help drive our product initiatives into warp speed. The person who fills these shoes will have a passion for analytics, crunching the data to help us become better at what we do.

Think You Have The Chops?

So what is ZURB looking for? We want T-shaped people who are optimistic, love problem solving, and are hungry to learn. In other words, can you get scrappy? Roll up your sleeves? Are you passionate about getting the word out about ZURB? Do you feel up to the challenge? Can you go the extra mile or more?

If you think you do, then check out our job listing for Marketing Lead and Product Marketer, and show us you've got the skills.

How many times have you heard this said while you’re building a product:

Listen, a few customers have requested this already, a number of us here love this feature. Let’s just build this and see how well it does. Analytics will tell us if this is a keeper or not. This is the quickest way to learn if people like the feature.

One of our good friends and loyal customers who IPO’d last year (can’t mention their name unfortunately) took this very approach: Build it, launch it, and see how well it does. When I asked him how well this approach worked out for him, three things were apparent:

1. They spend a LOT of money building the new functionality and changes.
2. They pulled a lot off new functionality down and never use it.
3. The spend a lot of time developing and testing new functionality.

”What if you could test out an idea without implementing it, from a mockup or a wireframe?” I asked."After all, why do you have to implement stuff that customers won’t use if they can tell you ahead of time?"

“Oh, you mean like a focus group? That’s too much time and effort," he said.

“No, I mean quickly mocking something up and asking customers a question about it."

People really get stuck when it comes to testing things before building them. Engineers, product managers, and designers just want to build stuff to solve problems then release it. However, a few key decision makers doesn't adequately represent thousands of would-be customers. If you’re building a product for customers (not just for yourself), you’ve got to test your assumptions early on with your potential users.

Testing Your Assumptions

At ZURB, we’re huge proponents of testing any assumptions we might have before we implement a change or the new feature in a product. It’s in our DNA. We saw that there was a hole in the market as far as tools go for this very problem. We built Verify to help ourselves, as well as many others who are building products, test assumptions before implementing features.

One side of the problem is having a tool that you can upload your concepts into, attach a question, and test out those assumptions. The other side is having an experienced set of passionate people that can give you great feedback about the changes and updates you’re thinking of implementing. These are the types of people that have had enough of sucky sites on the web and want to improving the web as a whole.

Helping Others Test Assumptions

We are excited to launch our own service called Enroll to build a community that helps make the web a better place by giving those building products honest and actionable feedback.

Your personal dashboard in Enroll to keep track of tests you've taken.

As you can see from these screenshots, everyone who signs up for Enroll will be able to track the quick 5 second tests they've taken through their own dashboard as well as earn different badges as rewards for tasks completed.

If you are excited about helping big brands solve their product problems then you’re the right type of person to give Enroll a shot. We're looking forward to hearing how all of you like Enroll. You can sign up now by following the link below. As always — feel free to reach out to us at support@enrollapp.com.

Sign Up To Help Improve the Web

We've said it once and we'll say it again, the old ways of web design don't apply anymore in the age of so many different phones, tablets, and other web-enabled devices. Millions of people use those devices on a daily basis to hop online. Websites can no longer afford to be stuck in 960px Photoshop templates.

Some websites have embraced the brave new world of countless devices, such as The Boston Globe. Yet the number of websites that are responsive are few and far between. The latest to join the responsive ranks is Smashing Magazine.

Given our interest in responsive web design and our development of Foundation, we were intrigued by Smashing Magazine's new homepage design. We liked what we saw and decided to do a complete deconstruction of the site, looking at what the folks at Smashing Magazine did well and at things they could improve on.

You can see our complete deconstruction from several different views (laptop, tablet, and smaller devices) by clicking on the thumbnails below:

• Laptop

  

• Smaller Laptop, Tablet

  

• Tablet Portrait

  

• Another Tablet Portrait

  

• Small Device

  

It's awesome to see other sites take the plunge, think about how their site will display on all the future devices that will come out and become responsive. With Smashing Magazine, there are certainly opportunities for improvement, but it's a step in the right direction. We excited to see how they iterate and refine their site in the coming months.

We're very passionate about feedback here at ZURB. We put a lot of effort into how to soliciting great feedback as well as giving great feedback.

We receive a lot of feedback from clients and teammates, some of which we solicit and some which we do not. What we don't want is detailed, nitpicky feedback when we're presenting a new idea to a client. Likewise, we usually want very detailed feedback when we present hi-fi wireframes to clients. So we thought: wouldn't it be nice if we had an app to help us control what type of feedback our clients would give us?

Different Ways to Solicit Feedback

We started to touch upon a few of these already, but there are numerous ways you can get feedback from clients and teammates:

1. You might want to simply guide people through a few mockups over the phone without soliciting any detailed feedback. You just want a poor man’s Webex without much setup: throw up a few screens up there, share a private link with your client, and control what they see on their screen as you talk on the phone.
   
   Check out an example here >>
2. You might not want to get on the phone with your clients or teammates and ask for their opinions on a few visual explorations. Do they like it? No? A quick "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" does the trick. If you want more detailed feedback, you can let them leave a comment on each mockup after they give their "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."
   
   Check out an example here >>
3. Finally, you might want very detailed feedback about final wireframes. In this case, you’ll need to give people specific directions and an ability to leave annotations on each mockup in your design presentation.
   
   Check out an example here >>

Summary of Feedback All in One Place

The trick, of course, isn't just controlling how you get feedback. You also have to make sense of it. It's really painful to ask for feedback then sort through 40-odd notes and comments to figure out what people think about your mockups. So ideally you want a quick summary that summarizes all your feedback.

You want one place where you can see all the thumbs up, comments, and annotations. This makes it easier to scan through your feedback. By doing so, you'll be able to drive the design process forward more quickly and iterate on your mockups faster.

Introducing Influence

By this point in the blog post, you might be wondering — what is this app that ZURBians are using to control the feedback they get from clients? Remember the little app we launched back in August to help you present your design ideas and reel in the feedback?

Today, we're excited to announce the private release of Reel's mother app Influence - a quick way to present new design ideas for feedback. We recognized that presenting design ideas, controlling and making sense of feedback you get was a problem for any freelancer, contractor, or company that is designing products. We created Influence to solve this problem.

We'll start letting early adopters in today to check out Influence and give us feedback (about an app to control how you get feedback — no pun intended!). For now you can sign up and we’ll let you in soon!

Sign Up For Influence

We're pumped to hearing your thoughts about Influence!

It's no secret that hiring an amazing product designer is a big problem for everyone right now. Numerous articles have highlighted this issue over the last year, Garry Tan of YCombinator gave an interview on Mashable recently about his experience finding great designers, Jay Holtz wrote a great op-ed on NYTimes about his hardships finding a designer. We’ve seen first hand how hard it is to find great designers, this is what prompted us to create our own job board. So the question becomes: Why is it so tough to hire a designer?

The answer to the question isn’t simple. The problem of finding a designer roots from a number of smaller issues: the fact that companies are not sure what skills they are looking for; there is a lack of trained product designers (who don’t simply push pixels around) out there; and, of course, it’s very tough to figure out how a designer fits in an organization.

We decided to ask some of our friends who had to deal with this very issue for their opinion. Here's what they had to say:

Designers are, in my experience, long on demand and short on supply for a few reasons:

Being a great designer requires a combination of raw talent, vision and structured practice that traditional schooling (K-12) doesn't typically teach or encourage. The personalities of artistically capable individuals often conflicts with a "hired designer" role, which requires finding an individual who can be flexible, accommodating and make intelligent compromises to get projects done. These traits are entirely at odds with fulfilling an artistic vision to perfection, yet many of the best designers are, indeed, artists.

Far too many managers and project leaders feel they've earned a right to influence, critique and judge a design, despite not having any formal training (much like writing but unlike programming, non-professionals feel they are entitled to much greater influence than their background would normally dictate)

There is a great article we wrote on this subject called The web design curve problem.

As happens in most industries, value creation is moving up the stack. That is, companies make money in new technology-driven arenas at first by differentiating on performance, engineering, cost, etc. As industries evolve, core infrastructure gets built and commoditized, and differentiation moves up the hierarchy of needs from basic functionality to non-basic functionality, to design, and even to fashion.

For example, there was a time when chief buying concerns included how well a watch might tell time and how durable a pair of jeans was. There is still plenty of core technology to be built for the Internet, but the fact that you can now be a fairly sizable Internet company without ever needing to own (or even look at) your server hardware means a much bigger proportion of what companies do is add value on top what's here. And one of the most powerful ways to add value is through design.

—Evan Williams, Founder of Twitter

It's only hard to find a designer if you're looking for someone excellent, and then it is just as hard as finding anyone to do any job excellently: very hard. Today, everyone and their brother can do some photoshop tutorials and edit frameworks, so the market is growing quickly at the less-skilled end with more and more designers. However, just as with programers, the people who are good and have experience are gainfully employed and so it is hard to source them as generally you have to poach them away from other jobs.

Everybody realizes the growing importance of good design as a competetive advantage, and the talent pool to draw upon very small, especially in tech heavy cities like San Francisco. Further, the US immigration policies make it very difficult for companies to import talented labour from overseas when they are unable to fill jobs locally, further pushing up salaries and competition.

—Matt Mickiewicz, Founder of 99designs and Sitepoint

What once required the most skilled programer in the most complex environment has now been abstracted up to a simple design that any consumer can see and touch. The new maestros are those who can create these designs.

—Kevin Hartz, CEO and Founder of Eventbrite

We're curious to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Why is it so hard to hire product designers? Did you have any hardships finding a designer?

As we talked about in last month's newsletter, we've been hiring like crazy. We've already introduced you to our latest ZURBians, now we're looking to add another awesome Designer to our team.

What does it take?

"What does it take to be a ZURBian?" That's a question we get a lot. Well, for us, it's a simple answer. You've got to be scrappy in achieving great things, not be afraid of failure and have a strong desire to learn and do better than the day before. Which is why we're so focused on whether someone is the right culture fit.

During our one day interview process, we try our best to get a sense of how a candidate would fit within our culture. How would they take our jokes? Our scrappiness? Our chaos? NERF air gun bullets flying through the air? Do they have the desire to learn? Do they embrace our core values and, more importantly, are they wanting to work at ZURB for the right reasons?

Culture fit plays a HUGE role in our decision to hire someone. Everyone at ZURB interviews the candidate and everyone has to bring that person on board. After all, we are a small team and one bad apple can really throw us off our game.

We're all about world domination and we can't do it without a strong team, so we need teammates who can go that extra mile or more.

Get A Job, Nerd!

Heard enough? Think you have what it takes? Then check out our ZURBjobs posting and see if you've got the skills.

As we mentioned in last month's newsletter, we went on a hiring binge last year. Before 2011 came to an end, we signed up two new ZURBians, who have already gotten scrappy in the New Year. Without further ado, let's introduce the newest members of our team.

Charlie Maynard, Designer

Charlie's a full-blooded Bay Area native and a graphic design grad from San Jose State University who lives and breaths design. He has a strong passion for iconography, information, and layout design centered around interaction. That's why we immediately put him to work on a top-secret project (more on that soon!). We've also got him hard at work crafting some pretty sweet icons for our suite of apps. As for why Charlie loves working at ZURB, here's what he says:

Being a ZURBian is sort of like being part of a powerful cult — but this cult is full of awesome people making cool stuff all day everyday, and none of us really care for punch.

When Charlie isn't using his mad design skills at ZURB, he's busy writing music and performing as a drummer in his band, Young Science.

Ryan Riddle, Editor

If adding a Designer wasn't awesome enough, we thought we'd also add an Editor who knows firsthand that the pen is mightier than the sword.

Before coming to ZURB, Ryan was a reporter and columnist for the Daily Post in Palo Alto, writing stories on Steve Jobs and Facebook. Ryan has won two Peninsula Press Awards for his work at the Post. When it comes to why he came to ZURB, here's what he says:

ZURB is like being on a grand adventure. I feel fortunate to have joined a talented group of people who are off looking for new technological horizons to conquer.

Ryan also holds a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and a Bachelors in Journalism from San Diego State University. When Ryan is not hammering away at the keyboard, he loves reading the novels of Michael Chabon and watching the adventures of the Starship Enterprise.

Get a Job, Nerd!

We're not quite finished hiring yet. We're looking for a few good nerds to join us. Yes, that means if you're reading this and you want to work with an awesome, talented team with an amazing culture then you should apply, like now. Check out our available jobs.

Happy New Year to all of you — our loyal blog readers! Over the past year, it’s been a huge pleasure seeing all of your emails, comments, tweets, and even in-person visits to ZURB! We are passionate about sharing tips and tricks about how to build great products, and are thankful that we have a very engaged audience.

After all, 2011 was a hoot for all of us at ZURB, and we shared our end of the year happenings in our latest ZURBnews December edition — a place where we share our insights on a monthly basis.

In case you're not on the ZURBnews email list, you might not have heard about the fun little game we sent out to our friends, followers, and acquaintances this holiday season. We do something amusing like this every year, such as the Christmas Pigs we sent out in 2010. This year, however, we kicked the entertainment value into overdrive.

Rock Paper Scissors

We painted our hands for a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

We went a little crazy and painted our hands then snapped a ton of pictures of them as either rock, paper, or scissors. Then those photos were used for a nifty card game (yep, a card game ... you read right) that we sent out as a holiday gift. There are a couple of games you can play:

1. Classic Duel: You and an opponent each take a card without revealing its face, then you throw down. Same rules as the hand game apply — paper beats rock, rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper.
2. Battle Royale: Split the deck with your opponent. Each player puts down a card, and whoever has the winning card of the two takes both cards, placing them in a pile. When there are no more cards in your stack, take the cards you've won and shuffle. Play another round. Whoever takes the entire deck wins.

In addition to the physical Rock Paper Scissors game we sent to folks, there is a Twitter version. Check this out: if you tweet us @zurb rock, or tweet us paper, or scissors, we’ll play with you! Take a look at this game we recently played:

"@zurb rock. next time, i'm playing with @fullsailbrewing bottle caps"

— Brenton Simpson (@appsforartists) December 24, 2011

"@appsforartists A well-placed rock crushes scissors. Too bad, we chose paper. We win, 2 out of 3. zurb.us/ubUxHQ"

— ZURB (@ZURB) December 24, 2011

Now that you've seen it in action, go ahead and give it a try — be sure to include @zurb in your tweet!

Thanks for spending 2011 with us! We're looking forward to sharing more insights with all of you in 2012. Happy New Year everyone!

As you've probably read in this month's ZURBnews, we’ve been having tons of fun publishing new ZURBwords (quick design concepts that people can use to help them build products online). There have been a few recent ones that have received a bit more attention than usual from our followers, so we thought we'd share them with all our loyal blog readers. Go ahead and click on the words below to see the explanation: