VisualsSpeak blog

How can we define culture by what it is not? After all, don’t we define culture based on what it is such as our values, languages, religions, etc? Anthropologists talk of worldview, which also includes basic assumptions about how things work. Values are derivative of worldview.

I’m going to share with you how I learned a little about my European American culture through a story a friend told me recently and how I came to see my own culture a little clearer because of what it isn’t.

But before I do, let me give you some things to snack on.

A little about me

I am a European American male. 51 years old. My parents are from Irish and Scottish stock. I was raised and spent most of my life in the Northeast. Now living in the Pacific Northwest.

Verbalizing European American culture

I know when I’m asked to talk about my culture, I sometimes have difficulty doing so. I have to think about it and usually come up with some kind of generic answer. I have heard the same sorts of responses from other European Americans (EA).

For example these are some of the responses I have given and have also heard other EA’s say.

• I’m American
• We’re all Americans (When we start to drill down into this response, we don’t have to go very far to discover that there are big differences in what this means depending on who is speaking

I celebrate

• The 4th of July
• Thanksgiving
• Christmas

In my family we acknowledged our Irish background by celebrating St Patrick’s Day. My stomach still turns over when I think of all that over-boiled corned beef and cabbage I was made to eat.

Somehow all of these things leave me with a feeling that something is missing. There’s more to the story, but I can’t put my finger on it.

Lost in St Louis

As I mentioned, a friend told me a story recently that gave me greater insight into my own culture. Let’s call him Michael.

Michael is from the Northwest and holds numerous high level degrees. The word brilliant comes to mind when I think about him. A thirst for knowledge, curiosity, and making relevance of the world has been his path through life.

A number of years ago, Michael attended a professional conference in St Louis, Missouri. He decides to save money by taking a bus instead of a taxi to his hotel. Unfortunately, he finds out that the bus line ends far away from his hotel. Now he is lost and is walking around trying to find another connection to his hotel. After an hour of walking in business attire, he finds himself on the edge of Washington University. Michael has never been to this city, so everything is new.

At some point in his wanderings, he notices a sheriff is following him. What makes the act so apparent is that the sheriff is in an official car and driving at the speed Michael is walking. There is no attempt to conceal the surveillance. Michael makes nothing of this at first chalking it up to a bored cop with nothing better to do.

After two, or has it been three, hours of this, Michael is feeling panicked. He cannot understand why he has drawn the attention of this sheriff. He has no history in St. Louis, so no reason to be harassed. He is well dressed and has broken no laws. He is a professional not some street thug in need of chaperoning.

He is lost and feeling desperate. He tries to call a cab from a phone booth, but the cab company wants to know ‘where’r you at’. He doesn’t understand the question. He’s telling them the location. He goes into an Asian restaurant to get change to call another cab. The workers look at him with fear and suspicion. They nervously inspect his money and give him change. Finally someone tells him that in St. Louis, cabs will only pick up people at a specific location such as at a restaurant. Unwritten rules.

What Michael didn’t know at the time was that the county had a sort of curfew in effect. The curfew was not geared towards protecting children by ensuring they were home at a safe hour. It was a local rule aimed at keeping specific groups of people off the streets. There were no signs spelling out the curfew guidelines, so only the locals would know of its existence.

The one qualification a person had to have for the curfew to apply to them was being non-white. You see, Michael is African American. He didn’t know the rules that governed African Americans in that part of the country, because they were enforced but not advertised like so many of these types of rules..

Defining culture by what it’s not

Hearing this story helped me to understand my European American culture better not because I had never heard of this sort of experience before. It helped me, because I realized that I would never expect this to happen to me. It is not in my consciousness or part of my life experience.

What isn’t defines what is

In the art world, there is a term called negative space. It is used to describe the space around an object or form. Negative space is as important to the overall purpose of the work as is the primary focal point, because it gives the work context.

This term is not used as a value judgment. There is no good or bad, right or wrong. It is just context.

Michael’s story is, in a sense, the negative space that gives more context to my experience as a European American. It is about what my experience has not been.

A reverse view of injustice

Part of what all of this is about is coming to understand white privilege. For me, the concept of white privilege has been more about the conscious attitudes of European Americans.

What I’m realizing is that there is an unconscious aspect that has to do with what I don’t ever expect to happen to me. When I was young and had long hair, I did expect the possibility of being harassed by a redneck cop. If my hair had been short I wouldn’t have expected it. But what I never would have expected then or now is to be followed around for hours because of my skin color. It’s not in my consciousness.

I have been aware for a long time that there is discrimination for many people in housing, job promotions, getting credit, etc. Yet, as a European American I have never had the conscious expectation that any of this would happen to me.

For example, I would never expect to be discriminated against for:

• Getting a job
• Being promoted
• Buying a car
• Purchasing a house
• Renting an apartment

I know this happens to others, but the possibility of it happening to me is not in my consciousness when I go about these activities. I never think to myself ‘I wonder if this person is going to treat me fairly because of my skin color’.

No scientific poll needed

I think it’s pretty safe to say that we don’t need a scientific poll to say that many non-dominant groups have the expectation that they may face discrimination in everyday encounters.

This expectation is something that a big percentage of US citizens live with every day of their lives.

And even though we may not be consciously aware of it, not having an expectation that it could happen to us, partly defines European American culture. It’s the negative space of our culture or worldview. The part defined by what it is not.

Incremental learning and diversity

I have found that becoming culturally aware and learning about diversity is about gaining insight through many small, incremental steps. Generally speaking there aren’t a lot of big ah-ha moments, although Michael’s story might be one, because it has caused me to reflect deeply. The reverberations have been many.

For me, understanding diversity and culture is a life-long process. I don’t think I’ll ever arrive at a point where I can say I know what it’s all about. There are layers and layers to uncover. And the layers shift as societies shift. Everything is in movement. Consciousness evolves. Understanding evolves.

What’s your perspective?

• How do you define your culture?
• What is the ‘negative space’ or unconscious parts of understanding cultural?
• What insights can you share to help others understand culture?

VizThink is one!

I attended a workshop last week sponsored by the Senior Forum of ASTD-Cascadia, Improve New Hire Productivity Using Visual Thinking. It was facilitated by Barrie Levinson, the Director of Consulting at Xplane.

Visual Business Cards

The first thing we did was to quickly draw our own visual business cards, and share them with someone else. Simple quick sketches drawn on business card size paper with Sharpie markers.

Mine shows I use the computer and photography to work with groups of people. It’s not a great drawing. People don’t look like a circle with a line below it, yet when I tell you that is what it represents, it works. The person I was paired with in the exercise understood something about what I did.

What does my card say I do?

Image-based Training & Consulting.

I know, no one knows what that means. It is eye-catching with great graphics. I have yet to come up with an effective concise description of what I do.

OK, really I haven’t come up with a paragraph to describe my work. Yet, I can show you in a few minutes. In many ways, the quick rough sketch tells you a lot more than the expensive professionally designed version about what I do.

Now I don’t think I am ready to ditch my cards that actually give you contact information. I do need a new tagline (any ideas???). But I am thinking about ways to use the back of my card to show something more meaningful.

What did other participants think of the visual cards?

When asked to reflect on what it was like to introduce yourself visually, and to hear others’ explanations, this is what participants reported:

• easier
• more enjoyable
• sustainable
• relaxing
• evoked more questions
• learned about the person
• easier to understand what the job entailed
• faster to understand
• gets past the jargon and buzzwords
• engaged interaction
• immediately multidimensional
• focuses on one component
• works when both are on the same plane, similar expectations
• requires talent and confidence
• some jobs are easier to depict than others

I certainly don’t hear those outcomes from exchanging regular business cards. So why don’t we see these methods being used more frequently?

What are we really trying to do with a card?

A few weeks ago Guy Kawasaki wrote a post about his new business card . No pictures, but nothing extra. Guy is about his websites, which are all listed there.

They were designed by Justin Ruckman. You can see many examples on his site of simple effective design, and the thing that jumps out at me, is you really get a sense of what people do.

Visuals don’t have to be the answer. Guy’s card is really effective using words. Now I would argue that a large part of the effectiveness of the words are their visual quality. So I don’t think the answer is the same for everyone.

How would you show people what you do?

Christine Martell and Tom Tiernan, owners of VisualsSpeak LLC, are pleased to announce that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Certificate of Registration for the trademark VisualsSpeak.

VisualsSpeak®

Reg. No. 3,435,236

Registered May 27, 2008

Owners’ Response

Co-owner Tiernan ’s response was to say “Now we are finally in a position to challenge Microsoft’s dominance of the global software market.” When reminded that VisualsSpeak® is not involved in developing software, he was quick to point out “But we could be”.

VisualsSpeak’s® principal, Christine Martell, could not be reached for comment as she is currently luxuriating on a private island in the Caribbean awaiting the riches to roll in after the Trademark announcement.

Newsflash: arrived today

Diane left a comment for us:

I have just been introduced to VisualsSpeak and I am very interested in what it has to offer! However I have read through the manual and I am looking for more information on how to facilitate it. Can you offer any suggestions or point me in the right direction?

I emailed her to ask for more information and received this reply:

I am looking into using VisualsSpeak to try and bring out more personal awareness for individuals. I am not quite sure how to do this, I just know that I would like to attempt to. Do you have any suggestions? I will also use it for companies when trying to discover where their employees stand in relation to things such as the company vision.

Find a way to practice

The images in the VisualsSpeak ImageSet have been tested with thousands of people, so you can have confidence that the tool itself will work. What do I mean by that? Participants will find images that will inspire some kind of significant conversation. Even if someone just finds one image and then spends their time telling you why it really isn’t the right image, you will have learned that person is quite literal and perhaps perfection is important to them.

I would suggest finding someone you know to practice with. If you want to get insight into an individual, try the present and future framework. Using construction paper (or placemats) for a background, ask the person to make one image of the present and another of the future. The space between them can represent the transition if they wish.

Only give them about five minutes to do it, because the time pressure helps get better outcomes. By not allowing too much time to over think the framing question, you will help your clients get to their core values and foster personal awareness.

Ask the participant to tell you the story of their image. Don’t interpret anything for them even if they ask. Pay attention to the visual patterns to give you ideas about questions that will deepen the reflection. Here are some ideas:

• What is in the center of the image?
• Which photographs are on the edges?
• Are all the photos within the frame (background paper)?
• Are there any shapes that appear in multiple images (ex: circles, rectangles)?

If there is a photo of a tree in the middle of one of the panels, you might ask

• Is there any significance to the tree being in the middle?

Strive for clarifying questions about the visual patterns and their verbal input.

In an organization

To get more information about how employees relate to organizational vision, you could ask them to create an image of the organization in general, or the vision specifically. I would lean toward the general, since you tend to get better information about how people really feel if they are not trying to guess what you want. If the framing question is too specific, people will often try to depict what they think they are supposed to. So you may see people doing things like selecting images similar to those that illustrate the company vision poster that hangs in the lobby instead of telling you their vision or understanding.

Does this help?

Are there other things you are wondering about? Or specific examples? Please leave your questions in the comment box or email me at info(at)visualsspeak(dot)com and I’ll be happy to answer them.

Adam Chan was a participant in the session I facilitated at the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) conference in April. He purchased a couple of VisualsSpeak ImageSets to bring back to Singapore.

Adam works for an interesting company, Focus Adventure ‘Where every moment is a challenge’. They use outdoor adventure of all kinds along with experiential techniques for leadership, team building, and innovation. You can see a video on their homepage. Made me want to sign up!

Facilitating his first session

When I met Adam, I could tell he had a lot of interesting ideas. So I asked him to keep in touch as he started using the tool. I just knew he would find creative ways to use it that all of us in the VisualsSpeak community will find useful. Here is his first report:

The internal learning session was conducted on 2 May 08. My peers are absolutely amazed by its (VisualsSpeak ImageSet) ability and potential to create openness at a level they have not experienced before. Apologies, I don’t consider myself as en expert in this so I stayed pretty close to the way you have conducted in the IAF session but a slightly compressed one as I have only 1.5 hour. In summary, this is how it was done;

• Started with a brief introduction on what VisualsSpeaks is.
• Each learner receives handouts on pattern recognition.
• Each learner receives a base (about 40cm by 30cm) to work with.
• Divided into two small group of 6, given only 5 minutes, each learner to select any number of photos that will represent “yourself”.

Some interesting observations captured were,

1. Some did not use the base, they simply lay the photos on the floor. Participants replied, “ creativity has no boundaries” when asked why the base wasn’t used
2. Some selected photos were overturned but were found beside the frame formed by the participant. The participant was asked why those photos were selected but not revealed. We didn’t get a concrete reply but it was interesting enough to just ask the question. We all agreed that the act carries meaning that is implicit and not groundless.
3. Listeners should try to look at the frame with the same perspective as the creator, i.e. nobody should stand opposite of the creator.
4. One participant formed a frame that has no humans in any photos but only nature. It could very well mean he prefers the nature to a crowd, introversion, reserved, etc.
5. A few felt that the least instructions from facilitators, more room can be given to creativity and also allowing more implicit information to surface
6. As a facilitator, the expectation cup should be emptied to avoid any unwarranted influences.

Overall, the experience was great.

Results!

I’m especially excited by Adam’s results for a couple of reasons:

• while we tested the VisualsSpeak ImageSet with people from around the world, most of the images were created in the US
• it worked in a setting that is very different from where it was created
• Adam got excellent results after just three hours of training

Our dream is to create add-on sets of images to broaden the applicability of the tool. We want other photographers who represent very different viewpoints to add to the collection. This will make it more usable globally, with more inclusive images. But, the core set has to be solid, and having facilitators bring it into other countries is a way to test that at a new level. So thanks Adam, we look forward to hearing how we can make the image selection even better for your area of the world.

Affirming Adam’s observations

These are great observations, aligned with much of what we have observed over the years.

• Some did not use the base

Offering a background for people to assemble their images serves a couple of purposes. One, there is a segment of participants that really enjoy working with a defined space. They don’t know what to do without a defined area, so the background is important to them. Second, how someone responds to the idea of a background gives you a lot more information about how they think.

With a group of experiential facilitators and people who work for a super creative company like Focus Adventure, I would expect some to reject the background. There is no end to what people come up with, and the best part about it- it’s all OK. It just provides more to talk about and makes our differences quite vivid and clear.

• photos were overturned

I totally agree that there is meaning to the overturned photos. Not all the time, but it can be very significant. I have seen people have deep insights when asked about images that are hidden in some way. I have also seen a lot of emotion, with crying and even deep sobbing. It can be very powerful in a coaching situation when you are one-on-one. It can be very uncomfortable for some people if that happens in a larger group. Especially in a work setting.

I proceed carefully. With a group, sometimes I will point out to them as a whole that they may want to reflect on things around the edges of their images. Often people who feel safe will share insights, while others will stay quiet and I just respect that.

• same perspective

This is interesting to me. Yes, looking at the image from the same side as where the creator is describing it helps you understand their perspective. So, if that matches your session objective, it could be helpful. I have also observed people who are on the opposite side see something, and when they mention it, it offers an insight to the person who constructed the image.

If you are looking for creative insights, innovation, and breakthrough, I would intentionally look at things from different sides. So this is a good example of how the process might flex depending on your desired outcomes.

• no humans in any photos but only nature

I also suspect I am working with someone who is more reflective when I see images with no people. I listen carefully to their stories for clues that confirm it or not.

• least instructions from facilitators

I’m totally on board with this one. I’m always saying no rules, just a time limit. Participants do amazing things, and I never tire of listening and seeing what they come up with.

• expectation cup should be emptied
  

I love this. So insightful. I think this is the hardest thing for most people to get used to using VisualsSpeak. The more you, as the facilitator, can lessen your expectations of what the outcomes should be about the better the process will be. If you allow it to happen, magic can occur in the room.

Thanks Adam and the team at Focus Adventure for sharing with all of us!

Christine and I were inspired by something we read recently about how to involve a community of people and businesses in donating to non-profits doing exceptional work. This is what we came up with. Your input about our approach would be greatly appreciated.

We are inviting the VisualsSpeak Community to donate to a good cause. And it won’t cost you a cent!

Send us your VisualsSpeak story and we will make a contribution to Mercy Corps. This Portland, Oregon based group has a global perspective. Presently they are contributing their resources to relief in China and Myanmar after the recent disasters there.

This is a Win-Win-Win scenario:

• You win - Your story is converted into dollars and then contributed to an organization doing great work on a global level.
• VisualsSpeak wins - We get your great stories to share with current and potential community members.
• Mercy Corps wins - They receive money from our community to help continue their great work.

About Mercy Corps

Mercy Corps works amid disasters, conflicts, chronic poverty and instability to unleash the potential of people who can win against nearly impossible odds. Since 1979, Mercy Corps has provided $1.5 billion in assistance to (more)

The Details

Send us a story* about something that happened while using VisualsSpeak. This might be about a time when there was a significant breakthrough, or something unusual happened, or new insights were inspired, or anything you think others might want to hear.

Include as much detail as possible such as:

• Who was the audience?
• What was the purpose of the process?
• Where did this take place?
• How did your participants respond?

Please include the following information about yourself: (as much as you like)

• Name
• Title/ Profession
• Company/ Organization
• Website/ Blog
• Digital Photograph (or where we can find one on the web)

How to send your story

• Leave your story as a comment on our Blog post “What’s your story?”
• Send a separate email to info at visualsspeak dot com

Show me the money!

• VisualsSpeak LLC will donate $10.00 per story
• Christine & Tom will personally contribute $10.00 per story for a total of $20 per story
• $300.00 total potential donation! (15 stories)
• Donations to be tabulated on June 18, 2008

Why?

We believe in giving back. And one of the ways to give back is to support organizations doing great work. There’s not enough time in a day to do everything, so contributing to groups that benefit us all makes sense.

* By sending your story to VisualsSpeak, you agree to give us permission to use it in various ways including but not limited to our website, Blog, and marketing materials.

Thanks for your story and for supporting an incredible organization like Mercy Corps!

More often in life, making a difference is about all of the small steps we take along the way.

Yours in service,

Christine Martell & Tom Tiernan
VisualsSpeak LLC

I’m not leaving my usual focus on all things visual, just adding my weekly report on an online blogging project I am participating in.

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Day 8: Comment outside nicheIn order to comment outside my niche, I would have to have a niche. I write in an obscure area, and see my roles as varied, so my blog reader is full of a diverse range of topics. Good thing, it made it easy to complete this task, since it is already something I regularly do.

Day 9: Should we comment on blogs?

The thing I most appreciate about blogs is the diversity of approaches. If a blog is new, I recognize that someone may have not decided how they want to approach the blogosphere, but for a more mature blog, it seems reasonable that a blogger may make a variety of choices for reasons that are individual.

Day 10: Comment Audit

This day asked us to look at how our blogs might affect whether we get comments. Over the course of this blog, I think I have done everything on the list that might deter people. I still struggle over voice, who I am talking to, who I want to talk to, and who might care about what I have to say. Of course, this reflects some of my own confusion about the direction my business in general is moving. It’s an ongoing action research project. I try things, watch how they go, and redesign.

Day 11: Comment Policy

I have a bunch of redesign I am working on behind the scenes, so a comment policy will be added to it. I was particularly taken by Kevin’s concept, where he extends an invitation. So much more appealing to me than a policy per se.

Day 12: Comment Friendly?

Since this is a business blog, I do not feel comfortable taking moderation off for first time commentors. I have caught enough objectionable comments to feel comfortable with this.

Day 13: Post using comments

Since the comment challenge began, I have been writing posts based on reader comments or requests. It started with a comment on Sue Waters blog from Christy Tucker about her new blog header, and I responded with Does my header make my blog look fat? . Jabiz Raisdana asked about his headers on that post, so I wrote, What makes these blog headers effective? Then I got an email from Fred Deutsch so I wrote What to do with a visually noisy blog and Suggestions for a visually noisy blog.

I have enjoyed writing these posts since it has provided me concrete examples of visual patterns to demonstrate how they affect what we do online. I can’t do it all of the time, and it might be very boring after a while, but I hope it has been helpful to readers and the blog owners alike.

Day 14: Turn blog over to readers

Ok, so have you found the series on blog headers and patterns helpful? Interesting? What could I do to be more helpful? Any opinions, I’d love to hear them.

This is the second post for looking at the visual details that effect how we read a blog. Part 1: What to do with a visually noisy blog focused on the design of the template that was modified for the School of Thought blog.

Part 2: Ideas for visually simplifying a blog

First I want to acknowledge the blog we are talking about in this post is chock full of great information and resources. So the goal here is to make that come front and center in a way that isn’t quite so visually overwhelming.

When I started blogging there were so many cool widgets and things to stick in my sidebar that I wanted to try them all. Even being conscious of the visual impact, I still did it. Then I read Skellie’s 50 Ways to Unclutter Your Blog. It really helped me to think more in terms of the readers perspective and about what I was trying to do. I pulled a lot of stuff off my blog that day.

What are readers looking for when they come to your blog?

I think this may be really different from blog to blog, and perhaps from reader to reader. When I come to a blog, the first thing I look at is the tagline for an overall sense of what it is about. I want to see who the author is and something about them. I look for categories or tags so I get a general overview of the topics the person is writing about. Therefore, when I look at the visuals on a blog, my opinions are influenced by what I want to see. Ultimately what works for a particular blog is a balance between what the owner is trying to convey and their readers’ needs.

Customizing a template

The School of Thought blog uses a customized version of Stardust, which I talked about in part 1. The most obvious difference is that the two column design from the original template has been converted to three columns. In the last post we talked about how people read in an F pattern on the web. When there are three columns, the reading pattern is slightly different. The eye can go on several paths, which may become confusing.

Sue Waters wondered:

Based on how you have explained people read online I now wondering how whether a left and right sidebar change this reading pattern and are they competing for attention with the post?

And Sue Wyatt saw it like this:

I never thought about the way my template might be read - choices of colour, number of columns, left to right in F pattern. I went into Fred’s blog and immediately the black writing got my eye, but further down the page the red on the left drew my eye first. I don’t think I even looked at the right hand side.

The second thing is the decorative flourish that separated the post from the right sidebar, in the original template, has been removed. The flourish provided a visual diverter to keep the eye going back to the posts. Without it, the visual path leads the eye almost off the right side.

What else is affecting how the eye moves?

The picture of Fred helps lead the eye into the post. The description below the photo appears as a grey rectangle. There is nothing to break up the block. Therefore, even though the words are situated in a place which normally would get a lot of attention, they melt into the background. I wouldn’t normally read something in a block like this. The content is great; warm, welcoming, engaging. But you have to get people to read it to know that. Sue Waters noticed:

Fred’s image plus information on the left is dominating the blog dragging my eyes to the left. I don’t think that is a bad thing but feel that the wording needs to be shortened and broken up to make it more concise.

How might you do this? Break it up into shorter parts. Use some bold? Maybe a bullet? Use a shorter excerpt and lead people to a longer version on the About page? Lots of choices.

As you scroll down, there are long lists of red links in small type. To my eye, when I try to focus on reading the post, it feels like the red links are trying to pull my eyes in two directions. Since it is a flexible width blog, I can reduce this on my 23″ Cinema Display, but there isn’t enough room on the 17″ monitor on my Windows machine at home. It gets even more dramatic on my 12″ laptop.

Manish Mohan saw it this way:

On Fred’s blog I basically read through the middle column. The text was easy to read in the middle. The side bars (left and right) have very small font text. So even though the color is red, and like you say pulls the eye, I ignored it completely. Perhaps it is because unconsciously I know that the main content on the page is in the middle column, perhaps because the middle column is significantly easier to read with bigger font. Only after I had scanned through the posts content did I review the page again for snippets on the sidebars to see if there was anything interesting.

Prime Blog Real Estate

For any blog, the things that are most important to our readers should be in the most prominent places on the blog. This may vary from blog to blog, but I suspect for a large percentage of people the most crucial elements are:

• Name of the blog
• The tagline (what it is about)
• Something about the author
• Where to subscribe
• Categories or most popular posts
• Ads if you are blogging for income

The prime real estate on a blog are the header, the top of the sidebars and anything that is above the fold (meaning things that show without having to scroll).

Right now on Fred’s blog we have the name, tagline, how to search and a way to subscribe labeled RSS in the header. At the top of the sidebar on the left is a picture of Fred. On the right where the eye is being most strongly lead, there is a link that brings you to another site. Underneath it is the login area for the author.

Suggestions?

There are lots of possibilities and a variety of reasons you might go one way or another. If there are statistics available, I would look at what people are clicking on. That would help me see what is important to my readers.

Here is one idea. It’s a sketch I created by taking screenshots and rearranging them, so it’s just to get an idea of how this might look.

I would select the most important links on the site to go in the left column. I usually put my categories here. Fred has a lot of link lists, and it’s not clear to me which ones he thinks are most important for his readers. I would identify what they are and put them here. Right now, categories are in a drop down menu, and there are lot of them. I’d think about shortening the number of categories and listing them out to make them more accessible. I would also place them as high up as possible on the template.

I moved Fred’s picture to the right since that is where this particular template naturally leads the eye. This has the added benefit of deflecting the eye back toward the posts. He could also enhance the visual path back to the post by breaking up the text underneath using bold letters, bullets, and/or paragraphs.

I’d add a Feedburner subscribe link, or some other one that uses natural language. Yes, there is an RSS link above, but I suspect many of Fred’s readers do not know what RSS is. Might also consider a subscribe by email. I have placed the subscribe link where most people expect to find it.

As you scroll down the current blog page, there are multiple link lists. I would move some of them to static pages. This way the offerings you most want readers to see would show up in the horizontal navigation where they can see them when they arrive on your site. There is a lot of great information for readers on this site, but I don’t know how many people are discovering all that is available to them since it requires so much scrolling. There is also the problem with red links on both sides of the page. By removing a lot of the links and placing them on a static Resource page, this would help reduce how much scrolling people have to do in order to get to what they’re after.

I’d move the meta section to the bottom of the blog. Something like this is only for the author, and we know where to find it. It’s just confusing to readers who aren’t WordPress bloggers.

What else might Fred consider?

What do you notice about Fred’s blog? He’s looking for suggestions, so I’m sure he’d appreciate hearing from you. Especially if you are a first time reader, those fresh eyes can often be the most helpful.

Part 1: Your template as your visual foundation

Fred Deutsch emailed me with a Help, help, help me subject line:

Hi, I really enjoy your site and am learning a lot. I’m wondering if you
might provide me some feedback or suggestions? I started my blog for two purposes — first to communicate with constituents and educational people, and second as a sort of reference area for me to list all my favorite sites (the side bars). But now that I’ve been blogging a few months, the blog page seems congested to me — or at least not as visually inviting as I would like it to be. Do you have any suggestions?

When I started looking at Fred’s site, I noticed a couple of things. But in order to really explain it, I need a couple of posts to do it. So I hope Fred can hang on while I talk about some of the visual basics under what is going on in his blog. When we select a template, we are choosing the foundation visuals of our blogs. I’m going to talk about the template Fred has chosen in this post, and write another post on the choices he has made that affect it.

How do people read on the web?

Eye tracking studies have shown people tend to read in an F shaped pattern online. These are heatmaps, where the areas that are most looked at are red, then yellow, then blue, with the grey areas being places that the eye skips over.

Looking at these charts you can see there is a general overall pattern (the F pattern) but you can also see how there are visual elements that also pull the eye. For example, in the middle heatmap, there are arrows that point to a box on the right side.

So when design elements fall into this F pattern, it’s pretty easy for the eye to follow. If you want the eye to go in another pattern, you have to do something to get its attention.

The template underneath Fred’s blog

Fred uses a customized version of Stardust. It’s a black and white template with red accents. Red against the black and white provides a lot of contrast and the red strongly attracts the eye. There is a decorative spray of leaves that also acts to deflect the eye back toward the post.

You can see, if you remove the spray (see template below), there is nothing to stop the eye from being pulled off the right side. The links create tracks for our eyes to follow that lead our attention off the blog to the right. Now if you have a short post so there is another red calendar or a strong image inserted on the left, you may be able to pull the eye back. But how often do you write your posts to satisfy the visual need of your blog? (OK, so I might.)

What can you do to change the way the eye moves?

In this case, you can darken the color of the links on the right. That will help the brighter reds move the eye back to the post.

In order to do this you need to get into the code and change a color number on the stylesheet. It isn’t terribly difficult, but you do have to pay attention and not modify the code in any other ways. There are several steps:

1. Determine the color number of the current links so you can find it in the code
2. Determine the color number you want to change them to
3. Find the place in the CSS on the stylesheet that controls those links
4. Change the color number

Finding colors

There are many ways to do this depending on the software you have access to. I’m showing the color picker in Photoshop, since that is the image program I use. First I took the screen shot of the template I show above, then open the image in Photoshop. I used the eyedropper tool to find the red used in the template, then selected a darker version of that color. The hexidecimal color number I need for the code is in the box at the bottom of the color picker.

Changing the Stylesheet in a Wordpress blog

I installed this template on a testblog that has been updated to version 2.5.1. If you are using another version, the admin interface may look different, but the basic process is the same. Open the admin, go to the Design (used to be called Presentation) tab. Select Theme Editor, then Stylesheet. Scroll down until you find the code for the links (click on the image to see it larger and clearer type). Make the change and click update.

Doing things in unconventional ways

Now, I am certainly one to break rules, especially in design. However, I do think about when it serves me and when it doesn’t. In a blog, we have many elements competing for attention. If we can use some elements that are familiar to the general user, those elements basically stop competing. We see them, recognize them, and move on.

This blog template chooses not to use the orange RSS symbol to subscribe to the feed. Instead it uses a link labeled RSS.

Usability expert Jacob Nielson has this to say:

The first, and strongest, guideline about news feeds is to stop calling them RSS. In our study, 82% of users had no idea what this term meant. Using implementation-oriented terminology is generally a bad idea, because most users don’t understand (or care about) the underlying technology. It’s better to use terms that indicate what the concept does for users. In this case, “news feed” does this far better than “RSS.”

How do you deal with a visually noisy blog?

OK, I’ve given you my perspective, now tell me yours. What do you think about this template and the visual flow? What do you do to increase the readability of your blog from a visual perspective?

Next up: suggestions for Fred’s blog

I’ll be putting up a second post on how to de-noize (I’m going to copyright this word, so don’t steal it) a blog, using Fred’s as an example. Some of the things we’ll be looking at are the unintentional consequences of changing the template and what are people looking for when they come to your blog.