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Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned working on a recent real-life, large-scale [responsive web design] project. Specifically, this post focuses on how we chose to deal with deep navigation in the landscape of a templated environment.

Over the past decade, the power of A/B testing has become an open secret of high-stakes web development. It’s now the standard (but seldom advertised) means through which Silicon Valley improves its online products. Using A/B, new ideas can be essentially focus-group tested in real time: Without being told, a fraction of users are diverted to a slightly different version of a given web page and their behavior compared against the mass of users on the standard site. If the new version proves superior—gaining more clicks, longer visits, more purchases—it will displace the original; if the new version is inferior, it’s quietly phased out without most users ever seeing it. A/B allows seemingly subjective questions of design—color, layout, image selection, text—to become incontrovertible matters of data-driven social science.

This article is about the tiniest of details that goes into creating the main centerpiece of your digital product—the construction of the elements of your navigation. This is the most important aid you can possibly give to your users as they are constantly seeking a reason to walk out on you.

Nonprofits needing workflow and project management software, be sure to give Podio a look as you explore the usual suspects (such as Basecamp).

A few highlights (from our perspective):

• Extremely flexible and customizable to your workflow
• Mobile apps so staff can keep up to date on the fly
• Google docs integration
• Dropbox integration
• Possibility for nonprofits to be sponsored beyond the free version: “We’re proud to sponsor students and non-profit around the world, and we would love to sponsor you as well.”

Some of the other features that we haven’t explored:

• CRM software
• Recruiting tool
• Event management

If anybody’s not using Dropbox yet, it’s incredibly handy for syncing and sharing files. They’ve just increased the amount of free space you can get by referring folks — up to 16 GB free now. This is handy for small nonprofits like us, who need the service but need to keep our costs down. (Sign up with the link above and we’ll each get 500 MB of space free).

1. Start with the user’s needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better

Great stuff! Click through on each for more details and examples.

(via Blogging Pro)

Here’s how to shape your new page around photos and images that engage and motivate your community…

How Linux is built

Usability.gov is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible. The site addresses a broad range of factors that go into web design and development. The site will help you to:

• Plan and design usable sites by collecting data on what users need
• Develop prototypes
• Conduct usability tests and write up results
• Measure trends and demographics

From Farra at Big Duck:

Using this chart can help you answer questions like:

• Does your website give users what they need in the way that they want it? 
• Does it serve your mission and current goals? 
• Do you have a content strategy and the resources you need to keep your site up to date? 
• How have the trends toward interactivity, social media, and responsive design affected your website?

Google Refine is a power tool for working with messy data, cleaning it up, transforming it from one format into another, extending it with web services, and linking it to databases…

Doesn’t even require a jQuery plugin — all core jQuery. Neato! (And, dare we say it, very similar to Tumblr’s scroll-to-top functionality).

We just implemented it on Sofie.org — scroll down on this page and test it out!

This session will assume that you have a current understanding of what responsive and mobile-first are, and that you come to this session ready to learn EXACTLY how to incorporate these technologies now in your Drupal projects.

This session will guide you through the methods to actually implement responsive, mobile-first themes in Drupal, today… On your way out the door when this session ends, you’ll be armed with the latest knowledge, tools, and inspiration to skip a time slot or two after the session, and start hacking away at your own responsive design!!

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the leading non-profit working to defend civil liberties in the realm of the internet and the digital world. This is a story about how the EFF was an early adopter of Drupal, tragically became encumbered with an aging Drupal5 site, and eventually triumphed with a migration and re-launch of their website in Drupal7. Also, there is a B Plot: The move from the proprietary advocacy/CRM service known as Convio into a Drupal-powered CiviCRM donation and CRM system. Presenters: Elly Jonez of Chapter Three and Micah Lee, EFF’s Web Developer.

Here’s the schedule from the last few days — click through each to watch/listen online.

OXFAM + Drupal = Great

International NGOs Leveraging Drupal for Social Change

Hardcore Pinterest users, do these words from the TOS terrify you? Perpetual. Irrevocable. Transferable. Royalty-Free…and Otherwise Exploit.