David R. Moulton's Blog » Design

New microsite launch, a place for Educators.

David — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:42:12 +0000

Education Community – TechSmith, the world leader in Screen Capture and Screen Recording Software.

Originally uploaded by moultonstudio

Just launched a news set of pages for TechSmith’s educators.

Check out the coming series.

David — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:16:23 +0000

24 in 24 logos (neon)

Originally uploaded by moultonstudio

Bets and friends are planning a 24 in 24 video series. Check it out.

Jing Project

David — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:33:28 +0000

Jing Project

Originally uploaded by moultonstudio

TechSmith launch Jing Pro this week and so far it has been well received. One of the things that was key to the successful launch was the new jingproject.com site, which was largely due to work done by my counter- part Nick and one of our amazing writers, Dan. I got to help a little on this one too… I took the essence of the Jing site and tried to build this bridge page on techsmith.com.

Add sizzle to your site. Slideshow Pro and HighSlide

David — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:08:16 +0000

So if you already know of Slideshow Pro and the JS library HighSlide, this is not a tutorial on how to use them together, though I am sure it has been done. This is me singing the praises of two tools that have made my life easier and my sites look better.

On the TechSmith site I used SlideShow Pro on the homepage and man does that look great. On the Camtasia Studio and Camtasia Relay site’s Nick and I used HighSlide and have been getting great feedback on how it works, especially for video.

I am looking to use both on the upcoming MidoriRideShop.com site and maybe if I have a second, I will push these beauties on to my own site.

What tools have you found have added sizzle to your site? I’d love to hear your comments.

Camtasia Studio 6 launch!

David — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:00:27 +0000

This week we launched the new Camtasia Studio 6 and with it, a new site. I was heavily involved in the design and development of the site, though, as is always the case at TechSmith a lot of people pitched in to make sure that this is a successful site.

A quick video walk-through of the site that I will be adding sound and narration to soon.

Heat map results for the initial 5000 visits, via a CrazyEgg test.

Totally ripped off.

David — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:54:56 +0000

For several months now I have been trying to get the site that ripped off my design (compare to my archived portfolio site) to do one thing for me. Delete my Google Analytics tracking code from their site.

I am past the idea that the page layout or code is or ever was something that I could somehow protect. The Google Analytics code that I use to track my traffic and improve my site is different.

In short, I expect that you would delete that tracking code from your pages when you steal from someone else. However some hapless Germans are not this clever and as you can see… they shifted the imagery but if you look at the code… we its mine and its pretty lame that after several requests to have the tracking code deleted I have been ignored.

I have tried to contact Mode Wübbenhorst. Of course I have heard nothing. If you have any ideas, I am open to suggestions. The email listed on the site is giselawuebbenhorst@web.de and here is some of the WhoIs info.

I think that thing that bugs me the most is that I am reminded every time I look at my stats. I am not looking at a ton of traffic so the addition of the Mode Wübbenhorst traffic skews things.

An Event Apart was awesome. Awesome!

David — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:37:19 +0000

In case you did not catch that, An Event Apart was awesome! What a conference. What speakers. All amazing. I am still unpacking my notes and digesting all the tidbits. More to come as soon as possible.

Check out the Flickr pics.

Summary of the conference.
All speakers centered their conversations around Design, Code, User Experience or Inspiration. Most covered a couple.

Zeldman: “Have empathy.” Jeffery states that a great designer must have empathy for the audience and be a great communicator. “Know your audience and know yourself” he says.

Moble web: A(hhh)mazing on Apple devices

David — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:19:03 +0000

Its 4:20pm, I am laying on my sofa, tapping out this post. I am using an iPod. I also checked the NFL scores, go Bears! And checked on some banking, and read CNN headlines and… well you get the idea. Amazing!

Now that I can, checking my designs on a mobile platform is key.

Are you checking your sites one a mobile platform?

Way to go orderedlist.com/

David — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 02:02:03 +0000

To the guys at Ordered List a major kudos for the further development of the Fancy Zoom! I can not wait to play with this. My only question is if having all the content that is hidden until the Fancy Zoom reveals it impacts the load time. I’ve only had a second to see this and I am very excited about the prospect of using it.

Check out the video.

Tools to test your site for free.

David — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:23:11 +0000

In July I decided to relaunch MoultonStudio.com. It was time. I have been at my new job for over a year, my desire to publish has been much stronger, and I finally settled on a design concept that I like*.

So after (re)launch, I went ahead and posted to a couple of CSS/design galleries. My hope was to generate some traffic so that I could see the strengths and weaknesses of the design and content. There have been a few surprises, and for revealing those, I am grateful to those that have taken the time to look at my site.

Google Analytics = time black hole.

Googles Analytics is a massively powerful tool. You can track just about anything, but there are a couple standouts in this application. These are just my favorites… deciding which are the most useful would be tough to call. I think it depends on what you want to know.

Content by Title

I like this because it lets me quickly understand what content visitors are looking at, the only drawback is if you have not made your title unique… I do and that had really helped me get a quick picture of my visitors experience.

Navigation Summary

I always have a tough time finding this in the UI, but the hunt is worth it. Being able to see how visitors are moving through the site lets me focus on improving that experience.

Map Overlay

Google calls this the “Geolocation visualization” and it is one of my first stops. Who is looking at your site? California? Sure. New York, why not? China… um wow.

CrazyEgg… very pretty

CrazyEgg is one of my favorite tools. Knowing where a user clicks is an amazing advantage. You can see what is working and what is not. I use CrazyEgg at work to test homepages and landing pages. Showing our stakeholders what is working (or not) in a beautiful, visual method pays off. People “get” this tools visual approach.

One of the surprises for me was revealed by CrazyEgg. This surprise was on my portfolio page. I could not believe how may people clicked on the URLs link. And that’s the thing about CrazyEgg. You set up the test thinking you understand how the page will work… and at the end you realize that people are interested in what they want, not always what you expect.

CrazyEggs visual tools make this tool something that will always be in my bag of tricks. The recent(ish) addition of the Confetti view is the most interesting to play with, though I wish I could save the data out as a self-contained SWF (hint).

Check out CrazyEgg and Google Analytics.

* This is harder than you might imagine, I am perhaps the worst client I’ve ever had.