Author Archives: Davin Granroth

About Davin Granroth

Davin is Vice President of User Experience for Covenant Eyes, Inc. in Owosso, Michigan. He got his start in the field in the mid-90s by helping students and faculty learn how to write better for the web. For what he's done between then and now, see his LinkedIn profile.

Much ado about phone numbers

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Four approaches to styling phone numbers.

Here are four approaches to styling phone numbers. Which looks best to you?

Lately I’ve been thinking about formatting phone numbers. Of course, there are plenty of options in addition to the ones above, but these are some common ones, although the thin spaces option is perhaps not too common. I added it because I’ve been wondering about the value of the separator characters, and if we can just not use them in favor of a little white space.

Here is some of the thinking.

  1. The conventional formatting of (123) 456-7890 will obviously be a phone number to most Americans.
  2. I’m no fan of the dashes.
  3. I’m okay with the periods. However, are they needed?
  4. Which led me to try the version with thin spaces between each set of digits.

I like the thin spaces, but I don’t dislike the conventional version. So, for obviousness, I lean towards the convention. For aesthetic, I lean towards the thin spaces.

But part of the decision of which approach to go with will depend upon the context. For instance, is the phone number labeled with an obvious word like Telephone or Phone? If so, I might opt for the thin spaces version.

However, if the context is unclear, say in the absence of clear cues about what that number is, the conventional approach would be best. Otherwise, the number could be misinterpreted as some other number, or it might simply take the reader too much mental effort to recognize it as a phone number. No need for that sort of rudeness.

Clearly, this is all just my opinion. Do you have a preference for how phone numbers ought to be styled?

How can MI UPA, IxDA groups, and MichiCHI work together?

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UX practitioners in the state of Michigan have an enviable problem. We have so many active professional groups that it’s easy to get confused by which one is doing what, exactly.

Which groups?

Each group organizes events for practitioners, students, and academics to gather together in order to network and learn from each other. It’s great!

But it is also a bit much to keep track of, and I’m not always clear on which group is sponsoring which event. After all, a great many people in the UX field do usability research and evaluation, interaction design, and are interested in research and theory. Thus, we tend to see a lot of overlap in attendees for events from any of these organizations.

So, during a conversation at work today, Caitlin, Alaina, and I hatched a rough concept. (Disclaimer: this post represents what I personally took away from that conversation. I invite Alaina and Caitlin to chime in on the comments below to correct my thinking and/or to add to this post.)

Here’s the gist: Loosely coordinate the efforts of these organizations by factors of geography, frequency, and approach to UX.

Factor: Geography

MI UPA is a state-wide association, so we hope that MI UPA events will be big enough to draw people from a wider area of Michigan. Of course, it is difficult to draw people from as far north as the Upper Peninsula (there are UXers up there, right?), but for a great deal of people in the state, an occassional drive to Lansing, Ann Arbor, Detroit, or Grand Rapids is acceptable if the event will be good enough.

However, IxDA is based on local groups. IxDA-Lansing, for instance, tends to draw people from the Lansing area and nearby areas like Owosso and Flint. IxDA-Grand Rapids will likewise draw people from that area.

MichiCHI is similar in geographic reach to MI UPA.

Factor: Frequency

Because of the geographic constraints, having frequent meetings is easier for IxDA local groups because attendees simply don’t have to drive that far. So, IxDA groups could meet monthly with greater ease, and they would be more relaxed.

However, because people would need to drive further to attend events by the statewide organizations, they could do better to meet perhaps quarterly or even less, leaving the more frequent get-togethers to the IxDA local groups. The expectation is that these less frequent events would be a bit more polished—more of an event than a meet up.

Factor: Approach to UX

What I mean by this phrase is whether the UX focus is more academic (MichiCHI), more focused on usability work (MI UPA), or more focused on interaction design (IxDA). Of course, because we’re all in the same general field, this breakdown should be taken with a pretty heavy grain of salt. But while we tend to operate as generalists in part, I personally appreciate opportunities in each area, so I think there is value in this distinction.

Coordinating events by these various groups

Sketch of idea for coordinating MI UPA, MichiCHI, and IxDA local groups in Michigan.

Sketch of idea for coordinating MI UPA, MichiCHI, and IxDA local groups in Michigan.

So, given these thoughts, here’s a proposal.

1. We embrace the IxDA local groups

Perhaps we could even create more. How about an IxDA-Detroit? IxDA-Marquette? IxDA-Houghton? (Trying to represent the U.P.) These IxDA groups would sate our appetite to meet frequently for networking, idea sharing, and teaching each other how we can do our work better. In the meantime, MI UPA and MichiCHI purposely slow down the pace and encourage participation in the more frequent IxDA events.

2. we help the state associations with less frequent, more formal events

These frequent IxDA groups can help generate the presentations that could then be shared state-wide at larger events sponsored by MI UPA or MichiCHI. The coordinators of each IxDA group could stay in touch with the events committees of MI UPA and MichiCHi and recommend excellent presentations. And these IxDA groups would help promote and recruit volunteers for the larger events put on by MI UPA and MichiCHI. These organizations are already putting on some awesome events like the annual Internet User Experience conference. Let’s pitch in and help them be even more awesome.

And how to coordinate between MI UPA and MichiCHI?

Beats me. Perhaps some of you have ideas?

Conclusion

We have a really great group of practitioners in Michigan, and we’re lucky to have these organizations actively promoting our field. With a little coordination for each group in light of the others, I think we can tune our professional organizations to work even better together.

Do you do UX work in Michigan? What are your thoughts?

How I use utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign from Google Analytics

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My friend Adam called me this evening to ask how I’ve used the Google Analytics tracking codes utm_source, utm_medium, and utm_campaign. He’s working on an app to help marketers generate HTML e-mails, and is thinking about automating the inclusion of these tracking codes.

The utm_medium is pretty straightforward in that the medium would be values like email, web, twitter, rss, and so on.

But, what’s the difference between utm_source and utm_campaign?

Google’s documentation on these variables is helpful in general, but is not all that clear on the difference between these two variables.

So, here’s how I think of those variables. The utm_source is like a noun, and utm_campaign is like an adjective. The utm_source will be more consistent from one edition to another, while the utm_campaign will change.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s say I send an e-mail newsletter called Brilliant Widgets every season (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter), and I want to track how many links back to my website each edition generates. Here are the utm_* values I would use.

utm_* values for the Winter edition of Brilliant Widgets

utm_source Brilliant_Widgets
utm_campaign Winter_2011
utm_medium email

So, the href value of the link back to my website would look like this: http://blog.davingranroth.com/?utm_source=Brilliant_Widgets&utm_campaign=Winter_2011&utm_medium=email

Now, assuming I use those parameters on the links back to my website and that my website activity is being tracked with Google Analytics, I’ll be able use Google Analytics to identify website visits that came from that e-mail newsletter. Then for the next edition, I would keep utm_source and utm_medium the same, but update to utm_campaign=Spring_2012.

With this thinking, you could define a set of values for all the e-mails you send out, and create a system that would help you know what those values should be when you introduce new online publications.

I’m sure that other people and companies have come up with their own approaches to using these utm_* values.

I’m curious, does anyone else have different ideas or examples to share?