Transcription Web Designer #5

Sunday, June 6th, 2010

Interviewee: Ronen Hirsh

Location: Israel

Duration: 1:15

Date: April 26^th 2010

*Transcription okay, no audio recording on field note blog.

Can you provide with your job title, or area of expertise?

No, I can’t actually, I don’t know. I am unemployed, and I have been for a few years. I am a yoga teacher; I have dabbled in the arts, and my own personal needs to express self online led me to gain some sort of mastery in Wordpress. And that brought about some additional skills.

How many years have you been doing web design then?

I had a 15 year tech career, the last 2 years was design of general software products. I have been using Wordpress for about 3 years.

How if at all would you label your workflow when building a website for someone?

Personal and intuitive.

*intuition is used quite often as a description of skill-set

What % of projects use WP?

I only use Wordpress.

Is there a type of client that wants WP more often?

I get all kinds of queries, and many that I don’t take on or don’t work out. From my perspective there are people who want WP and see it as an opportunity to express themselves and others who see it as a technical solution that is comfortable and usually they are not well attuned to what Wordpress does. So there is a bit of friction with WP, and it happens more with commercial websites than people or organizations that want to say something. They are looking for a cheap solution and Wp is free and in that kind of dialogue.  Israel different from rest of the world, and I got a project today from a nonprofit that actually helped me. The general quality of web services in Israel is really lousy, and there are 2 or 3 companies that dominate the internet, and if you are not a web professional and are not up to date on what is going on these companies are well known, but they do a lousy job, and they have lousy CMS systems and that are very pricy. Price point is very a strong point, so when they hear about WP they want to gravitate towards it. But cheap solution in not my thing.

What is the new project?

I was amused that it happened. The organization is called New Family, because in Israel there is no legislation concerning family status. Family status is based on tradition not on law. I met and married a Romanian woman, and there was no way for us to get married in Israel, so this organization helped us do this. *interesting! Linked here. So they really rescued us.  We paid them a symbolic amount, because they were a nonprofit, and if we have gone to law offices we would have paid a lot more. The person who emailed me, didn’t actually know about me, as it was eight years ago, but had seen me on a job listing. I wrote him back, saying that even if he had no money to pay me, it was an opportunity to give back.

Could you tell me the name of nonprofit and what sort of work they do?

Nonprofits are atypical because I do not do this commercially. *Interviewee gave three choices of websites. This is what I chose….

Third and biggest project is my wife. My wife is Romanian and she has created a website called feminity in Romanian, and this website has been up for a year in and month now. Over 400 women are visiting each day getting close to 2000 pages. It deals with issues that are just not available in Romanian, just does not exist. Women’s health, fertility, pregnancy, it is not organized as nonprofit yet legally in Romania. But there is an agenda here, and this is the biggest project and the one most closely involved with because it’s my wife.

It’s gone through the most iteration. There are a lot of content. How the design process happened, and how it happened and the needs. And it is live and working.

If you want to start talking what happened start to finish that is fine, if you feel comfortable doing so. However I can also provide questions for you, or markers for you to follow. Do you feel comfortable just starting?

I have a lot to say about Wordpress and how it’s done.

I believe that one of the greatest misconceptions,

What is different about nonprofits, and it is really about a sense of purpose. Rather than commercial and wanting to make money. One of the biggest misconceptions about Wordpress and websites in general is that it is a technical challenge. What I find that is that it is a content challenge. Writing, you know and people trying to make websites and just say they want a website with just 4 pages, content etc., not just a waste of money, but it is wrong to do. IF you expect Google to find you, or for anything to happen, I have this metaphor I like to use. If you are not updating your website all the time, it’s like having  a telephone line that is open to thousands of people and you are not saying anything. It’s kinda awkward. And the biggest challenge I find is connecting the idea of content creation to their lives, or work. Even with Andrea, my wife it is not a simple process. We don’t know how install Wp, make it SEO friendly etc…To do many technical things, and I say look that’s the easy part. Cause you are going to end up with a website and now what? And then you need to learn the discipline or writing, of pacing self and creating consistency. And that goes the other example of the website I gave you, the website that is not alive, is just dead in the water. And it hurts me, esp. because I care, I could say it is your business, your project, but I do care. And that is the most difficult aspect to get across to people.  People think it is just a technology issue. And this goes the same for personal blogs, and I say are you sure? Because I can make all the technical problems disappear, but then what? Like when they say in Feng Shui, water that is not flowing is unhealthy, this is the most difficult part I find in the process. And that changes the project from a web design project to something different all together. It is a long process of guiding and being there for them. What to do when I don’t feel like writing, what to do when I have nothing to say. Issues that come from the world of writing and not from web technologies. It is an ongoing process, there is no finish. This makes it difficult to price it. The most time consuming process I have that I put into any project is my attention. If someone comes to me once or twice a month with a question, they are with me that month. And if I have 10 clients that month, I am not emotionally well. If someone can come to me at anytime, and they want to know this or this. Goes back to my yoga routine.  Should I be charging them? Is this part of the work. There is always a clear beginning, but it is an ongoing process.

Andrea’s website we just launched the third design. It is not a whim, it is not because we feel like it, it is because we run into an issue and we have to decide what to do now.

*happens often with all clients, that simply can’t predict an issues until in the process, but nonprofit have less money to deal with them.

If I were an outsourcing developer that would be an another design project. And I honestly don’t know how to deal with this as a solutions provider, because its expensive to do a web design project each year. When you need money to sustain yourself. No way around it.

One of my biggest qualms with WP is that that it is not simple, it is complicated to use. I have been trying to raise this qualm in the community for some time now and I gave up on it. Because they are all developer and developers like to have options and lots of buttons. I have stopped counting on how many times I have taught people to use it.

Do you teach people to use Wordpress as part of the process or do you wait till the end?

That is where the intuitive part of the process comes in. I do it whenever it is necessary. I try as a matter of process to get people writing as soon as possible. Either on a notepad or do it online. Someone I just install Wordpress and tell them to get started.  I give them a staging environment somewhere on my domain, and tell them to write their first post. Or write their about me page. That is the biggest one.  I generally push toward them getting started on the writing as early as possible.  Many times there isn’t even a logo or an identity. SO it has to start somewhere. So if someone sees a website with their content it is much more approachable and they can relate to it. It is not a philosophical question do I like this design? Which is terrible design wise? Do I like it or not? This is a very narrow question. OS I try to get people writing as soon as possible. Because it is never soon enough. There is always resistance to it.

*also found this a problem for myself trying to blog field notes. Difficult to get started.

I have never come across a person who did not resist writing. It sounds so easy when you see it from the outside, but if it is your first time doing it, it is a huge obstacle.  Anyway that is my experience consistently  with people.

When you teach people how to use Wordpress, do you do it in Web design terms, or in a vernacular that speaks better to people who are not technologically literate?

I will always look for metaphor languages that relates to the person I am teaching. I do try to get some basic vocab now, so I can say post, page or category and they know what it is.

*language related to software that allows client to maintain site selves. Not to technology that created software.

But it always comes across better when there is a personal association or relationship. Their category, if they have a list that is relevant to them they understand what the category is, and not some distance technological concept and they just don’t get it.

Its like about a long time go, I taught this kid math,…doing these kind of basic algebra and if you buy 5 oranges etc.. and the kid couldn’t get it. So I used gummi bears and he got it.

Does this make people wanted to update things and increase their investment?

It is better for a project to fail early on if they can’t get into it, and then have it launch and have it be dead. So I push this as soon as possible for people o get involved early on. This also informs and drives the design. I am not a professional designer, and you have much more design skill than I do, I do basic designs and layouts because I do not believe that it is important. When people get too caught up in Details about colrs etc… come-on nobody, not even you are going to notice this eventually. But if you don’t have content, it’s like you are trying to avoid the issues. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t say anything, because its pretty! Well that only works once. So that also inspires me, so see someone’s about page. Where do you want to go, what do you want your organization to be. It’s tightly coupled with organization itself. And this is the issues to me. I am staying away because I believe the technical issue are not the issues.

I worked 2 years at a high end design consult, and company would pay tens of thousands of dollars and the design manager will say, I do not like Blue. Should that be a factor in the design process? Should I take you therapy and explain what a lame comment that is? I really try to , honestly, I work with people a very low budget , and I can’t afford to muck around with design so many design revisions. Let’s just get this done properly.

*important for nonprofits

I am starting another project with cousin in the states who has a psychology practice. He asked how much it would cost, and I said I don’t know. Whatever you want to pay. Because honestly I believe the conversation we are having now, is something that most web designers don’t do. They focus on the obvious things. This is my experience and insight in working with technology and products in the tech industry and now I am bringing it to you on a personal level. SO you know if I were to price this, and when I consult I have a really high per hour rate and you wouldn’t’ be able to afford me.  I and we had a really amazing process, and he was afraid to this because maybe he didn’t have enough to offend me, and he is three months into it and he is still thinking about the name and we are having conversations about the name and vision the goals. And I said to him imagine if we had some sort of agreement, I should be telling you come on man, we had an agreement, we have to get this done. And that is just wrong.

In what ways do you think web designer thwart the conversation? Sort of put clients in their place in some ways?

I think it is where it hurts the most; it is how involved you are. You can’t afford for me to be involved more than you can afford???. When you offer a quote, it assumes a certain amount of effort and I don’t think there is a web designer or technologist out there that doesn’t know it is not going to exceed . Your starting point then becomes how do I reign this in, and I am thinking how do I open this up? IF you are thinking reigning this in, your aren’t going to go anywhere.

A lot of illusion. Yeah there are a lot of cheap prices for 200 dollars. I am not even willing to talk to you for a certain amounts of money. I won’t even tell you why you shouldn’t for that amount of money. I had this same conversation with the large scale design firms, something would cost 30,000 dollars and they would say well I can get an independent freelancer to do it for 6, 000. And I say, by all means go for it and I will see you 2 years down the line, not selling and not working and it will cost you  more on principle.

Does WP affect your workflow specifically in being more open or is it just a tool?

I can say two things about this.  First of all, because it was originally a blogging tool, it has an amazing quality that pushes toward blogging. It is intuited in how it works, and I try to embrace this. Because the very idea that it does have categories and is time based, it pushes towards having a conversation in a website.

*conversation

The second thing is that it makes life simple for me. I tell people, I am not a developer and if you want this and this, and I can do anything that Wordpress has in terms of good plug-ins. So I can’t do anything for you that Wordpress also cannot do. Has to be good plugins, many are not.

*in that way shapes what is going online and also what nonprofits can do

When people come to me with needs and requirements, let’s see how we put this onto what Wordpress can do.

Because you are not a developer, and you are using Wordpress’ functions, do you think this opens up more time for you to have a relationship with the nonprofits?

I think it keeps, puts more weight on content and functional design. It has to be simple to do in Wordpress. If it is complicated, I am not your man.

If it is too complicated it is misusing the platform.

…Going back to the specific project and talking about the process.

Online you can see how it’s evolved…*link

Started as Hebrew website…but nothing was happening. No comments etc…

IN the Romanian site there are comments and not a week goes by that my wife does not get an email saying that it has changed her life. And that is a kind of rewarding experience because we are not getting any money for this. And we gave up on the Hebrew site.

Andrea wanted to start doing it in Romanian. SO took the theme, translated it to English and put it online. And the feedback was amazing. One person writing. We have a page about basic human anatomy and like 15,000 women read it. That is a huge achievement I think. So it started like this and at one point, trying to think back, I am not very orderly.

??? Fuzzy recording

I design on paper, and when I am done designing throw it out.

The first major change, occurred when the amount of content increased. We had a magazine type layout with 4 categories.  Newspaper websites, with categories under topics. This brought more content to the front. The nature of the blog is for old content to sink down below, but this was wrong for that sort of context.  The first articles are as relevant as the new ones.

This was the first thing that we addressed, so needed to more air time for more posts.

This is process, it was not some kind of light change, it, but it was a very specific need. How do we get people to see that there is more content here than what is on this page?

Categories are not enough.  People don’t click. What is in front of people’s s face is what they are going to see. There will always be the women who are more invested and more interested and because they have personal problems, and will do digging a round but most people are browsing though. So I got to make sure they meet the content we want them to meet in the browsing process. That was the second design iteration.

Added an email subscription. With over 400 women. It uses to be automated emails, and now its manual, so it is more personal. There is a summary in the mail.

Ops now I am skipping.

The last iteration is about a month or two old. What you see now. And actually I think there was a first major visual re design, needed to be a lighter and open color palette. What Andrea asked for was a shift…when there is just one person doing it, it is an uphill battle. And she found that people actually thought the project was much larger than that. And there are serious articles and all professional on diverse issues.

So this realization that people see this as bigger. SO her wish was to make this a nonprofit organization, not a nonprofit her, and acknowledging the fact that this is bigger. She was in Romainia was a few months because she wanted to meet people an promote the work, and the women and she stayed with friends there, and people opened up their homes to her, and she realized in a way they were already involved. It wasn’t really just her anymore. So we wanted to acknowledge this in the design, and this was the big change we were working towards. What you see on the website in the header is her. It is her picture. And people thought it wasn’t here, people couldn’t believe it was actually her.

*what nonprofits often rely on

When she went to Romania did she do interviews? Just speak to people?

We had an agenda, but we just were open. In the end it was about getting closer to the realities of Romania. In Israel there are a lot of options when it comes to birthing..etc.  A menu of birthing. And our natural preference is towards home birthing. But to preach this to a Romanian woman is just stupid, because natural childbirth is one where the doctor does not light a cigarette between their legs. You expect the world to be as you know it, and it’s not.  If she wants to give knowledge, it has to knowledge that is accessible and relevant to the realities of life in Romania. In that sense the visit was very important. Realizing what is possible.

It is like anthropology participant observation then.

Yeah, exactly. There is nothing like going there and being in it. One of her topics is able aromatherapy and being a herbalist. But in Romania you don’t have as many options as in Israel. Need to know what options make it relevant. No use giving advice to people that they can’t use. The agenda really is to move our lives back there.

She is looking for organization in Romania to help us get support and to get more people involved and collaboration that will help us make the transition and to get more women involved. Already have another woman who is a writer and write about her personal story or journal.

If you look at the website there are some design issues or solutions that address needs. If you are the homepage you can see that there is the post has a gravatar next to it. What happened was, a recent change, this women, a guest woman, and she started writing and from a personal perspective and what we realized was that it came across as another post.  And the funny thing was that someone replied to one of her posts and she became a consultant. And we said well this not what you are here for.  Okay and because it was also controversial. And it is kind of way down, and it shows that it is a personal entry. And give them a different feel. If you open up a journal entry it opens up a different looking page. Shows the difference between an article and a personal story. But the comment did not fit into the experience of reading.  The conditional tags changed the looks. And it was really powerful because it changed the way things were done on the site. Should we not have women writing or what to do?

Do you make the major decisions on the website together?

Yes. And it is another reason of why the process needs to be intimate. If I was an outsourcing service this change would have been complicated. We sit here in the living room and we talk about it, and sit here and describe it to you now easily because I now know what happed, but we sat and discussed what made us uncomfortable for a few hours in the living room before we figured it out. And I suggested one design solution, and she disagreed. It is processing of discovery. Not one of knowing. But you experience something on the website and they you take the time to figure out what to do with it.

I have done a lot of design projects in my life, and this is not something I could have expected or preempted. It was a few weeks of work and interactions. Until this happened, I could not foresee this problem. Any design spec I could have made would have come across this it. When it hurts you, you solve it. Big words, high talking, not relevant.

Another design story if you go back to the home page, if you click on one of the posts, let’s say new biological in Romania. There are 2, I wanted to write about this, things you can do with Wordpress, but I have lost motivation to give back to the Wordpress community. There are two things here, two achievements. Remember how I told you things would sink into history. Now here you see a random sampling of posts, and see content flowing by, so women can see variety of information. It brings up 4 or 5 random posts. SO even if the user does not do anything, content still moves by. And this is on every post page.

Another one, if you notice below the post title, there is a box, that is gray bluish with a title. What we created here, part of growing into a state of mind of an organization, we wanted to express, we wanted to have a wanted section, how you can participate in this organization. Calling out to more women to be part of the process. Created a new call to action category. Great, but how are you going to get people to see this. Every time a woman reads an article, there is a suggestion for how you can participate in this process. All these things are coming from a wish to grow. Not only to create a perception on the outside, but to create a realization on the outside that is it more than just the two of us. And we have had women writing in, and we have gotten help with translating.

And suddenly things started moving, cause people started seeing our wanted ads. And People being to see and respond. And this is the kind of stuff, and what I can say about feminitate. And what may expand the picture for you in another link* Have you ever heard about fertility awareness methods….it is…by observing bodily signs you can predict when you will be most fertile…or form of birth control. Etc..

Specifically, you need to keep track of these things, and all the ones currently online have poor user experience and design. And Andrea wanted to put up something people could use to track this process. And what she created, I decided was it would not work, so I created my own flash application that can do this. And it is the only application that I know of that can do this translated into so many languages. And had to be built in English in the first instance because I cannot develop in Romanian….not about knowing when ovulation, but knowing about your body.

This project is intended to expand and we don’t know how, but it will.

You said you mainly used sketches, but do you ever use wireframes or info design or anything like that?

The irony of it, is that I hate being in front of the computer. But one of my oldest customers who keeps coming back to me…??? but one of my main tools for wireframes was PowerPoint. They could make revisions and drafts without getting me involved. For small changes. If in PowerPoint they can just open it up and change it. Now when I moved to Ubuntu I lost it and open office is lousy. Because of this project and this circumstances, I have started to use Mockflow? Sometimes I do use wireframes and use that program.

I try not to accumulate information because it burdens me. Let the client take care of their materials. I don’t want too much on mind.

What, about your workflow makes it better for you as an individual?

I am not sure I understand?

Is there a specific aspect of your workflow that makes it better for you personally?

I am in an awkward position in life. One of my motivations for doing WP projects I that I need money. One of my frustrations is that I don’t like working for money. I like putting my heart into it. And I will say what I said a couple of minutes ago. I don’t like working in front of computers. I don’t like doing WP projects. I love the fact that doing WP project leverages people’s lives. I like helping my cousin express himself, and if that becomes part of his infrastructure for private practice that is like an amazing privilege for me. If I didn’t need to think about money, and if it wasn’t part of the process, I would just find a Wordpress guy and just concentrate on the process. Help with the process of expressing themselves. There are two posts on my site that help express why I use WP. This is what interests me, not the design process. Not the web design. I like to do the, it is almost a yoga process, the client wants a website, but I want to teach them about purpose because this is what is it is to me. It is your voice. This is the amazing thing about Wordpress, we have been able to teach 15000 women about female anatomy. If I wanted a book I would have never been able to publish it. And this is what I see when I go to a project. And people say web design, and talk about pages, and I say come-one because I know that is not what people want. They have to trust me at first, because they don’t understand what I am talking about. But in retrospect they will get it completely. But nobody hires me for that. People think they know that already. It is not part of the job description. But when somebody hits a wall and say they cannot get through my about me page, is that part of being a web designer? I may not be answering your question, but I am raising questions. But that is the heart not web design of creating an online presence. There is much more to it than installing Wordpress and creating a theme. If you say you are going to have 10 categories, I say, yeah write one post my friend. You have to have at least three posts in each category for it to work. That is 30 posts. That is depressing, that is prescription for writers block. How to take the first steps, in this content and expression process. How to have the freedom to know what is right for me in the future. You sometimes have to go half a year. You cannot predict what people are going to respond to. You have no idea where this is going. If you say you do it is bullshit. But I understand why people bullshit, because you are on a timeline and you are doing a web design project. But that is not what it is about. I am not good at business part of this, but if someone trusts me and I will help them through it. It is really process of discovery and closing it off in any way it’s the wrong reasons, especially for nonprofits is not the way to go.

That was a perfect answer to what I wanted. I wanted a nice summation of ideals…

It’s not I want to make a website, it’s I want to make the world a better place. That is the project. It is not about logo, colors and schedules. That is superficial, you are not delving into things and you see these empty websites. The standing water, it is not flowing it is unhealthy for you. Take the website down if this happens.

There was a great thing on wp tv *link he gave an amazing example, if you are washing machine guy and you want a website, what can you possibly write about, and I acknowledge it and he wrote me back. If he wants a website, and really wants to invest time in it, then there are tons of topics to write about.

Find your niche *WP tv

You can really do good website about anything if you really dig into it.

That is also why I left design, changes should be made for different customers with different needs. Darma and Karma.

I can’t just build a website for you, because I don’t know how, and if I say yes then I am lying to you.

I won’t sell out my piece for anybody…that is me.

Tags: cms, designer views, expert model, Nonprofit, web design, wordpress, workflow
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