I am among 10 Canadian UX professionals who shared tips with navigating resistance to innovation and change for an article on the Association of Registered Graphic Designers website. This article is chock full of excellent information and practical takeaways based on real strategies from my co-contributors who work at a cross-section of agencies and organisations of all sizes.

To summarise…

Some contributors shared that resistance can stem from fear of the unknown or comfort with familiar mental models, so addressing emotional concerns along with practical concerns is important.

Clear communication is also key. What I also liked was the tip by Crispin Bailey RGD, Director of Design and UX at Kalamuna about the use of storytelling to stakeholders “the path from today’s friction points to tomorrow’s improved experiences: for users, customers and the business itself” so they can understand the value. This enables stakeholders to see themselves “as co-creators of something meaningful rather than approvers to be convinced, resistance transforms into enthusiastic support.”

This is part of a common thread mentioned throughout the article about fostering buy-in through collaboration and trust-building with stakeholders. There is also an emphasis on the importance of using research, prototypes, and data to back up claims with evidence rather than opinion (my tip!).

Other practical tips include finding a stakeholder champion (always great to have advocates!), running small pilots (this always came in handy in my previous workplaces), and iterating with feedback (another great way to avoid decisions based on opinion).

Read UX Perspectives: Navigating resistance to change in innovative design.

Thanks to the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) for this opportunity. Membership is open to all areas of design including UX. I’m not being paid to say this, I’m a satisfied member just sharing this info. :)

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My iPad quickly became my go-to powerhouse for production back when the Apple Pencil was put on the market. This was partly due to the fact that I was focussing on creating Franky Banky comics for my audience across social media accounts. Using my iPad, an Apple Pencil, and the Procreate app saved me a heck of a lot of time from having to manually layout paper, pencil things in, erase, ink, fix any errors with Liquid Paper, scan, clean up, adjust, and make redraw a few things that need drawing and repeat. I could do all that while I digitally inked a comic. I’d draw a rough sketch on one layer and ink on another layer above it and make all necessary adjustments by erasing and redrawing parts. Much like touching up a photo in Photoshop. This was a real time saver since my Franky Banky work is my spare time side hustle.

However, I realized I was craving a physical connection to my work. I missed the tactile nature of drawing. And the skill needed to draw a permanent mark on a paper and try not to make any mistakes.

I felt I had too much technology in my life, both personal and professional, by the time AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, etc., had arrived. Everything took place in a screen. In the virtual world. Hardly in the real world. And these AI tools make it way too easy to outsource your talents. Just write a prompt . Yes, it’s nice to be able to whip up an email in a matter of seconds and tweak as per your liking, however, I feel something has been lost in the old way of writing from scratch.

While excess screen time brought on a bit of a non-tactile fatigue, it got me back into drawing with paper and a pencil. And a pen. And a brush pen. It feels so good to be back.

I still use my iPad for my social media stuff (industrialised art) but now I’m making time for what makes me human. This is partly because there’s a prediction made in some artist circles that seems to already be coming true – more people will end up wanting authentic human-made art over AI generated stuff.

Industrialised content

So I decided to use AI tools for work and business. After all, I see the value in efficiency as anyone, time is money, etc., and if an AI tool can speed up the lesser enjoyable aspects of a project, hey why not?

For personal creative expression? I’ve found it’s not quite my cup of tea. I miss that sense of personal “authorship” whenever I experimented with AI-generated assets. I missed the intentionality of every stroke and line rather than just directing code to assemble pixels for me. That’s why I’m choosing to avoid another ‘Apple Pencil habit’ because I’ve learned that while convenience is great, there’s a specific kind of connection that only happens when a human makes the choices. Imperfections and all.

My animation conundrum

One of my goals with Franky Banky is to start making animated cartoons. Thanks to the creators of Procreate, they gave us Dreams, an animation app. I haven’t yet been able to dabble in it a little more, however, in the meantime, I couldn’t help but find myself thinking if there would be an AI tool that could speed things up.

I don’t like that idea at all. After all, my love for animation came from the fact that humans made my favourite cartoons with their own hands. It’s a marvel of human feat and physics that brought this art form to life.

A few animation studios, including Disney, had announce they would be using AI in their films. Very controversial in the art space. As the industry evolves, I wanted to find a way to stay true to my roots while using new tools to handle the ‘grunt work.’
How can I reconcile this kind of philosophy of removing humanity from the equation?

Enter my friend, Jeremy Wright.

He’s a mix of marketer, strategist and, tinkerer (and oh, he’s absolutely worth hiring), who also has been doing deep dives into AI tools for his work in his field. Recently, I marvelled at a project he worked on and picked his brain about it. As a demonstration, Jeremy kindly threw together a similar project based on my work in cartooning.

I wonder if he knew that he would end up answering my conundrum.

He used Gemini and NotebookLM to brainstorm a “hybrid-human” model for the animation landscape. Long story short, in minutes, Jeremy’s research presented a 30/70 rule for animation companies that leverages 30% AI to amplify and not replace 70% human creativity. Complete with risk assessment (because according to research, viewers begin to disengage with synthetic content than with human-generated art).

A few highlights include:

• “Audiences are rejecting smooth, synthetic AI interpolation” (yay! – editor’s note). “There is a premium on ‘crunchy,’ hand-drawn lines and visible human effort.” This last part is what also brought me to draw with a brush pen on paper. Digitally inked lines don’t have that more appealing imperfect human-drawn look.
• “The artist draws key poses. The ‘Soul’ of movement—timing, spacing, exaggeration—comes from the human hand.” AI can be used to smooth specific actions and segments.
• “Artist provides the loose, energetic gesture drawings. This defines the anatomy and composition.” AI can be used to tighten roughs into clean vectors, then artists can manually refine errors. This is something I’ve recently wished for when I was designing an app icon in Adobe Illustrator! See? Industrialised art needs efficiency. Personal creative expression doesn’t (unless you’re in a rush or something!).

Now THIS makes sense to me!

The human creative mind is still in control and the AI tool acts as the intern. Does this take away jobs from interns and entry-level animators? Maybe. Maybe not because anyone at any level can use these tools and publish to the world and build a community just like the big companies.

And most likely better because they’ll have the efficiency of a studio and the soul of an individual creator!

A few close-ups to show dynamic content with details on how AI tools can be used in various production stages throughout the animation process along with risks:

I really like the Artist Manifesto:

1. I am the Director. Al is the intern.
2. My hand leads. No generation without a sketch reference.
3. I own the errors. The glitches are mine to fix or keep.
4. Style is biography. I will not train on peers without consent.

My next steps

The main takeaway I got from Jeremy’s example is AI tools can definitely help with pretty much anything you may need help with. This resonates with me very much since one of my workplace personality traits is strategic. I can’t help but come up with ideas and tactics for business, content engagements, storytelling, what-have-you, and like Jeremy, I like to tinker and try them out. Hence, how I started my Franky Banky side hustle.

So I’ll continue to tinker with various AI tools and see how they can assist in my strategic endeavours. As for animated Franky Banky cartoons, maybe. Dreams already has impressive keyframing features which seem to fulfill my needs but as a tinkerer, I can’t help but to keep my eyes open for opportunities.

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I collaborated with my friend, Boris Senatorov, who is currently stationed in Guinea in the Peace Corps, to create a comic strip about malaria prevention.

Boris told me that malaria persists because many people don’t use mosquito bedding nets around their beds. Instead, the nets tend to be used to keep animals away from vegetable gardens. Other factors include not installing window screens and keeping stagnant water around outside the house.

We aimed for creating a one page-comic so it can be easily printed with the fewest amount of paper and quick to read. However, this required packing and transforming a lot of information into an easy-to-absorb, engaging visual story.

Boris fleshed out a possible storyline centred around two friends wanting to play soccer but one of them ends up waking up with malaria symptoms. It’s soon discovered that malaria prevention tips weren’t followed.

I added humour to make the story more engaging. Boris suggested that the main characters wear soccer jerseys since soccer is really popular in Guinea. As someone of Italian heritage myself, I can relate to this. So I used this to add a humorous touch for our overall message – follow these malaria prevention tips so you never miss playing a soccer game!

Since I was unfamiliar with Guinea, I picked Boris’ brain about:

• Typical daily life and why and how mosquito nets tend to not be used in the way they were intended.
• How mosquito nets are acquired and the barriers to acquiring them.
• How to accurately draw Guinea. Boris sent me photos of what typical street scenes, markets, home life, etc. look like.
• Which animals to use as the main characters (monkeys because they are everywhere in Guinea and the elephant is the national animal). I decided to use animal characters over human because animal characters work well for humour and whimsical storytelling while also forming strong emotional connections. This makes them especially endearing to younger audiences.
• What to name the characters. Boris suggested two common names in Guinea, Abucabar and Mohamed, and I asked if they happened to have corresponding nicknames to make them more cartoony. Thus, Abu and Momo were born! I love their names!
• What happens when someone gets malaria. Are they contagious? Are they quarantined? Is there treatment? This was valuable in fleshing out the story since I needed to include the sick character going to the local health centre to get better.

Abu the elephant didn’t take long for me to design. I pictured what he looked like in my head and there he was looking back at me from my sketchbook. He was the one to get malaria because his headshape was perfect for the scene!

Momo, on the other hand, was a tricky little monkey to design!  It took me several tries and I might have driven Boris crazy at one point by asking his opinion again and again! Who knew something so simple could be hard to redraw consistently over and over?

Drawing tip! Pencilling in a light blue or red-orange colour (“vermillion”) makes it easier to ink over by creating a lot of colour contrast. Especially if you use black ink.

I pencilled a draft of the comic strip along with retrofitting Boris’ story outline on my iPad using the Procreate drawing app. I wrote the dialogue in English even though the target language for the comic would be French. My knowledge in French is very basic so I drew in English in order to get the copy, story, and pacing finalised.

Boris then used Google Translate as a quick way to translate into French since we had a short deadline and no budget. We asked Boris’ Guinean colleagues to verify and suggest any changes needed, particularly to include any local dialects or colloquialisms.

People in Guinea greet each other in Sousou, their local language. “Tana mu xi” means “have you spent the night without trouble?” and the response “tana yo my xi” means “Yes, I did”.

We also added a side story featuring the mosquito who gave Abu malaria looking for more family members to infect with the disease. It was a fun way to explain the effectiveness of the malaria prevention tips.

It was also my first time in a long while working in colour. I went for a light pastel kind of palette to keep the overall comic positive and not literally too dark.

This was a lot of fun to draw and I enjoyed learning about Guinea and malaria prevention. I also couldn’t help but notice a lot of parallels with UX design as I researched and drew this comic!

I created an English one for my own records (and for sharing here).

The comic was received very well from Boris’ team with his director of programming and training saying “This is FANTASTIC Boris!!!”.

Due to Abu’s reaction to the idea of never playing soccer, I am itching to make more Abu and Momo comics.

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I am not exaggerating when I say the results of my workshop were life-changing. Many participants shared with me that the activity changed their negative perspective towards their stutter into a positive one. Like having a companion join them on their journey through the ups and downs.

In the audience was my friend, Penny, who doesn’t stutter so she drew a cartoon character of her AuDHD, which is the experience of being both autistic and having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). She shared that it helped her explain her experiences to the people sitting at her table – it clarified and destigmatised her own thoughts and attitudes as she talked through her character.

Penny drew her character as five different squirrels. Each with their own personality and focus of attention. They shift at random times into taking the “brain control” position. This illustrates Penny’s experiences in having fluctuating levels of attention, interest, and planning skills. She never knows which squirrel is at the helm or how long they’ll stay.

Along with the workshops I’ve given where I taught participants how to draw comics based on their speaking experiences with stuttering over the years, I’ve also learned that drawing can help people:

• think through their experiences and feelings;
• communicate internal emotions of their struggles;
• explain what it’s like to live with their disability(ies).

What does this have to do with user experience design?

This made me wonder if cartooning can be applied to user experience design. And I think it can!

Cartooning, in general, enables people to express their feelings and emotions about whatever they are experiencing. Be it a trip to a new country, living in a conflict area, or getting through a season of life. This also includes interactions with technology, products, and most importantly for people with disabilities – accessibility barriers, rather than just what they do.

Cartooning has the power for UX designers to go beyond the standard data-driven format at the user research and persona creation stages and add an emotional layer. Especially for users with disabilities.

After witnessing what happened at my workshop, I’m safely assuming that when people draw their disabilities beyond stuttering and AuDHD, as cartoon characters, they are externalizing their internal experiences in a way that might be difficult to convey through words alone.

Meanwhile, comics are a medium that fully immerses readers into the character’s environment, struggles, and frustrations (read: barriers) as they use your product or live their daily lives.

Imagine the deep, richer insights cartooning can provide for UX design teams that traditional user interviews might miss. User personas will be enriched from emotional and personal stories and thus, leading to more empathetic and well-rounded product design. And, most importantly, products that are accessible are often easier for users of all abilities to interact with – something organizations often need reminding.

This is a comic strip I drew for my aforementioned side hustle. I use humour to explain a common icebreaker activity on the first day of school that causes a lot of anxiety for students who stutter – having each student in the classroom take turns saying their names. People who stutter often have a hard time saying their own name.

A polished Marvel or Disney style art is not the intended outcome for the activity.

This is about learning participants’ emotions, frustrations, and barriers. Fortunately, drawing stick figures are equally effective at storytelling. Just like the award-winning KXCD comics. So perfect illustration is not mandatory.

For example, I was able to teach participants how to draw stick figures in under a minute through a simple demonstration at STAMMAFest. I also provided an at-a-glance cheat sheet on a slide showing how to draw different kinds of heads, bodies, and facial expressions.

Inclusive options for drawing

You can offer multiple ways for participants to express their ideas so they aren’t restricted by their physical abilities. For example:

• People with limited mobility can participate by using assistive or adaptive technology.
• People with low vision can work with a facilitator who sketches their thoughts and emotions as they share their story.
• Pre-made character templates can help participants create visual representations quickly, especially over video chats with whiteboards.

Scaled-down versions of the exercises can also be an option due to budget and time considerations.

In conclusion, adding a cartooning aspect to traditional structured, data-driven user research methods can provide a more holistic view for UX designers. Bringing in personal stories in a visual way will make user personas more relatable, and thus, leading to more thoughtful and user-friendly designs. Especially for people with disabilities. And as I have mentioned earlier, the more accessible a product, the easier it is for everyone to use.

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Having experienced this many times throughout my career in coaching various content creators not knowledgeable in digital accessibility and encouraging them to include it in their workflow by outlining the many win-win benefits of doing so but only to end up seeing no change and the same barriers repeatedly making up the great majority of errors in accessibility audits (wow that was a long sentence!), I thought I’d try a new tactic.

I created an at-a-glance guide with short examples of the common barriers and what to do and what not to do.

• I focused my guide around the production process using:
• Word, PowerPoint
• Graphic design (for print assets, social media posts) and
• Websites and intranets (using content management systems or manual coding)

Making learning digital accessibility quick

I designed my guide like an organisation’s branding guidelines document with visual examples conveying dos and don’ts laid out in a way making it easy for busy colleagues to scan and retain – I designed it using the organisation’s policy and process template so it becomes official.

I also used copy and design examples typical of the organisation to offer relevant takeaways.

Since the amount of digital accessibility knowledge one needs to know is so vast, I focused my quick guide around the most common barriers that I have seen repeatedly come up in the workplace over the years. Common barriers such as people bolding headings in Word documents instead of using styles which, in turn, creates PDFs that are also not accessible.

My goal was to start with the basics, then, hopefully, colleagues will be interested in learning more. Thus, I also included shortened links to expert third-party information on the whys and hows as well as Microsoft help files.

Learning the basics also enables colleagues to apply what they learned from my guide as they create content regardless of software. So not just Word or PowerPoint as I listed earlier, but also Canva, the corporate intranet or any social network.

Making future requests for providing content in other formats a lot more efficient

My focus on Word and PowerPoint is obvious as they are the major office software that is used by all. Thus, creating accessible source documents in Word and PowerPoint helps with any future incoming requests from people who ask for your organisation’s content to be supplied in other accessible formats such as larger text.

This was one of the seeds that formed my at-a-glance-guide idea in the first place. A request came in at a previous workplace a few years ago that asked for content in a multi-page PDF to be provided in large text. Since the original Word document did not seem to exist, I manually re-typed it as optical character recognition software was not able to interpret the PDF. I also added the appropriate headings and such to ensure the resulting PDF was accessible to screen readers.

I thought to myself then that if everyone in the organisation had the knowledge and understood the benefits of creating accessible Word docs, it would make it really efficient to translate all their content into other accessible formats in the future. Be it for people with low vision, use as a script for a video, or what have you. Accessibility isn’t just for people with disabilities. Accessibility benefits everyone.

When branding colours don’t make an accessible combination

The other seed for my idea came from working for a client whose branding colours did not make an accessible text colour combination on social media posts or print assets.

As I mentioned earlier, I designed my guide similar to an organisation’s visual branding guidelines. My initial goal was to make my guide no longer than two pages (my client’s suggestion which I liked very much when I mentioned my guide idea). This is so colleagues and vendors can print out the guide, keep it on their desk, and quickly glance and scan what they need to do and not do.

I figured you can teach someone once but they may forget if they don’t have a chance to regularly practise their new knowledge.

A few highlights:

• I added a colour palette to show which combination of the branding colours are and are not accessible along with their corresponding RGB, CMYK, and HEX codes.
• I added dos and don’ts for writing accessible copy, descriptive links, alternative text for images and included shortened links to websites explaining the reasons behind each of these best practices and compliances.
• I added a section about creating accessible tables in both Word and HTML.
• I also added a last updated date to communicate that this is an evolving document to the organisation’s needs and updates to WCAG and other accessibility compliance guidelines.
• I added a link to WAI resources for people in various areas of an organisation as a way to learn more according to a person’s role.

The result

I had my team look at the document to ensure there were no areas that were unclear. I published after a few adjustments and unleashed it to the organisation.

While it’s still too soon to measure what kind of impact my document created, I have noticed changes so far! A colleague also recently told me “I hear your voice in my head every time I work on a Word document”. A good sign.

This is a living document, of course, as accessibility standards and office tools evolve. For instance, the POUR principles are proposed for elimination in WCAG 3.0 as is the renaming of A, AA and AAA levels to bronze, silver, and gold since the creation of my guide. So I am planning on removing those sections once 3.0 becomes official.

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The world has grown to become a scarier place since then. From all the privacy issues, the identity theft, ransomware, social engineering, a global network of hackers in kahoots with North Korea, human rights targeting, and even a spy incident right here in Toronto against The Citizen Lab, I feel the theme of this comic will be timeless unfortunately.

There are many cyber security podcasts out there but two I can highly recommend are Darknet Diaries and Hackable? for their documentary-style format and let’s-try-this-on-our-unsuspecting-friends theme respectively. Produced by cyber security professionals, both effectively tell the true stories behind recent well known and not so well known hacks and cyber espionage and warfare events. Be warned – many are quite chilling.

And best of all, you walk away with many practical tips on what you can do to protect yourself online and prevent future hacks wether your the head of an IT department or just an average person with an internet connection.

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A not-so quick update on what I’ve been up to since my last blog post. Long story short: I’ve become very passionate in and an advocate for digital accessibility! Particularly inclusive design.

It all started with my tenure at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital where I helped rebuild their suite of corporate websites. Working on site, I was immersed in Holland Bloorview’s mission of improving the lives and independence of children and youth with disabilities and support for families. Holland Bloorview is all about inclusion and independence. After all these years, I’m still in awe of the ground-breaking research their institute conducts. It’s the kind of stuff you only see in sci-fi movies (such as people with mobility issues being able to control computers with their thoughts!).

I really do mean it when I say that working at Holland Bloorview changed my life. I always find myself identifying both physical barriers and opportunities for people with disabilities while I’m out and about.

That’s why I’ve become more than just passionate in digital accessibility, but an advocate. In fact, just the other day I was introducing my professional translator friend to the world of web accessibility standards so that she’s informed and ready for future web translation projects! “Short sentences, no more than 80 characters or glyphs per line, descriptive links and buttons, here’s a link to the WCAG guidelines in French…”

Inclusion and independence

It’s not solely about ensuring a corporate website complies with web accessibility regulations in my home province of Ontario (and soon a federal law in all of Canada), it’s about ensuring people with disabilities can browse a corporate website – all websites – independently. As the ones building the websites and digital products, we can be the barrier or the provide the access.

Steve Saylor, a friend of mine who is a digital media creator with low vision, grew up having to watch other kids play video games. With the advent of virtual reality gaming, he’s now able to participate. Check out his video entitled Blind Gamer tries VR for the first time! and prepare to tear up.

#A11yTO

Lucky for me, Toronto has a thriving and enthusiastic community of web accessibility professionals and advocates who gather at #a11yTO meet ups to share expertise and support.

I had the chance to attend their #A11yTO Camp early in 2017 and the #a11yTO Conference later that autumn (unfortunately, I missed it in 2018) and have learned so much through presentations by:

• Slack about how they are working to make their mobile and desktop apps accessible to assistive devices as per their mission to enable all employees in an organization to collaborate regardless of disabilities;
• Accessibility leaders at eBay and LinkedIn on getting buy-in and building a corporate digital accessibility plan;
• Developers offering workshops on making code more efficient and readable by assistive devices.

Creating accessible web comics

I’m currently in the process of updating all my professional websites so they also comply with web accessibility standards. First up is my Stuttering is Cool website which runs on WordPress. The theme I had been using wasn’t very accessible so I decided to find a new one. I’m also due for a refresh of the web design and branding anyway so the timing is perfect.

I’m also planning on using this updated design to launch a new section on my website that features my web comics. My plan is to create and post web comics on a regular basis – and make them accessible to screen readers. However, a number of Google searches turned up nothing about best practices in making web comics accessible. I asked a few people at a recent #A11yTO meetup and they agreed that there doesn’t seem to be any best practices aside from adding descriptive text in alt tags.

But that got me thinking. Adding descriptive alt tags can’t be the whole story.

Do I post each panel as a separate image with its own alt tag or the entire comic as one image with the comic’s events described in the alt tag? Which option would users with low vision prefer? Would it be irritating for them to constantly be interrupted by the screen reader to inform them that they are landing on another image/panel? Or is that the norm? What if some users with low vision prefer multiple images while others prefer one long one? Should I simply add an audio file of me reading the comic like an audiobook?

I bounced these questions and ideas with Jennifer Chadwick, Lead Accessibility Strategist and Product Expert, North America for Siteimprove, who I met at an #A11yTO meetup a few months ago. Jennifer recommended that I also look into description detail. She used the example of a graphic ad for a mortgage on a banking website – would it benefit users with low vision to have the image described as consisting of “a couple sitting on a beach in bathing suits, sunglasses, and hats holding up tropical drinks and smiling to each other because they were able to afford this luxury vacation with the mortgage they got”? Or would users prefer a brief description such as “couple on a beach” so users can scan the website faster? Because, you know, we love ads when we’re surfing, right?

I wondered what kind of user experience audience members with low vision would expect when “listening to” a web comic? There’s lots for me to learn! And it looks like I’ll be having a lot of conversations with people who use assistive devices! And I can’t wait to share my new knowledge.

Thus, with this post, I’m announcing a new blog series on creating accessible comics. Stay tooned!

The post My mission to create accessible web comics appeared first on Daniele Rossi.

“Hm, 30 hits. Darn, that’s pretty low. Or is it?” You do some digging to apply some context.

Then…

In order to avoid awkward conversations with the higher ups such as “Well, it depends. Let me explain. You see…”, let’s start with your campaign’s planning stage hopefully, you’re asking the right questions.

What is the purpose of your campaign?

Every campaign is different. Is it to raise awareness? Raise donation dollars? Increase sales? Get as many people as possible to use your hashtag? Recruit the best employees? Make people think of you when they think of your industry or niche area? Or to put it another way, what do you want your audience to do?

If you want them to share your content, you want to count the number of shares (obviously) and who did the sharing (ex: influencers, customers, journalists). It it’s number of new registrants, you want to count the… number of new registrants. If it’s to increase sales of a certain product, you will want to count, you guessed it, the number of sales made. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? It is. Like everything else in life, you just need to have a set of goals and do what it takes to achieve them. Digital is no exception.

Declaring the purpose enables you to determine what you will measure. This is where you will list the “key performance indicators” (KPIs) relevant to your campaign. So number of shares may not even be on the list for one campaign but it may be an important item on another. The Content Marketing Institute has a great post offering tips on what to include in your KPIs.

Which tools will you use to monitor and measure?

Now that you have your spiffy list of KPIs, you need to know how you are achieving each item. Fortunately, there are many– so very, very many– analytics tools out there that can give you insights into different aspects of a campaign. Who’s talking about you, are they saying positive thing about you, which of the popular kids could you target to talk about you, how many people saw your beautiful piece of content, how many of them clicked on it, did they even do what you prayed they’d do, and so on. Again, context is everything as well as your needs. A small business may need to track only a few aspects of a campaign while a global brand would benefit from tracking more aspects (which also tend to be more expensive).

Avoid using just one tool as they may only be able to reveal a fraction of your true analytics. Unfortunately, you gotta pay for the intelligence you are looking for. Look at the KPIs you’re aiming for and choose the tools that fit your needs and budget.

Definitely use native analytics tools. That’s a fancy term meaning the analytics tools provided by the social networks you’re using. Free versions of third-party analytics tools tend to only reveal a fraction of what the social networks will allow them to reveal.

Who do you want to target?

Knowing the kind of content that your audience wants and/or needs (and where they like to hangout online) will help increase the quality reports of those KPIs. After all, when you design for the user (the user isn’t you), your content will be totally relevant, useful, and shareworthy to your audience. Thus, increasing the chances of you reaching those KPIs.

Always look at your competition

This is an ongoing task. Keeping on top of what your competition is doing, or failing to do, can really help you with your future campaigns. Especially if one of your business goals is to surpass your competition. You’d want to keep an eye on everything relevant including the kinds of campaigns they run. After all, you share the same audience!

What have you learned in the past?

Employ what worked in the past and avoid or tweak what didn’t. And always document learnings so you can remember for future campaigns.

Talk to everyone involved.

Don’t leave the tracking solely to the digital marketing team. You can benefit from talking to everyone who can help give you insight into your KPI performance. For instance, I always learn a lot from non-technical colleagues and benefit from them living outside of my own digital tunnelvision. Front line staff can offer insight into the customer journey if your campaign involves offline interaction. User experience designers can recommend any improvements to landing page design.

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I’m currently enjoying my Level D course at The Second City and I can attest to Dave’s tips. I’ve learned so many new skills that can be directly transferred to real life; embracing failure (ever try saying jokes with a stutter?), to accepting whatever your fellow improvisor gives you, thinking fast on your feet (workplace crisis, anyone?), and not to mention performing in front of an audience (be it on stage or in front of the C-Suite). Along with Toastmasters, I’d recommend taking improv classes to add to the toolbox of your professional life.

Full disclosure – Dave asked me to create illustrations for his ebook. Since his aim was to have illustrations that conveyed a bright, cheerful, and trustworthy, I went for an exaggerated and “abstractly cartoony” design. I’m a big fan of character design of 1950s animated TV commercials and felt that applying this style would fit perfectly with this topic.

Yes, I am available for any cartooning and illustration work you may need for your digital marketing needs.

Download your copy of Improving With Improv on GumRoad (that site has excellent user experience, I may add and is definitely a future blog post).

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As a truly immersive medium, comics are a great way to engage and touch lives. I’ve recently came across a beautiful digital comic called Cancer Owl created by Matthew Mewhorter who is currently undergoing cancer treatments.

Owls have always been my favorite animal. Fascinating creatures, really. From having eight eyelids, to their extreme night vision, to their stoic presence and keen observational ability. I love how some view owls as wise, while certain cultures view them as good luck. Plus they’re so expressive and gosh darn cute. Also, owls are up there in animal internet popularity with cats and sloths, and I figure that there might be more eyeballs on the strip with an owl rather than just drawing myself.

2. How did you come to choose to share your comics about living with cancer with the world?

It started as an art journal my therapist recommend I do as a way to cope. I began drawing comic strips because it’s always been my favorite medium of expression. It’s so creative, brief and direct. I looked up cancer comics and found that there weren’t any that I could find. So, I figured if anyone should have such a powerful way to communicate the cancer experience, why not me?

3. How has drawing and sharing your comics about living with cancer helped you cope? Has it helped your family and friends as well?

Click to view on cancerowl.com

For one, I’ve been able to be absolutely honest about the experience which in itself is healing. Drawing such a direct medium of communication, it’s caused me to flesh out exactly how I feel, and be able to communicate to people without cancer about what it’s like in a way they might actually pay attention.

Secondly, it has helped me connect to SO many cancer patients and survivors. Every one of them has thanked me and encouraged me to keep going. Knowing I’m not alone in the experience has been so refreshing and healing.

And conveying it all in such a vivid way has helped my friends and family to have a deeper understanding of someone in my position. I’ve noticed that they have been able to engage me in a deeper way.

4. I see that you currently work as a therapist. Have you used your artwork in therapy sessions?

I do a lot of art therapy with my clients. I have them paint, sculpt, create cartoons, graffiti, and art journal. Art has been such a powerful tool in working with people who struggle to speak about their pain. I work out of an “art room” and everyone seems to like it. I was chatting online with some other web-cartoonists, and when they learned what I did, one of them said, “Whoa, dude. You like, have a good job!”

5. What kind of feedback have you received from readers regarding your comics?

Feedback has been quite overwhelming. As I said earlier, many cancer patients and survivors write to thank me. But I’ve also had family members of people who suffer or have died from cancer letting me know how I’ve captured the experience so well. I’ve had many people tell me the comic has caused them to laugh like crazy and others tell me that they’ve cried reading the comic.

I only had one complaint so far. It was an old friend who was offended by a strip that poked a little fun at people who offer to help, but resort to “I’ll pray for you” when a way to help involves money. He was angry because I think he thought I was making the comic about him (I wasn’t), and he seemed to feel guilty about not donating money to my fundraiser.

6. Do you ever worry about “crossing a line” with making a joke about living with cancer?

Click to view on CancerOwl

I only worry about crossing a line with cancer patients, because really, this comic is primarily for them (and me, obviously). Everyone else, not so much.  I don’t really feel like I’m crossing a line as long as I tell my story as honestly as possible. In fact the more frank and honest I am, the more I have cancer patients, survivors and caretakers thanking me.

I imagine that the people I risk offending the most are those who throw out unhelpful, token phrases as well as those are just plain clueless or insincere.  And honestly, I really don’t care if I offend them. I kind of hope I do, and then maybe they might get past their offenses, and then become more helpful with those fighting cancer.  But if I have my fellow survivors telling me I’ve crossed a line, I will most certainly pay attention.

7. Can you share advice for anyone looking to start a comic journal much like how you did?

It’s the same advice my therapist gave me: do it primarily because it’s good self-care. This means that your comic/journal should be for YOU first. If you have a malady of any kind that impairs your daily living or threatens your life, journal it first and put all of your most raw and honest feelings down in a sketchbook/journal. If it isn’t therapeutic for you, it won’t be therapeutic for anyone else.

Take the brilliant webcomic/blog Hyperbole and a Half for instance. You are really just reading the therapeutic expressions of a woman battling depression. If she glosses over the challenges in any way, she won’t connect with those who also battle depression. So, when I write about having cancer, I must tell the truth, or else I rob others battling cancer the permission to be free in their journey.

Plus, pick a style that works for you, a style you can do consistently. You don’t have to be a great artist, just a great storyteller. And every great storyteller embraces their pain and finds freedom in it. Don’t let anyone bully you into censoring your experience just because it makes them uncomfortable.

8. Where are you now with your cancer treatments?

I’m post-radiation treatment and post-resection surgery. I still have an ostomy bag, set to be reversed close to Christmas time. I’m also taking chemotherapy, 9 days on and 5 days off for 5 months, to kill off any rogue cancer cells that still might lurking in my body somewhere. But as I write, my prognosis is “excellent” and all 18 lymph nodes tested at the time of my surgery tested negative! Right now, I deal with a ton of fatigue and nausea while working full time as well as being married and a father to a 2-year old. It feels like a forever stretch, but I’m almost done.

It’s been a wild year since my diagnosis!

A big thank you to Matthew for allowing me to share his story and his comics for my blog. Check out his comics at cancerowl.com.

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