In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg hired famed architect Frank Gehry to design Facebook’s new headquarters, which would ultimately be “the largest open floor plan in the world.” The campus is actually a single room stretching 10 acres.

These layouts were praised for their ability to encourage productivity, collaboration, and creativity. Architects and business leaders believe that open design focuses on mobility, empowers individual boundaries and encourages chance encounters. But, so employees who have to work in these spaces share the same sentiment?

Less Focus, More Distraction

In 2015, The Washington Post published an article that sated this design trend “is destroying the workplace” at places like Google because it’s too “oppressive.” In 2017, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple’s open-office design was producing to be too noisy and distracting for programmers.

A recent study by students at Harvard also noted that open designs are effectively hindering face-to-face communication, rather than building those “chance encounters” that Facebook had hoped. Rather than prompting collaboration, open architecture appeared to trigger a natural human response to socially withdraw from officemates, and interact instead over email and instant messaging, particularly through services such as Slack.

A Closer Look at Office Interaction

While open offices remain the trends, more studies around office interactions are showing that these spaces tend to yield employees who are more un-collaborative and unfriendly. Moreover, a study in 2016 by the Auckland University of Technology found that people who work from home or share a space with just one or two others enjoy better relationships with colleagues.

Additionally, some argue that openness creates a sense of transparency, and therefore motivates people to work more because others can see what they’re doing. Columbia professor and productivity expert Cal Newport suggests that this simply fuels busyness as a proxy for productivity and that it fails to foster quality work in favor of the perception of working more.

Alternatives to Openness

There are alternatives to designing a new workspace that isn’t reliant on open layouts. Hub and Spoke is just one approach that’s a hybrid of an open office and a closed office. While there are central spaces and hallways that are open, there are still individual offices. MIT’s Building 20 is an excellent example of Hub and Spoke.

Ultimately, businesses need to design spaces that are more likely to encourage great work. One thing that should be avoided at all costs is the notion that a space that’s swanky or impressive, offering a football-field of openness, is going to be the sliver bullet that leads to the next great idea. Chances are, according to research, it probably won’t.

According Google, 88% of customers in the U.S. do online research on a product before they buy. This Zero Moment, or ZMOT, is changing the way marketers think about branding and online commerce.

Marketing used to revolve around the 3 to 5 seconds a consumer would spend deciding on a product while at the store shelf. It was the moment where all of a brand’s incessant advertising would payoff, in what Proctor & Gamble called the “First Moment of Truth”, or FMOT.

But technology has completely altered the way consumers decide on a product to buy.

Today, FMOT isn’t the only brand interaction that counts. Marketers have to consider ZMOT as much as they do traditional advertising. Consumers have infinite means available to research products: comparison-shopping websites, user-generated ratings & reviews, social media posts, and the list goes on. More importantly, they can perform their research anywhere — at home, at work, or while waiting in line at Starbucks — and it can be done in real-time.

No longer are consumers at the mercy of messages being pushed to them. The consumer is now largely in control, seeking out the information they need to decide on the product that will satisfy their specific wants and desires.

ZMOT poses new challenges for brands, but there are ways to optimize for these news interactions.

• Start by thinking about the customer’s journey, especially the specific customer that you’re trying to reach. Research the types of questions they may ask at the start of their journey. This should lend insights into what content and messaging a brand should be communicating across ads, websites, and other touch points.
• Consumers are using more than just a desktop computer. They’re also increasingly on the go and highly mobile, so brands need to make sure they have mobile-friendly content that consumers can consume on any device. Responsive design and other mobile-centric marketing are now essential.
• It’s also important to understand that consumers are not waiting for a single advertisement to tell them what to do. They’re empowered and ready to do their research, so help them out by developing high-quality content around a product, such as blog posts, buying guides, comparison charts, and videos — not just ads. Remember that engaging content is critical for establishing an emotional connection with consumers, and that emotional bond is fundamentally what ZMOT is all about.
• Provide good customer service. Reviews matter at ZMOT. So, make sure your customers are happy, especially after the sale is complete. Find ways to encourage reviews and place positive ones front and center whenever possible.

Don’t forget to target people who have already shown interest in your brand. With remarketing, you can help establish brand loyalty and retention.

These are just some of the high-level ways that brands can optimize for ZMOT.

These exploits have really given SEO a bad name in the process. Scaling the development of low-quality content, purchasing links, getting meaningless directory inclusions, and many other offenses that were focusing on optimizing for search engines, once made a difference. That was then.

Today, Google is much smarter and has refined its algorithm to better understand what makes a great website. In short, a great website — one that Google will rank higher — is one that can provide a great user experience. A website that is optimized for people, not just search engines.

What Changed?

Over the last few years, experienced SEOs have been calling for a rebranding for what we do. Many have settled on Search Experience Optimization (often abbreviated SXO). The term search experience optimization better marries together a few disciplines, including search engine optimization, conversion rate optimization, and user experience.

In addition to SEOs becoming more focused on optimizing for the user, search engines have made significant changes to how they evaluate content. Among the most crucial updates to Google’s search algorithm was Panda, a series of updates that that includes real human evaluations (along with algorithmic assessments that mimic these human evaluations).

These changes help Google gauge the quality of a website more efficiently. While Google doesn’t explicitly divulge much when it comes to their ranking factors, it’s advised that SEOs and all web professionals adhere to Google’s prescribed best practices to avoid any ranking penalties.

How to Optimize for Experience

Good SEO has always been about upholding a great user experience. Unfortunately, some unethical marketers have given the field a bad name, seeking to game Google’s algorithm while failing to consider the user.

Focusing on search experience optimization is really about legitimizing what good SEOs have been doing all along. This includes improving all aspects of the searcher’s experience, including:

• Building content that meets of expectations of the searcher.
• Ensuring that content loads quickly.
• Making content that speaks directly to its intended audience.
• Aligning on-page SEO elements with the topic so that Google and users alike know exactly what you’re setting out to communicate.

These are just some of the basic tenets of optimizing content to provide a search engine friendly website. But the evolving demands of good SEOs now incorporate aspects of user experience (UX) as well. These include:

• Making sure content is accessible across all browsers and all devices, ideally through a responsive design.
• Building a clear information architecture (IA) so that users can easily perform their task or goal with little friction.
• Taking a more active role in wireframing and prototyping processes to ensure the IA informs the content strategy throughout the website.
• Upholding the accessibility of your website, ensuring that all of your potential users, including people with disabilities, have a decent user experience.

User Experience and SEO

SEO still manages to play a significant role in search engine results and influences how websites get found online. But SEO has become much more than simply trying to stay ahead of Google and their algorithm tweaks.

These days, it’s important to have a broader perspective. To better satisfy a user’s needs, marketers might have to turn to focus groups, Web analytics data, keyword research, field interviews, and usability tests. It’s no longer enough to gather search data alone. Data on interactions, as well as finding insights direct from users, will be paramount.

Truth is, the search experience is just one part of the larger overall user experience, and SEOs need to adjust their thinking and processes to better address UX. Ultimately, introducing new designs, features, and structures will likely keep users more engaged. This in turn, will have lasting results on your rankings.

GreekWire writer Frank Catalano dove deeper into this increase and considers some of the not-so-obvious reasons for the paper book’s sudden resurgence.

For starters, Catalano noted that numerous studies have been conducted that prove we read text differently when it’s printed on a page, compared to on a screen. On websites, text is often skimmed. And, studies have shown that the same is true when it comes to the text of ebooks. As a result, readers tend to have far better comprehension when they’re reading from a physical book.

Additionally, when it comes to making highlights, annotations, or just bookmarking a page, tablets and e-readers have some amazing tools. However, studies have shown that many of these added tools and virtual sticky notes are often too complicated to use. Different platforms also have different menus, icons, and conventions, often making them less user-friendly than simply grabbing a pen or highlighter and marking up a page.

The author notes other factors as well, such as the general feel and smell of a book that gets lost when they’re in digital form. Many studies have suggested that using backlit screens can also interfere with sleep.

Personally, I love the convenience of digital books. They’re usually less expensive and I can download a new book in a matter of seconds. But there’s something about reading a paper book that is definitely more enjoyable. As this article says, “real” books also have a UI and UX that benefits from centuries of refinement.

On April 21, 2015 Google rolled out a critical new algorithm that will boost the rankings of websites that are accessible and readable on mobile devices. This update has substantial risks for brands and publishers that don’t have have a mobile app, a responsive website design, or any method for delivering mobile-friendly content.

Google noted that the update affected rankings on mobile devices only, and shouldn’t effect searchers performed on tablets and desktop computers. But with wider adoption of smartphones, that’s not much of a consolation for anyone who hasn’t adopted a mobile-first strategy. According to the Pew Research Center, 64% of American adults now own a smartphone of some kind, up from 35% in the spring of 2011.

If your content is already mobile-friendly through the use of a dynamic serving website, separate URLs, or responsive design, you’re ahead of the curve. If you’re still in need of a mobile solution, don’t fret. Here are a few steps you might want to consider:

• First, verify whether your site is mobile-friendly or not by using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool. You can also use the Mobile Usability report in Webmaster Tools to test every page of your website.
• If you’re using WordPress and a non-responsive theme, head over to the Update page inside the dashboard and grab the latest version (Version 4.2.1). This will automatically apply needed security upgrades and may make your site mobile-friendly. Other content management systems may offer similar, built-in mobile solutions, so check to see that you’re always running the latest software.
• Contact your hosting provider to see if they have a mobile solution available. Many hosts like Dreamhost include a mobile site builder tool, which will create a mobile version of your site automatically within minutes.
• Look into revamping your site with a responsive framework. Frameworks like Bootstrap, Foundation, Gumby, Skeleton, and many others, provide grid-based layouts with pre-defined base code, helping deliver beautiful, modern responsive websites with less complicated and time-consuming development.
• Lastly, you can also seek the help of a developer or agency to help you rebuild your website or build a mobile app from scratch. Most developers and agencies are savvy with taking a mobile-first approach, but make sure they provide samples of their recent responsive or mobile work.

It’s important to keep in mind that responsive design has really become the new standard. Even Google is now recommending this approach for a number of reasons. For starters, responsive design makes it easier for users to share and link to your content with a single URL. It’s also optimized to every device, without the need for redirects or additional load time. A responsive website is also easier to crawl, so it can help Google index your content much more efficiently.

Because the update affects searches performed on mobile devices only and impacts individual pages rather that entire websites, “Mobilegeddon” has so far been less dramatic than some of Google’s other algorithm updates. However, the update underscores the growing use of mobile devices by consumers. It also shows that Google is making mobile user experience a top priority, which means that brands would be wise to do same.

Obviously, everyone loves to have their information served up at ludicrous speed. And not only is page speed important for enhancing user experience, it’s a critical yet sometimes overlooked variable when it comes to search engine optimization as well.

Site Speed Matters to Users

Users love it when a page loads in their browser quickly. Users are fickle and they know that if they don’t find what they’re looking for on your website, they’ll easily find it on another site. If it takes more than three or four seconds for a page to load, users have a tendency to get antsy and and click away, resulting in high bounce rates, lower conversions, and lost revenue.

Fact is, a simple Google search yields a plethora of information on any given query. And your website isn’t the only game in town. When a user clicks on your listing, you should be ready to serve your content up to them as quickly as possible.

Speed Matters to Google Too

Google’s primary mission is to help its users find the best quality information as quickly as possible. That’s precisely why site speed has become a major ranking factor for Google. While having quality content has always been key, the overall user experience is also hugely important.

Google wants to provide its own users with the best quality results possible. That’s why a site with mediocre content may very well rank higher than your site if its pages load in half the time. The content itself isn’t enough to provide the best experience for users.

Site speed also makes it easier for Google to index your content. While users should always be the top priority, it’s important to also consider the time required for search engines to crawl all the pages within your site. The faster your site loads, the faster the search engine can crawl your site, decipher its content, and rank it accordingly.

Mobile User Experience is Critical

Take a look at your Google Analytics account and check out the devices being used to view your site. More and more users are probably using a tablet or smartphone to access your content.

While the rise in mobile usage adds many challenges surrounding the design of your site and the flexibility of your user interface, it’s also important to think how users behave on their mobile devices compared to desktop users. Desktop users may be a little fickle and antsy, but mobile users are downright impatient. They’re on the go and demand information to be served up quickly.

Optimizing your site’s loading speed is increasingly critical for any site that has a large percentage of mobile visits. In fact, the mobile user experience is becoming more important that the desktop experience as consumers in general are replacing traditional desktop computers with tablets and larger smartphones.

A Faster Site Equals More Revenue

A faster website can translate into a better user experience, higher rankings in search engines, and lower bounce rates. For ecommerce sites in particular, pages that load faster translate into the ability to sell products to customers more efficiently with higher conversion rates.

Numerous case studies have been written on the importance of speediness in ecommerce. Companies like Walmart have noticed that site speed had a huge impact on its business. In 2012, the retail giant confirmed that conversion rates were at their highest when pages took just one or two seconds to load, but greatly decreased as page loading time increased.

Walmart even went on to buy site-speed optimization startup Torbit soon after the aforementioned case study was published, further signaling the critical correlation between the time it takes for a website to load and their core business metrics.

Tools and Resources

Here is a list of tools and resources that will help you test and resolve speed issues on your site:

Google PageSpeed Insights – This is one of the best tools to analyze the speed of your website. Not only does it break down how your website is loading on both mobile and desktop platforms, but it also provides specific details on what you should fix to improve speediness.

Pingdom Speed Test – This tool will breakdown all the individual requests done to load a page. It will also show how the page is loading in other parts of the world.

WP Super Cache – If you’re running a site on WordPress, this is one of the best caching plugins out there. Basically, when someone visits your site, it will serve them a static html file from your dynamic WordPress site, instead of serving up WordPress PHP scripts.

W3 Total Cache – This is another great caching plug-in for WordPress. While I personally haven’t used this one, it has received great reviews and appears to be more robust and feature-rich than many other caching plug-ins.

CloudFlare – This is a great service that acts as a proxy between your visitors and your website’s servers. According to CloudFlare, the average website or blog will load nearly twice as fast when the service has been activated, so its definitely worth a look.

Closing Thoughts

While sites like Amazon and Walmart have made great case studies on site speed, all websites stand to benefit from speedier loading. Here are a few additional tips to help speed things up:

• Reduce the amount of JavaScript on pages.
• Compress images to keep file size around 100 kb or less.
• Avoid adding plugins whenever possible.
• Utilize browser caching.
• Splurge on quality web hosting.

And if you’re using WordPress:

• WP Super Cache and CloudFlare will be especially useful to give your site a boost.
• You should also remove unneeded plugins from time to time. The more plugins you have installed, the more they will affect your site’s performance.
• Using a good theme with your WordPress installation will also help speed things up. The more bells and whistles, the more likely it will take longer to load.

Users expect to get what they need at faster and faster speeds. To ensure they have the best experience, and to boost traffic from search and reduce bounce rates, make sure to pay attention to load times. Your users – and search engines – will be glad you did.

One such successor to Google Glass might come from another large tech giant far from Silicon Valley. Microsoft just announced an even more powerful piece of headgear that promises to seamlessly blend digital and physical worlds together.

Microsoft has been secretly working on its own augmented reality technology for years. While projects like RoomAlive have shown that the company is interested in experimenting with augmented reality, its newly announced HoloLens hints that the company is positioning itself to dominate the next great computing experience.

By incorporating holograms, Microsoft believes it can truly blend your digital life with your physical life in ways that haven’t yet been achieved. Demos just released by the software giant show a visor that allows users to touch, see, and manipulate images and data in the air without the need for keyboards, mice, or other hardware.

What’s interesting is that Microsoft seems to have learned from Google Glass’ mistakes. One of the biggest criticisms of Glass is that the technology made bystanders feel uncomfortable. People were always suspicious of what Glass users could be recording in public spaces. This problem was so bad that Google even had to outline proper social etiquette for Glass “Explorers,” indicating just how troubling this technology was to society at large.

For its HoloLens demos, Microsoft took a different approach, showing how the technology can be used in the home or the office. Users aren’t seen outside or in public. In fact, the headset itself is unapologetically large; it’s not trying to be a computer masquerading as a cool fashion accessory.

Unlike Google Glass, Microsoft’s HoloLens appears to be more conceptual at this point. It’s not clear on when it will be available or how much it will cost. But when it does get into the hands of consumers, Microsoft might be able to succeed where Google has failed.

Take a look and the these incredible demos and get ready for “holograms” to be the next big buzzword in tech.

Material Design is largely composed of flat shapes and colors, but utilizes layers and animations that lend depth. According to Google’s design team, Material is “grounded in tactile reality, inspired by the study of paper and ink.” By basing it on the physical world, surfaces appear to be more tactile. User interface elements offer the illusion of height and dimensionality.

For now, Material Design has been reserved for Android and Google’s own mobile apps. But Google is also encouraging app developers to embrace Material Design for their own creations. The initiative not only resulted in the most visually appealing version of Android to date, but it has also provided a more cohesive look to Google’s mobile apps. Already, we’ve seen Material Design adopted by a wide range of Google’s core apps, including Gmail, Maps, Calendar, and YouTube, to name a few.

However, Material Design has yet to take over all Google properties, namely desktop properties like Google’s core end-user product, the search engine at Google.com. It’s this glaring absence that led graphic designer Aurélien Salomon to ponder what the Google search engine would look like if it too received the Material Design makeover, and his vision is stunningly beautiful.

Utilizing the Material Design principles outlined by Google and its designers, Salomon created a conceptual version of the popular search portal that includes bright colors and subtle shadows for a more simplified, albeit more modern look.

Similar to Google’s latest batch of apps and mobile products, there’s less negative space. Gone is the cold sparseness we’ve come to expect when performing a search. In its place are bright, inviting colors, subtle animations, and the same amount of links and results on each page.

In light of Material Design rolling out to Android Lollipop, Android Wear, Google Glass, and a host of apps, Google’s search engine is unquestionably beginning to look dated. If Google.com underwent a Material Design redesign like the one Salomon envisioned, it would undoubtedly change the way we see Google.

In addition to making the popular portal more modern and visually interesting, a Material Design update would finally provide a common design language. It would unify Google products and standardize its design in a way that hasn’t been achieved to this point. But with millions replying on the search engine daily, it’s understandable that any updates to its core product will be gradual and carefully executed. Nevertheless, we hope that Google is taking note of Salomon’s creation because it certainly would make for a more compelling experience.

As a kid, I remember watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and being amazed by all the technology that characters like Capt. Jean-Luc Picard got to use. One of the most memorable technologies was the holodeck, a simulated reality facility where users can interact with simulated objects and people without requiring any special equipment or headgear.

Today, the concept of the holodeck is one step closer to reality, thanks to researchers at Microsoft. The software giant has been quietly developing an amazing technology that brings augmented reality to any room. The company’s IllumiRoom research project was first unveiled last year at the Consumer Electronics Show. More recently, Microsoft showed the latest evolution of that research in a proof-of-concept demo called RoomAlive..

In a proof-of-concept demo called RoomAlive, several Kinect sensors, projectors, and depth-cameras, are harnessed to extend games to the walls around any room, creating an interactive augmented reality experience.

Users can interact with digital objects displayed around the room, with the ability to shoot, hit, or move them. The technology also tracks the position of the players as well as detecting the floor, walls, and other surfaces of the room. The ability to detect players and various surfaces/objectives, allows the technology to accurately and dynamically display digital content.

“In the future we will explore approaches and experiences that involve multiple users and multi-user viewpoint rendering,” said the RoomAlive creators. “We will also explore new ways to increase immersion with spatialized sound. RoomAlive provides a glimpse of how a scalable multi-projector system can transform any room into an immersive augmented gaming experience. Many new and exciting possibilities remain to be explored.”

Microsoft is clearly hoping to extend its Xbox gaming environment in the future, but for now the RoomAlive technology isn’t ready for consumers. At the moment, RoomAlive’s combination of video projectors, cameras, and Kinect sensors are too costly. However, if the technology can be had at a lower price point, and when those components become more compact, mainstream gaming consoles may finally incorporate the physical environment into games, and bring the concept of the holodeck out of science fiction and into reality.

All of Google’s apps, such as Gmail and its Calendar app, will be redesigned to adhere to the principles of Material Design. However, this new design language is more than a visual refresh. It also brings about new animations and new ways for users to interact with content. Along with revamped typography and more color, Google’s aiming to make its apps even more consistent than they are today, lending a better overall user experience.

“Unlike real paper, our digital material can expand and reform intelligently. Material has physical surfaces and edges. Seams and shadows provide meaning about what you can touch,” said Matias Durate, Google’s director of Android user experience.

Google also launched a new Design website to provide developers with all the guidelines needed to build apps that follow the Material Design principles. While Android will continue to employ elements of a flat design, the UI will also have incredible depth, thanks to use of shadows. Developers can even assign an elevation value to areas within their apps, letting Google’s framework automatically generate virtual light sources. Nuances like these will give Material Design a greater sensation of depth and visually indicate where user interactions can take place.

At the core of this new UI is the need to bring a seamless experience across devices. Different form factors has created a significant challenge not only Google, but also for Microsoft and Apple. With Material Design, Google has incorporated all of its apps and even Search, and the company is hoping that it cracked the code that brings mobile and desktop platforms closer together than ever before.

Google’s new APIs are now available, so developers can begin making apps that take advantage of this new design language. For non-developers, you can take a closer look at the future of Android below.