The first year for the US Census to collect information on computer ownership and use was 1984. They reported that only 7.9% of US households had a computer. It was during that same year, 1984, that a husband and wife in Wisconsin formed a punk rock band named Timbuk 3.

In 2016, the Census reported that the ownership of one or more home computers had grown to 89.3%. The mostly unknown band, Timbuk 3, was able to secure a place in history as an 80’s one-hit-wonder. The name and chorus of that song could…

 

What the heck is human-centered design? I once heard it dubiously described as college art students surrounding a nude model as they sketched. But, mostly the term elicits a shoulder shrug from people who feel like they should know what it is, but don’t. For me, however, I’ve been lucky enough to have been exposed to it over the last few years at Zion & Zion, where I spend my days as a Sr. Copywriter. Prior to participating in a weeklong design thinking bootcamp at Stanford University’s d.school, I had coworkers previously participate in the same human-centered program—and pass along…

 

During your career as a designer, you’ll develop skills with a lot of approaches that you can add to your ‘toolkit’ to help spark creativity or portray ideas. Each one is valuable in its own unique way and may not be used every time for every project. It’s like when you need to pound in a nail; there’s probably a screwdriver in your toolkit. Great tool, but you need to grab that hammer. Here are five design process tools I find myself pulling out of my toolkit quite often.

1. Opposite Day

The Opposite Day exercise helps challenge our normal…

 
When it comes to running successful paid search campaigns, ensuring ads are shown only when you want them to is key, and dayparting is the way to do that. Through this article I will go over what dayparting is, how it can be beneficial to various industries, how to determine the best schedule for you, and finally, how to set up dayparting for your paid search campaigns.
 
This year, I was fortunate enough to have Zion & Zion send me to an executive program at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, also known as d.school., with two of my colleagues from Zion & Zion. Stanford d.school’s Design Thinking Bootcamp is an intensive four-day program which helps people develop their creative abilities.
 
If you’ve read any of our other Zion & Zion articles, you’ve likely heard us talk about Google Analytics. If not, the quick version is Google Analytics is a tool that you place “on” your website to learn things like how people got to your website, what they are doing on your website, and how long they stay on your website. And the best part is, the tool is free!
 
Stanford’s d.school offers an intensive, four-day Design Thinking Bootcamp where attendees immerse themselves in real-world projects on the streets of Palo Alto and San Francisco. The purpose is to learn the d.school’s human-centered, prototype-driven approach to innovation. One Stanford alumnus described the program best when they shared “d.school is like riding a bike … except the bike is a skateboard … and the skateboard is made from 17,689 paperclips … and through the design-thinking process and empathy journeys … your team creates magic for users.”
 
As a member of the web development team at Zion & Zion, I was sent to Toronto, Canada where I attended the Smashing Magazine conference. Smashing Magazine is a website that publishes content for web developers and web designers. I was really excited to attend this conference as Smashing Magazine is one of my favorite websites to catch up on the latest development topics and trends. It was a two-day conference that featured a range of design, development, and UX/UI experts. In addition to the conference, I also attended a workshop that focused on the JavaScript Framework, Vue.