(cheerful upbeat music)
- Hello everyone and welcome
to my first vlog since moving to Spain.
I can't believe it's taken me this long to do it.
Well you know what, actually I can believe,
because it's just been hard to get back into vlogging
after so long not in the habit of it.
I think I've actually even,
if I remember it correctly,
started a couple of vlogs
but then I would do one clip like this
and then forget I was vlogging
and yeah nothing more would happen.
So if you're seeing this that means I remembered
to keep vlogging after this one clip
and we got a vlog out of it.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what I want,
like what direction I want my channel
to go in moving forward.
I think this little break just, I don't know made me think
"Okay, let's start fresh.
Let's think about really what type of videos
we want to be making et cetera."
And I think my favorite thing to make on YouTube
is when I just share what I'm working on.
I love more structured teaching.
I do enjoy doing that.
I enjoy how much it helps people.
I enjoy the responses that that gets,
but personally as a viewer what I like to see
is other people just sharing
what the heck is going on in their lives.
What challenges they're working through at the moment,
what they're creating, what they're doing,
just how they're living life.
And so I wanna make sure that I'm doing more of that.
So I don't know if that means more vlogs,
more like day in the life,
or I don't know, a video where I just sit down
and talk you through a project that I've worked on recently,
but that feels exciting to me.
That feels like what I want to make going forward,
so hopefully you're on board for that too.
Wow, my arm is getting sore already.
I'm really out of practice.
If things are sounding a bit echo-y,
then it's because I'm in this office of mine
which doesn't actually have
that much furniture and stuff in it.
I don't know.
I'm gonna get a rug I think
to try and solve this echo problem.
Come look over here.
This is where I was recording my podcast yesterday with Finn
and I've just dropped some cushions from our outside seats
on top to try and reduce the echo.
Spoiler: it didn't really work,
because there's still all this space over here
for the sound to bounce off of.
This is a quick little sneak peek of my office.
I'm not gonna do a proper tour
until I feel like it's in more of a finished state,
but yeah this wall here I'm planning on
putting all of this art up on.
There is a lot of art sitting down there
and I started to try and lay it out over the weekend
and didn't quite succeed at having something that looked,
I don't know.
Gallery walls are difficult.
You want them to look kind of random,
but also cohesive, I don't know.
Still working on that.
This is my plant.
(soft electronic music)
Something I am currently working on
is trying to get a more, what's the word?
Automated, I guess system in place
for finding users to get on calls with
for like user research, user tests.
Something I only started doing this year to be honest
is getting on calls with creators
and sharing some of the pages of our marketing website,
getting their thoughts on it,
and it's been so useful.
So far, and you might have seen me doing this
if you follow me on Twitter.
Bing, follow me on Twitter by the way.
You might have seen me put a call out for creators,
anyone using email marketing,
asking if you might be interested in getting on a call
and me talking to you and hearing your thoughts.
That's how I've been sourcing creators to talk to so far.
'Cause specifically I need people
who don't already use ConvertKit
'cause I'm testing for a marketing site
and if you're a user,
you probably know a lot about our product already.
But yeah, I feel like I've been hitting
the bottom of the barrel with people to talk to
through that method.
So I'm looking at this software called PingPong
to set up some tests.
So I've just been like writing a little introduction
and setting up some questions as well.
So basically, if someone ticks that
they already use ConvertKit,
they won't be put in my test 'cause you know
I wanna talk to people who use something else.
And I've set it up as well so that if people
say that they use it at a company,
that's their main method for email marketing
then they won't be put through either
because I wanna talk to people
who're using it for themselves,
not for a business
'cause that's like our more ideal user, I suppose.
So yeah.
I'll let you know how I get on with this.
(bright electronic music)
Good morning!
It's Tuesday, excuse the way I look.
I just did a workout and it's very hot today.
Quick update on the user testing.
The platform that I was testing out, PingPong.
I don't know if I said the name or not
but yeah, that's the one I'm testing out.
I've got a session booked
and it looks promising.
It looks like the exact type of creative
who I want to talk to
and then I've got a bunch of other people,
I won't show you my screen so that I don't like you know,
give away their personal information or anything.
But there is a bunch of other people
kind of in a queue who I could talk to
and the majority of them like look
like they'd be worth getting on a call with.
So I'm really excited about that.
I feel like this could have solved my problem
and basically what I can do is click 'Allow Booking'
and it'll let anyone from that queue
know that I'm interested in talking to them
and want to book a time for a user interview.
So that's really exciting because yeah,
like I said this has been a main challenge for me
is finding the right people to talk to.
So to feel like maybe there's a place where I can count on
to find the right type of person to get on a call with
and learn more about, you know the impression our site gives
is very exciting indeed.
I have the first call in about an hour.
So I will check back in and let you know how that goes.
(indistinct chatter)
(rock music)
So that call went so well.
I'm really happy and I feel excited
that maybe I've found a solution to this issue.
And the tool was nice to use as well.
So I just like used the website itself to join the call
and then I'll turn around and show you a little bit
of what I get in the recording was during it,
I could hit the little emoji at the side.
I could click like "ooh yep, that hit on something for me"
That's an idea that sparked something
at these different time stamps
and then jump to this in the video
so that I can be reminded you know when I had that thought.
Just a nice way to take notes
without really taking notes, I guess
throughout the call.
So yeah, all in all this has been an exciting day
for user testing
and what I do next in my process is
to essentially watch this video back at two x speed
and take a bunch of notes as I go
and then I publish them in BaseCamp for my team to read
and also just for me to have as well
as like an archive of the learnings.
I also put anything like any ideas,
all those little places where I clicked the light bulb
of things that I needed to change or whatever,
that I came up with throughout the call,
I'll add them to a to do list that we then will
like act on and implement as well.
So yeah, it's been a good day for user testing.
Tomorrow, I have a call with a different platform
that I'm evaluating called Validately,
I'm pretty sure is it's name.
So yeah, I guess tomorrow I'll let you know how that goes.
This is, the focus of this vlog is user testing
that's just how it turned out.
I hope you're interested in that.
(upbeat electronic music)
Well this has been an interesting day.
I started off my day,
I actually started by doing some writing outside
which is really nice.
I'm trying to build up a writing habit.
I say that like it's been something
I've been trying to for a while.
I feel like I actually really only just started today
so we'll see if that continues.
But it is something I want to do.
I want to get back to publishing my blog more frequently.
So yeah, some morning sitting in the sun with a coffee
seems like a good way to do it.
Although, my iPad got too hot
and then it forced me to come inside.
That's just what happens when you live in Spain
and it's that hot early in the morning.
I've had some bad luck with user testing today.
First person that I had one scheduled with today
didn't show up.
And then the second one had tech issues
so we couldn't actually do the call.
She's gonna re-book and we'll do it later.
So that's a bummer.
Didn't get that done today.
But I also had a call with Validately,
that other service I was talking about.
It's just, I dunno.
They're definitely like a big enterprise company it seems.
Seems like they do like a lot of stuff,
but it's also quite expensive.
It'll cost us over a thousand dollars a month
whereas this other one, PingPong,
that I've been looking at,
right now I'm talking on the Help Chat thing
with the founder of the company,
while he's helping me sort out an issue.
So I dunno,
it's just cool to get that level of support, I guess
even if there have been a couple of issues with it
with people not showing up, having tech issues et cetera.
So yeah, I dunno, feeling good about that.
Right now, it is 7:30 but there's one thing
that I'm gonna like force myself to do
before the end of the day
and that is, let me show you my screen.
One sec.
Okay, so I have this page.
Excuse the Pringles that I've been snacking on.
This is a new feature page that I've designed
to talk about our email designer
and what's going to go in here is
is going to be like a video that auto plays,
don't worry it doesn't have sound.
But it's just gonna like, you know
move through the features
and basically show you how it works.
Finishing this page is taking me freaking forever,
like just making the examples for it,
which I finally did earlier this week.
Then like finding these images here.
So yeah what do I need to now is
I've set up the email
and I'm gonna like turn these into bullet points
and bold some text and make a button and stuff.
This thing, I'm going to recreate this
and record my screen as I do it
so that that can be the example that goes in here.
That's the idea anyway.
So yeah,
I've been procrasti-working on this for a long time,
I'm gonna force myself to do this tonight
before I sign off for the day.
(upbeat electronic music)
(cheery electronic music)
Hello, it is Thursday
and I'm actually leaving the house today.
I'm heading to a coffee shop to work this morning.
Now that we live in a much bigger apartment,
it's honestly I don't feel as like trapped and confined
as I did in our London apartment
where I like needed to get out every single day.
So I've gotta like you know encourage myself
to get out more moving here.
I'm trying to remember my way to this coffee shop
that I like 'cause I'm terrible with directions
and it's about time I started learning this new city.
So I think I'm going in the right direction.
This is a neighborhood called Russafa.
It's one of my favorites.
It's where all the like cool coffee shops and bars
and restaurants and things are so yeah.
Is this looking right?
I don't know if this is right.
Nope, I think we're good.
I recognize that street up there
that I'm about to turn onto.
I've so far only been going to
this one coffee shop to work at.
I'm sure there are others in the city
but I dunno, I've just been feeling
like a lot of anxiety around going new places
without knowing the language here
and knowing how to talk to people.
It's just, I dunno, it's kinda scary to be honest
and I haven't been dealing with that as well
as I thought I would because I mean,
I've traveled here lots on holiday.
But it's kinda different when it's your hometown
and you've gotta you know manage your way around
in a foreign language forever
rather than just for like the five days
you're here or whatever.
So yeah, just been going to one place so far.
But I'm hoping that in future vlogs,
I will be showing you some different coffee shops
that I'm working at.
Hold me to that.
(rock music)
Successful coffee shop work session.
I got a user test set up in that other platform
that we're trying.
Wasn't too impressed to be honest
with the experience.
There's a lot of bugs
but we'll see how the results come back.
And then I did the write up and evaluation
of the user test that I ran earlier this week.
So yeah, all in all good mornings work so far.
I tend to start a bit later on Thursdays
because I have meetings that go until
nearly 8:00 p.m. in Spain time.
So yeah, I give myself some grace in the morning.
Yeah, on the way home now
to finish out the work day for the afternoon.
Before I finish out this vlog,
you might have noticed a little thing
at the start of this video.
The little "Powered by WebFlow" in my intro
and that is because something very exciting
that has happened.
WebFlow came on board as a sponsor for my channel.
They do this for Ran Segall's channel, Flux.
If you watch that, you would've seen his videos say
"Powered by WebFlow".
If you've been watching my channel before
you'll know that in the past
WebFlow have sponsored individual videos
and those videos have been like about WebFlow
or like using WebFlow videos, if that makes sense.
So with this different kind of sponsorship
that's more like patronage type of sponsorship,
it means that my videos don't need to be about WebFlow.
They're just still like gonna be
whatever I want to make them be about.
About life as a designer, you know.
But just WebFlow are there supporting me
and helping me make them which is really cool.
WebFlow don't review my videos
or need to approve them or anything before I post them.
All the content is completely and totally up to me.
You know, still my channel,
it's just that they are now patrons,
so they're paying me like monthly to support it,
which is awesome.
And they've also given me a discount code
that you all can use if you wanted to try WebFlow.
That'll always be linked in my description box.
This is like a thing we're gonna try for the next six months
and see how it goes.
So yeah, let me know what you think about this.
I'm really excited about it
'cause I'm a big fan of WebFlow as a product
but also and more importantly to me,
as a company as well.
I just think that they're a bunch of great people
on that team.
So I'm excited to like be affiliated with them in this way.
So yeah, on your end don't expect anything to change really
apart from that new little "Powered by WebFlow" in the intro
and like I said there will always be
a link in the description where you can get a discount.
But yeah, it's just gonna be my same videos as usual.
It'll just free up a bit of pressure on me
so now I can afford to like hire help with them.
Like an editor,
hire the animator who I use Austin Saledge
to create new intro for me
and you know fun animation stuff,
that sort of thing.
I'm heading home now and I've not yet looked at a map
but everything is feeling familiar
so I think I'm going the right way.
This is, this is a huge plus for me.
Like I said, very directionally challenged.
I'm gonna end up this vlog here
'cause I feel like it's probably been long enough already
with all the talking that I've been doing.
I feel good about this,
I'm excited to back into vlogging,
back into sharing little pieces of my life.
Especially now that I live in this new city.
I wanna show you more of Valencia in coming vlogs as well.
I know that you really only saw
like a couple of these streets
and that coffee shop today.
If you are watching this and you happen to live in Valencia,
please let me know
because I don't really know anyone here.
So yeah.
(honking)
Okay, apparently they wanna be my friend.
I'm actually, tomorrow night gonna hang out with
someone who I've met on Twitter
which is to be honest,
one of my favorite ways to make friends.
So yup and maybe I'll catch you up in a future vlog
on how that goes but for now,
thank you for watching
and I hope you have a good week.
Let me know what you got up to down in the comments
and I will see you next time.
(rock music)