AI is breaking all borders. There is no field where AI doesn’t have a significant role to play. It arranges calls for the sales team, gathers necessary customer information, sends automatic replies to clients, places an order for raw materials with the vendor, monitors manufacturing operations, and controls door-step delivery.

The services mentioned above are easy-to-automate jobs and don’t require much intellectual caliber to perform. But with the gradual advancements in AI, it is now ready to take on administrative tasks that consume much of managers’ time.

This article sheds light on 5 ways how business stakeholders — from front line executives to top management — can transform the way they work and get ready to make AI a crucial part of their professional lives.

1. Let AI handle administrative tasks

Consider a nurse working in a hospital who keeps a tab on the patients’ health. Who will maintain the records if she gets sick or decides to quit at short notice? AI can create, store, update, and share records instantly. Another such example is report writing. News agencies like the Associated Press are using AI software tools to write reports. In 2014, it expanded its quarterly earnings by publishing 4,400 stories, up from 300. The new-found AI capability allows journalists to spend more time investigating and interpreting reports rather than wasting time writing them.

Similarly, our Sage 300cloud ERP software takes control of all your administrative tasks. It monitors the inventory levels and places orders with the vendor as soon as the raw materials’ quantity goes below the set threshold. It controls the entire manufacturing process, manages warehousing activities, and also checks that the finished products reach their destination in time. Thus, allowing you to perform tasks that require high-level mental processing.

2. Improve your judgment skills

The only thing where humans supersede machines is judgment. AI can analyze and capture information from data. But managers have to use their intellect to extract business insights from that information. Empathy, intelligence, culture, and knowledge of organizational culture are the four things that distinguish managers from machines. Unlike machines, managers can visualize data from all corners and angles. They don’t only depend on data and numbers but existing financial and political conditions as well. Managers should understand that technology is there to support rather than replace them.

Sage CRM allows managers to monitor the performance of their teams. For example, the sales manager can instantly download performance reports that depict the following attributes:

• Average calls per day per salesperson
• Average time per call
• Prospect to customer ratio
• Customer queries resolved
• Face to face meeting sessions

With essential data at their beck and call, managers can focus on crucial business areas that require human ingenuity and decision making skills.

3. See intelligent machines as your colleagues rather than your competitors

Machines can never substitute human intelligence. They can support their human counterparts in doing trivial tasks, but the final decision always rests in the manager’s hands. Thus, managers shouldn’t be scared that they will lose their jobs to AI in the coming future.

A recent survey reveals that 78% of managers believe that they will trust intelligent machines’ advice while making business decisions.

For example, Sage X3 ERP software is highly mobile and allows adding, updating, or deleting user data from any place and at any time. It provides managers the ability to enhance process quality and customer support. Moreover, it contains various functionalities that support international trade and allows managers to scale and expand to new geographies.

4. Build creative thinking skills

What is the most crucial quality of a top-performing manager?

They can bring creativity into their work. But even more crucial is to unlock the creative potential of their team members. When the manager listens to their teams’ ideas and thinks of ways to implement them, the company benefits as a whole. As AI is quickly taking control over administrative work, skills such as design thinking, creative thinking, and experimentation will be the pillars of differentiation.

Companies no longer need managers who can execute an idea at a fast pace. Instead, they need managers who can layer fresh ideas on old ones and create something new.

5. Build stronger and deeper bonds

The following are the 11 vital skills managers believe they will need to succeed in the next 5 years. The table is in decreasing order of importance.

Skills	Percentage
Digital technology	42
Creative thinking and experimentation	33
Data analysis and interpretation	31
Strategy development	30
Planning and administration	23
Social networking	21
People development and coaching	21
Collaboration	20
Quality management and standards	20
Sharper skills within my current domain of expertise	20
Performance management and reporting	17

As you can see from the above data, managers highly regard technical and data analysis skills while looking down upon social skills like networking, coaching, and collaborating with others (points f,g, and h in the table above). As AI takes up more administrative and data analysis jobs, it is high time that managers start giving credence to networking skills. They can achieve much more when they factor in diverse perspectives, experiences, and insights.

While the conditions appear to be daunting, AI will not cause disruptions overnight. But managers need to look outside the box and understand the far-reaching implications of AI and Web App technologies. The corporate world’s face is soon going to change, for which managers need to take reformative steps today.

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Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

In today’s look at the latest research for web designers, we’re going to look at studies and reports from Payoneer, Robert Half, Hootsuite, and Contentsquare to see what they have to say about things like:

• Current freelancer demand
• Web designer earning potential
• A change in ecommerce shopping trends
• Unseen content rates

1. There’s Light At the End of the COVID-19 Tunnel for Freelancers

Payoneer’s The State of Freelancing During COVID-19 had to take a different approach to reporting on the freelancer workforce than in years passed.

Here’s why:

When 1000+ freelancers around the globe were asked how demand for their services changed during COVID-19, this was the response:

Less than 17% of freelancers experienced an increase in demand for their services and less than 23% saw demand remain the same.

An overwhelming majority of freelancers experienced a shrink in demand, with nearly 29% saying it slightly decreased while almost 32% said it greatly decreased.

However, the data collected wasn’t just assessed on a global scale. Payoneer also looked at freelancing demand trends in various parts of the world:

Notice the differences between Asia and Australia (who were hit with COVID-19 earlier) and North America and Europe (where the pandemic arrived a little later).

It appears as though Asian and Australian freelancers are, economically speaking, already starting to feel the effects of recovery from the pandemic with demand working in their favor.

So, if you’re feeling like there’s no end to the hardships you’ve faced during COVID-19, and were considering dropping your prices, hold on for just a little bit longer. Freelancers are starting to feel optimistic about demand for their services increasing. If you go devaluing yourself now, it’ll be hard to return to where you were before COVID-19 when things get back to normal.

2. Robert Half’s Salary Guide Breaks Down the Earning Potential for Web Designers

On a related note, let’s talk about demand from the employer’s point of view.

According to Robert Half’s 2020 Salary Guide for creative marketing professionals, there’s big demand for digital talent:

So, that’s number one. We know that almost 50% of hiring managers feel as though their digital teams are inadequately staffed. That’s good news for web designers.

However, these same managers complain about creative marketing professionals’ lack of up-to-date skills as the biggest barrier to hiring or retaining them. Although the report doesn’t say so, I’m going to assume this refers both to employees as well as contractors.

This should be a no-brainer. By keeping up with the latest web design trends and techniques, you can make top-dollar for your services — and hold onto those valuable client relationships for a long time.

According to the report, this is how much you stand to earn working in web design (in the U.S.) today:

If you’re eyeballing those salaries in the 95th percentile, then you know what you need to do. Hiring managers have spoken up about what’s holding them back from hiring.

For those of you who feel as though you’ve gone as far as you can as a web designer, it might be worth exploring a new specialty. Like one of the following:

As you can see, designers in the UI, UX, and interactive space (along with web developers) have the opportunity to make more money, even earlier on in their careers. You may also find that more job opportunities are available as you move into these niches (because of less competition), which might cut down on any demand issues you’ve been experiencing because of COVID-19.

3. Hootsuite’s Digital 2020 Report Reveals an Interesting Trend in Ecommerce

Hootsuite’s Digital 2020 report is always a great resource for learning about social media marketing trends. That said, that’s not why I read it.

It’s for hidden gems like these:

It’s no surprise that we’re seeing changes in retail and ecommerce during COVID-19. What is a surprise, however, is how consumers’ online shopping habits have changed.

Here’s what we’re seeing when we compare 2020 ecommerce data with the pre-COVID benchmarks:

Site visits are 1.7% lower than expected. That would make sense considering how budget-conscious consumers are right now. It likely keeps them from going on unnecessary shopping sprees.

Session durations are 3.3% lower. This could be related to fewer site visits. It might also indicate greater consumer confidence. If they come to a website with a plan for what they need to buy, they’re going to take a straight line to conversion instead of spending time window shopping that prolongs their session.

The number of transactions is 19.1% higher and the conversion rate is 21.6% higher. Considering shoppers aren’t spending as much time with ecommerce websites, this point suggests that there’s a massive shift happening from in-store shopping to online shopping.

If that’s the case (even if consumers are currently spending less money), that means web designers need to set their sights on the ecommerce space. With the holiday shopping season expected to start sooner rather than later this year, now is the time to get in there and make sure these sites provide as streamlined an experience as possible.

4. Contentsquare Studies the Unseen Content Rates By Industry

Contentsquare analyzed more than 7 billion user sessions globally to create the 2020 Digital Experience Benchmarks report.

There’s some interesting data in here about website traffic and conversion trends, but what I find the most valuable is the breakdown by industry.

It was this chart, in particular, that really caught my eye:

According to Contentsquare’s data, between 60% and 75% of a website’s content is unseen. Some industries fare better than others, like home supplies and luxury retailer websites, but the numbers still aren’t flattering.

For example, what does it mean when consumers miss 75% of a financial service provider’s content?

Does this mean that the financial advisory content — which I’m assuming comprises the bulk of the pages on the site — is useless or irrelevant? Or perhaps it’s an issue of discoverability since blog content and other resources often take a backseat to service and product promotion?

What about ecommerce brands in the apparel or beauty space?

If two-thirds of their pages are unseen, does that mean their websites are overrun with obsolete inventory? Or, again, is it an issue of navigability and discoverability around the store?

As a web designer, I’d suggest performing your own unseen content analysis on the websites you’ve built. If over 60% of your pages never get any views, you’re going to have to decide what to do with them:

Option 1: Fix the navigation or search function so people can actually find these unseen pages.

Option 2: Remove them from the site and make room for content your visitors actually find valuable.

Wrap-Up

As you encounter research and reports online — whether it’s written specifically for web designers or other creative professionals — spend some time looking for hidden gems.

As you can see above, there’s a ton of relevant research for web designers out there, even if it’s hiding behind the mask of a larger issue or matter. And it’s this data that will help you get a leg up on the competition since it’ll get you thinking about your business and your approach to design in different ways.

Source

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

UX Design for Navigation Menus

How to Choose UI Colors for Mobile and Web Design Wisely

A Step-By-Step Guide to Create your own WordPress Theme

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet [PDF]

Beyond Media Queries: Using Newer HTML & CSS Features for Responsive Designs

The Power of not Messing Around

Tailwind Ink: AI Color Palette Generator for Tailwindcss

Resumey.Pro – Save Time and Effort on Designing your Resume Using Markdown

The Ultimate List of YouTube Channels to Boost your Web Dev’t and Programming Skills

10 Google Font Combinations for Inspiration

Everything You Need to Know About WordPress 5.5

How to Create Stronger Layouts with the 8pt Grid

TEDx Talk: Good UX is a Problem

All the Ways to Make a Web Component

Landing Page 101: How to Design a Landing Page that Converts

30 Free HTML and CSS Book Effects and UI Design

A Guide to Design System Models

15 Designer Curated Color Palettes to Inspire your Next Project

My Thoughts About Editors in 2020

The Napoleon Technique: Postponing Things to Increase Productivity

Announcing TypeScript 4.0

Un-Cancelling 2020: Virtual Conferences for Designers

How to Manage Stress as a Developer

Explaining UX Design to a 5-year-old

How to Win Over Skeptics with Qualitative Research

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

Source

A fancy experiential essay from the team at Readymag, which is a tool for building… fancy experiential essays, about fancy experiential essays:

With all the technology addressing readability issues, it’s still design basics that distinguish a readable text from one that isn’t. Here are some simple rules we use ourselves when developing engaging texts and layouts.

I like this advice:

Always start with quality writing.

I find that it’s not only longform that inspires a fancy “art directed” post around here, but quality writing.

I can’t decide if I like that the URL changes as you scroll down the article. Seems a little better suited to hash links.

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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The post Read Me! appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

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Rick Strahl:

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve implemented a custom ‘button’ like CSS implementation. Over the years I’ve used images, backgrounds, gradients, and opacity to effectively ‘highlight’ a control. All that works of course, but the problem with most of these approaches is that one way or the other you’re hard coding a color value, image, or gradient.

You certainly have a lot more control if you specify exact colors, but if you can pull off brightening, darkening, or even a hue-shift in a way that feels cohesive on your site, it’s certainly a lot less code to maintain,

.button.specific-button {
  background: #4CAF50;
}
.button.specific-button:focus,
.button.specific-button:hover {
  background: #A5D6A7;
}

/* vs. */
.button:focus,
.button:hover {
  filter: brightness(120%);
}

/* or maybe you're super hardcore and do it everywhere */
:focus,
:hover {
  filter: brightness(120%) saturate(120%);
}

Direct Link to Article — Permalink

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The post Using a brightness() filter to generically highlight content appeared first on CSS-Tricks.

You can support CSS-Tricks by being an MVP Supporter.

I wanted to do a handwriting animation for calligraphy fonts — the kind where the words animate like they are being written by an invisible pen. Because calligraphy fonts have uneven stroke widths (they actually aren’t even strokes in terms of SVG), it was near impossible to do this sort of thing with typical path animation techniques. But I found an innovative application of SVG masking to achieve this affect in matter of minutes.

While researching how to do this, I gathered information from multiple sources. I combined them together and was able to create the final effect.

Let’s make this together!

SVG masking

If the stroke width of all the letters in a word or sentence are even throughout, then Craig Roblewsky has a nice way to animate handwriting. This is a clever technique that animates the SVG stroke-dasharray and stroke-offset attributes.

Calligraphy fonts like we want to animate here have uneven stroke width throughout the letters, hence it will need to be a and animating it in that way will not work. The trick will be to use SVG masking.

Let’s start by figuring out what font we want to use. The one I’ll be using throughout this article is HaveHeartOne, which has a nice brush stroke appearance that is perfect for handwriting.

The idea is to create a out of same sentence we want to animate, then place it on top of the sentence. In other words, there will be two layers of same sentence. Since the mask sits on top, we’ll make it white so it will hide the original sentence below it. We will animate the mask so the bottom layer is revealed as the animation runs.

Making the layers

The foundation of this trick is that we’re actually going to create two separate layers, one on top of the other:

1. The bottom layer is the words with the desired font (in my case it is HaveHeartOne).
2. The top layer is a handcrafted path approximating the words.

Creating the handcrafted path isn’t as hard as you might think. We need a continuous path to animate and reveal the sentence. That means no for this. But, many illustrates apps — including Illustrator — can convert letters to paths:

1. Select the words.
2. Open the “Properties” panel and click Create outline.

And, like magic, the letters become outlines with vector points that follow the shape.

At this point it is very important to give meaningful names to these paths, which are stored as layers. When we expect this to SVG, the app will generate code and it uses those layer names as the IDs and classes.

Notice how individual letters have a fill but no stroke:

In SVG, we can animate the stroke in the way we want to, so we’re going to need to create that as our second main layer, the mask. We can use the pen tool to trace the letters.

1. Select the pen tool.
2. Set the Fill option to “None.”
3. The stroke width will depend on the font you’re using. I’m setting the Stroke Width option to 5px and setting its color to black.
4. Start drawing!

My pen tool skills aren’t great, but that’s OK. What’s important isn’t perfection, but that the mask covers the layer below it.

Create a mask for each letters and remember to use good names for the layers. And definitely reuse masks where there are more than one of the same letter — there’s no need to re-draw the same “A” character over and over.

Exporting

Next up, we need to export the SVG file. That will likely depend on the application you are using. In Illustrator, you can do that with File ? Export ? Export as ? SVG

SVG options popup will open, below is the preferred setting to export for this example.

Now, not all apps will export SVG the same exact way. Some do an excellent job at generating slim, efficient code. Others, not so much. Either way, it’s a good idea to crack open the file in a code editor

When we’re working with SVG, there are a few tips to consider to help make them as light as possible for the sake of performance:

1. The fewer points, the lighter the file.
2. Using a smaller viewBox can help.
3. There are plenty of tools to optimize SVG even further.

Manually editing the SVG code

Now, not all apps will export SVG the same exact way. Some do an excellent job at generating slim, efficient code. Others, not so much. Either way, it’s a good idea to crack open the file in a code editor and make a few changes.

Some things worth doing:

1. Give the element width and height attributes that are set to size the final design.
2. Use the