From Clunky to Clear: How Good Design Supports A.A. (NAATW 2025)

Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability from the original caption file. Speaker names are standardized using first name and last initial where available. Timestamps are adjusted so the edited audio begins at 0:00.

Presentation: From Clunky to Clear: How Good Design Supports A.A. Presenter: Lois L. from the NAATW 2025 Workshop, Cincinnati.

[0:00] Presenter Introduction

[0:01] Host: Our next presenter is Lois L., a long-time member of NAATW, a former chairperson of the NAATW Steering Committee. Lois has been a steady voice of experience, balance, and creativity in helping our fellowship explore the intersection of A.A. principles and technology. Her presentation, entitled, From Clunky to Clear, How Good Design Supports A.A., explores how thoughtful, user-friendly design in websites, flyers, and digital tools helps make our message more accessible and our service work more effective. We're so glad to have her with us again. Please welcome our friend and trusted servant, Lois L.

[0:52] Opening Remarks

[0:53] Lois L.: Hey everybody, I'm Lois, I'm an alcoholic. I'm really glad to be here. Currently I'm serving on the Community Management Committee on the Technology and A.A. Online Forum, and I am the webmaster in District 4-2 and Area 38. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri. This session today is really about how small design choices, can really make a difference, and how anyone doing service can learn to make better choices. I'm running my own show today, so we'll see how it goes. Let's see. Alright.

[1:31] Have You Experienced Something Like This?

[1:32] Lois L.: So, we've all seen them. Flyers that are so packed with text that you can't read it, just walls of text, you can't find the date or the time. Websites with tiny fonts and frustrating broken navigation that make you want to give up. Forms with unnecessary steps that leave you wondering if you filled them out correctly, or, worse. Deciding not to make a contribution because they're too hard to get through. And these aren't just annoyances. They're really barriers that block communication and participation in A.A.

[2:06] Why Design Matters in A.A.

[2:07] Lois L.: And that's why design matters. Every design choice really affects, sort of, whether someone gets the message or not. A confusing design blocks access, and clear design carries the message. Poor design, it doesn't just make us look bad, it can make us seem untrustworthy or disorganized. Like, I admit, like, if I see a poorly designed website. I’m inclined not to trust the company behind it. I think, oh, these guys, they're not professional. Same for… I'm a… I'm a sort of a sign and menu snob. If I see, like, a poor sign at a restaurant, or a poorly designed menu, I think, the food can't be any good, you know? And, It's interesting, because I know I'm speaking to a lot of technologists in the room here, and a lot of times, I feel like

[2:58] Lois L.: when I have interactions with technologists about design, that they… they get… they think design is just about making it pretty. it’s like this afterthought, it's like decorating, you know? And I guess I'm here to tell you that I believe it's really more than that. I believe that good design is a service, and… and it's okay if I don't visit some website, or if I don't go to some restaurant, because the sign is, you know. sloppy. But… but if we keep people from participating in service or coming into a meeting, I mean, we might… I mean, that's life and death for some people, right? So, it really is way more than decorating, it's service.

[3:40] How This Talk Came About

[3:41] Lois L.: So, let me tell you how this talk came about. It was born out of a, I'm gonna say, friendly argument about a flyer. Our team at the Technology in A.A. Forum, wanted to create a flyer to attract people to the forum, and, you know, encourage them to join. I didn’t have time to make the flyer. I don't… I don't know who… how many of you I'm talking to are normally the designers in your home group or whatever. Yeah, so, but this time I didn't have time. And so, another member took it on. When they sent it out, said, hey, we're ready to send this, I was like, wait a minute, this isn't quite where it needs to be. And honestly, I pointed out issues, right? It had inconsistent logos, it had outdated content, it had a crowded layout, a buried call to action. I mean, to me.

[4:30] Lois L.: those details really mattered, because the flyer represented us. It communicated whether the forum was a credible, trustworthy place to, you know, for members to engage. And… but the team didn't see anything wrong with it. Honestly, I thought they… I think they thought I was being difficult, right? You know, all those difficult artists, right? And… and I was the bottleneck, though. I was the one keeping this thing from getting out in the world. And so, that disagreement really made something clear to me. It's that other people don't always see what I see, or how much design can impact trust, credibility, participation. And so that's really why I'm here today, hoping to talk a little bit more about that. And maybe, you know, hoping the rest of you will start to see that, too.

[5:16] Good Design Is Learnable

[5:16] Lois L.: I want to make something clear, like, those of us who are the designers here, we're not… extremely talented, right? Like, I mean, good design is learnable. You can learn how to do this. You don't have to be a professional designer or have fancy tools to start making better flyers or forms or websites. You do need to understand how people see things, how they read, how they take action. And a few small choices can really… Affect, whether or not people, whether your design connects. You know, if you make a couple of choices. Now, I did know that. I do have a design background, so I have been taught that stuff, but during that flyer debate, I realized that my job wasn't just to fix things myself. I'm looking at you, my friend, designer friend back there. We can't keep doing this all ourselves.

[6:04] Lois L.: It was to pass it on, and to help other people see why good design matters, and to make a whole room full of good, capable designers, so that we can all scale up our abilities here.

[6:19] Example Flyer: Version 1

[6:20] Lois L.: So, so let me show you that flyer. It's what kind of started this whole conversation. Okay, here it is. Good, somebody, you know. The team liked this, you know, the team liked this. They really did like that logo on top, and everything's technically here, right? It does have links in it, blue links. We'll have to talk about that. I'm not a fan of these, necessarily. I think we should put links in our PDFs that we distribute, but I don't think they should look like links, but I don't know, that might be a usability issue. Anyway, The eye doesn't know where to land here. It's a wall of same-size text. And when everything looks equally important, the reader stops reading.

[7:00] Lois L.: our own organization also puts out some information like that. But, so, people can't tell… if people can't tell instantly what the flyer's for or where to go, we've lost them. It also sends kind of an unintended signal that if the design feels chaotic. the forum may feel chaotic, too. And admittedly, occasionally some of those conversations might feel a little spicy and chaotic, but the whole forum, we hope, is not chaotic. In a panic, I tried to throw together something.

[7:33] Example Flyer: Version 2

[7:33] Lois L.: I was like, okay. Let me just make something. And so this is the second draft. Now, it's cleaner. This one was done in Google Docs. It's cleaner, it's still a little flat. I would say that you all could start with something like this, though. In our case, we missed our deadline, so we had a chance to go further. But this at least has a few more principles of design that I'm going to talk about, and it may make sense for you all to start with something like this, because you can then agree on, what are we doing with this flyer? What should it say? What do we want people to do? Before…

[8:13] Lois L.: you add in visual design elements that get people distracted, or get the whole… all of you feel fairly, qualified to decide what colors should be there, what graphics should be there, right? So before we start having that conversation, let's have the real conversation. But we did go further.

[8:33] Example Flyer: Version 3

[8:34] Lois L.: This is the final version. In this version, we've added color and a graphic element. The headline now says exactly what we'd hope viewers would do. Join the Technology and A.A. online community. The support line tells why it matters, connecting A.A. members to discuss A.A. and technology. And the call to action is separated from that, it's down at the bottom, and it's this www. Go to the forum, right? It's the URL, there's also a QR code. The spacing here gives it some breathing room, allows your eye to rest a little bit, the white space kind of signals competence, care, And this version, at least in my mind, fully communicates a credible, welcoming online space for members helping members. Now, this one was made using Canva.

[9:21] Lois L.: But it wasn't about a specific tool. It's really… the thing that makes this good are the design principles that are underneath it, okay?

[9:29] What Good Design Looks Like

[9:30] Lois L.: So let's look a little bit closer about what makes something a good design. It's really design principles. The first thing I'm gonna give you is a way to remember some of the basics. If you do not want your design to look like crap, you need to remember the CRAP, what is this? acronym. Okay, C stands for contrast. Contrast draws the eye. So, make important things stand out. Like, in the case of this flyer, the headline is larger type, and also, technology NA is bolded. Repetition creates unity, and consistent fonts and colors build trust, so the R stands for repetition. A stands for alignment. I have to tell you, I've been seeing a lot of alignment issues lately. Alignment… there are many things in A.A. that are centered that should not be centered. You know, so alignment is about organizing things and making them line up, and proximity

[10:22] Lois L.: the P in CRAP is about putting like elements together. So in this case, on the top of the flyer, it's the information about the flyer, and underneath, it's kind of what we want you to do and why. So, once those basics are in place. I want you to think about visual hierarchy. like, the path your reader's eye will take. In my world, there's, like, these F patterns and Z patterns, like, we… in the West, at least, we start by reading and looking up at the top. of the F, reading across, right? Sometimes in designs with less information, we do a Z kind of thing. We start at the top, we read across, and then we go down, and we read across, so put the important information in those places.

[11:02] Lois L.: And use fonts large enough. Actually, that's an interesting… I'll bring that up a little bit later, but long… large enough with strong contrast between the text and background. I mean, if people have to squint, we talk a lot about a squint test. If people have to squint or guess, they'll stop reading. And then finally, you use color, right? Use color to signal importance, reinforce tone, again, not just to decorate. It's to give a feeling. A well-chosen color graphic can really make information easier to find and remember, okay?

[11:36] Design Tools for Non-Designers

[11:36] Lois L.: So, design principles are what makes a design good. Tools are the how. Once you understand the principles. The how becomes easy. And I wanted to at least demo a few tools that I feel like make it simple to apply those ideas, even if design isn't your day job. Because for me, you know, I do have access to fancy tools, but I… but I find that I don't really need them. So, I'm gonna show… I'm gonna try. We're gonna try to do some demoing here. Let me show you… the first thing I'm gonna show you is Canva. This is Canva. Now, Canva allows you to… I think the benefit to me of Canva for you all, especially the non-designer, is that it has lots of templates built in, okay? And so you can just pick a, you know, what you want to make. I used to see Flyer up here. Of course, now I don't. Let's see, we'll do Create.

[12:31] Lois L.: You can pick a flyer, tell it what size you want. Come on, Canva, not too slow. It's getting there, you guys. It works faster than this at home. And then you'll see a variety of templates, and you can even search for, you know, the kind of design you're looking for. Now, one of the things they also have, and I ended up subscribing to this tool just so I could show you guys this, they have a new Canva AI, And so, you can actually just put in what you want to see. Now, it might take a little while, so I'm hoping… Oh, here we go, yeah. I can show you a recent chat. So, a recent chat I had was online forum technology flyer design.

[13:15] Lois L.: And you can see it generates several, and then you can pick more if you want, right? And then what you do is you just pick this and you start editing it, okay? Most of these are giving you some of the basics already. So, layout, visual hierarchy, things like that. If you just put your own content into these, you'll be doing, you know. A decent amount better. Now, Snagit… Snagit is a TechSmith tool, and for me, Snagit is all about screen captures, but it's sort of like screen capture on steroids, right? Think annotated screenshots. Let me try… it's hard, I got my Zoom controls up here, let me see if I can move those. Good, you guys don't see them. Alright, so I…

[14:00] Lois L.: You do see that? Yep, so I have it built in. I do a little screen capture. You can capture scrolling, which I do a lot, but one of the things I do… so let's just capture this, we'll do it. See, I could scroll, but I'm not going to. Done. is I use this a lot to talk about design. So, I can draw an arrow and be like, make that better! fix this, you know? And I also use it for, like, grabbing screenshots of things I want to put into presentations, or I use it an awful lot when I see things that are broken on websites. One of the tools that Snagit has that I also find I use all the time is this blur feature. So, like, if I see a member's name, let's say I'm taking a picture on the forum.

[14:45] Lois L.: And it's got everybody's name. I just use this blur tool, and it just blurs things out. Oh, it's kind of small for you guys, but you can see it's blurring, okay? Let's go to Noun Project. There have been a lot of cool little graphics you guys have seen, in my presentation. All of those I get from Noun Project. I probably could make I probably could make icons, but it would take me quite a while. And I can't always make them great. So, Noun Project is a simple, consistent icons that make… instantly make forms and flyers clearer. Like, if I want to search for, let's try, conference.

[15:28] Lois L.: I get back all kinds of little icons that might work for that. This is just a shortcut for you guys. If you… I can't do a design, you might not be able to, but you can probably use Noun Project and get something decent, okay? Most of these tools are for fee or for free. It's funny, I've had some conversations this weekend about I mean, we have to watch affiliation. I'm just trying to show you tips and tricks, right? You can find probably several other tools like this. These are just the ones I use. I'm really not, on the take for anybody here. That's just what I use. Google Docs and Google Slides are also very useful. One of the best parts about Google Docs Is that you can collaborate. So, that first flyer I made in Google Docs, I could have shared it with 3 people, and they could have said… commented right in the… in the Google Doc.

[16:16] Lois L.: And then Google Slides also has templates. I'm a long-time presenter at this conference, and I say I use the same Google Slide template every time, and it just makes it a little bit easier for me. Could I design my own? Yes. Do I have, you know. Is A.A. paying me to talk? No. So, you know, I use what I can to go cheaper. And then finally, you know, any chatbot will do, the chatbot of choice. You can use a chatbot to improve your designs, and, like. you know, we've had a lot of ideas on how we could do that already this weekend. I mean, here's one. Rewrite… here's a prompt for you guys. I'm gonna give you a few more at the end, a little gift I'm leaving for you. But rewrite this flyer text so it's clear, friendly, easy to scan, okay? And in the GPTs I use, you can upload the flyer. So, take advantage of that.

[17:13] Lois L.: Alright, let's see, what else?

[17:16] Stretch Tools: Exploring What’s Next

[17:16] Lois L.: Oh, and I have some stretch tools. So my wheelhouse is user experience design, okay? And I'm gonna show you a little bit of a stretch left into being a better illustrator, and a stretch right into being a developer. Look out, you guys. But… but… for example, you can use AI… I've been experimenting with AI image generation for A.A. One of the ones I've tried to use is, Midjourney. I admit to you, now, those of you… the… the AI-generated graphics I have seen this weekend, I think are, like, bad menus. Not very good. Midjourney's a little bit better, but I feel like I can't control it at all. So, I was trying to make a flyer for my district to talk about how nobody was showing up at the district meeting.

[18:03] Lois L.: And so I… I, I grabbed this… I don't know where I got this, but I uploaded this picture. I mean, that's another tip for you guys, if, like, use… use stock art where you can. Find something you like, and then you can iterate on it. But let's see, so I uploaded that. Can I go… can I go back? Let's see, yeah. Okay, and I told an artsy version of this photo. Moody, blue tones, lonely. All right, and then it just generates all these things, okay? And I don't know what to do with… I mean, in the water, like, the chair's in the water, right? But I ended up with something, let's see, I can… that… that worked okay, and then I went to Canva. And I made this flyer. And that, you know, it was kind of a powerful thing, right? And so, I think AI image generation may start to, do more for us.

[19:03] Lois L.: Certainly from a creative perspective, but what I would tell you is, is that for me right now, it's still… I still end up pulling my hair out more than getting success. But it's something to play with. The other thing I've played around with is, browser-based coding studios, that's the generic term, I'm trying not to use all the brands for my friends. But, Replit is… I've used Lovable, I've used Replit, and one of the things I did recently that was really interesting. is we were in this meeting, and I… we were talking about how to make the TIA forum, front content more SEO-friendly, right? So I put in this prompt, it says… let's see, I'm gonna get over here where I can read it.

[19:49] Lois L.: Here, I just said, here's the current website, I gave it the URL, I said the problems we are trying to solve involve improving the SEO, we want to break the hot topics into individual posts, and we want to add more content that this is for Alcoholics Anonymous. So the main text should say Technology and A.A., and this is what it made. I'm gonna pop this open for you. What's really exciting to me about some of these IDEs is that… I mean, this isn't a fabulous design, but it did what we said, and it actually… things are clickable, right? So it broke these topics out, and you can actually click them and read them and go back. I feel like… I feel like this… The current design we have.

[20:33] Lois L.: needs some love, and I feel like this isn't a bad starting place. And actually, we was able to talk to it a little bit, and work within Replit, within chat, telling it what to do, but what I have under this is code. Now, you guys would have to tell me if it's great code. I don't know. I know I can put something in GitHub, which I think a lot of you are going to be worried about, but I can do it now. So, so… so these are ways that you could stretch yourself, either way, or that I'm stretching myself into coding and into more visual design. But, of course, you know.

[21:09] Trusted Servants, Not Lone Designers

[21:09] Lois L.: Tools only get us so far. Really, good design doesn't happen in isolation. The best designs result from feedback, collaboration, and remembering who the design is really for. This is a big deal. We're not designing for us, we're designing for the people who receive it. Tradition 2 says our leaders are but trusted servants. I think that applies beautifully to design, too. We don't design for ourselves. We design in service of others, and the best way to know if something works is to ask. and sometimes, I don't know, people… we try to be nice to each other in A.A., right? So just don't just ask, like, do you like this? Kind of ask, what is the most important thing? Where does your eye land? With websites especially, can you complete this task?

[21:52] Lois L.: So that people don't have to worry about, like, hurting your feelings, you can more give them a task, because honestly, that's what these things are supposed to be. They're supposed to be… communication vehicles that are working for us. And our job is to carry the message clearly, and that's something we can do together. So do this. I would say if you are a talented designer, in A.A., remember that you're a trusted servant too, and that you know, our skills are a gift of the fellowship, but, good design grows stronger when we invite feedback as well. And I admit, like, I'm somebody who just wants to, like… it was funny because, so, I got to that third version of the flyer, and then I posted that one in the forum, and then people were kind of kibbitsin' on it, and I didn't want the kibbits. I was like, look…

[22:40] Lois L.: I'm the expert. I know what I'm doing. We don’t have experts in A.A., first of all, I’m just telling you. And it turns out that they were right. I actually… the text on the bottom was pretty small, and I liked it that way, because it lined up, everything, you know. And so, they called me out on that, and I did make the text bigger, so… If you are a talented designer, we still have to listen, but we don't have to put all the words they tell us on the page, okay? Phew, I'm looking at you. All right, so…

[23:10] Take These Ideas Home

[23:11] Lois L.: We've talked about principles, we've looked at tools and the importance of working with others, and now, like, I just want us to put this into action. You don't have to redesign the world, right? Just… just redesign one thing. This week, pick something small. Make it like a homework assignment for yourself. Let me try that tool and see if I can make this communication I got from the General Service Office easier to read, like. if I have time, I would tell you that our Southwest Regional Forum communications, I felt like, could use some improvement. So, do something small, make the main thing easy to find, add a little white space. Remove one thing that's not needed. Then, and this part matters the most, ask other people what they think, right? If they can do it, what they notice first. That's… I mean, I think, really.

[24:00] Lois L.: if you do these things, then we want you to create a template and share it with other people. You know, we have to… I have to be teaching more people to become designers so I don't have to do it alone. And we all do. With everything we do, you know, but we really have to pass this stuff on. I'm looking at… I'm looking at Damon in the audience here. I know that he brought Brian to this event this weekend, and I have to tell you, thank you for the example. you know, there's 3 of us from St. Louis, and we… we didn't ride together, because I'm selfish, right? So we all need to be doing more, right? We need to be bringing other people along. Look at the demographics in this room. We're not going to be here forever, right? So… You know, Pat… well…

[24:49] Lois L.: I mean, I care enough about A.A. that I want this to be good after I’m gone. So, I'd like it to still be there. I have provided you guys with, you know, like a good teacher.

[24:59] Your Design Starter Kit

[25:00] Lois L.: a little design starter kit, so you'll be able to get that at that QR code. It's got… oh, look at that, this is bad. Okay, so it's got some highlights, it's got your CRAP outline, some layout and readability, some links. Links to tools, some… I gave you guys some prompts you can try, not just the regular ones, but some good design ones. Like, give me two open-ended questions I can ask someone to see if this design works as intended, okay? So try those. A couple of books, you know, there's a classic, Don’t Make Me Think, we, you know, we talked about this. 10 years ago now at NAATW, but it's still a classic. This is where the CRAP, comes from, and also 10, usability heuristics. This applies primarily to, Websites and software, so… Finally, it's funny, I…

[25:54] Lois L.: I don't know what this is. This could be my ego, you guys can tell me later. But there… to me. I've… I've presented a lot at NAATW, and some of my Some of my favorite talks. are, like, nowhere except on Lois' private YouTube. And it's funny because, like, Steve had a topic last night that he wanted to talk about, like, good, you know, how do we make websites easier for newcomers, things like that, and I just want to tell you guys that that we've talked about this in NAATW, and I went and looked at these, because they're 10 years old, right? I was like, are these still valuable? They are. They're… they're still the best practices

[26:29] Lois L.: for applying good user experience to your websites, to doing digital strategy for A.A. websites, so you can go watch those, too, if you want. I'm sure other people have good presentations of theirs that are in the past as well. But it's funny, as we've been here this weekend, we've all been remembering some really cool you know, formative moments that we've had at NAATW that really changed what we thought about, so I thought I would archive these for you as well. And… I think. I'm done. Wow, wouldn't it be great if we got even a little break? But that's all I have. Thanks.

[26:55] Q&A / Discussion

[27:10] Damon / Lois L.: Oh, I see all you guys… I don't know if there's… I mean, what questions could there be about this? Oh, okay, Damon. Are you gonna ask me why I didn't put somebody in my car? My name's Damon, I am an alcoholic. Hi, Damon. Love you, gal. You always give us that challenge. A little challenge back, maybe, my wife is an occupational therapist, she's been working with, technology and people with, accessibility issues. And are there any design tools for taking your design And seeing how accessible it is. There are. There's lots of them. I might even have a built-in one here. Let's see, what is that? Yeah, is that Wave?

[27:55] Lois L.: Let's see… so there's some… there are a lot of tools for that, Damon, although I think we could get even better. I mean, there's… there's tools that'll read your website. I believe on my… toolkit here, I also provided a link to the contrast checker, like, for low vision people, but I can get you more of those, and I feel like we've got some past talks as well, like, basics, but I'd like us to get better. You know, low vision is a real passion of mine, and I feel like, you know, we're kind of addressing blind, but low vision is a big deal, so I'd like to talk more about that. No problem. It is sometimes in conflict with good design, I admit. I was telling Jackie that today. That and security. All my security friends, it's, like, inversely proportional. The more secure it is, the poorer the user experience. Anyway…

[28:48] LaShanta / Lois L.: Hi, my name's LaShanta, I'm an alcoholic. Thank you so much. I know we kind of connected in the room, and, you know, like we say in the rooms, I feel like you're telling my story. I am a designer, a graphic designer by trade. That's what I do. I have a freelance company, and I also work within, progressive politics in California. But, So much of what you said was just so right on, and I think most importantly, just highlighting, like, the importance of what we do, the importance of delivering the message, in a way, right? I know in design, one factor of design, we call it wayfinding, right? Like, when you're designing signs and things, and I think that that dovetails so beautifully with the program of helping folks find their way, right? And how important it is

[29:34] LaShanta / Lois L.: To have these certain concepts or the principles of design like you're talking about. One thing I would say from my own experience, because I'm also a webmaster as well in my district. Highlighting the use of Canva, I think, is… really crucial. I think Canva's one of the best tools. For me, I… in my old job, I used to do a thing where I'd have to train folks that were working within our organization on doing their own design, so we wouldn't have to do everything. And then, so I was doing tutorials on Canva. And what I'm… and then I'm like, oh man, they're gonna take my job, like… Getting good on something like Canva. It's brilliant. But,

[30:12] LaShanta / Lois L.: as a webmaster, the one thing I thought maybe if I could add any notes, because really, you said everything beautifully. The only thing, as an artist, some of the AI stuff I have my own opinion on, I'm not going to get into it, because, again, I don't want to lose my job. But, also, I think that there's a certain level of integrity with artistic output that AI just cannot match. But, I will say this, do you have any thoughts on, like, at least just, like, output? Because that's one thing I see when I get files to upload onto a website. A lot of different, like, file types being sent, and, like, for me, I think, you know, just using JPEGs or PNGs or something is the most

[30:51] LaShanta / Lois L.: helpful for us, especially when you're spreading it digitally. So, do you have any thoughts on that? I'm actually glad you asked that, because I've been thinking about that lately, because we share so many documents, like, digitally or not. Actually, for this flyer, I made a PDF and a JPEG. Because I found that some people just want to text it to their friends, but some people want to send a PDF. So this would be something that I would encourage if if part of bringing people into this is, now you say, okay, Jackie, now send this to your friend, and just watch what she does, right? You know, is she gonna take a picture of the physical flyer and then send it? Because I… I think…

[31:30] LaShanta / Lois L.: file formats are a thing. I mean, I've been playing around with SVGs lately, just because I like how I can change color and stuff, and they scale better, but, you know, I don't have… I don't have as much expertise on what is right. I think we should explore what works best. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

[31:51] Lois L.: I don't know if anybody's online. Okay, am I supposed to know? Okay.

[31:59] Jackie / Lois L.: Go ahead, Jackie. Okay, thank you, Lois, that was amazing, and one of the things we were talking about, Jackie, outside was, I'm very passionate about accessibility, and also, like, you know, and you talked about this balance of wanting something to look professional, but also accessibility, and I feel like for us in A.A., accessibility actually needs to be a very high priority. You can have something that looks legitimate, that creates trust with the public, as you said, and professionals and within the fellowship. but that also has good, accessibility. But, I think also, for me, very passionate about websites and intergroup websites, and to think about also not just people with low vision, but, people for whom English is not a native language. And, when you have…

[33:00] Jackie / Lois L.: not… when it's not in your language, it's visual noise, all the letters. And so especially, you know, one of the things that I've been working with the DeafAA.org website, and I have something out there, which is, you know, the Deaf… folks that I've talked to have said we really… it's… unless it's at the top of your website, it's not, you know, anything that you create for deaf people, prelingual, right? I mean, people who, never, learned English, because English is based on phonetics, right? It's the sense you don't have. ASL is not signed English, I think I said that before. It's…

[33:41] Jackie / Lois L.: if it's not at the top, it's… it's so difficult to find because of the visual noise, and it's the same thing with non-English, non-Spanish. So, you know, I'm… I'm kind of spreading that. If you have a Habla Español or a Spanish hotline number, put it at the top. Where it's easy, use icons, don't use the icon of… a bar going across the ear that's actually offensive for a lot of deaf people use ASL, as an icon, so… and, last thing I'll say is I was actually… I don't like hyperlink, you know, I feel with you about that way, but I changed my mind about it because I was told by a deaf person that's how deaf people know it's a link. And not just text. So, thanks.

[34:28] Lois L.: Thanks, Jackie.

[34:33] Mark / Lois L.: Hey, Mark, alcoholic. Hey, Mark. Thank you so much, for the presentation. One for everybody else, Canva is free. If you've got a 501c3, the pro version of it is free, so if you are using Canva, put that in, and boom. all of the Canva. So the first year I was here, you talked about doing, like, interviewing people, or… Like, having them… User research? Thank you. So I'm at that stage now. And, like, for that, do you, like, pick a newcomer, somebody that's got, you know, 5 to 10, and then, like, a long-timer that's got, you know, 15 plus years, and asks them to find certain things on the website? Like, who are your users? Like, I know the website is for…

[35:22] Mark / Lois L.: you know, the newcomer, right? My thing is that the newcomer is not always the person who has less time. We talked earlier about, like, somebody going to a different state, and, you know, the… the website is filtered by district, and they don't know the district, so technically, coming to that website, they are a newcomer, because they don't understand how it works. So, like, what are the parameters for finding people to… test… how the website is. Like, who… what are you… That's great. I mean…

[35:54] Lois L.: people like me can really get into this, so I'll try not to do too much of that, but, you know, you want to get, ideally. a representation of the audience that you think is gonna come. So for an A.A. website, a local website, it's likely newcomers, existing members, and the general public. Right? And so you want a couple of those. You know, it depends. I mean, somebody's better than nobody, more is better, and you can get it to a point where there's diminishing returns. So 8 to 12 people. But make sure you get tested on mobile. Test it with your elderly people. Yeah, that's one of the other things I've been looking at, is Google Analytics, and, like, I know for Atlanta's website, 62.7% of the people are using mobile devices, so, like, I've tried to build more to that side than to the desktop side, but also…

[36:48] Lois L.: similarly, so that it doesn't look so far off, but making sure that, like, the mobile side is, like, my main priority. We did this at our assembly, and we let people come in, and we projected it, and they… we had a room, and they could come in and test, so that might be something to try. Okay, Hugh? One minute, and then we're gonna give… give whoever comes after me some grace and time to, like, breathe in between. Okay. Somebody do that for me. Who's online? Viv. I hate my profile. I wanna look at that. I think you can unmute, Dave. Viv, are you there? Viv, I asked to unmute you. You have to unmute on your end.

[37:30] Vivienne: Alright, now I'm unmuted. Hi, Lois, thank you very much. That was a great presentation. I just had, a couple of comments on some of the questions, two questions. One was about how the document is uploaded, whether it's an image or a PDF. I know that when I used to run my intergroup website. And I would get a flyer that was an image. I had a terrible time trying to put that in the events calendar, because it required you know, text input. I like it personally when it's done in both formats. I know… I then came to learn that a lot of people really just like the image, and that's what they share on their phones. The other comment that was made about,

[38:20] Vivienne: the hyperlinks, generally blue, I don't know if that's still true, but I would imagine that blue is kind of understood to be a hyperlink color, and that we should try to avoid that if it's not… you know, if you want to emphasize some text or something, use another color. Not blue. Great presentation, thank you so much.

[38:44] Audience / Lois L.: Thanks. 30 seconds? All right. Because Viv just said what I was gonna say about the text. However, what drives me up the wall the most is when I get a flyer with text on it, but it's an image, and I can't copy the text. Alright. Gotcha. Ask ChatGPT, it can probably extract it for you. I mean, or any… or the… model of your choice. Alright. Thanks, guys! Let's go to somewhere else, though.