CLIENT:
Max-TM/Kellogg’s

INVOLVED:
Strategy & Design

The challenge was to help Kellogg’s Special K consumers maintain their shape and lead a healthy lifestyle.

My role was to create a strategy and design a concept to facilitate this online.

Proposed Strategy & Design Concept:

1) Record or plan activities in the diary
This can be anything from food eaten, exercise done or how you feel.

2) Keep track of progress – are you doing well or can you do better?
Score a diary entry, green = good, amber = okay, red = not so good. Add as many entries per day as you like, the aim is to get an average green each day by balancing good things with the less good. As it’s down to you to set the score you can only be fair to yourself – so there’s no point in scoring a chocolate bar as green unless you have a reason to as you won’t be doing yourself any favours!

3) Support when you need it
Dynamic tips appear at login depending on the time of day. 4pm – “Fancy a chocolate bar? …why not have an apple instead?”

4) Support each other
Connect with your friends and share experiences, tips, exercise events and support in the K Club social network.

5) K Club is there when you need it
As Special K is about maintaining your shape but being free to enjoy yourself, K Club is a free tool to use when you need it. Dieting never lasts anyway so why punish yourself by tying yourself into a fixed plan?

STATUS:
Offline

Last week I got caught flashing on the beach. Sorry if you know anything about it that’s a terrible cliche to start on but I couldn’t resist it! It’s a great web conference in Brighton full of inspiration, learning and meeting new people. What I liked about it most was that it was accessible, great value and although the elite were present, there was no arrogance. All the speakers were very down to earth and it was a great opportunity to hang out with them in the bar after and have a good chat over a beer, or a rum, or even a flaming fireball cocktail.

Here are my takeaways from the three days…

1) Use best tool for the job

Being at Flash on the beach for my first time as a non Flasher, I was expecting to be the odd one out and be subjected to a lot of biased Flash persuasion. Generally, Flash is like Marmite so I always expected the Flash community to be very one sided. Not the case. A lot of the speakers were multi platform and advocated using the best tool for the job. Lee Brimelow explained in his talk that if HTML can be used, it should be but Flash will always be for doing something more rich and advanced. He also explained that in the HTML5 VS Flash debate, Flash will always be advanced one stage further than HTML5.

2) Mobile is happening now

It’s always felt like the industry is waiting; “Next year will be the year for the mobile web.” Weren’t we saying this back in the mid 2000′s with WAP? Mobile is happening now and as more people view websites on mobile devices, in Lee Brimelow’s words “it’s like writing your own death certificate if you’re not concerning yourself with mobile now”. Viewing desktop sites on the iPhone or Android or any other smart phone, you see the full site zoomed out which you then have to pan around trying to make complex interactions. We should be producing separate cut down mobile friendly front ends by prioritising the most important content, typically 20-30% of the main site. Laura Jordan Bambach made some good points in her talk, one of which being that “there’s value in creating ancillary pieces designed for multitasking” as we increasingly engage for example, watching TV whilst surfing.

3) Make data interesting

The conference was full to the brim with visual data driven examples and experiments. I watched in fascination as programming geniuses such as Robert Hodgin, Grant Skinner and Andre Michelle presented inspiring ways to use data and make it visual or interactive through programming. There’s always inspiration to take but for me it’s real world applications that interest me most… My good friend Matt Barringer was asked to take part in the Elevator Pitch, a quick fire 3 minute talk where he presented his Twitter Buzz, a Flash app for CNN which took a live twitter feed during the world cup and presented the data in a really interesting, engaging way.

4) Take a sabbatical

Stefan Sagmeister’s talk was one of the highlights for me in one of the inspirational sessions. He’s taken 5 years off his retirement time and added them into his working life, taking a one year sabbatical every seven years. He closes his agency and does something completely different like moving to Bali and meditating in the mountains or getting involved in new projects. He explained its very important to have a very constructive plan for this time. The benefit is to take a break, evaluate and consider new things and there are a few major positive outcomes in his working life that he believes he wouldn’t have benefited from had he not done this.

5) Have a different side project

This is no new thing but I wonder how many people actually do it? Do something outside of your client work and maybe even outside of your comfort zone or something you never usually do and it’ll keep your creative side fresh or maybe even inspire you to look at your client work in new ways. There’s only one way to explain Cyriak Harris; Nuts. Interestingly, he explained he likes “creating chaos from order”, something the rest of us are trying to to the opposite of, but his mad experimental videos are truly weird and wonderful. Brendan Dawes side project, an elegant stand for an iPhone or iPad has started a new direction in product design from digital for his agency mN. And Jared Tarbell, the last talk of the conference showed us his intricately laser cut wooden cubes which he modeled from the shapes he programmed in Flash and sells on Etsy. So it seems good things can come from playing with your interests!

So although I never considered myself a Flasher, roll on FOTB 2011!

* Image by Marc Thiele

CLIENT:

Olive Branch

INVOLVED:

Strategy, design, development, project management

I have been working with Olive Branch Florist for a number of years, this being version four of the site. The previous version was functional and practical but feedback from customers was that it was too corporate looking and uninspiring to use and order from.

Working with the client I produced a concept with a more friendly boutique style, a design I would hope reflects the pleasant experience of visiting the physical shop in Pimlico, London.

Olive Branch has a large customer base in London as well as overseas customers ordering for London delivery so I designed graphics which would engage these customers to give them confidence that they were ordering from a dedicated London based Florist, giving it the edge over the competition.

As well as design, I also worked on full development of the site including HTML/CSS templates, Magento installation and integration and setup up of payment gateway.

Status:
Live – View Website

CLIENT:
dotMailer

INVOLVED:

Interface Design

dotMailer is part of the dotDigitalGroup and one of the UK’s largest email marketing platforms.

I was brought on board to improve the user experience and to ensure that the interface is as easy to use as possible. The product has many advanced features over the competition and as such is a complex app. But like any interface, it is essential to prioritise the most important features whilst still allowing the lesser used ones to be intuitive.

After studying usage, we realised that the campaign creation process is one of the most important red routes. Not only is it the route that every user takes when creating and sending a campaign but it is also the most common journey that prospects take when test driving the product. So this was the main area of focus for quite some time.

My starting point was finding out from users how they were using the existing product as it was also just as important not to alienate the pros that were used to the system. There were a few bottlenecks where people left the journey so I designed a simple step process where people understood where they were at all times and didn’t deviate. I went through a cycle of prototyping and testing to refine the interface before creating polished comps and then integrating the changes to the beta version.

We are doing more user testing and refinement before the upgrade which will be available in the next major deployment. Phase two is to focus on improving interface personality to ensure the experience is not only really easy to use but also a pleasurable experience that people really love to spend time with.

STATUS:
Live – Visit Website

CLIENT:
Anna Neale/Half Full Glass Records

INVOLVED:
Design & Development

Singer Songwriter, Anna Neale wanted a new look for her web site to promote her new album, “Touch”. We decided distressed graphics combined with pretty vector vines was a good look and I put together this HTML5 / CSS3 site with gallery and RSS feeds pulled from blogger and MySpace.

STATUS:
Live – Visit Web Site

Here’s a short list of things I’ve been working on:

• http://olive-branch.co.uk relaunched – a redesign of my old OScommerce site and my first experience of designing, setting up and templating a Magento store.
• http://helpmusicians.org.uk launched – IA and visual design for dotAgency
• http://annaneale.net relaunched – giving me an opportunity to redesign the old Flash site into a bright new HTML5 and CSS3 site
• http://pineapple.uk.com launched – HTML and CSS of the shopping area

What I’m working on now:

• My first iPhone app – Using user centred design techniques I’ve been prototyping and user testing – all very exciting
• UX work on http://dotMailer.co.uk app – More user centred design and user testing work which is coming together nicely
• A redesign of this site – watch this space!
• Also waiting for a few other sites to launch which are currently in development

Oh yes, and don’t forget you can also follow me on Twitter…

2009 has been an awesome year so big thanks to my friends, my company dotDigitalGroup, bosses and clients who gave me the opportunities to make this happen!

2009 Achievements

2009 has been a big year and I’ve worked on a lot of exciting projects for some cool clients. The biggest change was starting as agency designer for dotDigitalGroup in June and working for a much bigger company has taught me a lot and enabled me to enjoy a greater variety of work and clients. It’s been a record year for dotDigitalGroup too, winning the award for Growth Strategy of the Year at the National Business Awards and I feel very honored to be a part of that.

Here’s an update on achievements of goals that I set at the start of 2009:

- Design Even More

Well I have certainly done this! Working at dotDigitalGroup has meant that I have been able to focus more on design and less on project management and day to day business like at my previous company. Turn around time for projects is also quicker at dot due to a bigger team meaning I move on to the next one quicker.

- Brush up on code & get closer to technology

Again, I can tick this one off too. This year about half my time has been focused on design and the other half on front end development so I’ve brushed off some cobwebs and learnt some new tricks too. Our standards are exceptionally high at dotDigitalGroup when it comes to html/css so bringing myself up to this standard has certainly been rewarding.

- Go to a conference and exhibition or two

Well, I didn’t do as much of this as I wanted. I made it to Cut&Paste which was awesome and an interesting experience quite unlike anything else I’d seen before. I have also been spending more time reading and getting more involved with the web community.

- Align myself & my web site

This is something which will take longer to achieve and is I guess something that is always evolving. I’ve been focusing my skillsets though and am less of a jack of all trades. Next year I’ll be aiming to narrow this down even more.

- Submit my sites to a gallery …& win awards??

A few of the sites I’ve designed this year which I planned on submitting are still in development so one for 2010. Awards though? Hmm, I’m now not so sure winning awards is that important, just as long as the work is top class for the job in hand? Happy clients is really all that matters?

2010 Resolutions

- Raise the bar in design

This year has been great for variety in design but there is a danger in rushing work out too quickly. It’s important to ensure quality in design so I want to work on a balance – productive but also ensuring projects get the quality in design that they deserve. I also feel it is important to become involved in projects as early as possible to ensure deep understanding of client requirements and issues which affect the design. Too often I enter the process too far down the line which often results in wasted time for account managers and clients or even a sub standard design.

- Experiment more

Again this year I have been concentrating on bringing myself up to speed, but I want to be at the forefront of the industry (or as much as possible). With all these cool new CSS3 and HTML5 techniques, I want to start experimenting and try some cool new things. This goes for design too and I want to focus more on gaining inspiration from new places to bring into my web design work.

- Focus more on user experience

So I’ve come to the conclusion that this is my strong point. It’s taken me a while but it makes sense. My background is in product design and the way people interact with designs and this is what really interests me digitally – like it did with product design.

- Learn to draw

Although I can scribble a few lines on a page, drawing has always been my weak point in design. Being able to pick up a pencil or draw on a graphics tablet I think would have great advantages not only in graphic communication but also to the depth of the design on the web. I bought this book years ago and just never bothered to study it, so now is the time.

- Get more involved

I’d like to try out more conferences and get more involved in the community. This year I have met lots of great people who do great things on the web and it would be cool to continue meet more.

So that’s it for another year. Let’s hope the next is just as good as the last!

Back in the day when the web was still finding its feet, designers didn’t know much about usability or user experience on the web so we took standards from other mediums such as print and fitted them around the limited technology that we had.

Since then, things have moved on and the web has become a much more complex world as we know. It’s grown immensely and techniques and standards have had to grow with it.

So there is nothing wrong with changing your mind! If a client says “that’s not what you told me last time!” don’t be afraid to explain why you’ve changed your mind.

Backing down will only lead to bad usability, old-fashioned techniques and the prevented evolution of our industry.

After all, the web is in your hands!

CLIENT:
dotAgency/Childlife

INVOLVED:
Front End Development XHTML/CSS

One of my first projects for dotAgency, I was tasked with front end development of the charity website for Childlife which was beautifully designed by my colleague Sylvia Fernandez.

The project involved building ten page templates with relevant server side includes. The specification I built to was as follows:

• Clean hand coded semantic markup
• Standards compliant XHTML & CSS
• Priority 2 accessibility standards
• Text scaling with allowance for growing content
• X-Browser support IE6+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari
• Code framework for dotEditor CMS integration

STATUS:
Online – Visit Website

* Unfortunately W3C validation can’t be guaranteed post CMS integration.

How a designer can benefit from management of their design projects:

• More involvement in projects means more depth of understanding and therefore maximising opportunity for better design solutions.
• Having direct client communication is important to gain first hand information that may otherwise get lost in translation through project managers or other people involved.
• A deeper project understanding means it’s easier to debate issues and advise justified design solutions that are clearly a business benefit to the clients work.
• Being involved in management of a project to the end means more control of design issues should they arise during the development process. This ensures that the project is deployed as the designer intended.
• Too many cooks spoil the broth. Too many people involved in a project means communication becomes over complicated, opinions in design become diluted, no one really gets what they want and no one takes leadership of the project.  Managing this from the design side means a good consistent end result as you intended.
• Greater satisfaction when the job is done and you can be sure you made a solid effort, knowing everything about the design of the project.