Hallworth

Creating an exhibition stand in 24hrs

Ian — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:25:03 +0000

I booked a stand at the Brighton and Hove Business Show one week before the exhibition. A week in which I was flat out with client work during the day. So, I spent 24 hours over that week getting my act together. Here’s what happened… Why bother? First of all, I wanted to raise my
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Developing an online business: what to do?

Chris — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:00:04 +0000

We’ve just finished a consultancy report for a client. They wanted us to help them make a decision: should they continue to develop an online business, or should they abandon it? How do you think about a problem like this? Well, using a decision-making framework helps, and for this issue we turned to the PrOACT
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BBC Review Online Commissioning System

Ian — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:20:42 +0000

The BBC recently requested feedback and suggestions on how their commissioning process and ASL might be improved. These were my thoughts – I'd love to hear yours too.

Top Trumps

Ian — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 16:07:10 +0000

We think it's time there's a Top Trumps pack for online design. "I've got 85 for interactive design — 37Signals." "Ha! I've got Cooper. 90." Here's the file, for download and customisation. What categories would you use? What score would you give yourself? How can we get a system that stops everyone awarding themselves 95 points? No fighting in the backseat... Download Web Trumps.ai.

Not everyone sees things the way you do

Chris — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:41:14 +0000

At the SCIP event last month, the group leader asked the community organisations if they had any specific problems they wanted addressing. "Accessibility", said one man. "What do you mean?" "You know, blind people, that kind of thing."

Stealing best practice

Chris — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:50:09 +0000

We've been doing some interface design for Magic Studio, a multimedia tool used by schools. In one task, the students have to decide how significant they think economic, social and environmental factors are for a variety of objects (in this case, buildings). Ian's been facing the problem of how to represent the results. Three separate screens? Live feedback? Perhaps the icons should be coloured or varied by size to convey their different axes?

Thinking about technology

Chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:24:36 +0000

Ian and I were at a community IT event a couple of weeks ago. The aim was to connect design agencies with community groups who needed assistance with their online presence. It reminded me of how differently people see technology – annoyance, tool, magic or secret club. Community groups are used to doing things themselves,
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Eureka! I’ve got a great idea for an online business

Chris — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:53:21 +0000

Ian took a call recently. It was a man who wanted an e-commerce website. He wanted to know how much it would cost. Ian asked him why he wanted a site at all. This flummoxed the man. He'd called a few design agencies, and none had asked him this. In fact, they hadn't asked him much before giving him a figure. "What's your competition?" I heard Ian say. "Have you done a competitive analysis?" I was feeling sorry for our potential client. I wanted to give him a figure, but Ian was right. An ecommerce site is a shop. Behind the shop is a business, and it's the business that matters.

How to evaluate software for a client

Ian — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:30:10 +0000

When we’re working on a project, we often have to compare complex things – features/services/software – and work out which one is the best in the given situation. I use a spreadsheet and create a matrix. This is what you should end up with. Click on screen shots to see the next step. There’s a
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3.6.4 Titles And Quotations within Titles

Chris — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:08:18 +0000

How do academic writers refer to posts in an online forum? We had no idea (and admittedly, hadn’t given it any thought) until late last year when we started designing the Modern Languages Association’s Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. The MLA Handbook is the gold-standard reference for academic researchers in the US, but it
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