Kotsego Design

The Importance of Taking a Step Back

Étienne Garbugli — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:01:30 +0000

Often times, you start a project with a vision — the big picture. You understand what’s needed and get to work. You build your product up, make it perfect, align it with objectives, data, best practices, trends and send it off to take a life of its own. People look at it, get an understanding and [...]

11 Tips on Blogging and Writing Effective Copy

Étienne Garbugli — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:33:31 +0000

Twitter and other micro-blogging Websites are changing reading behaviors online. Attention is getting harder to get, people expect highly disposable content. Articles and posts are getting shorter, writers have to learn to be more concise. The following tips should help you convince readers to break through the reading barrier: Keep it short. As a general [...]

Launch of Everbetter.ca

Étienne Garbugli — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:16:56 +0000

Last Fall, I had the chance of working with a team of extremely talented creatives at Sid Lee on designing a content Website for Baby-Boomers. Interesting project, target audience and objectives, I couldn’t wait to see the site go up. Last week, the Website went up. Now, if you’ve ever worked on a Website, you’ll know [...]

In Montreal Tomorrow, Thursday April the 30th?

Étienne Garbugli — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:49:57 +0000

If you’re in Montreal on the 30th, you definitely want to come to our UX happy hour organized by yours truly in collaboration with Utilisabilité Québec, an affiliate of the Usability Professional Association. The gathering starts at 5:30pm at Le Belmont, located at 4483, blvd. St-Laurent (map). Philippe Alengry, an e-marketing specialist, will be doing a [...]

Global Innovation Reduces User Engagement

Étienne Garbugli — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:23:18 +0000

I was at the « Seize the new business opportunities » conference yesterday. The objective of the conference was to highlight new business opportunities created by the current economic crisis. Most speakers (Seth Godin, Tony Chapman, etc) focused on the creation of products that lead to word of mouth and social marketing. The presentations were [...]

Resistance to change, the Facebook story

Étienne Garbugli — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:34:28 +0000

With popularity comes responsabilities. With user engagement comes ownership. With ownership comes resistance to change. Facebook is a perfect example of this. Twice their design changed over the last year and twice it created an uproar. Petitions went up, groups were created and the Facebook team had to defend the changes. But, if your business needs to [...]

Small Things that Lead to Big Results

Étienne Garbugli — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:52:22 +0000

It’s not always the biggest features, ideas or changes that lead to the biggest results. In fact, it rarely is. Small changes allow you to limit the risk. Small ideas need less commitment and are easier to discard if they don’t work. Break expectations, anticipate user needs, find and improve on the small things your competitors [...]

Off the shelf: Landing Page Optimization

Étienne Garbugli — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:34:56 +0000

I recently finished reading the book Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash. The book is very complete and provides great examples to help readers understand metrics, user behaviors, usability basics, marketing ROI, optimization methods, tools, roles and the AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action) decision process. Although the author sometimes puts down other methodologies, there is a [...]

How to Make Atypical Navigations Work Part 2

Étienne Garbugli — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:16:50 +0000

We decided to follow up on the success of our post How to Make Atypical Navigations Work. This time however, we decided to go beyond navigation formats to focus on concepts and ideas. The following examples should help you find inspiration: Horizontal space For the last 20 years, Websites have been laid out vertically. But, the Apple [...]

In Montreal Thursday February the 26th?

Étienne Garbugli — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:01:24 +0000

If you’re in Montreal on the 26th, you might want to come the first of a serie of UX happy hours organized by yours truly in collaboration with Utilisabilité Québec, an affiliate of the Usability Professional Association. The gathering starts at 5pm at La Quincaillerie, located at 980, Rachel East (map). The happy hours are an informal [...]