Archive for June, 2009

Fishpond

June 20th, 2009

Fishpond

Fishpond needed a design overhaul for their main interface that would fit within the aesthetics of the current site.
Lushai looked at the constraints, business & customer goals to produce a design that worked. We provided clean, consistent interactive components including the tab system, shopping cart and search bar. We applied subtle changes to the logo, header design & layout to create a usable consistent design.
Visit the live site »

Why I love Threadless or how to turn your shop into a fashion icon – Part1

June 19th, 2009

I have to be honest I’m an online shop-a-holic but I don’t just buy any old thing. I’m an animal of habit and I buy the things I love; mainly sneakers, books, vinyl (the spinning record type) and t-shirts. Like most people, once I cotton onto a good thing, I can’t get enough so I tend to frequent Pick your shoes, Fishpond, Juno and the mighty Threadless.

Now out of all of these, Threadless is the rare needle in a hay stack that I LOVE. Their whole site reeks of visual design beauty and interaction mastery and for me that means MAGIC. For visual design, look at their minimal colour palatte that lets the content speak out. Tones of blue with a touch of green provide a canvas that doesn’t fight with the content but frame it solidly.

The generous use of white space and typographic variation make the site sing from a graphic design point of view. Amazingly with the fairly large range of type faces on each page (sometimes up to 7 including main navigation items) the site still holds it together. The tight grid structure does it’s job, containing the
large variety of imagery and type into a cohesive pattern. Overall, visually, the site just works!

So what makes Threadless stand out? There are plenty of nice looking shopping sites. Think the Aloha shirt shop or Karmaloop both nicely all round.

…next week – Part 2

The difference is Threadless really get social media, their whole model is based around community collaboration.

More about the interaction design and social media lessons from Threadless next week…

Grateful Post

June 7th, 2009

This morning I suddenly realised that I and most of us don’t voice kudos enough to those who have helped us in our lives. I read somewhere that saying out loud “Thank you or I am grateful for [insert name here]” is a great way to make yourself feel better especially when you’re feeling down.

There are lots of things that you experience that shape your life but sometimes there are people you meet that just seems like it was meant to be. In my experience, I feel that people have:

  • Given me books to read or suggest what to read
  • Shown me what blogs to read and subscribe to so I don’t have to spend loads of time looking for myself
  • Told me that I can do it even when I feel totally unqualified to do it
  • Advised me about what options I have or clarified my thinking by taking their own time out to talk with me
  • Encouraged me to take the next step

At the end of the day it is up to you to decide which information to recieve and act on and what pathway to take and so on. I want to take this time to name some people who I feel have greatly influenced me my career path.

So, I am grateful to:

  1. John Clegg, my husband and partner for 7 years – John has always believed in me in my capabilities. He was my boss in my earlier work experience. He is my most reliable and probably most patient, as I tend to garble my words, resource for anything tech and web. He is my walking, talking wikipedia for technology and business terms and concepts.
  2. Caroline Dewe, CEO of Fronde Anywhere, one of my closest friends – for letting me tag along to all her sales and business dev meetings with clients and mentoring me as well as through osmosis teaching me to not bullshit. That’s what it comes down to – relationship and trust. I also created loads of diagrams and conceptual models for her business presentations and pitches. That’s how I started learning about communication through pictures. She is a kick-ass cook too.
  3. Hayden Vink, ex-colleague – for showing me and taking me to the deep end of understanding the meaning of value, for sharing all his RSS feeds to blogs and articles that has opened my eyes to the world of innovation and creative thinking. The time with Hayden was probably the most eye-opening for me in terms of what I believed in and having the courage to do it. Now I just follow him everywhere on the net.
  4. Zef Fugaz, ex-colleague and manager at Provoke – Even before I met Zef, I used the interaction design templates and documents he created at Synergy/Fronde and wondered if I would ever be like him. I finally worked with him, at Provoke, where he carved a niche for me, to lead the strategy side of experience design. Sometimes you need someone to give you the space and show you the door to learn if you are really good at something. I am really enjoying it and am getting the hang of it.

There are more people that I can name. But these four stand out when I think of huge impacts in the direction that I’ve taken. I hope other people take the time to be grateful as this is a great way to look back and see where you’ve come from and where you can still go.

My own philosophy in life is that everyone you meet and wherever you are, are meant to be. It is how or what you make of it that makes a difference in your life and will leave either a positive or a negative impact.

I hope to add to this list as I have so much more to learn still…

Also instead of trying hard to gain recognition, I thought it would be a nice change to GIVE recognition.

Have a great day! Thanks again. :)



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