Archive for the ‘All Posts’ Category

Top 8 at 8

November 26th, 2009

This was going to be a top 10 at 10 but hey, it’s 8am and all is well.
Plus I only have eight links to get through this morning.

So a quick skim through feedly has given me some juicy links for a morning read. Well worth sharing.
I was even going to try and organise these but it’s too early to try and fancy IA stuff. Onwards

What is UX and how can it help your business?

November 17th, 2009

Ux stands for ‘user experience’.  It can be applied to a wide range of disciplines and we, at Lushai, work it in the online or web space (so far) and work it good.

It is about the experience that you create for your users (these are your customers and other interested visitors or people who stumble across your site from Google).  It permeates every facet of web design from your idea to content to code.

To me a great user experience is one you don’t notice, (it’s only us webby folk that would rave about it) but to your average user they are just satisfied the tool (website) has successfully enabled them to complete their task. Be it book tickets, find the content or article they were looking for or navigate through a photo album.

As the web becomes richer with multiple channels and levels of visual and physical emphasis it is sometimes best to step back and keep it simple.  We like to solve problems. We like to know what your users face as a challenge online and we want to solve it, preferably with you. We enjoy solving complex problems (and sometimes the not so complex problems) with simple solutions.

For us good UX equals smart business.  How could it not be? You are discovering what your user needs to solve their issues and problems.

How do we find out what their problems are?
We use a range of techniques.  One could be trailing them in their work place or their natural user environment. Asking them probing, to-the-point questions, leading questions and vague searching questions (you name it we ask them!) Then once we know your users and their problems we use this to inform our design and create the solution.

Example:

  • You: You are a business, so you want insight into how the people that visit your site (your users) will think, act, and react when using your site right?
  • Us: We’ll use UX research techniques to gather information from your users, yourself & your business.
  • Users: What are their goals when they come to your site? How can you achieve these gracefully and successfully?
  • Business: what are you wanting to achieve with your site? What are the business goals for your site?
  • Together: We will work with you to create a site that reflects your business needs and your users needs. Design and wireframe the concepts we will walk through together. We’ll apply best practice principles, creativity and kick ass design to solve the problems and  needs of both parties.

With good UX  you can get your product or service connecting with your user and answering their needs.

What Ux means to me:  An overall experience that is as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Gracefully taking me from one useful piece of information to the other.  Anticipating my needs, meeting then and every now and then surprising and delighting me.

A book (nearly) about Interaction Design

October 15th, 2009

Well this is my first blog post to Lushai and I’m happy to be on the team! Instead of writing about me I thought i would share something a friend forwarded onto me recently.

So there is a guy who is writing a book on Interaction Design and he’s breaking the mold a little on this one by asking the user to fund the end result (that’s the book).  Usually this sort of stuff annoys me a little but after having read the intro I think I am starting to understand why he already has a fair few people backing him.

The book is called Cadence and Slang. Have a read of the ‘outline of the book’ (scroll a little down the homepage to the link to it) and see what you think.  I am relatively impressed with the few snippets that stood out to me such as:

“An interface should be understood at a minimal cognitive cost, which vanishes after enough practice.”

And

“Expectations are always multifaceted, and they are usually moving targets. It takes a sensitive, continually adaptive understanding of what those expectations are to make a good interface.”

It seems like it might be worth throwing him a dollar or two his way so he complete the thing. See what you think yourself.

Links from a breaking the mold approach to education

October 15th, 2009

I’m back and I’m bad. It’s been like weeks and weeks since my last one. All due to large projects mixed with the small bread n butter plus all the usual distractions that come along.

Our current major project is for a large educational institute so it has brought up a host of challenges around all the facets of user experience (UX) design – visual design, information architecture, interaction design and all the smaller interactive components. The design needs to break the conventional mode for the sector (we wanted this one to pop). The UX has to be fun, easy and exceptional. Finally the interactive parts such as a course finder needs to be solid yet flexible, media galleries and landing pages all need to flow with ease as I like to say. The whole site needs to be quick, intuitive and fun.
Anyway we’ve swum through a large pool of research to help us get this far and here are some of the highlights.

UX and interactive

The techy stuff. Still if you’re in the web design business you should know it.

And when you have to present it all: Make Yourself Presentable

Monday post-it notes

September 7th, 2009

Slack is the word! I have been trying to write one, maybe two blog posts a week here at Lushai but as you may or may not have noticed, last week was a fizzer. Due not so much to motivation as extreme workloads and baby demands.
So here is a short spewage of links and fun for a Monday morning, enjoy

I love it

Space age retro images. Awesome!

space-age

Top 10 at 10 no.2

August 26th, 2009

I’ve had a resurgence of late with my posterous account. This due to a few reasons. My new iPhone, near new daughter Lola Grace and the excellant Pic Posterous app. Im also taking big steps into the IA world (I believe the saying is chucked into the deep end) so will chuck in a few useful posts for newbies.

Posterous, Pic Posterous and Tumblr

Information Architecture for beginners, sink or swim

Im a sucker for bold bright lavish design and Smashing mags latest post on festival design fits the bill.

And finally… Beautiful pictures, 8 Cities That Might Not Make It.

Opiki bridge

Reminds me of the Opiki suspension bridge in the Manawatu.

I would love to hear from anyone else digging deep into IA, any nuggets of wisdom or links would be much appreciated.

Weekly wrap-up number 2

August 21st, 2009

A small wrap of stuff this week. It’s been a busy one with barely a blink to capture stuff outside of work.

If your into Dj sets as opposed to band albums or tracks check out a new online music startup called mugasha. It’s pretty sweet though I Can’t find Shadow on there yet.

Google maps gets busy using locals to make the maps wiki style. Nice.

Crowdsourcing rocks! It’s what powers my favourite company Theadlesss

Check out this awesome bike cover. Im not so sure how it will work in a Wellington wind though.

bike-bite

Don’t let branding kill your brand

And finally. The Golden age of advertising. These are almost like some sort of weird alternate reality shift. Wicked!

Top 10 at 10, well 2

August 18th, 2009

Ideally this will be a quick post of my top 10 links at 10am on a Tuesday. In this case it’s more of an afternoon slot. Time being what it is not many things happen according to the clock, this is no exception. Enjoy.

Wicked stuff

!Free! Radiohead’s new track “These are my twisted words”.

The new Facebook for iPhone 3.0 app.

Unique tv shows that inspire creativity

Web world

Redesigning your own site. Let me say with the re-design of Lushai taking many months and itterations, I know the pain.
and on the subject of re-designs have a look at another artcle from ALA on the Erskin website redesign.

On the subject of art direction and web design. Have a look at Gregory Woods site. Gorgeous.

Good stuff

I love this! Shows what good people really can do.

Scotland does what NZ should be doing. It’s ethical duty.

It’s great t see a HUGE company taking a real stance and making a change for the environment. Go Walmart go!

And finally…Awkward family photos, ummm yeah

Weekly wrap-up

August 13th, 2009

This the first of many (fingers crossed) weekly wrap-up articles I will be posting with and insight into the wild world of web as seen by me over last week.

Highlights this week include the news that Microsoft word is banned from Texas?! and
This edition is playing catchup as it was started a few weeks ago but I wanted to hold it off until our new site was released. Some of the links a re a few weeks old now but it’s all worth a look I say.

All that social media guff

Twitter has a new front page. Mashable ponder over what and why?

Hootsuite. The professional Twitter client.

General web news

YouTube finally launches their new interface for the masses. Have a read of their blog post about the updates.

Everyone loves firefox(well I do), it may not be the fastest horse on the track but it’s the most versatile. Firefox 4.0 is on the horizon and Mashable have some early screenshots.

Apparently Apple don’t do market research. Pretty interesting article from Bokardo on why the hell not. And here is the og quote.

UX UX UX

Myself IM a fledgling UX designer, Lulu is the jedi master. Nick Finck writes a good post about Starting a career in User Experience Design and this post on ‘10 Common misconceptions about User Experience Design’ offers a great understanding of what it’s all about.

Visual treats

Web designer depot talk about ‘The dos and dont’s of dark webdesign’.

In spite of the striking visual impact that these dark designs can have, many designers don’t know how to effectively pull them off without turning off the visitor

It’s a well written article with some great points.The one re-occuring theme seems to be white or dark space. They also reference the beautiful New Zealand based Black Estate website. Nice.

A nice read on the virtues of old tech from Jason Santa Maria. I always love the visual richness and variety in his posts.

I love colour so this little stumble is well worth a read. Incidently I can’t recommend highly enough Colourlovers.com, such a great resource for anything colour related and it’s fun to just troll on through.

You press the button. The story of Kodak

And thats a wrap.

Brand value and the user experience

July 13th, 2009

Like most designers I end up becoming almost subconsciously critical of the things I love. At Lushai its usually my latest ‘user experience’ and most of the time it’s not even digital, it’s anything from door knobs & potato peelers to cell phones and this weekend a new car. All of these experiences adds to the perception of a brand.

Every action builds on the experience of the brand as if it were a person. Recently we have been frequenting a certain drive thru and every time the same branch forgets the same thing. Every time! So much so that I’m beginning to think they just don’t care about me or my family – their customers. Do I really want to mix with this person anymore? Nope, not me.

I’m sure the user experience of a brand is old in branding circles but in the online world it seems so many companies and their branding partners just don’t get it. Their ‘brand’ goes as far as guidelines for logo placement, colour and typography but very rarely do they follow through to the actual experience of their end-users. So the perception of the company is someone who cares a lot about how they look but could care less how they interact with customers. They just don’t get how their persona(lity) is experienced, and ultimately perceived, online.

Turkish anyone?
Try finding anything on a certain online yellow phone directory. The key words ‘Turkish’ and ‘Petone’ should surely bring up the most popular Turkish restaurant in my area. Hmmmm brezelmania anyone? Google does it with a snap but not the big yellow. Guess which one I never use?

That’s a big user experience fail, therefore brand fail. On a side note maybe Yellow need to do something about their SEO, they should be first on the list for New Zealand businesses in any Google search.

That’s only one of many examples where the experience and interaction just lets the brand down big time. How about online banking? My own bank makes everyday business a chore. As if the teller didn’t speak English and had to travel great distances to do anything. The whole experience is slow and unforgiving. If it wasn’t so hard to switch I would have moved out a long time ago that’s for sure.

This is just a tip of the iceberg post. I will be doing plenty of ux brand reviews over the next few months so let me know of your own experiences.

What online experience has hammered your brand perception recently?



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