Whitireia Polytechnic

Brent — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:19:51 +0000

Whitireia Polytechnic required a complete overhaul of their current website.

They needed an online presence that lived up to their marketing vision whilst meeting their business and user goals. Lushai provided complete a re-design of their site architecture, user flow paths, interactive and visual design. We worked closely with Inov8 who provided a custom built SharePoint platform for Whitireia’s CMS requirements.

Visit Whitireia’s website

Top 8 at 8

Brent — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:43:57 +0000

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

iPlotz, Could be some competition for Mockingbird Perfecting User Experience Design with A/B Testing

What is UX and how can it help your business?

laura — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:26:25 +0000

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 [...]

A book (nearly) about Interaction Design

laura — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:33:04 +0000

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 [...]

Links from a breaking the mold approach to education

Brent — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 01:05:57 +0000

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 [...]

Promoting people to walk & cycle more

Lulu — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:22:56 +0000

Greater Wellington Regional Council want to promote walking and cycling as a viable transport option. To make it easy for people to discover walking and cycling routes in the Wellington region, Lushai did user research to understand people’s walking and cycling habits. Working closely with ProjectX, to understand online Map applications, we did the interaction design to deliver the first phase of the Journey planner tool. Visit GWRC’s Journey Planner website

Monday post-it notes

Brent — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:07:09 +0000

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 Danny Devito joins twitter and his nuts are on fire. Im following! Introducing Typedia by Jason Santa Maria

iPredict – Design review and strategy

Lulu — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:00:38 +0000

iPredict  is  the  first  and  only real money prediction market in New Zealand.     Lushai   helped  identify  opportunities through a design review process and user research with the audience of the  site. We provided design and search engine optimisation (SEO) recommendations for  iPredict  to  take  to meet its objective of capturing  an  audience  and  ultimately increase conversion.  

Visit iPredict website

Knowledge Cue

Lulu — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:00:14 +0000

KnowledgeCue needed a new online identity and a website that reflected their approach to technology – an approach that is open to new ideas and sharing knowledge. Lushai designed their new logo and a website that reflects their fresh attitude to collaboration, sharing and opening new opportunities for their clients and partners.

KnowledgeCue specialises in Microsoft SharePoint solutions and partners.

Visit KnowledgeCue website

SSC intranet

Lulu — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 07:00:04 +0000

The States Services Commission (SSC) needed a new intranet during a time of change at the commission.

Lushai developed a flexible information architecture that could cater to future content, personalisation based on user participation and a really easy way to find information within their existing document management system.

We worked with SilverStripe to deliver the SSC intranet.

Top 10 at 10 no.2

Brent — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:04:42 +0000

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 Is Posterous the new TwitPic? Posterous Finally Has An iPhone App, Could [...]

Weekly wrap-up number 2

Brent — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:27:52 +0000

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 [...]

Top 10 at 10, well 2

Brent — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 01:56:00 +0000

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 [...]

Weekly wrap-up

Brent — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:05:29 +0000

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 [...]

myBLOCK

Lulu — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 08:24:34 +0000

myBLOCK provides support and toolsfor offline communities to organise events and spread the word about their work within a locality.

myBLOCK needed a help from concept to vision. We have worked closely with myBLOCK founder Anne-Marie to unravel her vision of a better world, to our first milestone, the promotional website. We still have a long way to go, getting funding and building the main site. Watch this space.

GeekSpeak website

Lulu — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 05:37:19 +0000

GeekSpeak helps local businesses get their presence and offerings online. Lushai provides visual designs for the websites they build and deliver to their clients. We are proud to be their partner in helping businesses get value out of the internet. Lushai carefully crafted GeekSpeak’s own website to suit their client-base and cms platform capabilities.

Visit Geek Speak live website »

Design Point Architecture – Geekspeak

Lulu — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 06:45:45 +0000

Design Point architecture required a minimalist design introduction leading through through a rich detailed path of projects and history. Design Point architecture is designed for our partner company Geekspeak

Visit live site »

NZ Post – Lifestyle Survey

Lulu — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 05:29:31 +0000

Lushai provides various experience design services working closely with their Digital Channel. For this project, they needed a custom interface that was to be built on top of their existing survey tool RightNow. Lushai provided NZ Post a set of guidelines and patterns for this survey and HTML templates for developers to easily integrate with the existing systems.

CWA – Te Tere Auraki

Lulu — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 06:00:59 +0000

Te Terea Auraki is one of the communities within TKI, the bilingual education portal built by CWA.

Lushai re-interpreted the previous Te Tere Auraki brand and developed the visual identity for the new website.

Visit the live site »

Brand value and the user experience

Brent — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:54:06 +0000

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 [...]

Fishpond

Lulu — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 08:23:50 +0000

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

Brent — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:43:54 +0000

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 [...]

Grateful Post

Lulu — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 00:44:03 +0000

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 [...]

Prediction marketing concept

Lulu — Wed, 13 May 2009 04:01:56 +0000

Proff of concept design for a prediction marketing website based around sporting events. The visual concept brought in aspects of live events, share trading, blogging and graphical analysis allowing to create a bold, ever changing trading environment for sports fans.

Dawn of the age of the "newbie" consultant?

Lulu — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:46:17 +0000

I am not the best at coming up with names - but my question here is about what i am seeing in the last 6 months...