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…

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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? (more…)

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…

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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.

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.”

Ian shifted in his chair, and then spoke. “Do you have a problem with the site? Are people coming to you, complaining that they can’t access it?”

They weren’t, and a conversation developed. What kind of people visit the site? For what? It’s a radio website, so would partially-sighted people be coming through the site, or through streaming players, or iTunes? Is there any evidence of people using screen readers to reach the site?

How useful is it to focus on blind people when we think about accessibility?

Not everyone sees things the way you do

For us, accessibility is a broader concept. It’s about all the different ways people might want to access your site. If you have events, will people want to view them on the move? Do you need some mobile pages?

Is there lots of good information on your site? Will people be wanting to print it out? If so, you should have good print stylesheets to make the printed pages look good and not waste paper.

I like to use a computer-based calendar. I don’t want to visit your website to find out about new events. Can I subscribe to your calendar?

And what about news? I like to read mine as email. Can I get news from your site through email?

This is accessibility. Making sure your site is accessible to all your users in the way they want to interact with it. And that means blind people with screen readers. But it also means a great deal more.

More tips »

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?

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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, and more than one of them had tumbled down the rabbit hole with a Dreamweaver book in hand. I wanted to make the point that it’s more important that they can articulate their needs and find willing helpers than it is to understand the technology details.

Ian took the opposite view – that people have inflated expectations of new media, and that if they expect to be running a publishing system they have to learn the language and workflow of the tools they’ll be using.

In a way it comes down to roles – you need someone who can draw the organisational big picture, and someone who understands how to format posts in Wordpress. In community organisations these roles often fall on the same person, and thinking about their online presence from such different vantage points can be difficult.

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. (more…)

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 brief explanation of each step underneath.

Open a spreadsheet, and in A2 type Criteria and then copy and past your criteria list beneath that, one cell per item.

Select cell B1 and type in Weighting. Assign a Weighting value to each criteria. The value represents the level of importance this item has within your overall decision. It doesn’t matter what range you use as long as you’re consistent. I used the range 0.1 (not important) – 1.0 (essential).

Starting in cell C1, label two cells for each software package you’re reviewing – label the first one the name of the software e.g Product A, and the second Score $ e.g Score A, horizontally across the top.

Select the Score value cell.

Create the formula =PRODUCT(weighting column, Score $) and press ENTER.

In the highlighted cell C1, you will see a little cross on the bottom right corner. Click and drag that vertically in that column to copy the formula to those cells too.

The formula is copied to those cells …

… and the values are calculated.

Repeat steps 4-8 for each product – add a formula …

.. copy it to all the other cells.

Starting in cell C3, review each software package against your criteria and assign an appropriate value. I used the range 0-5, but you just need to be consistent.

When you’ve finished scoring all your criteria, you want to add them all up. At the bottom of your product score rows, add the formula =SUM(D3:D11)to add up each column. Repeat for each score column, changing the values appropriately e.g. =SUM(F3:F11)

It may be no surprise that product with the highest figure gives is the favoured choice. Now go back and add additional criteria rows so it eventually comes out the way you wanted it to

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 lacked an online version. For the Seventh edition, our partners Semantico were commissioned to build one, and we designed the interface. The site has just gone live.

The book is a surprisingly interesting read, covering not just citation rules but style guidance, case studies and research technique. Strunk and White fans should check it out. The rest of you may be interested to read our short case study (forgive style errors).