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?
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. Continue reading
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).
I was lucky enough to visit this exhibition while in New York a couple of weeks ago. I took a few stills and videos of interactive works that particularly caught my eye. Most of this is documented on the Design and the Elastic Mind website, but here are a couple of extra views…
Below is a talk given by the MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli, who gives an overview of the main themes of the exhibition and a closer look at some of the works it encompasses.
Source: http://www.ted.org/index.php/talks/paola_antonelli_previews_design_and_the_elastic_mind.html
The Webby Awards, the leading international honor for the Web, today recognised Moore at Kew as an Official Honoree, a distinction that recognises work exhibiting remarkable achievement. The website has been selected as an Official Honoree for the Art category.
Moore at Kew was designed by 72 dots Ltd, managed by Chris Marsh and produced by 72 dots in conjunction with the Kew web team.
Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video, and Mobile Websites. The awards are judged by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organization that includes David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Arianna Huffington, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto, Matt Groening, Jamie Oliver, Internet inventor Vinton Cerf, and RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser.
“The Webby Awards honors the outstanding work that is setting the standards for the Internet,” said David-Michel Davies, executive director of The Webby Awards. “Moore at Kew’s Official Honoree selection is a testament to the skill, ingenuity, and vision of its creators.”
Ian Hallworth, Creative Director at 72 dots said “This was a fantastic project to work and one that we were extremely proud to have been involved with. The website took off immediately with loads of people adding comments and getting involved with the photo competitions. It seems the work of Henry Moore really captured people’s imaginations. Naturally, I’m over the moon about the award – to be recognised internationally is testament to the fantastic team effort that went in to creating this great site.”
If you’d like to read more about how we approached the design of the Moore at Kew website, you can read a case study.
The 12th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states. Out more than 10,000 entries submitted, fewer than 15% received this honor and were deemed Official Honorees.
About the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS):
The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences is dedicated to the creative, technical, and professional progress of the internet and interactive media. The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes over 550 members consisting of leading experts in a diverse range of fields, such as musician David Bowie, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser, The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, AKQA Global Creative Director Rei Inamoto and The Weinstein Company’s Harvey Weinstein. The Webby Awards and The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences are registered trademarks of International Data Group. For more information, visit www.iadas.net.
If you are thinking about commissioning work on your existing or new website, you’re going to want to write a brief to give to your developer/designer at some point so they know what you want. Here are some topics to get you thinking in the right direction and help you do just that.
It may sound like a daft question, but it is at the top of the list for good reason. Even if you have an existing website, ask yourself the same question again. What do you need it to do for you? What are your short and long-term business goals? Do you need to raise awareness of your product? Increase sales by widening your audience? Get your brand message across to a new audience? Once you’ve really know what it needs to do, we can start to think about how we can achieve it… This question will help us define what the key design and functionality needs to be.
If you’re involved in web production, it’s likely that at some point you need to generate a lot of graphic text – page headers are often graphics.
If you do this kind of work, it’s well worth investing some time to learn how to script Photoshop – you’ll save plenty of time and reduce your chances of RSI.
We scripted Photoshop to create all the graphic titles on the Moore At Kew website, pulling all the text from an external text file. kirupa.com – Photoshop Scripting
