Blog posts in the design category

We’d like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, and what better way to do that than to serve up a little slice of Christmas merriment- right to your desktop.

Thanks to Augmented Reality (and those clever bods in tech) our modern day take on a traditional pop-up Christmas card let’s you watch and interact as the festive scene unfolds before you. And since we can’t always rely on the good old British weather to give us a white Christmas, we’ve even brought you snow.

If you want to play along, all you need to do is follow these simple steps:

1. Visit www.pancentric.com/xmas
2. Print the downloadable AR patch (you’ll need it for step 4)
3. Plug in your web cam
4. Point the Christmas Tree shape on the AR patch (printed at step 2) at the web cam.

But I don’t have a web cam I hear you cry. Well fear not my Christmas comrades, just click here to watch the demo and see what you’re missing.

And that’s all folks. Just grab a mince pie, sit back, put your feet up and watch the Christmas scene unfold before you…Enjoy!

Merry Christmas from all the team here at Pancentric Digital.

The lovely yourstables.co.uk website we designed & built for Petplan Equine is up for an award. After bagging a VMA award and an Allianz i2 award for the most innovative campaign earlier this year we’re happy to say the site has now been shortlisted for a CIM Marketing Excellence Award.

It’s a cracking website (even if I do say so myself) that takes users on an impressive 3D tour of a virtual working stables yard. Not just a pretty face, interactive how-to videos, anatomical guides and heaps of info and advice, make it a one-stop-shop for everything horse owners, riders and enthusiasts could ever wish to know about horse care.

We’re, of course, hoping the site will triumph when winners are announced in the New Year but in the meantime we’re giving the fab team who worked on it the back-patting they deserve.

It’s welcome to sequin-city complete with countdown glitter balls and heaps of Strictly fun as we launch ‘Strictly Social’- the BBC’s big online event for the show this year.

After all of the creative madness, there were weeks of user experience development, architecting, wireframing, designing and technical consultation to make this social TV extravaganza a reality.

The application is designed to let viewers interact with the live broadcast of the show.  Fans can also have fun predicting the judges score or can get behind their favourite contestants using the ‘I support’ feature. They can wow as the couples waltz or tut as they tango then share these emotional reactions real-time with other users. User reactions are also aggregated so they can watch the biggest ‘boo’ moment or biggest ‘wow’ moment again after the show and even share it with their friends.

Each week ‘Strictly Social’ will be hosted by a different celebrity guest who will take part in the live chat via dynamic comment streams and messaging.

It’s early days but the app has already been well received; click to find out what Revolution magazine, the Guardian, Design Week and Creative Boom had to say about it.

And why not have a play yourself? Click here to find out more, and let us know what you think.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the Accessibility 2.0 Conference, held at Microsoft’s extremely plush offices in Victoria. This was the first time I’d been to a conference on this topic, and the first thing that struck me was how human it was compared to the average conference. It may have been the wider-than-usual age range of the attendees, the obvious passion they felt for the subject, or simply the presence of several guide dogs lazily stretching during the talks. Whatever it was, it made for a conference with unusual warmth.

I admit I wasn’t sure what to expect, as my experience of AX (accessibility) to date has been a world of code, rules and grey areas. The fundamental problem as I always saw it was not in the application of rules but in a general mindset. Accessibility often means making a few code tweaks at the end of the design and build process, and many people’s experience of AX will be of getting a specialist agency to run an accessibility check on an existing site. The process of implementing AX from the start has always seemed very vague – who takes responsibility? Who should be involved?

Mark Boulton summed this up well in his excellent talk on Inclusive Design when he reminded us that a building that hadn’t been designed with accessibility in mind just wouldn’t make it past the blueprint. Can you imagine a multi-storey car park with no lifts? No ventilation? In the same way that it would be unfair (not to mention unrealistic) to expect the builders or engineers to deal with all this once the building was up, it’s unfair of us in the digital realm to expect the coders to “fix” the accessibility issues once a site has been designed. Christian Heilmann of Yahoo, who was part of a panel on “To comply or not to comply” made this point when he said that it shouldn’t be up to the developers to “tick the accessibility boxes”.

So how do we do this? Mark said the AX community needs to move beyond specs and acronyms, and become accessible itself by reducing barriers to understanding. But responsibility lies with the design community as well. “Design without constraints isn’t design, it’s art” – and AX must be treated as any other constraint, from the start of the project.

Another interesting point Mark made is that designers must expose themselves to the users they are designing for. This area is where I was hoping to find some answers to a problem that has bothered me for a long time. In usability testing, 5 or 6 participants per user-type are recruited to uncover most usability issues. Surely the same applies to accessibility testing? In which case, do we need 5 or 6 per disability-type? Across all the user-types? The cost and logistics of this type of exercise are plainly not feasible for most projects.

The panel accepted that this is an issue, and suggested that users should be recruited across all user types, and that a disabled user should be representative of that user type, rather than of that disability. I think this is a useful first step, and hopefully we will start to see more of this type of recruiting in the usability field. But usability/accessibility testing is again generally something that is done at the end of the project, or at least after the initial structure has been laid down.

The conclusion I’ve drawn from this conference is that the responsibility of ensuring our sites can be used by everybody needs to be taken away from the developers and laid down at the door of the information architects and designers. If we can build it into the very structure, navigation and design, then surely the developers’ task of building the accessible code will be made that much easier. And the first challenge is to educate our clients that AX is as important when designing a website as it is when designing anything else.

Sometimes you see a piece of advertising and think to yourself “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that”.

The latest advertising campaign from Dixons makes you do just that.

Bold, brave, exceptionally clever. As Dixons disappear from our high streets and shift their focus to their online store, how do they get the footfall that used to trundle through the stores on a Sunday afternoon into the homepage of their website?

Like this:

Dixons latest advertising campaign

An interesting fact for you. Netbook PCs (very small laptops with 7-10 inch screens)  have accounted for 30% of all Laptops sales in the UK in 2009. Sales of these tiny laptops are currently outstripping sales of the iphone, and sales are expected to rise throughout the remainder of the year and in to 2010.

So with emergence of this new ‘mobile’ laptop device and continued increase in their popularity, are there challenges that lay ahead for website designers and usability experts?

The software on these devices is for the most part a simple copy of their bigger brothers, the Laptop, which has lead to issues viewing and navigating websites on these tiny bundles of joy. The screen is so small that scrolling up and down, and left and right is inevitable. A very interesting white paper I recently stumbled upon from Mobilein.com explores this in more detail.

There are already tools to help you Netbook users, Minifox and Google Chrome both help the Netbook user with resolution and re-sizing issues, as well as tools like Ubuntu Netbook Remix which helps move a lot of on screen ‘furniture’ to the side of the screen for you. But does the real work need to be done at the design and build stage? And what are the implications, will we start to see the fold moving up the web page?

So, just as most mobile phones work better with the ‘mobile’ version of the website, will we now need to start considering Netbook versions when designing new sites? Have the considerations for website builds changed forever? The Mobile version, The HTML version…. The Netbook version?

The Campaign Kick-Off…
“I want to move the brand forward, I want fresh thinking, new ideas, a new approach, something that stands out and makes us look difference.”

Initial Concept Delivery…
“It’s not really on brand, I don’t think the brand team will sign this off, this needs to look like the things we’ve done previously.”

Sound familiar? Are your internal brand police holding back your marketing? Here’s a thought, perhaps it’s down to your approach.

Simply putting a new creative approach in front of the brand management team and expecting them to get it won’t work. Next time you have that new revolutionary approach that pushes the brand values and guidelines to the limit why not explain where the approach has come from. Perhaps feedback from customers,  a new research report or developments in technology have dictated the change? You might have evidence that shows this change will make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your marketing.  What ever the reason is for the change (providing you have one), try explaining it to the guardians of your brand, it might just help move things along.

We all love the latest web wizardry but there’s nothing like quality time with your web users to understand what they’re really after.

If people can’t use your website properly, or find what they are looking for, your technology investments are futile and your customers will go elsewhere.

Getting the web experience right influences customers’ decisions to buy and people’s broader perception of your brand.

It’s amazing how even small changes to a site’s usability can have a sizable impact.

Tip 1: I’m a real person not a stereotype

Who are your key users and what are they after? When and where do they tend to access your site? Time spent understanding users’ everyday needs, motivations and the wider context of usage is invaluable. Making assumptions and stereotyping can overlook vital clues and ideas for optimising the navigation and shaping functionality.

Tip 2: Test, test, test

When you start scratching your head wondering what a user would do in this or that situation, it’s time to test. Testing with real-life users is a must. And you don’t need to get hung up on testing large numbers – observing even 3 people’s experiences can give you enough information to start making improvements.

Tip 3: Less is more

Most people will come to your site looking for something specific. Simple, unobtrusive interfaces are normally best for directing them to relevant content fast. It’s all about logical placements of links and consistent treatments for menus. Oh yes, and if your boss thinks the Flash intro to your company’s site is working just fine, show him users failing to find the ‘skip intro’ link and moving to a competitor’s site – that’ll change his mind.

Tip 4: Think accessibility

An accessible site is by definition a usable site. That’s to say, if a visually impaired user can easily navigate your site using a screen reader, it will be a joy for everyone else to use too. Accessibility also means considering alternative formats for your site, particularly as new technologies such as Android and iPhone are changing customers’ buying habits. How does your website look on a mobile?

Tip 5: Don’t be afraid to break conventions

Eyes naturally move from left to right, leading the majority of travel websites to include the all-important ‘Search for your trip’ form on the left-hand side of the screen.

Earlier this year lastminute.com broke this well-known travel site convention, by moving the search form to the right of the home page. This followed usability testing where customers said they would prefer to see more promotions and inspirational ideas. The result? Traffic to merchandising rose while the feared decrease in traffic to the ‘search for your trip’ form didn’t happen. This just goes to show, giving users what they want is your key to online success.

While all the world is all a’twitter about Google Chrome OS, it is time to take a couple of minutes to reflect on Google’s other OS Android.

After a slowish start with only one handset available for a long time my impression is that there is a growing momentum behind Android. There are now 5 handsets available from HTC and Samsung, showing the flexibility of the platform.

And if the rumour mills are to believed (and they aren’t often wrong) Sony Ericcson and Nokia are also preparing Android phones, amongst others. Motorola are also poised to jettison Windows Mobile in favour of Android.

More importantly, with 02 getting the rights (not yet confirmed) to the Palm Pre and already having the exclusive on the iPhone – there is little choice of carrier if you want a state of the art smartphone.

Google aren’t talking much, but at a presentation I went to recently they were stressing mobile, particularly allied to maps, very strongly. And looking at the statistics they shared and some of the uses to which smartphones are being put to, it is hard not to see 2010 as the (takes a deep breath) year of the mobile.

So why not the iPhone? After all it is the leading player (in mindsets if not volume), has an large developer community around it, the oft quoted billion app downloads, and it looks great, (although the icons are starting to look a little bit Fisher-Price imho)

Well the answer is simple, pace of innovation. The open (linux based) platform of the Android means that developers can access the platform and add things to it. Unlike the iPhone with it’s annual June lovefest where Apple release their goodies, Android innovation happens daily, and it is mostly ported back to earlier handsets.And in less than a year (the G1 was introduced to the UK in September 2008) the OS has matured, is feature rich and has reached version 1.5 (approaching the magic 2.1 when things really work). Oh and it is natively multitasking, and has naturally great integration with Google products Gmail, Maps, Apps, Docs etc.

And whilst on the application side, whilst there is not the sheer number of fart machines and other useful apps (only joking) the ones that are appearing are very good. For example Wired says that Spotify for the Android should frighten Apple (http://bit.ly/e3gHO), and Nick Brown, Spotify’s MD says that they are able to do more with Android as they can integrate further into the OS. So it’s volume versus openness and only time will tell.

The other development byproduct that might help is that by having put your app on Android, it is not such a leap to put it on desktop linux (and Android is poised to make a move to nettops). This is where Chrome OS starts fitting in nicely.

This is probably the most interesting time for mobile for a few years, and I for one look forward to the innovations coming down the line.