Archive for the ‘All’ Category
Does exactly what it says on the tin; just the posts that relate to the above...
Harrogate FREE parking; shop local!
This Saturday, Christmas Eve, two of the major car parks in Harrogate will be offering FREE parking!
Power-cut
The usual income generated by the car parks will be covered by Northern Powergrid, following the untimely power-cut last Saturday afternoon that made it nigh-on impossible for retailers to trade for the majority of what is arguably the busiest day for Christmas shopping in the town. A good gesture by Northern Powergrid.
Which car parks?
There will be approximately 1,200 free spaces in the Victoria and Jubilee multi-storey car parks throughout Saturday 24 December 2011.
Head in, park for free and shop local!
As well as the major national high street retailers, Harrogate is awash with local independent shops offering unique and quality Christmas gifts. And of course there are plenty of bars, restaurants and coffee shops to keep you fed and watered throughout the day.
Festive thanks
Just so you know, we are closed for the Christmas recess from Friday 23 December 2011 til’ Tuesday 3 January 2012. We have gifts to give, food to be eaten and beer to consume.
Thank you folks!
2011 has been a great year for Mixd and we have had the opportunity to work on some really exciting projects for some lovely clients. A big thanks to all those that have worked with us and here’s to a fantastic 2012. It’s not just clients that make us tick though. We value our relationships and interactions with suppliers, digital peers, students and anyone else who cares to engage with us!
To all of you, from the bottom of the Mixd heart, we wish you a truly fantastic festive period and all the very best for the forthcoming new year.
Merry Christmas! WIN some festive fizz!
When Santa hit the streets of Harrogate last Christmas to collect charity donations, he took 3 ‘stooges’ with him to help conceal his true identity. But which one is the real Santa?
Win champagne!
To enter and be in with a chance of winning a magnum of champagne, just visit the Mixd Facebook page and add your comment to the picture. Your comment should include who you think the real Santa is in the picture and your reasoning as to why. The winner will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries made on or before the 31st December 2011
Merry Christmas folks!
What’s the Internet done for Christmas?
Christmas Eve 2008
There I was, traipsing around a bland town centre, with arms full of bags blowing in the wind, a light shower to add to my woes and a bag of roasted chestnuts that resembled charcoal… all whilst a Peruvian pan pipe band played ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’… repeatedly.
Mid-December 2011
Christmas gift and food shopping all done. Purchased online. From the warmth and comfort of my own home. With a large glass of port. (It’s not necessarily all plain sailing; you must be prepared to take the odd trip to your local, friendly sorting office to exchange your ‘Sorry we missed you’ cards for parcels.)
Okay then. So other than taking the strain out of the Christmas shopping…
What has the Internet done for Christmas?
Surely the biggest thing must be how it has broken down barriers of geographical location, so people can communicate and see loved ones easily wherever they are on the planet?
No. Sadly not. It’s ‘The Christmas Madness Bandwagon’. Digital Christmas tat is another way of putting it. But we love it…
Track Santa’s movements (not those ones) on Christmas Eve!
For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) claim to have tracked Santa’s flights. How the heck would you do that you may ask. Well, to quote from the NORAD Tracks Santa website:
“NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa cams and fighter jets.”
Of course.
Now you can join the fun at the NORAD site and see Santa’s movements live at any time on Christmas Eve! As well as fascinating information about NORAD and Santa himself, seasonal digital features include ‘The Countdown Village’ for kids festive games, the official NORAD Tracks Santa App (featuring the game ‘Elf Toss’) and the ability to follow Santa on Google Earth!
Personalised Santa video message!
As you may well have seen all over Facebook and Twitter, PNP is a hot Christmas topic this year. PNP (Portable North Pole) brings Santa to you or your loved ones via the medium of personalised video message. The blurb on the Portable North Pole site boasts:
“With just a few clicks, you help Santa gather the necessary information and he prepares a unique, tailor-made video that would delight even Scrooge himself.”
Since 2008, PNP claims to have helped Santa deliver over 20 million personalised video messages worldwide. Some stat. However, the site isn’t mobile friendly (uses Flash) so don’t try it on your iPhone. There is of course an App available though!
One more thing… I was slightly concerned about the privacy of my data. But if you say ‘Bah Humbug’ to that, get on it and enjoy!
UK Snow Map
If you’re a Twitter addict, there’s always the UK Snow Map that is powered by tweets. You can use Twitter to have the snow conditions where you are plotted on a map of the UK in real-time. To find out more, get on over to the UK Snow Map website.
Why user experience (UX) research?
Design flourishes within constraints
The more a design team knows about the users of a site, the better they can meet their needs and design something that appeals to those users beyond the aesthetic appearance of a site. Something that looks lovely but doesn’t work for the user is pointless online. The fundamental principles of user centred design are satisfaction, efficiency and effectiveness. To reach the ‘sweet spot’, design teams need to know what the user’s needs are for each of these areas. A designer has to have knowledge to make decisions; opinions and assumptions do not count when it comes to UX and usability. Getting direct access to users gives knowledge.
User experience designers
User experience designers are a specific type of user centred designers. They have specialist skills in collecting and analysing user research. The techniques used during both the data gathering and analysis are essential to ensure that the results are not skewed. With quantitative research like surveys, you have to gather a large enough sample size to ensure that the responses of ‘outliers’ (fans and haters) do not skew the results. So what method do we use?
Qualitative user research
Qualitative user research is the basis of user centred design. Give design teams access to real and representative users from target audiences before the design process begins, and they are provided with the information and ideas needed to develop their thinking and avoid designing in problems that need to be fixed later. Designers themselves need to have access to the representative users to do this; a connection with real users is required to fully understand their needs. With qualitative user research, you still have to ensure that you gather the right number of participants to collect information from; however, with proper recruitment and an experienced researcher the minimum number you can use is five. Research has determined that by conducting qualitative user experience work for a site with five participants you can uncover the vast majority of usability problems.
Find out more about qualitative research.
‘Usability studies’ and ‘depth interviews’
Usability studies are focussed on existing flaws within a site. Depth interviews are concerned with preventing flaws from being built into a new site. With both, the insight gained simply can’t be obtained from surveys or quantitative data sources because they do not elicit the information we need. We cannot gather the sort of feedback we need from questionnaires or surveys simply because nobody can write down and articulate the info we gather through qualitative research… and even if we could, it would lose its potency as it’s diluted through statistical analysis.
Do it yourself or use a specialist?
Using a specialist researcher gives you all of their past experience. As a moderator, our user experience expert Bonny has conducted countless hours of user experience work for organisations such as eBay. By running all these sessions for clients, Bonny has gathered a lot of experience in how to deal with participants and knows how not to be distracted by irrelevant data. Furthermore, she knows how to illicit responses that tell us what we need to know… not necessarily what we want to hear! This is a skill that is often not present with novice or new researchers who can easily be lead by responses through no real fault of their own. As an example, participants will often lie unknowingly; it’s a skill to know when someone is doing this and to dig deeper without letting them know that they have lied. If you do give this away you ruin the sense of trust between the researcher and the participant.
Mental model guru Indi Young has written some interesting points on conducting better interviews over on the Adaptive Path blog.
Phil in Lycra
I know many of you will be disappointed having read Phil’s post about commuting, not to see him in Lycra… so here you go!
Your commute just got interesting
Happy 1st November everyone! Whilst driving to work this morning I was thinking how lucky I am to have the commute that I have to Harrogate. I am sure that I am not alone to say that I have had my fair share of long, dull and tedious commutes. Perhaps the longest of which was the 5-hour drive that I did to Scotland every weekend when I worked as a white water raft guide! I have to say I am glad that working in Harrogate means I no longer have to compete with the masses travelling into Leeds each morning – something I spent many years doing in previous employment. I’m hard placed to beat the commute I have from the market town of Otley (on the outskirts of Leeds) across the edge of the Yorkshire Dales and over to Harrogate where Mixd is based… it’s a great little ride on the bike too!
Wait, you bike to work?
Yes, whilst the drive across the edge of the Dales can be positively up-lifting, it does get better on the days when I can leave my car at home and cycle to work. I thought I would give you a little insight into what my commute is like on the days I bike to work, so here goes…
Lights on
It’s that time of year again… so like many enthusiast cyclists out there I have invested heavily in lights so powerful they put Blackpool illuminations to shame! I reckoned I could do the distance in about 45 minutes each way. So the choice was either a road bike which I reasoned would be fast but meant I’d need to wear the Lycra outfit back and forth and since they don’t have mudguards I’d be getting a wet bum if it rained. Or I could go for something more ‘cool’… use my mountain bike, cut the corner off and go through the woods at Norwood Edge. The choice was made! Potential for a wet arse and how I’d look in Lycra meant there was no contest. Mountain bike it was then.
Take the rough with the smooth
Setting off from Otley in the dark is always a tough call. Especially when it’s wet and windy and you know you’ve got 45 minutes of pain to follow! Out of Otley and over the river before the right towards Farnley. Bang! It’s hits you… the first climb that leads gently up towards Lindley Wood reservoir. On with the iPod and dare I say the new ColdPlay album. Feels wrong to say I like it but it helped me tackle the mighty Norwood Edge climb before cutting off and going cross country. This is the biggest and worst climb of the ride and despite the tough gradient when you get going, it’s really not all that bad. When I got over the top you’d be forgiven for thinking it was an entirely different country; there was barely a cloud in the blue sky and the sun was just starting to come up. It’s for moments like this that I do it! Down the hill to Beckwithshaw and down into Harrogate. There done. 42 minutes and 38 seconds. Argh, it’s a hard life being a web designer!
So what is the ideal commute and how long is acceptable?
So what is your commute like? Just curious to see how long it takes folks to commute to work? How long before its ‘too long’ and wastes too much of your day, where do you draw the line? Does the method of transport influence your decision? Currently my commute is 30 minutes in the car or 45 minutes by bike!
Roll with it… working with Oasis!
Not that Oasis!
We have created new branding and launched an online presence for Oasis, an ethical, not-for-profit human relations consultancy.
The branding and website are designed to help Oasis to clearly articulate its unique approach and skills, with much of the web content focusing on real-life case studies and testimonials.
Some might say…
Cathy Neligan, Communications Officer of Oasis says:
“Working with Mixd was an absolute pleasure. Their emphasis on getting to know exactly what we wanted meant we maintained an effective working relationship throughout the project and resulted in exactly the solution we needed. They came up with creative solutions for our branding, web and print, and we were able to rely on their expert advice and honest feedback.
“Feedback from clients and users on our new branding and website has been fantastic and we have seen an increase in enquiries and bookings through the website immediately following launch.”
Who and what is Oasis?
Oasis works with organisations to help them develop new and more effective HR and personnel management strategies. It’s clients range from not for profit organisations, charities and educational institutions to major companies such as Northern Foods, Skipton Building Society and Betty & Taylors Group.
The masterplan…
Built to the latest front-end standards in HTML5 and CSS3, the website really lives the Oasis brand and makes user interaction easy, even for such a content rich site. The jQuery animation on the homepage helps get across key brand messages with the site supported in all browsers (including iPhone/iPad) without the need for Flash.
The Executive Developers section allows users to easily search or browse to find the right developer for them, by name or region, and the Resources section allows free downloads of PDF Manuals and the online purchase of books utilising simple PayPal integration. The entire site is incredibly quick to load and navigate, by fully optimising both the front- and back-ends, whilst the search engines are kept happy by the ground-up integration of solid SEO practices that see the site sitting pretty on page one for many key search terms, even without an ongoing SEO campaign.
The website can easily be updated by Oasis through our adaptation and integration of the WordPress content management system which includes bespoke features including Custom Post Types to allow easy input of wide ranging content.
Don’t look back in anger…
Here’s what the Oasis site looked like before our involvement.
View the new Oasis School of Human Relations website.
A massive improvement wouldn’t you say? Definitely… no maybe about it!
Why is scoping important?
It is fair to say that scoping is the most important stage of any design and development project.
“None of us plan to fail, but some of us fail to plan.”
Anon. (I saw this quote as graffiti on a dressing room door!)
Without scoping, a design and development project is like trying to build a house without any solid foundations; in fact, a project built on nothing but assumptions (assume makes an ass of u and me!) and guesswork would be like trying to build a house on quick sand.
The key reasons for scoping:
- Target audience needs are reviewed
- Project requirements (and risks) are identified
- Routes to meet these needs are researched
- Deliverables are agreed
- Planning and allocation of resources are made simpler
- Indicative project costs and time-scales are firmer
- Money allocated to the project is better spent
- An initial investment creates an informed project platform or in certain cases shelves a project, saving valuable resources that may have been wasted
- Overall project time and cost is streamlined
- Solid scoping makes the project as successful as it can be
Scoping is an investment, not an expense
A good Monday
We all hate Mondays. But then again we all love the Internet. So imagine how I felt when these two opposites collided yesterday morning after discovering not one, but two sites which impressed me more than a little.
Magnum Pleasure Hunt
http://pleasurehunt.mymagnum.com/
Have to say this one’s been out for a while but it was the first time I’d seen it. Now I’m not the biggest advocate of Flash (in fact I will do anything to avoid it) but when it’s used to do something as creative as this then I can cut it a bit of slack. Give it a go! It’s essentially a simple online platform game, but I won’t ruin it for you.
The Boston Globe
At the opposite end of the web technologies spectrum the brand new The Boston Globe site went live yesterday, carried out by Ethan Marcotte, Scott Jehl and Filament Group. The key here is that the site has been optimised, and is responsive to a wide range of devices including mobiles and tablets (resize your browser to see this in action!). This is no mean feat for a site of this scale and certainly not when it contains fixed-width advertising.
The techniques used here build on Ethan’s brilliant book Responsive Web Design which means the website adapts to any given screen resolution, without the need for a separate m. site. Building a website in this way is one option to consider when choosing your mobile strategy.
So there’s two lots of inspiration from a Monday. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
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Ammendum:
My comments about the Boston Globe are coming from a technical perspective, being a front-end developer myself and liking cool stuff. However is the site heading in the right direction? I’ve just picked up on Joshua Benton sharing some thoughts about how effective the new site is on the Nieman Journalism Lab website.