The process of user centered design and creating useful websites, should start at an early stage in a web site project. In this post we wanted to share with you our process for visualising and designing the most useful and usable websites.
Before we start any sexy, fancy design, what we want to consider is “is the structure and layout of the web interface easy to understand?”, “does it follow how users think it works in their minds?” This way of working allows us to understand our users “mental models” in their minds, in relation to how the site should be physically structured.
By learning and using this feedback in the web design, we can add to the value of the user experience on a web site, and turn this into an enjoyable experience for our users.
We’ve had an example published on the wireframes website which summarises how we used interactive prototypes worked on a recent project with East Hampshire District Council.
Using interactive prototypes allowed us to confirm the areas of the site that were successful in terms of users being able to achieve the tasks (we were asking them in a user testing interview) successfully and quickly.
More about the way we worked is on the article. We hope you find it interesting.
We hope 2009 has started well for you so far? As this is our first post this year I want to look ahead to what the market is doing and also promote some of our activities.
Firstly, it seems as if the coming year will be a challenging time for most of us. But running a small business is all about tackling and overcoming challenges, so in many respects, it’s business as usual. It’s just that the difficulties we now face are different to those we’ve battled in the past.
‘While it’s difficult to tell what will happen in the wider economy, web design has remained robust through numerous economic ups and downs”
He reasons for the increase on our reliance with online services – even if shops close down and staff laid off, products need selling and websites need creating and maintaining. This means freelancers, in-house staff and agencies should be busy, even when others are losing their jobs’
What should you be doing as a design company?
Our main aim for this current economic climate is to continue to have empathy for users, base our work on a strong design process based on site users and client business goals.
Continue to look ahead, embrace and adopt new technologies and assess their usefulness for your clients work.
Diversify your capabilities and services/products you offer to appeal to a wider client base.
Get organised, form teams of compatible skills through your networks to increase your chances of being able to respond to a wider set of briefs
Think beyond the desktop browser – get a head start and learn about the web on a smaller screen
If you have a quiet time you can still be proactive – here’s some ideas:
Teach yourself new skills
Get out meet new contacts for coffee
Get off-line and you may find it easier to focus on what is important for your business
What we have planned for 2009:
Client guides – In a series of free ebooks we will explain to our new and existing clients about current web services, trends and technologies in easy to follow guide
Training freelancers and mentoring local colleagues
Work with our peers
Develop International business opportunities
Attending conferences, meetups and networking events, and also attend more non-technical events (no not knitting classes)
How you are going to stay confident, fresh and stay relevant in this industry? We’d love to know, comments are on..
Where to start! What a year 2008 was (to recap this was 2007’s review).
So 2008 was all about collaboration, online, with local colleagues and forging new projects and relationships with clients and friends alike, here’s what happened at Callender Creates:
2008, the year my girlfriend started to use the mobile web!
Designed and developed a variety of ecommerce, content managed and social networking sites for a variety of UK based clients, startups, agencies, local government and councils
Our biggest achievement in 2008
To take on large projects and successfully work collaboratively with local colleagues and achieve results at much higher quality than a individual would be able to produce.
Looking ahead into 2009 – Guardian online have picked the web’s cream of the crop, their latest selection finds that location-based services, work-anywhere collaboration and video are prominent – 100 top sites for the year ahead
To all the people we’ve worked with in 2008, to all our readers, family, friends, peers and everybody else. A big thank you and looking forward to more success and interesting work in 2009.
A list of the most popular articles on Callender Creates in 2008
Why network with successful people? Because as a result you will become more successful when you network with people more successful than you.
One thing that everyone needs is visibility, have a blog like this helps, but perhaps now and more so in the futuretwitter and other social sites will be used as an effective tool for broadcasting and consuming information.
1. Offer something they don’t have
The number one reason to start a blog or to be a journalist isn’t to position yourself as an expert or get your thoughts out there. 99% of bloggers and journalists make almost nothing (relatively nothing), but the network that they gain from giving value to successful people, is priceless. See, the one thing that all successful people have in common when it comes to needs is that they need visibility and promotion for their brands. With a blog, you can provide that to them. When you first start your blog, you can’t because you won’t have enough readership to prove the benefit to them.
2. Give something for free
Unless you have something of extraordinary ‘one of a kind’ value to give to successful people, you are better off giving them something for free in exchange for an endorsement or referral later. A lot of consultants choose to do this or have to do this when they are first starting out, so they can build credibility and a track record. Obviously, people are more inclined to accept that type of generous offer than pay a complete stranger or someone who isn’t as wealthy or successful. If you receive an endorsement from them, you can use it on your website or on LinkedIn to attract new business or opportunities. Also, if they talk about you or promote you back, you gain visibility with other influencer’s, which can further your career.
3. Take genuine interest in their brand
If someone emails you and is sincere, you are more inclined to answer their email. If someone is reaching out to you asking you for favors, especially when you are more successful than they are, you are going to disregard the email. Genuine interest goes a long way in this world, especially because people are so used to being used and abused, as well as spammed daily. There is a great opportunity right now to locate people who are closely aligned to your brand and reach out to them. Even if you’re less successful than they are, they will at least answer you based on flattery.
4. Get noticed by them
Successful people take notice of other successful people. There are like secret code words and there is an ancient language they all speak . A great way to connect with them is to be where their eyes already are. For instance, if you speak at an event they are speaking at, it’s easy to start a conversation around that and for them to already know who you are. Also, if you write an article for a blog or traditional news site that they read, you might earn some respect from them.
5. Find people who know them
The shortcut to meeting successful people is by meeting them through your personal contacts. Your friends’ endorsement can save you from a random outreach and make it more personal. LinkedIn is so important because you can see who knows you and then strategize. Networking gets easier once your network gets larger. When you’re first starting out, it will be hard to implement this strategy, but as you grow older, it will become much easier to meet successful people this way.
INTRODUCTION easthampshire.org is a community site which features daily news updates and an extensive event listings of what’s happening in and around the the East Hampshire Area. Also interactive maps, and information on towns and villages in East Hampshire.
This is not the main portal site for EHDC as you may think, but a companion/sister site that has features that are useful for anyone wanting to learn more about the East Hampshire area.
You don’t have to live in East Hampshire to be able to appreciate that in a traditionally rural area so much is happening. Furthermore, you don’t have to register to enjoy the wealth of information constantly being added to the site, however, to get the customisable and personalised features that the site offers you can register for free.
COMMUNITY BASED SITE
EHDC want the site to be a hub for community information with free pages for groups, customisable profiles, and links to other local websites.
As you can visit the site and learn about the area, also the people that feature on the site. We hope it wil draw people closer together in this rural county. It features content generated by members on the site, as well as featuring social networking features such as member profiles, being able to comment on various sections of the site. As the site grows from visitors generating content as well as the EHDC team publishing content, it means that for the first time a two way dialogue on-line can be created on a local government site.
Visitors to the site can learn from a number of interesting sections on the site – news, events, towns and villages, and local groups. You can pinpoint the news for example down to street level – using geo-coding and Google maps on the interactive map, something that has not been done at this level before by a council run site.
All visitor’s to the site have the opportunity to submit their own news or event item, which is moderated by the EHDC team and then published on the site. As a group admin, a club secretary for a local club or group – for example, the Greatham Gardeners club group, they can add events automatically to the site, using a form that sends their details directly to Yahoo Upcoming. This information is then pulled back into the site, and featured on their group page. Allowing all visitors to learn about the group, and possibly attend the event.
As part of this ‘add event’ feature the person entering details into the form can geo-code the event, as well as ‘tag’ the event – meaning the event is shown on various parts of the site at the same time, as well as being featured on upcoming’s service.
For example view the event for “Plants and Gardens of the Italian Lakes at Greatham Village Hall” on easthampshire.org, listing detail, map detail and the same listing on upcoming.
SOCIAL FEATURES
The site is quite innovative in the way it uses already existing web services to do the work for us. Why create something that is already working and proven? We have integrated social elements in the site using the API’s of Yahoo’s upcoming, del.ico.us, and Google Maps. We also have geo-coded events and news items, so users can get driving directions for events, for example. And also find out where exactly that news item is referring to.
The events all feature hcalendar using microformats. With the correct coding we have structured the event listing so that that search engines and other aggregators can retrieve such events, automatically convert them to iCalendar, and use them in any iCalendar application or service, such Google calendar.
Although not a social feature, we have added OpenID to the site, so users don’t have to remember their username and password. With OpenID, it means that users can log on to different web sites using a single digital identity, single sign-on. This relates to data portability and means that you don’t have to remember all those different passwords for each website account.
CUSTOMISABLE FEATURES
The main aim is to let people be creative and pull their information from various sources on this site, as well as external sites.
By choosing which town or village you are interested about during registration, boxes featuring events and news based on your choice will automatically appear on your homepage.
There is a ‘netvibes’ style homepage where you can move the boxes around the page depending on your preference. You can also choose which boxes appear. As well as having your delicious bookmarks on your easthampshire homepage.
The RSS page means users can be updated by using their RSS reader on new details on any town or village in East Hampshire.
WHAT’S NEXT?
We’d love to hear your feedback either on here, or directly on the site. Is this the future for council sites that are embracing current and future web technologies?
We hope this will attract some attention from other community sites, and set new standards in how councils can communicate with member of the public.
The site is still in beta and we have more interesting features planned for the site planned, early 2009. Watch this space!
For more information checkout easthampshire.org’s brochure:
There is a plethora of online services that allow you to create charts and diagrams online, in the cloud.
Lovely charts is very powerful service, think of a web based OmniGraffle or Visio. Where you can create – flowcharts, sitemaps, wireframes, organisational charts, network diagrams, screenshots
Whether you are a designer, manager or just need a service to record ideas – I’ve suggested to number of clients using a service like this to ‘mind-map’ desired features on a site, or creating a site map for web site.
Lovely Charts is going to be in demand the next few months. They have been in public beta since November by the way, so keep an eye on their site for more updates.
They just work, very clean and intuitive to use. Not all of them have collaboration and exporting (PNG, SVG, PDF) features which makes the ones that do feel like they are going to stick around.
These type of free collaborative services are already very popular, and the services that can scale with user growth and be correctly funded will surely add new features to make their service more powerful in 2009.
Why do these web services exist?
Online services reduce the need for smaller agencies to buy expensive licenced desktop based software
A majority of ‘cloud’ based services are practically free
Always on, and access the files where ever you are in the world – no need to carry a USB stick, you just need an internet connection
Great for working remotely with clients and suppliers who may not have the same software
As it is all done through an internet browser like Firefox it makes communicating much more instant and makes your project process a whole lot smoother and enjoyable for all involved.
The files shared through these services can also act as a specification for your work, making your project tighter by having documentation to refer to when ever you need to.
Conclusion: Free services + being able to communicate more effectively with your team and clients = WIN
Ideally you should be monitoring the vibe of your relationship with your client throughout the project process. However, at the end of a phase, like a launch, or new site release is best.
Why review? At the most basic level it’s time for you the service provider/supplier and your client to get together and be upfront and honest about what worked and more importantly what didn’t so you can avoid the same mistakes again in the future with them and with you other client relationships.
It’s OK to make mistakes, we’re all human, if you do admit it and be authentic. At the same time embrace negativity, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Our surveys usually follow a set pattern of questions (5 being the highest grade):
1. Overall how happy our you with the service given (1 to 5)
2. Quality of information given (1 to 5)
3. Personal service given (1 to 5)
4. People you have dealt with – how much do you think you could rely
on them to do a good job (1 to 5)
5. In terms of how you feel overall about the service provided by
(Company Name) (1 to 5)
6. Would you feel comfortable referring you to a friend or colleague
(1 to 5)
This type of survey can be done face to face during a meeting, or if a number of people are involved build this survey on wufoo or surveymonkey.
Why not even involve your colleagues and co-workers to see how you done. It’s a really valuable chance to find out how you done. And the only way to develop and build your business from a good to a great business that your clients will refer personally to people they deal with on a daily basis.
Feedback from your clients brings value to the products your business is selling. It gives more confidence and trust to the client, making future work always more likely.
Remember, it costs less money to keep existing clients than find new ones. Look after them, and you may just find that they will do marketing for you as well as be open as you should be in your dealings with your customers.
. A great way to connect with them is to be where their eyes already are. For instance, if you speak at an event they are speaking at, it’s easy to start a conversation around that and for them to already know who you are. Also, if you write an article for a blog or traditional news site that they read, you might earn some respect from them.
