Positive

Quote of the day

“Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.” -Erik Qualman

Adopting a mobile first strategy

The times they are a-changin’ - we are all well aware of the explosion of the smartphone market, the increasing popularity of portable tablet devices, mirrored by a steady decline in the sales of desktop computers. This has rightly been cause for concern - we’ve been optimising our websites accordingly, and making sure they work as nicely on an iPad as they do on a desktop. We’ve even been making fantastic web experiences specifically for mobile and tablet. But is it time to fundamentally rethink the order in which we plan, create and deploy our projects across different devices?

It is widely predicted that by 2015 (or even sooner) mobile will exceed desktop usage of the web, yet almost every website recently created is desktop optimised. Mobile is all too often an afterthought, using the last few drops of budget. It is time to adapt and move our mind-sets from a “desktop first” strategy to a “mobile first” digital strategy.

By this I mean we need to stop thinking about mobile as a secondary concern to the desktop and put it at the core of our planning. This may seem radical, but it isn’t a new concept by any means; Google has claimed to be a mobile first company since 2010, and renowned strategist Luke Wroblewski led the way in arguing the case for a mobile first digital strategy as early as 2009. Looking at and segmenting your web traffic you may think that considering this now is jumping the gun, but it is a mind-set change that will have to be done by everyone eventually. The sooner we can adopt it, the better prepared we are for tomorrow, therefore keeping us one step ahead of the competition.

Thinking “mobile first” has further benefits. Designing for mobile forces us to focus on the core of our offering, and get that core right first before worrying about the peripheral. As a UX designer I take great pleasure in designing mobile experiences, the constraints of mobile (such as screen size and connection speed) mean that the first task is often to remove anything that is not completely necessary from the page or anything that could be considered to be visual clutter. This is a great exercise that enables us to work out the hierarchy of information and content.

So how can a mobile first digital strategy be applied to a typical website project?

"Responsive design" is one technique, and a healthy starting point for most new projects. The idea is that we plan and design from the mobile up. We start with a mobile optimised website (fits in a narrow viewport, has lean amounts of imagery, is fast to load). Next we allow the mobile site to scale up to the viewport of a tablet, adding graphics and other rich features as it scales. Finally we have the desktop version, which you might call all singing and all dancing. This way we don't have a "mobile website" and a "desktop website" we have one website which adapts to how it is being viewed, which has had its structure and content optimised to be as simple and usable as possible. This method isn't suited to every project, but is a good first port of call for any new brief.

New thinking often leads to new problems. Images need to work at different sizes with this methodology and we are yet to find the perfect way to scale them dynamically without affecting download speeds. Traditional banner advertising and other revenue sources such as PPC advertising are generally hidden on responsive designs when they are viewed on a mobile - this will surely mean that they are not seen by most of their intended audience soon. How can we make advertising work in this new medium?

The answers aren't all there yet, but that's one of the things that makes today an exciting time to be working in digital. We are at one of the great crossing points; a sea change is among us. It's time to adapt or lose out, and adopting a mobile first strategy is the key step in evolving your business to meet tomorrow's new challenges. Mobile first - a strategy for refinement, clarity, speed and a strategy for the future.

D Young & Co mobile website

As part of our ongoing digital partnership with intellectual property firm D Young & Co, we have created a website optimised for viewing on smart phones, to accompany the main website which we made last year.

As well as modifying the user experience to suit the compact mobile format, we also had the challenge of the D Young & Co Knowledge Bank, a vast library of IP related commentary, reviews and analysis which we needed to make easily viewable and searchable for people on the move. We made this area easy to browse through, and gave users the ability to return quickly to recently viewed pages with just one click. Another nice feature we added utilised the fact that most smart phones are location aware, giving you directions to offices from your current GPS location. The end result is a simple and useful solution, tailored to users and their devices. You can view the site by visiting m.dyoung.com on your smart phone, or by scanning the QR code above.

Read full case study

Starflight interactive brochure

Looking for an exciting new way to entertain your clients? How about flying them out to Miami in a private jet? Then look no further than our new digital brochure for Starflight, designed by Imagination and built by ourselves. Starflight are a global partnership who are dedicated to providing and managing outstanding private jet flights for demanding people.

In order to create a luxury feel and keep the brochure text as legible as possible, this brochure has the capability to stretch to the full width of your browser, as well as having all the great navigation features we add as standard.

View the digital brochure here.

The power of open data

Last Friday I was lucky enough to attend “Local by Social South West: Apps for Communities” a thought provoking event that explored how Apps and Widgets could be used to bring real benefits to citizens, broadening social and economic inclusion and helping the whole community benefit from the power of open data.

So firstly what is this open data that could be so powerful? About a year ago, the UK government was forward thinking enough to open up almost all non-personal data acquired for official purposes for free re-use. This meant that government was hopefully going to be more transparent, but also the dream was that citizens, communities and entrepreneurs might start finding some exciting uses for all this data that was now freely accessible. Before the event I was aware of this, but hadn’t really spent the time considering how I could use it or why I should care about it. As the speakers put forward their arguments for how the world can be improved by making this data useful to all in society I quickly re considered all of that. I found it quite refreshing to even start thinking about digital without coming at it from a marketing angle, using apps and the web for the good of society rather than just “how can we use this to sell something”. This made the day a bit of a call to arms for people like myself, who have digital expertise, to consider using our knowledge to make something that could benefit lives and communities, whilst at the same time still being potentially commercially successful.

Throughout the day we heard how Foursquare could be used to help improve social care, how crowd sourcing was helping Seattle’s local government , that Twitter was helping politicians communicate, how community driven action on the web cleared deep snow in the USA, that NHS Choices had started as a community action forum and then been taken on by the UK government, why sites like Simpl act as a Social Innovation marketplace, and how the “Awesometer” app had been a reaction against the “ASBOrometer” app, both of which utilise the data.gov.uk initiative to give you information about your location. Keynote speaker Emer Coleman (director of Digital Projects, Greater London Authority) stated that “developers are the new creatives”, presumably as an understanding of all the technical capabilities now on offer is now the key to coming up with something truly new and exciting, whilst making it beautifully designed is almost a secondary task.

The standout talk of the day for me was by Bristol based Overlay Media, who’ve been working on an initiative called “Hills are Evil”. The project aims to help make cities more accessible, via the creation of a dynamic map overlay that provides people with restricted mobility, cyclists, skateboarders, the elderly, and people pushing pushchairs, the ability to identify the most appropriate route between two places. The route will be determined based upon factors including gradients and surfaces. They even have a hashtag for people to rate how much a terrain will hurt them (#painscale) example: 'like standing on a mousetrap', for those who want the choice of going via a more direct route but need to know the pain it may cause them. They hope to crowd source data onto their map, so objects not currently found in open map data, such as cattle grids or a missing drop curb will be added by users, building up a detail picture of the accessible city. The “Hills are Evil” phone app will also launch soon, which will help further identify bad terrain and pinpoint it on the map (via GPS and a smartphone’s motion sensor); lots of clever thinking here and hopefully an app that will really change people’s lives.

Next, having been fuelled up with food for thought (and lunch), we had an hour to come up with some ideas of our own, a few of which were going to be taken further in a hack day at the Watershed the following day. Some great ideas followed, including an app to distribute surplus allotment produce, an app to help visitors enjoy the beach, the “Democracybot” to help government listen and understand, a volunteer sourcing app, and a car parking space finding app.

Thoughts I took away from the day that can apply to all projects: don’t forget about people in rural communities with lousy web connections, make things accessible to all and most of all, make them truly useful.

Thanks to Bristol City Council, Future Gov et al for putting on a truly inspiring event.

BUDF website

We have just launched a new website for the Bristol Urban Design Forum (BUDF), an independent group of design and environment professionals who undertake design review of specific development proposals and provide advice to Bristol City Council on urban design policy preparation.

The site aims to provide the public with information about BUDF, details of schemes reviewed and information on how to submit a scheme. It also acts as a hub for BUDF members to share information and files in a secure way. BUDF have shown real enthusiasm for what we have been doing – both creatively and technically – and their input has been invaluable. The result is a strong online presence, which gives them a public face for the organisation, whilst providing exactly what they need from the back-end.

BUDF Chair, Nick Childs (Childs and Sulzmann Architects): “The team at Positive were a pleasure to work with and infinitely patient as we worked through our own thinking about what it was we were trying to say about our organization”.

View the BUDF webiste here.

Monastic Productions

We recently launched the new website for Monastic Productions, the scriptwriting geniuses behind "Ashes to Ashes" and "Bonekickers". Monastic needed a platform to connect with their fans and production partners, so it's a great place to learn more about what drives them and find exclusive content. The website is a collaboration between ourselves and the lovely team at Taxi Studio, who designed the website and devised Monastic's new visual identity. As well as developing the website we also created and branded Monastic's Twitter and YouTube channels.

View the Monastic Productions website

Reto Kitchens website

We've just finished work on a website for luxury kitchen brand Reto. Reto were founded in 1969, uniting Swiss craftsmanship with South African ingenuity. Forty years on, they are at the forefront of kitchen design and manufacturing.

View the Reto website