Posted at: 12:50 PM by Marianna

As we are heading towards the end of 2009 a lot of practitioners in digital industry have started identifying some current & new trends that might be established in 2010. Here is a list of some exciting predictions:

Usability Predictions (view source by W Craig Tomlin @ctomlin)

· There will be a dramatic increase in the use of low cost web-based usability testing tools.

· True usability ROI will continue to elude usability practitioners.

· Use of remote moderated usability testing will increase by a factor of 10.

Design Trend Predictions (view source by Sneh Roy @LBOI)

· Much more type rich imagery online with the ease of font replacement now, especially with CSS3 around the corner. It's going to be all about spacing, type and uniqueness.

· Some sites will gear towards the magazine type of look with short concise articles, easy to read and absorb clean simple design with splash of bold colors to catch the eye.

· A lot more retro and vintage colors in design and in packaging design. Many consumer goods have been releasing limited edition products with their retro packaging, and since it is a successful way of marketing it won't be too long before other consumer goods start doing so as well. I also see the transition between print to web becoming a huge trend.

· Another step will be what is now being nicknamed Web3.0. It's all about automation. Web 2.0 is about customized, personalised content, but the next step is about automated and integrated content.

Other

· Mobile net will flourish: As we now have some great hardware, good packaging, balanced operating systems and an accepting public we can expect mobile Internet to take hold. Dot mobile sites will enable us to interact with our phones without a constant flurry of pinching and scrolling. Mobile e-commerce may not be too far behind. (view source by Adam Toren)

· 2010 will be The year of Platform Wars: netbooks, cell phones, pads, Cloud standards. Clouds will tend to support the consumer world (Picnik, Amazon), enterprises will continue to build out their own data centres, and Netbook sector growth rates continue to post very large numbers.

· News media that survive will move to the subscription model, in whole or in part, along age lines. (view source by Mark Anderson)

· Video: As already mentioned, IPTV continues to rise, but video as a whole will be a massive trend to watch through 2010.

· The real time web is going to be a big issue, especially in search. Lots of smaller technology companies have been quick to realise this, as often indicated through the likes of TechCrunch, and I imagine the better ones will fare extremely well during the course of the coming year. (view source by Jake Hird @Jake_Hird)

· Location, location, location: the new frontier in app dev is location-aware applications and services, for internal, asset and service management, and B2C.

· Which underpins a new wave of mobile services as smart phones become pervasive. Augmented Reality will begin to make a mark in the mobile space. Initial experiences in Europe are likely to be in augmented tourism next summer-where you point your phone at a building and it shows you the associated Wikipedia entry. (view source by James Governor @monkchips)

Here at Zabisco the New Year will find us busy with interesting projects as planning new mobile applications, forming user experiences for various sites, design challenges and launching websites that have been built this year.

Feel free to share your predictions for 2010 with us!

Labels: design, prediction, user experience, web

Posted at: 3:46 PM by Laura

Excitement is building in the office as we all prepare for the Zabisco Christmas do, taking place on Monday.

Thanks to MD Hammad's impeccable organisational skills, our Secret Santas were chosen a couple of weeks ago. I've bought mine already, but (and I'll name no names), I do know of a certain developer who has yet to buy his...cue hectic shopping this weekend and a hastily wrapped gift for one lucky colleague on Monday!

Mulled wine and mince pies will be plentiful on Monday afternoon, as we enjoy some festive fun in Zabisco's large conference room, which has been beautifully decorated by our very own IA expert Marianna. Then off to town we will go for some tepenyaki at a local restaurant.

This will come as a welcome break for everyone as we've been really busy this year, spending the past couple of weeks ensuring all our projects are looking and working at their best and bringing various websites to the 'go live' stage. Though we have a very relaxed office, wearing casual clothes and working flexible hours, the strong dedication from everyone in the office to the highest possible standard of work at all times can mean we miss out on socialising with each other. Our Christmas party will be a good opportunity for everyone to have a good chat and to get to know each other, particularly for those of us who are quite new to the team. (You can get to know us all a bit better by clicking here).

Of course, in the current climate, not everyone will be enjoying a Christmas party with their colleagues this year. In some cases, redundancies made over the past few months have caused companies to tighten the purse strings, with others simply viewing the celebrations as ?insensitive? during the recession. Click here for an interesting look at how Christmas parties are being affected.

We're certainly very lucky to be in the position we are, and look forward to a very enjoyable afternoon and evening.

To find out more about what we can do for you over the festive season and beyond, visit www.zabisco.com, or our new site www.zabiscodigital.com. Or why not come down to the office for a face-to-face chat? We might even have some mulled wine left over for you...

Labels: christmas, morale, party, socialising

Posted at: 12:02 PM by Si

So you have a nice new shiny website, fresh design, some nice new images - and a nifty content management system that lets you update your content easily. Excellent - great news. The bad news is that this is really only half the challenge of a new (or rebuilt) website.

Here at Zabisco, we often get asked - how do I boost my traffic? The answer is not simple, Google is an advanced and complex beast. However there are some basic principles you can adhere to to help your search engine visibility. One of the most overlooked is updating the content on the website, not only does Google keep track of what pages get updated, it is also a good way to ensure that visitors see fresh and engaging content.

All very easy so far - where's the problem I hear you cry? Well in our experience, and through no fault of their own, new and engaging content can easily be overlooked by clients. The reason? Well everyone has a day job - you can't always be thinking about a new blog post, or how to make your homepage more key rich. Creating time to manage a website is not always easy and if lots of people are contributing then consistency of tone of voice and best practice can be lost.

At Zabisco we are always looking to add value to our clients, so recently we have been trialing our content management/generation service (suggestions for a catchier name are welcome) with a few key clients. So what does this service entail?

• we visit the client regularly or keep in touch over the phone to ensure we know what is going on in their company/industry
• we generate regular news and content items for the site and ensure they are key word rich but also maintain a consistent and engaging tone of voice
• as well as looking to promote content we also then aim to push that content out to a wider audience, so we look to post links to the content on relevant sites, and to promote it through social media channels (such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook)

The service can cost as little or as much as you want, it really depends on how much you want us to do.

For more information feel free to get in touch with us

Labels: content, seo, social media

Posted at: 11:46 AM by Laura

Zabisco are putting the finishing touches to a new website for Nottingham University?s GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence, giving us the opportunity to develop our relationship with the University?s Innovation Park.

The GRACE site is the internet face of a new £9.2million facility on the UNIP. We?ve worked on this site from strategy through to design and development using Joomla, and we believe we?ve created a site which works really well for the client and their users.

Using our firm belief in the importance of user-centred design, we?ve made a site which is not only easy to use and navigate through, but which also works aesthetically. The site includes a social community to allow people involved in the industry to engage and network, as well as news and events, job opportunities and a member directory providing all the information you need on the new facility.

This project is a continuation of our work with the University, with our previous work on the Ingenuity Gateway proving a great success.

Labels: user centred design, web design, web development. joomla, website

Posted at: 4:52 PM by Marianna

Yesterday (12th November 2009) was this year's World Usability Day. This celebration started 4 years ago in 2005 as an initiative of the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) so as every year to remember that products & services important to human life have to be accessible and simple to use.

I am really happy to announce that every year more and more clients discuss with us how they can create a website having in their mind: "How to create a website accessible to all?", "Redesign their website so as to approach more people than they do know", "How can they improve the website interface, navigation in order to help people use their site, help users understand their products & services".

This year's theme is "Design for a Sustainable World". Sustainability which can be reassured by taking four main actions: Recycle     Reduce     Reuse     Restore is applicable to almost every facet of life on Earth, from local to global scale. In technology area, digital innovations continue to getting cheaper, faster, better and easier to use enabling the invention of new and expanded uses for Information & Communication technologies every day. As a result the new uses provide sustainable economic, environmental and social benefits on a national & global basis. (source)

You can find the most recent news about events taking place around the world on @WUD2OO9

Popular events that took place across the UK:

A) Web site usability drop-in clinic in Birmingham

B) Usability Open Day in Bristol

C) UK UPA World Usability Day in London

Feel free to share with us how you celebrated this day or ideas of how technology can ensure long-term maintenance of human wellbeing, wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources.

Labels: experience, ia, sustainalbility, WUD