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: 3:27 PM by Laura

'Inafishbowl.co.uk' goes live today, giving a unique opportunity to watch, read about and follow the journey of three start-up businesses as they go from concept to reality, sharing and documenting everything they do whilst in their own 'Fish Bowl'.

The team here at Zabisco have built the site to allow users to receive information on and follow the businesses in a variety of ways and will utilise multiple social media platforms.

Having met the guys taking part, we?ll all be following their journeys with interest. Matt, a music fan, is starting up a record label and management company, with talk of using a double decker bus to promote new bands; Marcella is a Mexican mother of two, who hopes to bring a taste of Mexico to Britain with her home-made sauces and salsas and Owain and Dominic are a really friendly pair who will providing tailored suits online. Through inafishbowl.co.uk, we can follow them as their ideas take shape.

As with all of our sites, we have made this one really intuitive to use - take a look now at www.inafishbowl.co.uk to follow the entrepreneurs in what will no doubt be an exciting, sometimes difficult and hopefully rewarding time.

You can also follow @fishbowlhq on Twitter for more news.

Labels: entrepreneur, reality, small business, start up, startup, website

Posted at: 9:29 AM by Laura

After lots of work and some sleepless nights brainstorming ideas in the office, we are proud to announce that we have won a contract with the British Heart Foundation.

BHF have chosen us to undertake the task of putting together the information and content architecture for their redesigned website, ensuring their users get everything they need quickly and efficiently and that the site is easy to use.

This is not the first time we have dealt with a charity, as, amongst our extensive portfolio of clients, are the British Red Cross and Headway, so we are confident we can deliver the goods and exceed expectations on this project.

The British Heart Foundation understands how beneficial Information Architecture is in reducing design time, managing scope and generally ensuring that the end user is always the focus of the design. We firmly believe that an information architecture stage is beneficial to all projects. The strategy and structure of the site is just as important as a good look and feel.

We always encourage clients to feedback when we produce sitemaps and wireframes, which ensures that once the project reaches the graphic design stage, our designers have a clear and focused design to work from. Our experience shows us this reduces design time, allows the client more time to think about the structure of their content and helps keep both time and budget on target. Good news for everyone!

Labels: BHF, British Heart Foundation, charity, ia, information architecture, user centred design, web design, website

Posted at: 1:01 PM by Marianna

2008 will remain in history as the year where Internet changed politics forever. The main reason for that is the pre-election campaign of Barack Obama, especially the way his consultants used the internet as a political tool.

The very well designed website of the today's President of United States and the wide use of e-mails, YouTube and other social networks as Facebook and MySpace, but also the use of other tools for the gathering of funds, are nowadays established tactics that are being used from other politicians too.

Lots of people claim that if it wasn't for the web Barack Obama wouldn't be a President today. I recently came across a very light full blog post "Lessons for User Experience Consultants from Barack Obama" that evaluates Barack Obama pre-election campaign web site published by John Yesko.

Among the lessons the author believes Barack Obama's website teach us are:

·Lesson 1: Use Clear Calls-to-Action: Donate now is the key call to action Obama uses on his website while is not the only message.

·Lesson 2: Put a Priority on Creative: Work with smart, talented creatives. Involve them from the beginning, and encourage them to be the stewards of the brand throughout the process.

·Lesson 3: Make Personal Connections (Or At Least Fake It): Use labels that are simple and easily comprehensive from the users (see also my post: can users read your website)

·Lesson 6: Be Young, Charming, and Good Looking: Everyone wants to have a fluid experience, come across with new concepts and ideas and view an aesthetically pleasing website when navigates through the net.

If we take a closer look of Barack Obama's web site homepage in comparison with his competitor John McCain's we can see clearly why Barack Obama's internet campaign was more successful:

Navigation: Obama's website has 6 main navigation elements and 2 less highlighted while McCain's website has 9 main navigation sections (far too many).

Labelling:The labelling Obama uses is more user friendly and commonly used in public as People, Media, States while McCain uses more vague terminology as Issues, Coalitions & Contribute.

Website goal: Obama's website has a strong "donate now" message while McCain's dominant point is "vote now" message and how to promote his personal image more.

Images: By comparing the politicians' images on the top left hand side we can also see that Obama's low angle shot looks more professional. A politician is the voice of the public so he needs to use humanise photos. Unfortunately McCain and Palin photos fail to convince us that they are potential future leaders.

Top Homepage message: Obama chose to use a very communicative personal quote "I'm asking you to believe..." while McCain chose a distant message using capital letters making it even more alienated from the users "COUNTRY FIRST REFORM....".

Page layout: Obama chose a two column page layout while McCain chose a three column template. While Obama placed efficiently information on the page leaving sufficient space in between, McCain made the mistake to place lots of information with different coloured icons, buttons and banners to the three columns resulting in a distractive output.

Here is a visual presentation of what I mention above:

Have a look on the two politicians' websites to judge by yourselves:

Picture 1: Barack Obama website

Picture 2: John McCain website

After reading this post I hope you are now convinced that User Experience Architecture can make a difference in the way people see and get influenced by your website.

Labels: experience, politics, user, website

Posted at: 11:44 AM by Hammad

Intercede are one of the world's leading Identity and Credential Management companies. Their services include enabling and managing: secure registration, biometric capture, application vetting and approval through to smart card personalization, issuance and management.

Here at Persona we were charged with overhauling their corporate website to provide a more modern look and feel but also to produce a site which was logically, informatively and strategically structured in order to optimise content and create an excellent first impression for visitors to the site.

The project is being developed in a phased approach; phase 1 has just been completed with a flat HTML site, which is now live at www.intercede.com. Phase 2 will see the site expand in terms of the number of pages, whilst at the same time pages being developed into our CMS to allow Intercede staff to manage the content for their website.

The Intercede site does contain a lot of information as is the primary focus for sales based activity. As such we have ensured that the information is clearly presented and does not intimidate the visitor with huge blocks of copy. One of the ways we have sought to achieve this can be seen at http://www.intercede.com/products-techspecs.html - the page contains a lot of copy, however with clever use of an "accordion" tool, the content can be read in easily digestible chunks.

Phase 2 kicks off in the next few weeks, and we'll keep you posted on developments...

Labels: cms, technical, web design, website

Posted at: 2:59 PM by Marianna

One of my responsibilities as an Information Architect is to keep abreast of the latest releases in the computer science industry. Recently I have come across a selection of different maps from a variety of sources that have made me realise there is a trend nowadays to use more and more interactivity when presenting data. A set of examples is:

- A UK interactive map that enables Regional Economic Strategy (RES) to display evidence data in an engaging visual way.

- A world interactive map from www.publicprofiler.org which presents the distribution of certain surnames, compiled by researchers from the University College London (UCL) using publicly available sources of information such as electoral registers and telephone directories. It contains information on over 300 million names covering 26 nations from Europe, America, Asia and Oceania.

- And a visualisation tool in the form of a map created by the New York Times providing information about the Olympic medals throughout its existence. Each country that has won medals during the Olympic Games is represented by a circle - its size relative to the number of medals won.

In terms of usability these three maps along with all the other well designed maps in the web are bright examples of well presented data, in a user friendly way saving a lot of time for the user. The users can effortlessly figure out how to use these interactive interfaces and at the same time they are easily memorable. The usage of a variety of colours in association with tables, pop-up windows with information or lists under the maps form a powerful source of information accessible within a few seconds. The efficient usage of white space also enhances the user experience.

Interactivity is one of the major advantages of web maps, enabling simple map tools to fully integrate multimedia elements. It helps to explore maps, change parameters, navigate and interact with the map, reveal additional information, link to other resources, and much more. My conclusion of this short reference to interactive maps is that they are a powerful tool in terms of efficient access to a large amount of data.

Labels: experience, interactivity, usability, website

Posted at: 9:10 AM by Marianna

While finishing the first draft of a website's project wireframes; I noticed that one of the pages that troubled me most was the "Thank you" page. This wireframe can be just designed as a plain page with a simple "Thank you message" being polite to the user after accomplishing a purchase or an action.

On the other hand this page can be a lot more than that and I believe it should be designed with a lot of attention to detail:

• This page could have effective calls to action so as to bring the users back again to your website instead of saying goodbye to them and lead them to navigate away. If the message is "Thank you for purchasing a product", this page can be a great opportunity to advertise more products. Statistics have proven that a big percentage of consumers (39%) continue to purchase another product if they are prompted in the "thank you page".
• This page can also show some authority of your website by reminding the user that his card details were securely used. Furthermore it can inform the user that the details of the purchase will be send to him through an e-mail.
• This page can provide a signature or a photo making your website more personal for the user. As a result a trustworthy relationship will develop between your website and the user (Alexandria K. Brown).
• It is important to provide the customer with instructions in case something goes wrong with the purchase or if he requires any other help.
• Last but certainly not least, you should provide a path for the users to exit the "Thank you page" without having to close the web browser or navigating away from your website.

I am sure there are other reasons why we should carefully design "Thank you" pages for websites. I am looking forward to hearing your ideas too.

Good examples of "Thank you" pages:

Picture 1. "Adobe" website "thank you" message after downloading free trial software.

Picture 2: "East Midlands Trains" website "thank you" page after completing a form to receive ticket offers information.

Labels: experience, ia, theory, website, wireframes

Posted at: 12:02 PM by Hammad

If you're a small, growing business that could benefit from some equity investment, you wont find a better place to research and contact the right people than the new Growth Investment East Midlands web site which was launched this month.

www.ginem.co.uk

Following a formal tendering process, the EMDA backed organisation commissioned Persona as their brand stewards and communications agency.

Our remit has been fully integrated and so far we've delivered a new visual identity, marketing material, advertorials and event signage.

The key channel though is the new web site at www.ginem.co.uk which has been developed on our Content Management System (CMS) for easy maintenance and longevity. The site has a clean, professional and modern design that's aimed at entrepreneurs, along with a suitable wealth of no nonsense news, articles and resources. It's worth bookmarking this one, as already the site content is updated regularly with events and videos.

Don't forget, if you need to regain control of your web site and could benefit from a more user-centric communications strategy, speak to us and we can have a friendly chat to see if we can help.

Labels: advertorials, cms, illustration, signage, technical, web design, website