I had the pleasure of judging design student portfolios for the 2012 AIGA Portfolio One on One Event. It was a great experience, and truly a tough job to sort through all of the great work and select winners for the four different scholarships. I wanted to take a minute to show off the work of Cody Mehlhlorn, recipient of the Clockwork Interactive Scholarship.

This month, we show our ongoing support for the Family Equality Council with our May wallpaper highlighting their Night at the Pier celebration. Night at the Pier is the culminating event in their national, year-long, 30th anniversary celebration, and serves as a renewal of commitment to creating a stronger world for the community. It's our small way of recognizing and thanking them for everything they do to connect, support, and represent the one million lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents in this country and the two million children they are raising. 

Congratulations to the Family Equality Council for their 30 years of commitment and progress!

Download "Night at the Pier"

 

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We always have interesting things happening, and this month was no exception. On April 15th, we hosted our second annual ArtCRANK Family pre-party. An afternoon of bikes (and bike safety!), games, food, and fun—you can't beat that. A few days later, volunteers from our client, Metro CISM Team, stopped by with their first-response vehicles to thank us for their new website. Immediately, the kids in all of us Clockworkers came out as we excitedly climbed in and on the trucks. How could we help ourselves? And lastly are some photos from our monthly lab day—a day dedicated to working on non-client projects (also sometimes called experiments).

The Challenge

One of the most consistent challenges in creating positive online experiences is designing a product that aligns with users' expectations while still achieving business objectives. It's a constant balance. Users bring past experiences and current understanding of similar products to every site they use. The question becomes, "how do I align my understanding of the site I am designing (the conceptual model) with their expectations (mental model)?" This, of course, extends beyond design to site navigation: how can I organize navigation that feels intuitive to the audience? How can I translate business objectives into functional designs? There are no easy answers to these puzzles, but there are a lot of tools that help us investigate how to do this. 

Research to the Rescue

There are many user-centered design (UCD) approaches for discovering a user's mental model. Contextual inquiry, card sorting, surveys, task analysis and user testing can be used, individually or in concert, to determine the audience's expectations. From here, these outcomes can be integrated into navigation, design and architecture. When building a brand new site for a client with no prior analytics data, research methods like these-together with best practices in usability, user interface design, and content strategy-provide a solid foundation for creating a positive, holistic user experience.

The Road Less Traveled

However, a shiny new website is the beginning of the process, not the end. Building a great user experience is an iterative process. Even a site that gets off to a great start can use improvements down the line. It takes time to gather feedback, to see what is working, and realize what needs to be improved. Great UX requires a long-term commitment. The initial research only gives you an approximation as to how people will use the site.  As we all know, once it launches, there is no guarantee that everyone will use the site as you intended. Unexpected patterns can emerge. As the site collects data, and as analytics tools improve, there is a growing opportunity to improve the user experience over the long-term.

The Path of Least Resistance

In Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps, author Josh Clark mentions the anecdote commonly referred to as "paving the cowpaths." He says, 

Image: Google

About Ryan
Ryan is a User Experience Specialist at Clockwork. Ryan has several years of experience planning and designing websites. His previous background in visual design lends itself to the process of creating online interactions.
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A few weeks ago, a small group of us participated in the Overnight Website Challenge. The event matches teams made up of 10 interactive pros with not-for-profits that need new websites. As the event title suggests, the teams then design, develop, and deliver a website in 24 hours. It’s challenging, fun, and rewarding.

Successfully condensing work that typically takes 6 months into 24 hours requires a few things: an engaged not-for-profit, a good process, a focused and collaborative team, and not surprisingly, well-spaced shots of caffeine. Luckily, our team had all four. 

We had a great partner

We were matched with Metro CISM Team, a local, volunteer-driven organization that "serves those that serve others." Through peer-based support, they help first-responders cope after they go through emotionally and psychologically challenging situations while on the job.

We relied on our established process

I think the entire team would agree that using our finely-tuned (and soon to be published!) process helped us hit every angle of the project with precision and kept us on track. And both were very helpful as we approached our 20th continuous hour of being awake.

While it was compressed, the research and planning we did up front proved to be the backbone of what we executed. Taking the time to hammer out specific audiences, goals, and requirements was key to creating a site did what it needed to do for the clients, while being what it needed to be for the end users.

The big takeaway is that no matter how much time you have—or don’t have—a process always helps. In fact, it’s in these tight turnaround situations where the process is most necessary. 

From Eryn, one of our devoted devs: “And it was amazing to see how the Clockwork process supported us even on a crazy, crazy timeline. We all adhered to it—instead of throwing it out the window for the sake of time—and it paid off.” (Really, we stuck to it.)

We did it through collaboration

Collaboration is one of our key values. We don’t espouse it just because it’s helpful; we embrace it because it’s absolutely necessary.

The team worked together respectfully, but also pushed each other at times to go further and achieve more. Because of time constraints, those moments of review and criticism boiled down to the barest and more direct kind of communication. And it worked. 

From Matt, our master Tech Lead: “Every person gave it their all and that effort clearly shows in our results and top four standing.” (Yup, we made it to the finals!)

From Leaf, our QA extraordinaire: “I'm proud of the work this team was able to accomplish, drama-free and on time.” (Communication is the key.)

From Das, another devoted dev: “Also despite going an entire night without sleeping, we kept high energy and good spirits the entire time… and no one on our team or from Metro CISM suffered a caffeine overdose*.” (At hour 24, high energy is relative, but we were upright and coherent.) 

We drank a lot of caffeine

A big thank you to The Nerdery for hosting the challenge, and keeping us going with food, caffeine, and many other helpful treats along the way.

And we achieved success

In the end, the Clockwork team used the tools and values that we always do, and created a totally rock solid site. The before and after screenshots below only show the design, UX, and content changes, but there were just as many functionality and behind-the-scenes changes that support the organization’s needs. And our QA team made sure that it works as gloriously as it looks.

While we didn’t “win” per se, our clients were more than pleased, and so was our team. And that feels great.

From Corrine Becker, the Chair of the Metro CISM Team:

“Thank you all for the wonderful experience this weekend! I have gained such a deeper appreciation for the expertise of the computer sciences. You are true professionals and the generous gift of your time and energy will make a huge difference to so many first responders. Thank you is inadequate to let you know how grateful I am, but THANK YOU!”

* Eryn’s pretty sure she suffered from caffeine OD, but not until after the event, so we’re not counting that.

As a member of the scholarship judging panel for last year’s AIGA Minnesota annual Portfolio 1-on-1, I was in awe of the volume of great work and incredibly talented creatives who participated in the scholarship competition. Many of them presented work that spanned disciplines and mediums, but I quickly realized that there were few works that were clearly intended for web, mobile, or other interactive environments. There’s no doubt that emerging visual designers are interested in creating interactive experiences, so why weren't there more entries?

Perhaps designers need a little encouragement to explore the pool of interactive design. It’s a different medium with different requirements and conventions. Clockwork wants to reward and support the talented designers who explore our discipline. To do this, Clockwork is offering the first-ever interactive design scholarship in conjunction with AIGA Minnesota’s Portfolio 1-on-1.

Clockwork’s $1,000 Interactive Scholarship

We’re excited to offer the new $1,000 scholarship, which is available to all interested AIGA student membership holders who enter works into the 2012 competition. You can learn more about and fill out an application (by April 13!) for any or all of the AIGA scholarships on the AIGA Minnesota website.

As you can see with the other scholarship supporters, we’re in great company. We can’t wait to see the incredible designs.

Learn more about the AIGA Minnesota and The Portfolio 1-on-1

Learn more about AIGA Minnesota

About Chuck
Chuck is Clockwork's Chief Experience Officer (CXO). He was a co-founder of Bitstream Underground, one of the region's first ISP/Web Development companies, and has worked in the field of Design and User Experience for over 15 years.
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This month’s wallpaper is an homage to and call for rain. With barely any winter, and then summer arriving in March, we need it! Meteorologist Paul Huttner says, "Average rainfall won't do this year. A good 4" to 8" of spring rains is what we need..."

Have you ever look at a photo of rain on a window and noticed that the world is reflected upside-down in every droplet? I’ve always found this fascinating. I wanted to highlight that topsy-turvy feeling in my wallpaper design.*

When the picture I chose turned out a little too gray and dreary, Ben Schuster suggested adding some color. A rainbow was the natural addition. I used this hilariously named tutorial called "How to Make Your Photos Look Hipster" to download high-resolution "light leaks" that created the magical rainbow.

The result is my April Showers wallpaper that reflects the springtime mood of vibrancy and rejuvenation.

* Thanks to Sharyn Morrow for the picture!

Download "April Showers"

 

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About Kjrsten
Kjrsten is a Front End Developer at Clockwork. She likes using Flash, Flex and good old HTML+CSS+JS to produce applications that are pleasing to the user and pleasing to the developer who works on them next.
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Thanks to everyone that joined the Clockwork crew in celebrating our ten-year anniversary, and thanks to our community of clients, friends, and family for making the last ten years so memorable.

Our celebration went off without a hitch. The New Standards helped us create an evening we won't soon forget and for that, we're forever grateful. 

Photos

Here are some Flickr photos from the event. As you can see, everyone looked fantastic! 

We also had a Traveling Photobooth capturing the love and celebrations in a tiny box. Use the code PMUU4 to check out all those photos.

We'll see you again in ten years! (Just kidding!)

We Minnesotans made it though the winter relatively unscathed: threatening megabilzzards failed to materialize and we hit 45° in February. As disappointing this all was, we're still eager for the upcoming spring season. Bring on the slightly warmer, and probably soaking wet, weeks to come! 

This wallpaper was designed by half-Irishman Paul Carroll, who is looking forward to beers of all colors this month. He is an equal opportunity beverage enjoyer.

Download "Spring Clovers"

 

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