There had been talk in the studio earlier this year about new camera technology that allows you to take a quick photo in 3D that you can then edit at a later time to decide where you want the focus to be - foreground, middleground, background, you could try them all with just the one photo.

Up until today I had just assumed this kind of technology would be for super enthusiastic photographers willing to dish out thousands for the latest technology. To my delight, I read this article today and discovered that I could get my hands on a camera like this for just $399 as early as the beginning of next year. It's name - the Lytro.

What's more, they look sexy too.

This totally just moved straight to the top of my 'must have' list.

Awesome.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20122734-264/lytro-unveils-radical-new-came...

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There's no feeling like the anticipation of a freshly-ordered Amazon delivery. The first half of our delivery just arrived but we couldn't hold it in any longer. The team's new reading list over the next month or so:

1. Sketching user experiences. Getting the design right and the right design - Bill Buxton
2. The Simplicity Shift: Innovative Design Tactics in a Corporate World - Scott Jenson
3. Art & Fear. Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking - David Bayles
4. About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design - Alan Cooper
5. The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman

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It makes me want to draw Surface Media's org chart (boy i'd never thought I'd say that!). At least ours doesn't look Microsoft's haha, I guess that's a good thing. Check out the full post

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Ah Manchester Press - how would we survive our working week without you.

If only your new website was live (we know it's coming though so we forgive you).

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Recently I had the pleasure of having lunch with the executive team from an NFP organisation we have been working with for nearly five years. The reason for the catch up primarily being to get together informally and talk about the previous twelve months, gauge how well we have been performing and to talk about the business and any big plans for the next year or so. Over the course of the lunch we discussed recently delivered projects and work in progress as well as deeper issues relating to how the organisation can become better at decision making when it comes to investing in digital.

Here are three key take-aways from the discussions and some thoughts on how to address them:

1. Rethink existing processes before digitising them

NFP's who have been around a while, and even newer businesses that grow quickly often start out doing things using non-digital, offline processes. We know from experience that simply taking non-digital processes and replicating them online never works very well. If a process is cumbersome and time consuming in the offline world there is no reason why just simply translating it into a digital process is going to solve the problem. In fact we have seen the reverse where processes can actually becomes more complex and time consuming once technology gets involved.

The challenge here for both the organisation and the agency is to work to gather to re-think the old ways of doing things and design new processes that take advantage of latest digital technologies. A word of caution here - sometimes this work can lead to tough decisions for the business, particularly when it involves staff restructures or changes to ancient workflows. It can be a case of one step back and two steps forward, buts its worth it if you’re client's goal is measurable success.

2. Talk to users about how they want to consume your content

As is the case with most successful NFP’s; passionate and informed people can be found behind everything they do. With organisations that do a lot of research to inform the programs and initiatives they produce, the focus tends to be very much on content - and quite rightly so given the social value of much of the work NFP's do. However, while informative and rich content can often be in an abundance, when it comes to digital content delivery, the biggest issue facing these types or organisations is getting content into a shape that will work in a digital context. All too often we see content that is written and organised for publishing in print get replicated verbatim on web pages. And who wants to read reams of dense text on screen? Not me.

When this situation arises what is needed is some dialogue with users to find out exactly how they would like to access content and in what formats they prefer to consume it. By taking a user centred approach, incorrect assumptions can be avoided and content can be reworked to satisfy real world user needs. The best time to do this is before any plans for the digital project are finalised. This ensures any decisions around information architecture and content are based on real world user needs and not assumptions. Over time, as deeper understanding develops around the needs of an online audience it may then be possible to innovate around the process of developing content for both on and offline publishing, so that further production efficiencies may be achieved.

3. Its ok to say no

If after taking a brief from a valued NFP client you feel that rethinking a set of processes is the better way to go than simply replicating them online, politely tell them so. Its what you are there for. Remind yourself that you have a duty of responsibility to work with your client to ensure they are not wasting their time and money in creating a system that will more of a beast than a beauty - so be bold. It may be tough trying to convince them that there are better alternatives. So don't go in cold. Be prepared. Your client will ultimately thank you and your relationship will be stronger for it

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Who hasn't had this moment?

You're thinking about purchasing a certain electronic item and you thought you'd just go 'have a look' to see what's around... then you see it glistening in the distance... it's got a 'sale' tag on it... you've found an awesome deal... what luck! You're excited, you want it NOW.

Then (hopefully) your rational self chimes in and there's that moment of second-guessing... is this really a great deal? Is this some kind of marketing trick? Is there a newer release that's going to pop up as soon as I buy this? If I wait until next week, the price drop even further? What if the price goes back up?

How do you answer these questions as soon as possible so you don't miss out on this potentially awesome deal or pay too much because you couldn't hold out for another week? How do you avoid the regret?

Well, decide.com is the answer. Simply search for your desired electronic goodie and it will tell you whether you should buy now before prices rise or wait for a price drop or a newer model. Of course, there's a mobile version of the website so when you find yourself in 'impulse-buy' mode, decide.com is never far away.

Price and product release predictions are based on an array of data types and sources including historical price information, price comparison tools and information contained in blog posts and product-related articles across the web. You can also track products to receive price alerts and product release notifications relating to your product of choice.

As the site is only very recently launched, currently the product range only covers TVs, laptops and cameras. Additional product categories are coming soon and users are encouraged to vote for new product categories through the website.

I'll be bookmarking this one for future reference.

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It's easy for us Interaction/Ux designers to forget how focused on the user we actually are. We know that the user should come first however when the person paying us just wants a website, it's hard to make them understand how important it is for the website to keep their customers happy too.

As Ux (User Experience) designers, we live in a world of sketches and wireframes. We understand technology, what it's capable of, how it works and when is the best time to use it. We have the ability to quickly sketch lo-fi screen designs and talk about how these screens would change based on user actions. We may choose to develop a prototype, we may not. Because of old-world development models, it was always a case of "Do as little HTML/CSS and actual design as possible until the site map and content is locked down. Otherwise we design a site whose content/sitemap will change and as a result, we'll have to re-do the design again and again." Hence, the rise of the wireframe. It was supposed to be the best way to show a client how their website will work without having to go through the iterative process of design. But after years of trying to make this work, what the Ux community (and us here at Surface Media) is finding is that a site wireframe may not be speaking the language of the client.

Sometimes, we're so focused on the end-user - our client's clients, that we forget that what we also need to do is communicate our interaction design solutions to the project team. We need to identify user groups within our own team and document our interaction design accordingly.

Communicating with business owners/project owners

Like we do with our client's clients, we should be asking: What is our client's background? Are they marketers? CEOs? Are they from IT, Architecture, Design disciplines? Once we establish this we need to decide how we communicate with them. A simple task-flow model might work well for those from a science/IT background, it's what they're used to seeing and can easily comprehend a user's decision process with boxes and arrows; but to a client with a marketing or design background, it looks like another boring flowchart and subsequent interest levels plummet to 0%. Conversely, a ux design comic used to communicate a user problem might get a laugh out of IT and be blown-off as just a silly story, but for someone in HR or a small business owner, it might just have them 100% thoroughly engaged and willing to participate in a user journey session to flesh the characters story and uncover hidden end-user needs.

Communicating with designers

Designers hate being told how to lay things out. It's what they are paid to do. If it's not their job to decide what colours, typography and visual heirarchy to use, the role of visual designer is degraded to a simple pixel-pusher. Not only is it a boring existence but it can hurt team morale. A high-fidelity digital wireframe/prototype then, with boxes laid out in a clickable interface ready for them to 'skin' is not the tool to communicate your interaction design with designers. We've been trialling a method in the studio where page functions are identified and priortised in a bullet list format. Give this to a designer and what you receive is something completely unexpected, but it still solves your problem and often, better than you could have articulated in a high-fidelity wireframe anyway.

Communicating with developers

Developers often don't have a designer's eye for how it looks. If it works, the job is done. Give a developer a series of photoshopped, high-fidelity designs and you won't get back the same thing without multiple meetings and frustrating iterations. However, arm a developer with a functional list; "User need to be able to do x" along with a set of photoshop files describing the user action, followed by the resulting system action (and some very low-fi prototypes for certain, more complex functions) and you're on your way to a 1st time functional product, and a happy developer.

It's pretty clear, after being exposed to the world of Ux design for so long now, that there's no one 'best approach' to communicating your interaction design to client and/or project team. However, by accepting this and working with it, it frees you up to take a more agile and less process-driven approach to your Ux documentation. Some clients like to read about website features as a 'functional list', others prefer to call them 'user stories' and respond better to them when they're related to a persona. For every client that understands a 'paper-protoype', there's another that can't understand why we're working on paper when we're building a digital artefact.

The lesson learned so far? There are no easy shortcuts to documenting interactions. Not only do clients and teams vary from project to project but so too do budgets and technology used. The trick is to stop trying to fit a square peg in to a round hole but to learn about the shape of the hole first, the background of the team, the language used by each client/organisation, and then wittle at your peg so it's a perfect fit everytime.

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Fixed price quoting. Lets be honest, it's a killer. In fact, its probably one of the 'biggest' issues facing small web design businesses in a highly competitive market. For many small web design businesses it can be a viscous cycle that seems impossible to break out of.  You get asked to do a redesign of a website and perhaps some technical development, you ask as many questions as you can in an attempt to get a clear idea of the scope of work required and you politely ask the client if they have a budget in mind for the project and they tell you they have 'no idea how much these things cost' and that they want you to give them your 'best price' for the whole bag. You then you go away and prepare a fixed price quote. What happens next is your new client either loves your quote and signs up and you begin work, or they tell you its too much and want to put the squeeze on.

In my opinion, either way, having provided a fixed price your relationship with your client is already in trouble and your project is destined to fail. Here's why.

You just don't know enough at the outset
Even with the most clearly written brief provided by the customer, it is impossible to know everything you need to know about a web design or development project. So how can you accurately quote on something you don't really understand yet?

Unforeseen things will come up... they always do, its inevitable
Things always come up during technical development that need additional thinking. Its natural that as development is going on that both your client and your team are going to be learning a lot about how the new site features and functions should work. Its during development that real opportunities exist to prototype, test and review features and functions with your client and to explore options that could lead to better outcomes. The catch is that working in this way usually requires more time and flexibility. Two things that fixed quotes that have stuffed full of features don't usually have going for them.

With fixed price quoting your locked into trying to deliver an agreed amount of stuff for a fixed amount of money, and if you've allowed yourself to be squeezed on budget there is usually very little room for exploring options and collaborating with your client in this way.

It shouldn't be you versus your client... but it'll end up that way
There is an expectation by your client that you will deliver the project with all the bells and whistles that you promised in your quote. Lets say your developer discovers that connecting the website to the client's intranet database is going to be a little (or a lot!) harder than first thought, or the client reveals midstream some crucial information concerning how they need that new reporting module to work. Some things might be small and easy to absorb, others may have broader more significant implications for the project.

In the first case, you are going to have to wear it because you probably should have been a bit more thorough when scoping that feature out at the beginning. It's a bummer because it will costs you time and money.

In the second case you might feel that the client needs to fork out additional budget or perhaps drop a low priority feature in order to accommodate the new requirement within the original budget. So you go to the well and negotiate with you client who will understandably be disappointed because they believed you knew what you were doing and now they are going to have to find more cash which they say they don't have. The client will argue they thought something was in the scope, you will argue that it was never mentioned, emails get checked, people get frustrated, the project stalls — just writing about this type of scenarios is stressful.

Now your in a tug of war over money and time and the biggest loser is going to be you, because ultimately it's your businesses reputation for getting things done that is on the line.

Here's the solution...
Don't do fixed price quoting on technical projects, or any project if you can avoid it. Instead, try offering a fixed price to run a discovery session with your client to identify, flesh out and prioritise all the features and functions that will be required by the projects users in the first release. Bring your developer along and anyone else from your team who you think will benefit. Pull together a document that communicates all of this in plain jargon free language and provide it to your client for their approval.

Now that you have a detailed understanding of the project scope, you've minimised the risk of unforeseen things emerging midstream and you're in a much better position to provide a more accurate costing. The discovery work you have done will enable you to confidently break your costing down into individual features and functions so your client can see clearly where their budget is going. It helps in budget negotiations if the client can easily see what they can have for a certain dollar value. Having a detailed list of features and functions also means they can easily choose to drop a feature should a new requirement of similar value be identified midstream.

Finally, and most importantly, make it clear that investigating new features and functions midstream takes time and that additional budget to do this has to come from somewhere. If, after talking through the benefits of quoting and working this way, your client still insists on full upfront fixed price quoting - stick to your guns, so no thanks and let it go. There will be other opportunities.

The best thing about saying goodbye to upfront fixed price quoting is knowing that your client relationships will be happier and more enjoyable ones. And happy people make better stuff which is good for business.

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When KV "Pops" Sridhar, national creative director of Leo Burnett India, wanted to capture the graphic essence of Gandhi in a commemorative typeface for the 141st anniversary of his birth, the choice was clear: go with the glasses. (Besides Woody Allen, is there any other iconic figure so instantly identifiable by his eyewear?) The Indian leader's classy glasses had the perfect combination of forms and shapes to build a font out of -- more than a dozen fonts, in fact.

Read more here http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663498/a-typeface-based-on-gandhis-iconic-specta...

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See the full gallery on Posterous

I'm reminded that, unlike most of us grown ups, Harry is, like most kids, uninhibited by the tendency to sensor his own ideas. He just gets on with getting them down on paper.

As designers we all need to be more like Harry. Especially me!

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via starwars.tomtom.com

As a self-confessed Star Wars nerd you can probably imagine my joy when I stumbled across the news that Tom Tom has released Star Wars voices and sounds for their GPS devices!

No doubt in time the novelty will wear off (probably after about 5kms) however, download the voices I must.

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via canyoudrawtheinternet.com

So you think your pretty creative? Here we have people who work within creative industries, with all their experience, competing against a bunch of free thinking young kids, to illustrate 'the internet'. This is a great source of ideas and inspiration if your looking for something to get the creative stuff flowing.

http://www.canyoudrawtheinternet.com

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via thecoolhunter.com.au

This is quite possibly the coolest coffee shop I've ever seen. Now, I'm not sure how long I would be able to stay in there before completely tripping out and falling over but it would be totally worth it.

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Surface Media is offering you the chance to win a 3 month membership to a Genesis Fitness Club near you. To be eligible to go into the draw, post a comment below telling us what you like or dislike about Surface Media's new website. Good or bad, we want to know what you think!

Make sure you complete the name and email address fields when posting your comment so we can contact you if you win. We will also announce the winner here on Friday 10th September 2010.

Good luck!

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