thebridgingproject

Switching

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 13:14:50 +0200

I’ve recently switched work places from BEE3 to MOC Systems. I’m now heading information architecture and design at MOC.

Gaining knowledge about user behaviour via heatmaps

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:13:40 +0200

Gaining knowledge about user behaviour via heatmaps:

Crazy Egg is one of the live testing/behaviour tracking tools we use for continously optimizing client sites. I have to admit that I just love looking at the heatmaps in particular. There’s so much insight hidden in seeing exactly where on the page users click. Obviously, images are key - but what really often strikes me is that we’re building web pages for the body as well as for the mind. Placing links, images and other content types is also about physicality.

Positioning has such a direct effect on hand/mouse/trackpad/eye-movement and so designing a web page also becomes about designing something that feels nice for the hand - and not only for the brain. It’s hard to get right - no doubt about it. But the heatmaps lets us gain knowledge about all this.

Software for unemployed developers

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:25:01 +0200

Software for unemployed developers :

I really like the win-win position Adobe is setting up here - the company gains momentum in the developer community - and the developers get access to advanced tools in a period of their life where upgrading skills can be neccesary. Good thinking.

Launch celebration: High-end design and social media integration on new PM' website

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:00:00 +0200

The website of newly appointed danish PM, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, required a significant design of his personal website, larsløkke.dk, as he took office minutes ago. Central functional desires were a very high level of interaction with web 2.0 social sites and a high-end design quality level.

BEE3 designed and executed the overall web identity and web 2.0 strategy - as well as produced the site in open source TYPO3.

I congratulate Lars Løkke Rasmussen and I’m glad we had the chance to be such a major part of the team behind the new PM.

A green vision - clean and simple

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:46:42 +0100

We were recently given the task of creating an online presence for the newly formulated green vision of government leading party, Venstre. The platform available was a combined venstre.dk front page teaser and a new sub site.

It can be experienced at groenvaekst.venstre.dk

The purpose of the campaign needed a powerful visual reference - and so an image visualizing a new path towards green growth policy was selected.

The dominant content of the presentation is two speeches by the prime minister - and consequently the video player needed an eye-catching place in the design.

The windmill imagery and the video components should become the center of the entire presentation to give the viewer a simple and clear picture of the perspectives at stake.

As for interaction and reference to the rest of the party’s main site, the key point was an explicit traffic-guiding trail between the teaser banner and the sub site.

The client liked it. It was simple and gave a good setting for the presentations by the PM.

Another strength was that we could do it all in-house - and quickly. I believe that’s quite important too, both being capable of delivering quality work and making good cost-benefit sense.

All done within the week - from brainstorm to new campaign site.

Include the future

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 13:58:51 +0100

This is an old truth - but still a very important truth: You have to design for the future, not for the present. The fact is that if you design something for a specific project and focus only on what is specified here and now you will inevitably design something that will turn obsolete extremely fast.

I’m thinking about how you explain this as I just had a cool experience with doing a design for a client where we emphasized this approach:

Specify what you’re going to produce
Design for what’s way beyond what you have specified for the current project
Take the design back to what’s specified and implement only that - yet, keeping all the good stuff from the future-based design

What basically happens is this: You get a stronger design that will hold on for a much longer time because you don’t bump into design limitations too quickly as technology evolves.

To me, a webdesign foundation should last not 1 or 2 years but 3-5 years but when you design the foundation it is an absolute neccesity that you include the future needs in what you’re thinking about producing right now. It’s just another funny thing that sounds so easy and so obvious but appears pretty hard to get right down in the trenches.

T3REORG underway

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:04:40 +0100

T3REORG underway

typo3.org project underway

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:12:54 +0100

Although it’s a daunting project, I’m happy to bringing the new typo3.org project well underway. I’ve been meeting with Jens Hoffmann of d.k.d all day to review the designs and to discuss how we’re facilitating all the new advanced community features with TYPO3 extensions. The project is extremely interesting from a general Open Source point of view with our collaboration methods challenging conventional thinking about how to cooporate on Open Source development. It will be intriguing to see how it works out to work together with now 20+ web agencies from Germany, Denmark, Holland, Ireland, USA and more coming in.

I’m very inspired about the drive and motivation coming from everywhere to contribute to the project.

Better FAQ's: Helping the user search & compare content

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:00:04 +0100

Recently launched government party, Venstre’s, new FAQ. Apart from the easy search method I really have a soft spot for accordion interfaces that let’s users have multiple FAQ elements open at the same time.

BEE3 Facebook pages

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:52:13 +0100

BEE3 Facebook pages

Using Facebook groups as project sites

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:51:46 +0100

We’ve started using secret Facebook groups extensively for client project sites - and we’re really happy about it. It enables us to communicate with clients without forcing people to reenter their data. Other companies use Facebook as their intranet - which definately also has great advantages. At BEE3 we prefer to have that a little seperate, though. But opening up client communication about design proposals, prototypes, specifications and more has been very powerful - and also just plain fun.

Open source at heart, yet ready for business

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:51:39 +0100

I had a small fit this morning as I discovered I had run out of clean shirts. My daughter of 2 years had vandalized the last clean one.

Problem was: Today I’m scheduled to a new client meeting of the type where a somewhat strict dress code is an absolute neccesity to be able to just start talking and understanding each other.

Going through the last clean clothes I stumpled upon the latest TYPO3 t-shirt. My mood shifted instantly as this was the spot on solution.

Blue geek TYPO3 t-shirt under the black blazer: Open source at heart, yet ready to focus on business. It touches directly on both sides of work life that have to go hand in hand. Can’t get much better than that.

Jens Hoffmann talking about future usability concepts at...

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:07:36 +0200

Jens Hoffmann talking about future usability concepts at T3CON08.

Second day at T3CON08

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:03:00 +0200

Enjoyed TYPO3 HCI team leader Jens Hoffmann’s speech on usability concepts in relation to what can be implemented or just inspirational to TYPO3 version 5.

One of his points were to continuously look far ahead into what isn’t even realistic yet - but doing so to push the bounderies of what user experiences we build into TYPO3 right now. I love starting new usability & design projects by looking a lot further than the project timeline to make sure that what we design now can accommodate future expansion.

So on that, we’re really on the same page - trying to look at usabilty and user experiences from our two related sides in TYPO3, one as team leader for HCI, the other for design/brand.

A highly consistent corporate identity with almost no control. Can this really be happening?

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 09:44:00 +0200

Here at T3CON08 there are obviously TYPO3 logo and CI implementations all over the place. I managed the project of building the new open source TYPO3 CI back in 2005 and gave a lot of thoughts to how to control the thousands of identity-based applications that would arise after the logo, font, concept and color files were released.

Controlling the CI and thereby the brand experience was to be about motivation - and not centralized control. So the only things we did were to build simple web pages, a Creative Commons License and very informal mail correspondence to those (very few) examples of more problematic misuse of the CI.

A look at flickr/photos/tags/t3con08 shows you TYPO3 branded t-shirts, powerpoint presentations and even cigars with the logo and the costum TYPO3 font, Share.

I have to say that I’m totally amazed about how consistent and outright beautiful implementations of the CI are done here.

When the design team originally talked about the guidelines of the visual identity and how strict or open they were to be structured, we really wanted to create a motivational system, yet at the same time we were very nervous about how to keep the consistency of a brand being continously contributed to by hundreds of individual agencies and people working with the open source CMS.

Now looking at speakers having done powerpoints with usage of the Share font and even with video clips incorporating the logo - with absolutely no identity-flaws what-so-ever, that’s extremely exciting.

Organizations all over the world spend millions on keeping this consistency of CI’s - here we have an open source community just following simple guidelines - and having almost no consistency problems with virtually no control beyond a few rules and a Creative commons license.

First day at T3CON08 in Berlin

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:52:15 +0200

I’m at the TYPO3 conference in Berlin. It’s always nice to see all the TYPO3 enthusiasts coming together and talking about how to advance the CMS.

After our arrival yesterday the BEE3 guys had a nice dinner & chat with core developers Jan-Erik Revsbech and Christan Jul Jensen from MOC Systems and Kasper Skårhøj.

Today is tutorial day with content beyond my own technical scope so I’m looking forward to Kasper’s keynote tomorrow and to Jens Hoffmann’s talk on new usability concepts for the backend of TYPO3 version 5.0.

I’m spending today structuring my own talk/workshop on the storytelling of TYPO3, hoping to advance the branding efforts of TYPO3 in the coming years.

Structuring teamwork and creative processes in web development (or beyond)

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 10:51:00 +0200

Structuring teamwork couls also be coined ‘systematizing teamwork’.

But it sounds super unpleasant to systematize creative processes, yet there’s much truth to what doing exactly that can do.

I’m not enthusiastic about common notions of teamwork. In many places I’ve seen, it means either a boss-inspired pretending to collaborate closely - or it represents behaviour that really does pool ressources, enable the sharing of thoughts and taking advantage of cross-sectional insights but doesn’t really bring those strong results that all the ressources being put into action ought to advance.

Basically I’m convinced that for teamworking to be effective it needs to be (honestly) fun for the individual. I give a lot of thought about how to catalyze that. It’s one of those things that sounds simple and commonplace. The hard stuff starts when you need to execute.

I think thoughts about how to achieve fun teamwork for the individual starts along the lines of enriching a more structured (or systematized) approach to teamworking. To me, that’s about making simple guidelines that help give some form to the behaviours and processes taking place.

A simple guideline I really like is this:

It’s YOUR ongoing task and responsibility to help the person next to you in solving HIS or HER challenges with YOUR skills and tools.

(Who doesn’t do that all the time, you might ask. But try to think it through: When do you strive to always just solve your own challenges - and when are you responsible for helping someone with another skill-set, solve their issues with your skills. It just builds on the notion that it’s easier to solve other peoples obstacles than your own inside-brain puzzles.)

PS: Oh, and btw.: I don’t need to mention what I think about conventional teambuilding events! To me, that’s all too often really an excuse for simply not knowing where to start structuring teamwork in day-to-day processes instead.

How a Barack Obama bumper sticker turns up on a Nihola bike in Copenhagen

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 10:03:00 +0200

I’m really fascinated with this: This morning, driving my bike to work on Islands Brygge (apropos cool places in Cph), I ran into a fellow Nihola bike enthusiast. On the front of his bike he’d placed a Barack Obama bumber sticker.

It’s not at all unusual to see Barack Obama merchandise in Denmark, yet seeing that sticker on a special and popular danish bike - in Copenhagen - was mind-opening to me in terms of just how succesful that bridgebuilding has been done.

In part there is serious consistency management going on here; letting the brand and the Barack Obama design be distributed across the world to understructure both the global ad campaign that is Barack Obama - and on the other hand, distributing the political pressure and identity outwards and inwards at the same time via merchandise sold at store.barackobama.com.

What fascinates me is this: Through design, advertisement-based text work and distribution all things come together.

On the other hand, what I hate the most is when brands that have the same potential do not get to the effect that the Obama campaign gets - simply because of lack of consistency between purpose, message, design and distribution.

Regardless of political preferences, this is great work done by smart people - which I can really appreciate and be inspired by.

Reason of response

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:40:00 +0200

I think, you are always responding or reacting to something. This simple truth has led to lots of pretty action-packed business discussions with all kinds of talented people.

The question that starts this off is just: “What do you react to?”

That’s usually one of the first questions I ask when scoping a new project with a client - at the very first meeting. And it almost never fails to bring up really interesting discussions.

I guess it’s because it becomes a shortcut to the real mojo of their reason for bringing someone like me in. We immediately get down to what’s important - and not to what just sounds good. Before, I always asked something cheasy as “What can I do to help?” which obviously leads absolutely nowhere.

Paying attention to what is being reacted to can help bridge purpose, design and technology at the same time. I try hard to not separate those discussions - and bring all relevant elements of a project into play in the very same discussion. Yesterday, an all-new client seized that moment and launched (pretty fearlessly) into the talk about whether the new product to be kickstarted was really optimally done.

I obviously (more or less) had to go home without a project - because what happened was that pretty much everything had to be stalled instantly to make room for more solid decisions. Which is just so cool when you meet someone with that degree of courage!

A lot of times the reason of response is based on potentially weird internal needs or belief systems that have be challenged. A dialogue about that leads to what’s really neat: Change mechanics. In other words, how does change or a desired outcome look like when we’ve got the reason of response right, right off the bat.

I truly love that kind of conversation. At BEE3 it’s my ongoing small thing to try and uncover the real reasons for kickstarting an online presence project. That’s the basis for building bridges.

Me, taken by the adorable Miss Webcam.

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0200

Me, taken by the adorable Miss Webcam.