It took a couple of long nights but this week, we delivered the complete report for the research and user testing on Puno. The document ended up over 10,000 words and it’s highly comprehensive. This is great but I wonder if we could achieve the same while being more concise the next time round. Most importantly, we have a set of recommendations deduced from the testing that will form the basis of the production work on Puno going forward in 2013. Tom and Alice kick off that part next week.
Nikki and Steve have been working through a second round of creative development on Suprema, digging deeper into how we structure the interactions through the week and during TX. We hit a bit of a roadblock last thing Friday on how we integrate with Twitter, but I’m hoping we can resolve that next week with their help. Next up, we’ll be looking to build a prototype to test out the ideas in practice.
I have been working on a couple of new business bits, one of them for an existing client and one new thing with Noam. For the new piece, we delivered our response and will head in to chat with them next week. I think it could be a good one.
Work on the Foldable.Me collaboration continues along with set up towards new clothing assets we will be launching in a couple of weeks. Sandeep has been doing some work on how we promote that. On StickyGram, we wrapped up the January photo competition and did some planning on future work items. Both products also had their Valentine’s Day promotions go live, with something a little sweet for StickyGram and something a little cheeky for Foldable.Me.
After some debate, we settled on a new name for our new venture. Tom and Matt completed the first iteration on a style guide and branding. We hope to use that as the basis for quickly whipping up the necessary pages and launch it within a couple of weeks.
Projecteo was taken through a large bug review as we geared up to launch next week. That plan however was scuppered by the final production samples we received this week from China. Unfortunately, they’re not up to the standard we would like them to be, leaving us with no choice but to delay launch until we receive a new sample up to spec. With Chinese New Year on the horizon, this is going to cause a bigger delay than it would otherwise be.
This is our first major stumbling block on Projecteo and annoyingly it’s the bit of process we can’t control. I do genuinely believe we’re making the right decision however. Ben will be writing a detailed update on that to our Kickstarter backers.
The Mint site finally saw Iteration 3 go live, bringing in the new style. The response on that so far has been positive, both internally and externally. Next week, I’ll be taking that through a design review with the team and work to tidy it up a little. Brad and I will also be working on the next iteration, which will bring in something we are calling competencies.
Lastly, Mint is gearing up for Four Days to Launch, our annual company retreat. Every year, we head off to the countryside, split into three teams and work on a single brief. This week, we launched the brief for this year and held a draft to pick teams. We’re heading off 18 February. Time to start preparing my brain and liver for that.
The week started with a big effort to pull the Puno write up together. Alice, Tom and I tackled different bits and we had something we were happy to share with the client team on Tuesday. The report itself will see more work as other strands of testing are completed but we’re also moving ahead and working out a roadmap for the production phase that will commence here shortly.
Suprema saw another week of concept development, as well as the usual budget and schedule conversations that come with kicking off a new project. I have been working on that with Adam and Steve, but hope to spend more time on the product itself next week. We were also ready to react to any launch requirements on Cucuta, but it has not been necessary so far.
I continued to work with Brad and Thomas on the Mint site, checking in more code this week than I have in a good couple of years. Annoyingly, we were unable to push anything live due to a few snags, but largely because we tried to tackle too many things in a single iteration. That said, this next update is a complete style overhaul, so a two week turnaround is not terrible. We should have that live early next week.
In a few weeks, we will start to roll out Projecteo to our Kickstarter backers. We’ll be treating this phase as a beta to test and iterate on the trickier aspects, such as fulfilment. The site is generally feature complete for this launch, with next week set aside toward bug fixing along with final design and copy reviews. We do still need to nail packaging and test fulfilment internally though. Nothing like a deadline…
Although it’s not for a little longer, we’re also working on the public launch for Projecteo. I see this as play space and an opportunity to push what we can do on the web. To that effect, I outlined a new design brief to Steve and Tom this week and we agreed to do just that. I’m already excited.
On the rest of the roster, Sandeep completed the final shoots for the Valentine’s Day promos, which will launch late next week. There’s one shot in particular that should produce a good chuckle. Nikki worked on mapping the service flow for Summer Chimney and it looks like she has some good findings. Foldable.me is also seeing work for a fun collaboration, which involves celebrity Foldables. I’m looking forward to seeing that in action.
The product teams on StickyGram and Foldable.me had away days to discuss strategy for this year. I’ll need to catch up with them properly but even from skimming the notes, it’s clear there are a lot of ideas for what we can do. One of our ideas for this year actually involves a new venture, using some of our existing infrastructure. There’s already been some work on that in the last few weeks on building a prototype and coming up with a name. Our aim to get it to market fast and go from there.
On new business, a proposal we had submitted did not come our way. This was a shame but not surprising, given we had proposed a different idea to what was briefed, one we genuinely believed to be a better solution. A few other conversations have moved forward though, so no sign of things slowing down there.
Tom and I are getting into the habit of sitting down once a week to discuss the studio. For the last couple of weeks, we have mostly been looking at how designers manage projects and what our involvement should be. We’ve come a long way in the last six months on this but it’s a tough problem and we’re looking to see how we can improve on process. This week, we’ve also agreed to kick things up a small notch on hiring. That’s always exciting.
This week had us kick off proper on the new thing with Channel 4, which takes the name Suprema. Steve has been working on the concept with Laura and Adam which is progressing impressively fast. It’s early days, but there are already a couple of clever ideas there and I’m looking forward to see how it all comes together.
Puno saw another big week. Tom and Alice continued with user testing as well as a second workshop, this time in Manchester. We have a new outline for how we will pull the threads of this work together and we’ll be looking to complete as much of our report as we can early next week. I hope to pitch in with that.
We are also doing a few bits here and there for Cucuta, but nothing major on our plate at the moment as everything looks good for launch in the next couple of weeks.
Most of my time this week has been on the new Mint site. It has been a good few months since we decided to take an iterative approach to this and ironically, we never got round to doing even that. As Andy put it, we’ve finally broken the four year deadlock.
The work here at the moment is loads of fun as we’re pretty much designing on the fly and I’m even getting some of my front-end chops back by checking in code. I did some production work on setting up a style guide for the next iteration, which should be live early next week.
Along with Ben’s BBC1 debut, Projecteo continues to see the most work on the product side, as we gear up to launch for Kickstarter backers. This week consisted of a few updates to the purchase flow and a little work on messaging. I need to spend a little more time on that next week. We also need to decide on some form of packaging pretty soon.
Foldable.me and StickyGram both had test shots for their upcoming Valentine’s Day campaigns. We’re pretty much there on composition and we’ll be looking to do final shots next week. Things are also progressing on Summer Chimney and we now have sharing of quiz results live.
A busy week on new business as well. Noam and I followed up on a couple of new conversations and I have a few calls with a high chance of turning into something solid.
A busy second week in the Studio, which saw us put the new capacity system in place. Feedback from the team has been positive, I think everyone has benefited from the increased focus. Matt has been on floating, which meant he was taking care of the bits and pieces that did not warrant a full week of capacity. His week has been a little fragmented, we’ll need to think about how we can give designers on floating some focus also.
We paused design work on Cucuta, as we are a little ahead of development. Keep up guys! Tom’s been off snowboarding this week, so I’ve been working a little on Puno with Alice and Paul in his absence. The first workshop seems to be a success and we have positive validation on a few assumptions. We have another workshop next week and we hope to undertake a few more user testing sessions.
Thomas has been working with me on Mint Properties. We put together a plan for Iteration I, which we’ll be working on next week. We should have something to show very soon! Incidentally, we’re also drafting a joint talk proposal on a few things we have been talking on recently, mainly metrics driven product development and designing for continuous deployment.
We have been trying to settle on Valentine’s Day promos for both Foldable.me and StickyGram. Despite my protests it was madness to do so in the second week of January, the teams have me convinced it’s not. Sandeep has a sweet idea for StickyGram and we came up with something a bit more cheeky on Foldable.me. That one should be fun.
Nikki and Andrew worked on a new reveal feature on Summer Chimney, which gives people a wine profile at the end of the quiz, along with a few examples of wines you might receive. We simplified the feature to something we can ship this week and indeed, deployed it on Friday. We’re going to split test it next week to get some validation on the proposition and go from there.
I had good catch ups with Ben and Steve on Projecteo. Ben’s excited about the first bulk shipment, which will be heading to New York soon. Steve has been progressing on the visual design and is pretty much complete for Iteration I. I’m going to do some work on tweaks to the site and copy with the guys next week. The whole team will also be bouncing ideas for what the homepage could be. I’m hoping that’s where we can do something a little special.
As far as new business, I’ve been working with Noam on a pitch we are giving next week. Steve has been working with Andy and Adam on a new thing for Channel 4, which quickly gained momentum. It looks like we’ll be kicking off on that next week. Onwards!
The first week of 2013 may have been a short one but we were not short of things to do. Work on Cucuta continued with increased steam as we gear up to launch at the end of January. Tom and Matt have been working through a few final design bits and we generally look to be on target for launch.
Puno also saw a lot of work, as Alice and Tom continued the research and testing work we kicked off in December. I’m pitching in where I can be of help. We are hoping to power through this work, but a few shifting dates for workshops mean the timeline may extend.
A busy week on the product side as well. We launched a month-long photo competition for StickyGram, which after a few teething problems Kaye quickly jumped on is now running smoothly. We’re seeing around 800-900 entries a day, it’s fantastic to see how well it looks to be received by the community. We also set out a January promo for Foldable.me and discussed campaigns in the upcoming months. In December, we have worked on some new clothes and we are gearing up to launch those during a certain fashion event in February. I’m looking forward to us execute the campaign around that one. Nikki and Andrew did some planning on Summer Chimney, which will see some work next week.
Projecteo design and development work looks like it’s continuing full steam ahead. As more of Steve’s visual design gets implemented, it’s exciting to see the digital side of the product coming together. The photo picker is going to be a delighter on this one.
Tom and I had a good chat over breakfast on our aims for the Studio in 2013. A new year always feels like a blank slate, so it’s exciting to talk about what we can achieve. Over the break, he’s been working on a new way of allocating capacity which aims to give designers more focus and reduce the overhead attached to capacity management. We did some back and forth on that and put a pilot in place to start next week. It looks set to be a better system all around.
I seemed to mostly be in meetings, but continued to work on Mint Properties and did some work on new business, both to forward a few conversations from December and on new stuff with Noam. We’ve got a good pipeline and there should be a couple of new exciting projects on our plate soon, which is a nice way to kick off the year.
