all posts tagged “design”
The Story of Building the New Common Craft
Posted by: leelefever on December 12, 2011- 10:24am
Categories: design, development, history, New Common Craft, story, website
A few months ago, we released a completely new and different Common Craft. This is the story of the big ideas that drove the change and getting the website designed and built.
- Will Common Craft videos still be available for free on the website?
- What features will only be available to members?
- Do different levels of membership come with different features?
- What are the required features for the project?
- How will pricing work?
- Website Front End: Drupal 7
- Website Back End: PHP/MySQL
- Video API/Host: Wistia
- ECommerce Front End: Recurly
- Merchant services: Authorize.net
- Email services: Mail Chimp
- SSL Security: Digicert
- Josh Kopel and Jared Stoneberg now run a company that specializes in Drupal development. It’s called Number 10 Web Company, based in Seattle.
- Jay Fienberg and Anastasia Fuller run Juxtaprose, which designs and develops websites.
- Wistia is going strong and becoming a standard for business video sharing.
- Dan Shafer is a freelance designer and instructor at the Cornish Design School in Seattle.
- Tony Wright recently started Tomo Labs and launched TouchBase, a calendar app for iOS.
For more,
- The guys at Number 10 have written about the project from their perspective
- Wistia has also shared their thoughts on the project and our model.
We've re-thought our website from the ground up and soon you'll see the all the changes we're making. For now though, I want to highlight a few things that make a big difference.
1. A Focus on the Business. This may be the best way to explain how the focus has changed:
- The current Common Craft site says "WE HAVE A BLOG - and we sell videos"
- The *new* Common Craft site says "WE SELL VIDEOS - and we have a blog"
It's true - the new site is more closely aligned with the goal of finding, viewing, purchasing and downloading videos.
2. Simplified Video Organization. Our videos used to appear in two places, depending on their version: "free" or "presentation quality." We've consolidated the display of videos one a single page. This means:
- No More "Common Craft Store" - Instead of trying to attach a video store to the site, we're integrating the purchase experience into the pages where the videos appear.
- No More "Common Craft Show"- The "Common Craft Show" was simply a way to organize the free versions of our videos. Now higher-quality versions of the videos will appear in a single place on the site.
3. Videos in 5 Languages
We're taking a big step to internationalize our videos. For the first time, 10 of our videos (including the Social Media 9 Pack) will be available with voice-overs in 5 languages (English, French, German, [Brazilian] Portuguese and Spanish.) These videos will be available for viewing, purchase and download.
4. Organization by Major Topics
Our video library will be organized into four major topics, which outline our direction in the future. The topics are: Green, Money, Society and Technology.
5. Overall Look and Feel
Our goal was to make the site look and feel like our videos. We've integrated our artwork, used a white background and tried to make the experience as focused as our videos.
Of course there are many more changes, but I think these points capture some of the big ideas that drive the new design. More soon...
What's Missing From This Sign at Airport Security?
Posted by: leelefever on December 7, 2008- 4:00pm
Categories: communication, design, offtopic, signs, travel
Me (to the friendly TSA ID checker): Do I have to remove my laptop computer?
TSA Employee: Yes, you do.
Me: It's not listed on the sign
TSA Employee: Well, it's the most important thing to remove.
Me: But not important enough to be on the sign?
TSA: It's supposed to be on there, the people that printed it messed up (rolls eyes).
The TSA folks have hard jobs and I appreciate what they do. However, it doesn't exactly give me a safe feeling when the instructions for moving through the line efficiently are "messed up" and no on seems to care.
As you may have seen, the Common Craft Store has a section for merchandise that is looking pretty minimal at the moment. At the same time, we often get requests for t-shirts. Hopefully, we're about to solve this problem.
We've created a new "assignment" on a website called Pixish. Using Pixish, we can describe an image we need and have a community of creative people submit their ideas. The creator of the winning images win "rewards" - often money, links, etc.
We're hoping to identify 2-3 images that we can put on t-shirts and other fun things that are offered in our store. If you're creative and want to participate, please do. The details are here.
We're offering $200US to the winners, plus some link-love from this blog. The assignment ends on September 15th.
What would you like to see on a Common Craft t-shirt?
For a while now I've been fascinated by the idea of creating a single place (other than Facebook) that brings together all the things I do on the Web. That is why I created the zeitgeist page here on Common Craft - to have that single place to bring it together. At the same time, I've had a blog at leelefever.com that has become a pain to keep updated - I needed a replacement.
Recently I discovered Tumblr, which is a super-simple and lightweight way to have a blog with a minimum of effort.
Here's the deal. I blog here, I put photos on Flickr, I put videos on You Tube and updates Twitter, the list goes on. Anyway, Tumblr takes the RSS feeds from these sources and turns them into blog posts. This was a perfect replacement for my old blog - it is always updated.
Further, Tumblr makes it super-simple for me to add a new photo, video, quote, blog post, or whatever, via a handy-dandy bookmarklet. It's fast.
The Tumblr posts don't allow comments and there are only a handful of features, but they appear to be the right ones.
So, I've redirected leelefever.com to leelefever.tumblr.com - which will provide a constant flow of Lee-related bloggified fun from this point forward.
After 3+ years, Common Craft has a new design and a new platform (Drupal) - Yay! We hope you like it, we sure do.
Please kick the tires and give it a test drive while it's still got that showroom sheen. I'm sure there are some kinks to work out of the system and we'd really appreciate it if you'd let us know so we can fix 'em. Just leave a comment below. Any feedback is welcome.
Over the next little while we'll be tweaking things and posting some content that will represent where Common Craft is headed. Until then, I hope we'll hear from you.
Congrats to my friends and fellow Seattle guys Blue Flavor for getting their new company off the ground. From their site:
We're four guys with a zeal for simple, clear and effective communication and creating lasting interactive experiences.
We’re big picture thinkers, Web and mobile architects, user advocates, writers, speakers and well-respected experts. We're also fairly regular folks who think technology should work for people, not the other way around.
Blue Flavor is: Brian Fling, D. Keith Robinson, Matt May, Nick Finck. See the bio page.
We're expecting big things! No pressure! I dig the little blue leaf icon.
Boxes and Arrows: Building a Vision of Design Success
Since I started to learn a little more about Contextual Inquiry/Ethonography, it seems like it is coming up every where.
Though this article does not mention the terms above, it describes the techniques as a viable way to build and promote a vision for a project.
I find it useful to use Peter Senge’s Five Why’s. This is a very simple technique in which you ask why, and when you get a response, you ask why again. It helps you move from specific issues to uncovering larger underlying problems.
For example, let’s say you are the head of user research:
Me: Why do you think we should do a redesign?
You: Because people can’t find anything.
Me: Why can’t they find anything?
You: The navigation isn’t intuitive.
Me: Why isn’t it intuitive?
You: We didn’t do any user research when we designed it, just usability after.
Me: Why is that?
You: Well, our budget was cut…
Me: Oh? (which is what I say when I’m tired of “why�?…)
You: Well, the company doesn’t seem to value getting user feedback.From this short conversation, I’ve learned several things. The user researcher thinks findability is a key problem, and he thinks research would help, and he feels we don’t invest in it. I can return to any of the places where I asked way, and take a different branch to find out more.
As I write about this subject, I wonder if readers are asking themselves: What does this have to do with weblogs and online communities?
My answer is that business-based weblogs and online communities must fulfill a real need to be truly successful.
As I learn about contextual inquiry, I'm discovering a way to understand that need- a way to get to the real issue and problems that need to be solved. Otherwise design decisions may be driven by speculation and assumptions which may waste valuable time and money in the long run.
This interview with Peter Coughlan, by Mark Hurst of GoodExperience.com, provides a good look at the "broken" state of hospitals and how his company IDEO works with hospitals to improve.
Having a Masters in Health Administration, I hold this stuff close to heart. I think there are incredible opportunities to help hospitals improve and I like the way Peter describes their process.
Ordinarily the hospital spends a year or two in committee, create what they think is the perfect team process, and then goes out and tries it and fails. At IDEO we say, "fail early to succeed sooner." So after a half hour bringing into the field, we see how colleagues use it. Then we come back and revise it. So we get rapid prototyping in place. Previously it was death by committee.
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