Carte Blanche Greetings is one of the world’s largest and best known greeting companies. Their anchor brand, Tatty Teddy, is one of the world’s best loved characters, and is soon to be joined by a range of new blue nose friends; expanding the Carte Blanche product range significantly.

FRONT was given the challenge to create an immersive online experience to support the launch of ”My Blue Nose Friends” - an experience that needed to be sensitive to the existing popularity of Tatty Teddy while also showcasing the cute new range of characters. The site needed to draw on the skills and talents of the Carte Blanche art studio who create the core artistic assets for the company’s products (and who are incredibly talented it has to be said). FRONT also needed to understand and be sensitive to the huge and loyal Tatty Teddy fanbase; tailoring artwork, language and functionality to captivate these key users.

FRONT worked closely with Carte Blanche to understand their business case, their users and their core brand. We then worked closely with the Carte Blanche Greetings art studio to create an intricate animated sequence that tells the story of the Blue Nose Friends and enhances the story of Tatty Teddy as well. The animation sequence is wrapped in a cute, friendly and useful website which encourages users to download and share content, allowing them to take part in this huge step forward in the world of Tatty Teddy.

The site will be rolled out over several phases, with more chapters of animation and further layers of functionality being added to support the launch of the products in Summer 2008. We’re keeping the exact details of the next phases under wraps for now; but you should visit mybluenosefriends.com to see the start of this very special journey for Carte Blanche Greetings.

Working on this project has given us a warm fuzzy feeling inside; we hope you enjoy it!

Matt Mullenweg of Automattic talked about new developments with his incredibly popular Wordpress blogging engine, including new photo-responsive themes and a move towards automatically suggested content on Wordpress.com. Matt Cutts of Google closed the Keynote with an incredibly dull talk on how Google approaches the problem of sites that try to cheat the PageRank system.

I have been so incredibly impressed by the guys from Adaptive Path that I had to go to see the talk given by Dave Verba on Agile Development. Dave is a co-author of the new book “Subject to Change” written with the Adaptive Path team. He gave some good background on the Agile development methodology; and in the questions afterwards he really got down to nuts and bolts on topics like cost control and documentation. A very, very useful session.

After three more semi-technical talks on High Performance Websites (Steven Souders - Google), oAuth (Scott Fleckenstein - Get Satisfactioj) and Casual Privacy (Kellan Elliott-McCrea - Flickr, whose slides self-destructed minutes before his talk) we were all done and dusted.

What a week. I’ve had the great fortune to meet and talk to the best people working on the web, and they have been kind to pass on their own knowledge to all of us attending the Expo. An incredibly useful and enjoyable week. Thanks to all who organised the trip from InvestNI and Enterprise Ireland. See you in 2009? :)

Dan Catt of Flickr gave an entertaining and somewhat baffling talk on the spatial algorithms used by Flickr Maps. Dan described Flickr’s approach to indexing and positioning tens of millions of photos. I won’t/can’t go into too much detail on this one; but it involves maths, clever people and a whacking-great database.

Moving away from the nerdy to the human; I went to see Thor Muller and Lane Becker of GetSatisfaction.com give a talk called ”Customer Service is the New Marketing”. Using some great case studies and a “concierge” model (just like in a hotel) they described how every interaction with a customer can be used as an opportunity to build a lasting relationship and create passionate advocates.

Adaptive Path’s Bryan Mason and Sarah Nelson gave a talk which was, for me anyway, one of the highlights of the whole week called ”10 Tools for Managing a Creative Environment” where they desctibed how Adaptive Path’s research into orchestras, theatre companies, screen writers and other creative professions has influenced the way they manage their own practice. This was a huge opportunity to learn from the best in the business; and the talk didn’t disappoint. The level of thought and detail that Adaptive Path bring to bear on projects is admirable and frightening :)

So, that was all for Thursday. We adjourned to the most fashionable hotel in SF, the “W” for the Ireland Connects event. There was some schmoozing and shaking of hands, and the Irish companies looking for VC came with shiny faces and elevator pitches at the ready. I hope they all came out of the event with useful contacts :)

Thermo will allow designers to create rich internet applications from wireframes or designs, while also producing clean code for developers to work with. It’s an interesting concept which could really bridge the gap between members of a design/development team - but part of me thinks that it could also lead to some bad behaviour; in essence it’s so easy to make something dance around on the screen, you might as well. As with all web creation tools; the who and why will still be more important. The how will just be easier. I am officially all RIAd out for this week.

Matt Jones (Dopplr) and Tom Coates (Fire Eagle) gave a great talk called “Polite, Pertinent...and Pretty” where they discussed the development of ubiquitous computing and personal informatics services. In a world where even your shoes can gather data about you, how should/can we make use of information to enhance our lives?

I was then really lucky to join Matt Jones and a lot of other extremely clever people in a small group discussion on data portability and online identity. Even if I was to summarise the conversation here it would take a solid hour - but suffice to say that we didn’t solve the problems of how people represent themselves flexibly and safely online. Maybe tomorrow.

Erika Hall from Mule Design presented a session on writing and constructing copy for interfaces; which is a topic very close to my heart. Writing clear, consise, relevant text to support the user journey is not something that comes across as sexy or “web 2.0”, but it can be the difference between an interface works and is delightful, and one that is a chore to use. Two thumbs up for this session; especially the excellent examples of how not to write for the web :)

Gavin Bell (Nature) gave a cool talk on the psychology of web design. It’s not a subject that really lends itself to a 30 minute talk, but he did a good job in front of a ridiculously big crowd.

After hours I met up with people from Federated Media; representing “Team Ireland” at the Yahoo Brickhouse event and a party at the Adaptive Path offices. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it.

The highlight of the day for me was definitely the workshop with Todd Wilkens of Adaptive Path on Experience Driven strategy. Adaptive Path are world leaders in applying user-centred design to business and technology problems. Todd brought the group through some clear and articulate historical context; showing how our understanding of the way people work and live has changed over the last two centuries.

The workshop basically boiled down to some very useful, practical and intuitively simple ideas on developing products and services; namely that you should *really* understand your users (who are just people - not aliens) and their motivations (fears, aspirations, lives, complexities) when you are trying to design products and services that are of use to them. This is an idea that FRONT applies when helping clients build web applications; but is a difficult process - the clarity of the workshop really helped me understand where we can improve the way we work on projects.

So, a great opening to the week - today alone justified the long flight and was a real learning experience. I’ll be updating this blog item all week - so check back for more. 

Photos on Flickr

The website is intended to be a rich and immersive place where children can catch up with the inhabitants of the Sesame Tree, Potto and Hilda. Witty scripts and puppets with Northern Irish accents makes for a light-hearted experience where learning is fun. Although we have also included some super support material for grown-ups, We suspect you are never too old to enjoy collecting minibeasts:)

We had buckets of fun with this project and are proud that it was written, recorded, designed and animated right here in Belfast.

Launch BBC Sesame Tree, or let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

The right to scroll is an age-old argument (well, an age in GUI terms...), and one that is likely to continue into the future so long as the volume of our content eclipses the display area available. For the mean-time we need to take a balanced view and begin with the most important factor – context.

There is no Paradigm

The reason why there is no cut and dried approach to scrolling is that the environment in which the scrollable area is to appear really needs to be evaluated along with the apparent need to avoid scrolling. By ‘environment’ I am referring to ¹page design, ²the display device being used and ³the user goals that need to be considered.

1. Page design

   Sometimes the design of a page can make need to scroll more obvious – and therefor a percieved hassle. For example, if a web page has a short column width for article content this leads to more scrolling (especially if you prefer to turn your text size up within the browser).  A 50% reduction in column width can equal 100-120% growth in scrolling effort in order to get to the bottom of the article. The BBC’s archaic news layout has long been a culprit and source of some pretty athletic scrolling. Of course, having to choose between a design with lots of scrolling or butchering your content isn’t an easy one.

2. The display device being used

   The description for the area beyond where we need to scroll (commonly the bottom of the browser) has been affectionately re-purposed from print, to web design as “below the fold”.  But there the similarities end, as the dynamic aspect of the web throws many problems our way than would trouble a newspaper typesetter.

   Right now we are seeing a race to adapt old technology (such as TV and mobile phones) and develop new ones (such as multi-touch devices) that can interface with and display internet pages. If we remember that there is already a veriety of accepted display settings being used on our PC monitors, we can assume that the task of guessing how a web page is likely to be viewed is becoming increasingly difficult. This is a challenge for the modern web designer who must bare in mind that content may end up on a 2 inch portrait screen or a 42 inch widescreen.

3. User Goals

   The purpose of the web page of course, has a huge effect on whether or not the page should scroll. For example it is now accepted that the “comments” form for a blog article follows the main article body (you have to scroll to get there). Which is fine because wanting to comment on an article assumes you need to read it first.
   
   However, if these two items where switched around in favour of promoting user comments, the likely result would be few comments due to some users not realising that there is an article to be read. This may seam obvious, but you may be surprised by some of the mistakes made by web designers who do not consider the user.

OK. So now we have an idea of the factors that may shape the need for scrolling, what about best practice…?

The Evidence

Let’s look at the typical argument against scrolling:

If you ask any web user if they like to scroll they will say “no”.

This is true. Many studies have been carried out that show that the vast number of users who are asked this question will answer with a definite “no”. However, a bit like climbing the stairs to go to the bathroom, the average person will not think about whether or not they enjoyed the journey or found it a barrier to their goal unless asked directly. From a research point of view, this makes asking the question a bit of a red herring and therefore quizzing users directly is not likely to get you very far.

By studying exactly how the web is used, rather than how people say they use it, some researchers have come up with some interesting findings.

ClickTale precisely track user’s mouse movements and navigation patterns through clever online tools they have developed. Looking at aggregated usage statistics from around 120,000 web pages they have been able to establish the following:

91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar.
76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent.
22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom.

While studying the way in which users behave on the Cognos and New York Times websites, Jared Spool suggests that users are perfectly happy to scroll as long as the design makes it obvious that this is what they are expected to do. The responsibility for making this scrolling intention apparent is ofcourse, with the web designer.

Not Going Anywhere Just Yet

So, whether we like it or not, scrolling is still going to be an issue for some time. As long as we are open-minded enough to evaluate the need for scrolling on a case by case basis I think we should be able to keep MOST users happy.

As for me? On balance - I think we should all try not to get too hung up on the technical aspects of the scrolling issue and try to remember Milissa Tarquini’s simple instruction “If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end”.

And I have one final thought for you

If you have enjoyed this article enough to read this far, you almost definitely HAVE scrolled. And despite spending several minutes reading about the subject of scrolling, I bet you didn’t think about it ONCE in context of this page while getting to this very sentence. Or did you?

So, what do we think smaller screens, like the iPod Touch/iPhone mean for web developers and those commissioning work for the web? Here are a few thoughts:

1. The size of the iPod Touch/iPhone is probably going to be the prototype form-factor for mobile devices for a long time to come (2-3 years). iPod Touch is light enough and and small enough to fit in your pocket with practically all the device’s surface given over to the screen. In short; this is as big as you’d want a mobile device to get - unless you want an ultramobile PC (and nobody really seems to).
2. The experience of surfing the web on the iPod Touch/iPhone is the closest thing you’ll find to a large-screen (e.g. desktop) experience but because of the screen size and the need to zoom, scroll, drag, pinch your way around the page the best websites to use are those who have put a lot of thought into information architecture and priorisation of functionality. Basically, if you want to fulfull your users goals through excellent functionality quickly and simply the way you interact with iPod/iPhone and mobile devices should be taken into consideration.
3. When a website is built properly the difference between website, web application and software just disappears when you are not sitting at a desk. Users will quickly come to expect the same clean and quick functionality from websites as they do from excellent, functional software. What does this mean? Websites need to offer quick, intuitive navigation and great information architecture. Interfaces need to be tactile and cut straight to the most important features and functionality. It’s not about the size of the screen, it’s about getting your website to fit seamlessly into the users experience of his/her mobile device.

Recognising that there is a great deal of general interest in both the Titanic wreck (especially here in Belfast) and the science of deep sea exploration, we created a clever media player that displays related links, video and images from elsewhere on the BBC (such as BBC 2’s Coast) as each video clip unfolds. To add to the fun there is also a 6 part quiz to see if those boffins out there were paying attention to the footage. For users who may be using the footage for study, we have also provided a ‘ship’s log’ where notes on individual video clips can be saved.

Although we had fun designing and building the supporting features on this website, we were also keen to keep things simple and not lose sight of the very sensible view that on the web ‘content is king’.

Let us know what you think!