FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

Perhaps the end of the decade is making me reflective, but there has been so much happening that its hard to believe its only 12 months since I welcomed 2009. Time has flown.

The Front Team

Since the start of the year we’ve been working towards the Investors in People standard (and hope to have good news here soon).  Jamie, and Paul both passed their Prince2 Practitioner exams, so that we now have 5 professionally qualified project managers available - with the rest of the team completing their Prince2 Foundation exams too.

We’ve welcomed Lee Braiden and David Hughes onto the team along with internal promotions for Adrian (now officially our senior developer) and Paul May (now our user experience consultant).

Romance has been in the air; I got married this year too (as did three other Fronties - but not to eachother). Being able to switch off my mobile phone for a month and leave things to the team here was a sign of the way the company has grown and matured. 

The Front Studio & Website

The studio has had a bit of a well deserved face-lift with new collaboration rooms (see more images of the studio on Flickr) and some old kit sent off to Kenya.

The front website is still very much a work in progress, although we’re slowly getting there with a summary portfolio  and new careers page.  We’ve also written plenty of articles for the blog this year, including my Why Great Design is About Problem Solving and Paul May’s Smart Procurement: Buying Online Expertise.

We’ve started publishing content elsewhere on the web, with a great selection of photos on Flickr and videos on Vimeo.  Best video of the year has to go to Paul May for his most innovative use of a fruit metaphor:

We worked on several potential ideas for 4ip with the help of the incredibly talented Ewan McIntosh. We’d like to wish Ewan all the best as he leaves Channel4 after doing a sterling job to reshape and rethink public service broadcasting.

We’re still here to help, but will have some temporary procedures you should keep note of should you need us for a support issue.

We’ll only be accepting support issues from customers with service level agreements.  As the studio is closed, we’ll only be accepting issues via email - so if you have a priority support issue during this time please email . 

We’ll let you know that we’ve got your email and what we can do to help. (We can’t guarantee a response if you post on basecamp or phone the studio – so please make sure you email the support address).

Apart from that – have a very Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you all again next year!

Well, yes. From our point of view Build was a complete success. The reaction on Twitter is a proof that we weren’t the only ones:

Andy brought the participants through a well structured workshop on why and how to run effective usability testing sessions. Using examples from web design and computer game design, Andy showed how it makes eminent financial sense to iteratively improve the quality of products based on user testing - a little testing at the beginning of your project with a small number of people can catch the vast majority of issues that would otherwise be experienced after release; damaging the perception of your product and brand.

With this in mind, I’m very proud to be part of Cross Creative; a 9 month programme that brings people together from the media, web and gaming industries to learn, share experiences and perspectives, develop new ideas and form partnerships.

This month’s session was themed around Collaboration and featured talks by Yvonne Dunn of Pinsent Masons (OutLaw), Steve Lawson of Sleepydog, David Thomson of Denki, and Luke Barrett of ThoughtWorks.