A user experience design and web development blog from web studio, Front

Researching Content Management Experiences

2010-07-07T15:03:00+00:00

To anyone who has ever struggled to maintain their site using a Content Management System (CMS): you’re not alone, we feel your pain.

We’re doing some research into the user experience of content management systems, so if you’ve ever been involved in managing a website, we’d love to get your insight. Click here to take the short survey!

Front Recognised as an Investor in People

2010-07-06T09:43:13+00:00

We say this a lot, but there is nothing more important to Front than its team. We take a lot of care and attention when we build sites for our clients; drawing on a diverse and highly-skilled team. Everything that we do is founded on the hard work of our team, and we recognise that we can only be successful as a company by putting our people first.

A Preview of Web2 San Francisco, 2010

2010-05-03T09:34:22+00:00

Creativity, innovative new ideas and the best thinking about the web are the essence of our work at Front. That’s why I’m heading to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco today; here’s a sneak preview of what I’ll be getting up to while I’m there.

I was lucky enough to overview of last year’s web2 expo, and Paul May’s summary from 2008. We keep coming back to events like this because we believe in the value of getting out there. Learning from the world’s brightest experts - and sharing our ideas with others - is what keeps us fresh. There’s really no substitute.

Roundup of 2009 - An Amazing Year at Front

2009-12-23T12:42:32+00:00

This has been a simply tremendous year at Front; we’ve grown and developed as a team in ways that I’m truly proud of. We’ve invested a lot of time and effort in learning new things, attended and spoken at a tonne of events, worked hard to delight our clients - and as a result we’ve launched better work than ever before.

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.

A Well Deserved Christmas Break

2009-12-23T11:34:50+00:00

We’re looking forward to the Christmas break and some hard earned festivities, so the studio will be closed from 24th December reopening the 4th January.

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 xmas2009@designbyfront.com. 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!

Build Conference Recap

2009-11-06T17:46:33+00:00

Build Conference was always an ambitious idea. What would happen if we could bring the world’s best web professionals to Belfast for a conference? Would it bring curious visitors to the city? Would it sell any tickets? Would it have a positive effect on the local industry?

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:

Guerrilla Usability Testing Workshop with Andy Budd

2009-11-05T10:56:24+00:00

Andy Budd is a designer with Brighton-based web design and user experience studio Clearleft. He was in Belfast this week to give a workshop on Guerrilla Usability Testing as part of the Build conference, which continues today.

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.

Cross Creative - Session 3 Recap

2009-10-23T13:22:37+00:00

In the last couple of years we’ve invested heavily in training and developing the team. Sometimes this involves classroom-based training, but as with a lot of things in our industry it’s also about the direction, help and energy we get from our peers and mentors in web design, user experience, technology, business and media.

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.

Front go to the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgniter Conference 2009 in Leiden, Netherlands

2009-10-22T07:02:27+00:00

In 2009 I’ve been lucky enough to attend design-centred conferences such as Future of Web Design London, and the FOWD Tour in Belfast; now the time has come to satisfy my developer urges for two days at the first Expression Engine and Code Igniter conference in Leiden, Netherlands. I’ll be reporting back throughout the conference, but here’s a summary of what I’m looking forward to.

Why am I Going? ExpressionEngine is a fantastic Content Management System that we use many of our projects here at FRONT. Having been through the spectrum of off the shelf content management systems (and having been mostly disappointed/frustrated) we’ve found ExpressionEngine to be a robust, functionally rich CMS that makes simple things simple and more difficult things eminently possible. It’s a system that lets us focus on doing what’s unique to each project. The first ExpressionEngine/CodeIgniter Conference in Leiden, Netherlands is a must-attend event for us. I’ve been asked to travel to EECI2009 to learn from the experts, relay this information to the team so that we can all keep our skills razor sharp and so we can continue to offer great work to our clients.

Event Summary: Refresh Belfast, May 2009

2009-05-20T08:18:54+00:00

What could be better: web design and free beer! We’d like to thank everyone attended Refresh Belfast on Monday; it was great to get a chance to meet old friends as well as to new people, and talk about what we do. Belfast is home to so many people who care about creating a better web - so it was nice to be a part of that growing community.

Special thanks to Andy McMillan for all his organisational efforts (and to everyone on the Front team who helped too). We’ve published some images on Flickr and there’s a highlights video and slides from each talk too. Feel free to share your own images or your own thoughts in the comments below - feedback is particularly welcome, and you can rate / comment on our talks via SpeakerRate. There’s some good buzz about Refresh on Twitter and you can follow @refreshbelfast to keep up to date with future happenings. Win a £100 Amazon Voucher Sharing our expertise helps us all deliver better work, and the enthusiasm from everyone who came was heartening. We want the idea of Refresh to spread, so to encourage people to blog about it and build interest in future events we’re running a draw for a £100 Amazon voucher. All you need to do is blog about the event, include a link back to this summary and add a comment below to let us know. We’ll put all the names into a hat and one lucky soul will be getting their Amazon voucher next week. We’re nice like that, see.