With the May 26th deadline looming for the United Kingdom to comply with the European Union’s Cookie Law, the internet is buzzing with concerns over what this means for all those affected as fines for non-compliancy are set to run as high as £500,000. While numerous sources for information are available online, here are some of the highlights.
Here’s April’s Monthly Muse, highlighting beautiful things or ideas we’ve seen across the digital world in the last month. This month features a guest author from Strawberryfrog Amsterdam… drumroll… Mr. Ben Culpin. Thanks for contributing Ben!
via Tom Keane
With the Olympics coming to East London this year, Ikea have decided to build a village with all of its principles in mind: Will you have to put your house together with an allen key? Will it look good for a couple of years and then start to fall apart? Source: Co.Exist
There’s a lot happening in the world of mobile and tech in general. Here are some of our fav links.
via Anna Sardini
Anna’s comments: The average worker at the iPhone plant in China would have to work three months to afford an iPhone. So what is the level of ‘injustice’ that you are prepared to put up with for your technology? Source: Co.Design
Many aspects of our lives exist in the digital realm. This takes the form of our personal content. That is, our photographs, email, favorite music and movies, the contacts in our phones, frequently travelled routes and more. This is all content that we are actively documenting and responsible for taking care of. It is content that is meaningful to us. It is content that we have interacted with and it is content that forms the record of our own invaluable personal history.
If you are anything like me, for the most part, your personal history is digitally documented and stored across accounts on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google, Pinterest, WordPress, iTunes, iPhoto, Spotify, Instagram, the list goes on.
Photo taken using the iPhone 4 stock camera and edited with Camera+ and Adobe Photoshop Express (photographer: me)
Photography has come a long way since its beginnings, as more than 250 million photos are uploaded per day to Facebook alone (source Facebook statistics). Smartphones have become so popular that even professional photographer Annie Liebovitz recommends the iPhone as the camera to buy:
“When friends ask famed photographer Annie Leibovitz what camera they should buy, she suggests the iPhone. Appearing on NBC’s new Rock Center news program, Leibovitz suggested the iPhone because it is ‘the snapshot camera of today’, saying it is ‘accessible and easy’” (source MacRumors).
The artistry of photography has also evolved significantly as photo editing applications are available for free or for pocket change, and are very easy to learn and use. You can see some stunning examples of how far you can really go with these applications on iPhone Art, a collaboration site dedicated to iPhone photography. Continue reading
A good deal of companies maintain a Facebook page as part of their web presence, for marketing, hiring new employees, even for customer support. It’s an excellent medium to interact with users, both to release information quickly as well as to receive feedback. The following are a few tips on how to increase your user interaction:
Make your profile noticeable, this is what your audience sees first
Your profile pic
“Profile pictures matter. The site feature that attracted most attention on Klout, Facebook and StumbleUpon was the profile photo.” Source Mashable: Here’s How People Look at Your Facebook Profile — Literally
Written by Frank Gaine
As outlined in our last blog entry, we reviewed over twenty automotive and motorcycle mobile websites in Europe and the US. We also had a look at the native apps (available through the app store) that these manufacturers provided. An interesting trend has emerged – the move away from native app towards more capable mobile websites.
Mobile websites versus Desktop websites
It seems that fewer and fewer manufacturers are prepared to tolerate their users muddling through the full desktop version of their websites while using mobile phones. This is the case even though some of these sites perform quite well on the small screen (if you count the need to zoom and scroll horizontally apart). Instead, most provide bespoke sites for mobile browsers. In general these mobile web sites can be described as scaled downversions of the desktop website in terms of content, functionality and needless to say physical dimension.
Mobile web versus Native App
Inevitably the question is asked whether or not to create a sumptuous mobile app whose content can be curated and that can perform morequickly. The answer all depends on what you need it to do. Unless you have to rely on functionality that only an app can perform then the answer seems to be – build a mobile website. Mobile websites generally cost less to build, need less specialized skills to put together and are quicker to market.
MediaCatalyst recently carried out a review of over twenty automotive and motorcycle mobile websites in Europe and the US. The insights of our review brought up some interesting trends and design practices that we would like to share with you and invite commentary.
Visual Design and Navigation
In terms of visual design approach, sites fall into two broad categories. There are the experiential sites and there are the more functional sites (Audi USA/Vespa and Renault/VW respectively). The former presents larger, more lavish imagery whereas the latter focuses more on presenting comprehensive and obvious navigation that aims to get the user to where they want to go as soon as possible.
Sites now offer dynamic navigation brought to you by the wonders of HTML5 and CSS 3. This is where additional navigation options are shown in neatly expanding or collapsing accordions or where navigation appears almost immediately from the sides of the page.
MediaCatalyst has been working with Sony’s in-house development team at London Studios since 2009, joining in a dynamic partnership to develop a web presence to showcase such titles as Killzone 2 and SingStar, plus involvement with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe’s Digital Comics in 2008. Because MediaCatalyst is known for expertise in integrating game data with a live site, the two entities began working together on their DanceStar Party game site.
DanceStar Party is much like SingStar, the hugely successful karaoke series initially launched in 2004, the new addition to the family being focused on dance rather than singing. The user can use a hand-held controller in conjunction with the web cam to mirror moves shown on the screen and be scored on personal performance, plus be able to compete with others across the digital platform. Continue reading
When MediaCatalyst were asked to redesign the World Press Photo website we were thrilled to take on such an exciting project. Since partnering with World Press Photo for the first time in 2004, MediaCatalyst have always shared a passion for Photojournalism and it’s power to Inspire Understanding of the world around us. Being lead designer, I knew this shared passion would be the key to redesigning their new website and bringing the brand to life online.
From the beginning of the project I was aware that close collaboration within the MediaCatalyst team (IA, UX design, technical strategists and strategists) as well as with the client would be essential for success. This process began from the onset with intensive interactive workshops and regular working ideation sessions throughout the project. This was an essential part of building a solid working foundation for all areas of the site, such as UX and CMS. There were many areas to be explored as part of a team, with everyone working in the same direction. During the design phase we encountered 3 main design challenges, working with large amounts of CMS content, showcasing images on the homepage and presenting contextual information throughout the site.
How to present CMS managed images
