The final four
Posted: November 29, 2012 Filed under: Content, design, Knowledge transfer, web design | Tags: blogging, presentation, stakeholders Leave a commentAfter three long weeks of waiting, the tenders came flooding in. We had an amazing response – 37 white hot digital agencies submitted a proposal for redesigning the Nesta site. Me and Sara spent the weekend, Monday and Tuesday whittling them down to a shortlist of 4. Now we’re heading into interview territory, so I can’t say any more until we’ve finished and chosen our 1 supplier. I’ll let you know…
In the meantime I’ve been keeping Nesta in the loop as much as possible about what’s happening. A common mistake I’ve found on these kind of projects is disappearing into your own little world, and forgetting about your main sponsor – the organisation you’re in.
So with that in mind I presented a high level view of the project so far – why we’re doing it, what it’s trying to achieve, and a glimpse of the sunlit uplands where they will all be able to publish to the site.
If you’ve got a spare 5 minutes, have a flick through – it’s without notes, so it’ll be a bit like listening to a silent movie:
One of the main ideas was borrowed from a really powerful talk given by a guy called Simon Sinek. In it he talks about getting the Why right before you start anything – whether that’s a small web project or a massive company rebrand.
Most organisations immediately get bogged down with the What and the How – and he used a comparison between Apple and Dell to drive home his point. Where Dell would talk about What they make (PCs), Apple would talk about Why they make them (we believe in beautiful design). Definintely worth checking out.
Crazy card sort
Posted: October 11, 2012 Filed under: card sorting, design, information architecture, UX, web design | Tags: digital marketing, Digital platforms, interaction design, redesign, ux, web project 1 CommentCard sorting is a great way to get a different angle on your site. All you need is some willing users, 30 minutes over lunch, and a bunch of index cards and post-its (oh, and I recommend recording it too on your phone -some of the juiciest insights come through people’s reactions while they’re discussing the sort)
For our first card sort I tested it out on some internal Nesta peeps to make sure the cards were easily sortable. But then I branched out and started sorting with our real users .
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- Alice, Louise and Stian rebuilding Nesta’s brain
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- Steph, Tom and Claire grapple with Nesta
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- It looks quite neat from a distance
The results were really interesting. We know we’ve got a design problem with our site – it’s difficult to navigate because it’s been set up without users in min. But the scale of the problem is only coming to light now that card sorting is underway – we’ve had 5 sorts so far, and each one is throwing up really interesting and different.
As soon as the final data is in, I’ll share it with you.
But for now, here are some great off-the-cuff responses from our sorters to the problem they were trying to solve:
“It’s like a big soup!”
“People don’t care who’s in which team – they just want to know what’s happening”
“Nesta needs to talk more around a programme, rather than just after it”
“It’s all very jargony” (that was from a new Nesta staffer staring at the cards in front of her)
Useful tip:
I recommend reading Card Sorting by Donna Spencer (kindle edition is cheaper) – really practical instructions on how to run a sort. She’s also got a great spreadsheet for analysing the data afterwards. There’s nothing like hard evidence for persuading people they need to change what they do.
Digital soup 