A year ago, nearly to the day, we headed into 2011 with our press release on the redesign of SBA.gov, in partnership with DRT Strategies and Promet Solutions – since then, we’ve been in a full on marathon sprint!

We’ve had some time to come up for air to put up a few portfolio, blog, twitter, and  FB  posts – but it’s been tough to get it all up to share at the pace we’re moving. We’ll follow up with more detailed posts and website additions about our clients in the coming month(s), but here is a quick sampling from some of Limina’s 2011 clients and work.

We want to thank all of our customers for investing in User Experience!  Special thanks to our partners and collaborators; Promet Solutions, Alex Hsiao @Perphic, Jacob Burhardt @FlashbulbInteraction, Alla Zollers @azollers, Cory Lebson @CoryLebson and Linchpin @linchpin_agency for making this one of our strongest business years to date!

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

The Limina Team

Children’s perception of the world is so unique, so genuine that information, basic or complex, is visualized in the barest fashion. After reading this article, I watched my 14-month old scan through a Toys R Us magazine. On a page filled with microscopic 1 x 1.5 cm images (representing some game software), my son could point out the images that featured Lightening McQueen, the red speedster straight out of the Disney/Pixar animation movie Cars 2.

What’s my point? My son is only looking for images of the red speedster because that is what he wants to see; who cares about Dora the Explorer, or Nemo! This could be the same for your clients or users – motivation, expectations, impatience makes people see (and experience) different things – and the design of your web portal could succumb to the same narrow mindedness…unless you use this as a tool in your design!

Try integrating some of these ideas to work with possible selective attention:

1.   Design to your clients’ or users’ expectations – In the example above, my son wants to see the Cars 2 picture. Similarly, if your clients want a design that communicates fashionable & hip or conventional & retro, research the different cues that represent these environments. Expected, accepted, or conventional design cues can help render more usability. We all have accepted cues that bring more information than we sometimes may want. For example, how would you react to a laundry detergent that was red in color? We accept that laundry detergents are within a certain color range – blue, green, white, essentially. These colors are accepted laundry detergent colors, whether we like it or not, and communicate certain characteristics (cleaning, perfume) that are intrinsic to our own accepted cues.

 2.   “Perception is malleable” – So, you think you are a unique mind and can steer clear of social influences and pressure? Think again. Your perception of everything you see, feel, touch is dependent on experiences from a year ago, a day ago, or even a minute ago! If I translate the methodology used in the Balcetis & Dunning (2006) paper, I can influence your choice of seeing the glass half empty or half full if I tell you upfront about wars and the declining economy, or about the shining sun and cute puppies (well, I guess that depends on if you like puppies…Ok, you get the drift). This means that you can also predispose your clients’ perception by discussing upfront the unique logo choice that was a hit with the testing agency, or about the wording that was changed in order to bring clarity to the software. Positive pre-disposition can go a long way!

 3.   Remove any potential ambiguity – In the example of my son’s selective attention to only the Cars 2 character, I noticed that he would hesitate in his choice when there was a visual similar to a car, or red in color. This ambiguity was basically distracting his attention, and here, unfortunately, steering him in the wrong direction. Similarly, you don’t want any ambiguity or confusion in your design. You can also read a past article about Tropicana’s failed design change.

TEST YOUR SELECTIVE ATTENTION

References:

UX Magazine on-line (October 2011), Article No. 754 by Andrew Turrell http://uxmag.com/articles/selective-attention-and-user-experience).

Balcetis and Dunning (2006) Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 91, No. 4, p612.

Today, Kareen has taken the helm managing our social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, Blog) in addition to designing and implementing our Marketing Plan.

Welcome, live long and prosper!

Over the past few months, the Limina team has been carefully preparing to grow our business. We have a little way to go yet, but I thought it would be nice to post an update to keep everyone up to speed. As some of you may know, Limina has been around since 2003, and operating in more or less the same model for the past 7 years. We could conceivably stay this size and continue to enjoy our success as a small UX consultancy for years to come, but we’ve decided that it’s time for change.

Contributing factors to Limina’s shift:

• US Small Business Administration 8(a) Business Development program.  Limina entered into this program in 2010.  Participating in this business development program allows Limina to compete on Federal contracts which have been set aside for 8(a) firms.  Given the scope and duration of Federal contracts, growth to support our resource demands will be immanent.
• Increased demand for UX services.  Over the past two years, Limina has experience increased demand for our UX research, strategy and design services – we love our work, but we need to eat and sleep – more hands on deck will help distribute the load.
• Product development opportunity – this topic is Top Secret and we can’t give away any details.  Suffice to say, we will be dividing our focus from the services side of our business to deliver on a turn-key products which will deliver massive value to the field of technology. With our focus divided, we’ll need more staff to work on client delivery and product research, design & development.
• It’s just time.

We don’t have a specific timeline to share, but concrete plans are in motion to secure an office space in the DC Metro area to expend the team.  We’re working out a benefits package and employee handbook details…  and stacking our project pipeline with exciting new projects!

What does this mean for you?

If you’re currently working with Limina as an independent contractor – and you like it that way, don’t worry – we understand that works for you and we won’t cut off our contractors from our projects.   If you’re an independent UX consultant and you’re looking to work on exciting user centered design consultancy – we’re interested, send your contact info, resume and portfolio work samples our way!

If you’re looking for a full time UX career – working with a team of innovative collaborators, start preparing your resume and portfolios!  We’re taking applications and we’ll reach out to you when we kick off our interview process.  For a list of opportunities – check out our job listings.

If you feel like our posts are too far and few between – Follow us out on Twitter!  We tweet daily – and save you time on hunting for tasty UX treats.  Over capacity on twitter follows?  Hit us up on Facebook and slap that “Like” button.

We’re also on LinkedIn, Proudly Made in DC, IXDA DC, UPA DC and DC Tech Meetup – find us at any of their events!

Cheers!

-Jon Fukuda

It’s really cool to see our designs in action.  Read more about our project with with Invincea. You can find more of their demos and webcasts on their YouTube Channel.

Enjoy!
-Jon

Dave McCandless‘ TED gives a great talk on the Beauty of Data Visualization. This talk covers all of the valuable considerations for why providing the right visualizations can make a big difference in how we understand the data.  You can learn a lot from looking at raw data, but when you ask the right questions, and have the relevant visualizations, things can become far more meaningful.

A huge Hat Tip to Jeff Wong, Creative Director at AddThis.

Being a virtual company has it’s challenges – communicating, planning, collaborating, tracking, managing and delivering have many potential pitfalls.  We wanted to take a moment to highlight some products that have been helping us to drive more efficiency in our virtual structure.

In recent months, Limina has been picking up the pace in collaborating with UX personnel in the field and delivering our services.  This has been, in no small part, due to our use of collab-ware.  We’ve recently migrated our intranet, client extranets and project collaboration space to OneHub workspaces.   For the past 5 years, we’ve been  using GoToMeeting to facilitate our internal project checkpoints, along with a host of user research activities and client presentations.  And we’ve recently started using ClickTime as our user friendly time reporting product.

Other enablers we’re tinkering with in our lab include: Pidoco, iRise,and iMockups, to name a few. Add into the mix Skype, GoogleDocs, chat and mail clients and you’re well on your way!

We just thought we’d give a shout out to technology products that’ve been making deploying our user centered research and design services  not only more efficient for a decentralized UX practice, but fun and easy!  Our clients and field agents love how we’ve brought these products into our process and service delivery suite.  And we couldn’t think of any better way to say: “We <3 These Great Products!”

-Jon

We’ve been tracking this story for about a week now – trying to see where things would end up. Here’s just a brief overview an analysis, along with some interesting links on what you might have missed.

On October 5th,  2010 – GAP, inc.  quietly swapped out their logo on their website (soft launch) without warning or announcement.

On October 6th, 2010 -  UnderConsideration posted an article “Don’t Mind the Gap, or the Square” where they provided a little background on the company, the history of the logo and some initial reactions to the new logo.

Gap’s Facebook Page starts getting customer comments on the new look… and Gap responds:

Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.
— Gap’s Facebook status update

October 7th, 2010 – idsng.org posts a roll-up of reactions to the new logo and Gap’s plans to crowd-source, or not.

October 8th, 2010 -  UnderConsideration pulls together the Mother-load post “Followup: Gap Gate” – demonstrating that gap consumers, designers, bloggers and the social web weren’t going to swallow the new logo and were ready to poke fun and actually compete for the title of “I designed the new Gap logo”

The Gapify Tumblr demonstrated how asinine the design decisions were and how applying them completely oversimplify and disregarded the key brand identity in any logo.

And my personal favorite CrapLogo.Me took a more in-your-face approach to describe how they feel about the new logo by creating a Gap logo meme.

By far the most controversial of reactions (see below)  is Gap’s marketing pivot – “Let’s crowd source the logo design” which spurs into motion a $500 logo design competition by 99 Designs.  The competition rang in a healthy 4660 entries – which spanned  wide range of humorous satirical design to some legitimate attempts to resolve the company’s desire to move their brand forward.  While this competition is not officially sponsored by Gap, we’re awaiting to learn the outcome of the, now closed, competition and what 99 Designs intends to do with the winning design.  (UPDATE 10.18.10 – below)

Post-post Analysis Post: Everyone is all excited about crowd-sourcing design..  aren’t they?  Wait…  not everyone.  Crowd-sourcing has done wonders for open technology platforms like Drupal and Jquery and opened content platforms like Wikipedia,  but is it right for design?  The main complaint to the world of crowd sourced design is that it appeals to the bottom feeder in design consumers and the desperation of a struggling designer which has a downward spiraling effect on the design market.   Mike Monteiro from Mule Design sums it up in his “Gap, I have your new logo” post from Off the Hoof.  Another jab at 99 Designs and Crowd sourced design at BonFX.

Oct 11, 2010 – Gap Inc. Issues an official press release- “Gap Listens to Customers and Will Keep the Classic Blue Box Logo”

Oct, 11, 2010 – AP Marketing Writer, Emily Fredrix,  picks up the story and posts:  Gap’s logo back to blue after fans gripe about new – now headlining on Yahoo.com Oct.12, 2010.

Oct 12, 2010 – Richard Grefé, Executive Director of AIGA| the professional association for design, (re) posts his position on Spec work with a letter sent to the Gap on October 7th.

If you want quality, if you have respect for the design process (research, conceptualization, design, testing), along with an ounce of self respect – you’ll pay the designer the true value of the labor and the product.

Why does Limina care about this?  Our customers are primarily software, web-app and website design oriented, looking for ways to improve the user experience.  While this resides heavily in user research and user centered design, it often touches and occasionally includes heavy consideration for brand identity.  We don’t take the subject lightly – use acceptance can make or break a product.  As we’ve seen with Tropicana and now with Gap – this level of market rejection can be costly – fortunately for Gap they didn’t roll out the new design across all of the product lines, stores, packaging, bags and collateral.

UPDATE 10.17.10 – Things just went from bad to worse.  99Designs sent out a blast to the community to participate in “voting” for the best Gap logo design.  It’s as if the 99Designs crew got cold feet  in fear of a backlash from the design community if they picked a weak design.  So they’re throwing it back at the crowd.  “Here…  you guys sort out this mess”.

-Jon Fukuda

(Reblog)

IDEO released a five-minute video exploring the future of digital books. Their illustrated concepts highlight some interesting opportunity areas in the publishing industry through three distinct reading experiences:

Nelson reinforces books as critical thinking tools, providing multiple perspectives, references, and current conversations on a single subject. The layers of information beyond the book itself provide greater context and encourages a deeper dive into the book throughout history and into the future.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Coupland addresses the challenge to stay on top of the thinking and writing in our world and professional field that so many of us feel. Readers can easily keep up with “must-reads” by following what colleagues are reading and interact with them through “book clubs” and other social layers (discussions, suggestions, lists, purchases) to help each other share and learn.

Alice explores new ways for users to interact and affect written narratives by introducing non-linear and game mechanics to reading. By introducing the reader’s active participation, this concept “blurs the lines between reality and fiction.” Certain interactions allow the reader to transcend traditional media by utilizing geographic location, communication with characters, and user contribution to storyline and plot.

A very cool blue sky project from IDEO to say the least. I enjoyed the way they chose to compartmentalize the functionality rather than attempting to redefine the book in a single all-inclusive interface (a failure we see in most of these concept projects). This project, and examples appearing all over the industry, only further prove that the future of books in the digital age does not lie in single solution but rather a utilization of technology to better address the wants and needs of users to share, interact, and learn more through specialized design solutions. We are certainly on the precipice of a whole new world for this morphed understanding of the “book.”If you are interested in hearing more about IDEO’s project, check out the interview with two of the project’s designers, Duane Bray and Robert Lenne, on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show. There’s also a conversation about the topic going on over at IDEO’s Facebook page.

Video and photos from IDEO.

This post was originally posted by Willem Van Lancker, 21 Sep 2010

Head nod to Convio, their technology and developers.

Take Action California has an agressive goal to sign up 5k users by 8/1/2010.  Spread the word, share with your local Californians.

Be heard and take policy, budget, legislative and general social well being into your own hands!

We are Limina, and we approve this message!

-Jon Fukuda

• 20 Websites to Help You Master User Interface Design
• 10 Tools for Evaluating Web Design Accessibility
• 11 Inspiring Lessons from Web Design Experts
• Best Practices for Hints and Validation in Web Forms

Hope you find these helpful,

-Jon Fukuda