Matt Bagwell

Code Geeks and Art Nerds in love (or at least in ‘like’)

mark.peters — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:23:00 GMT

Conchango Creative Director Matthew Bagwell on rethinking workflow and collaboration in the studio

Last week at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference in LA, Conchango’s Paul Dawson and Tesco’s Nick Lansley presented a touchscreen WPF application prototype we’ve been working on for a little more than a month. It provided a glimpse into how ‘touch’ could revolutionise the way we all think and act about what we eat at home. More, it demonstrated what can be achieved in very short timeframes with new approaches to workflow, enabled by collaborative software like Expression Blend.

We’ve had all kinds of positive feedback about it so far. Comments like:

‘The Tesco demo just blew my Dad away.’
‘I heard gasps from the audience.’
‘Great, thought-leading stuff.’

You can watch the presentation here (it comes on at about the 95:00 mark and runs for 5 minutes): http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/KYN02

As I say, the entire project, from conception to presentation, came together in about 4 weeks. Making it happen required a very nimble approach to collaboration and workflow that would facilitate interaction between team members throughout...

Most importantly, our developers and designers needed to work literally side by side from day one. The traditional ‘hand-off’ simply wouldn’t do.

And that’s increasingly true. Which is why we’ve been honing a new take on integrated workflow – from concept to final delivery – over the past 24 months here at Conchango.

Some of the key questions driving our investigation:

Are traditional ‘studio’ principles and structures still appropriate for the creative development of ‘digital interfaces’?

Or are the scope of the briefs we’re getting, the potential richness of the interfaces, end user technologies and creative software all combining to force change?

Are we returning to a type of studio environment more akin to film-making, animation and post-production – where creatives work dynamically with producers and often clients; hours spent together, working ‘on the fly’?

I’ve often bemoaned the ‘waterfall’ method of production – where ‘graphic’ designers respond first to briefs, cascading their design solution ‘down’ to developers who have to ‘make it work’. Fortunately, this is happening less than it used to, particularly where integrated business analysts and user experience architects are working in parallel with designers – and when methodologies like Agile are deployed, where creative work is developed in sprints aligned to technical development. But it still happens.

Ideally, interfaces are created in unison, such that what’s designed can be developed and vice versa. And combined thinking is surely better than over-emphasizing one particular skill. If you have a hammer, you’ll create nail-like problems. Put different tools in the box and you’ll solve problems differently.

Certainly, at Conchango, we’ve realised the benefits of reconsidering the relationship between developer and designer, combining their skills to develop rich interface applications for touch screen kiosks, IPTV players, financial simulators, desktop apps, telemetric data and deep zoom microsites.

Historically, the dev/designer relationship has been ‘authored’ in Abobe Flash. However, latterly we’ve enjoyed the pleasure of working with the Expression suite, and specifically Blend. For me, the obvious clue to the advantages that this software offers is in the name itself. The environment affords us a practical way to develop creative interfaces, almost on the fly, in a way that doesn’t compromise the work of ‘designer’ or the ‘developer’. Work can be produced at speed, in synchronicity – and tailored, tweaked and fiddled with in quick iteration.

Real or perceived divisions are being eroded. Devs and designers are starting to think and create more ‘sympathetically’ together, driven by a common ambition and contributing complementary skills.

Richard Griffin is one of our interactive developers, a self-described ‘code geek’. He’s one of the people here who’s passionately charting this new territory and speaking about it at conferences worldwide, alongside our interactive designer Felix Corke. Rich has this to say:

“Developers have to come to terms with the fact that our world has changed. In this new world you’re part of a duo. Without the designer, you’re not going to be able to create compelling user experiences that take advantage of powerful APIs like WPF. So make friends with a designer and start to understand how they work. This will really help you further down the line.”

Felix adds: “Making it work is rather personal. The most important thing is to build a relationship so that you understand each other’s considerations. Developers are concerned with efficiency and logic, so they may not initially understand why the designer is concerned with perfecting the layout of the control and the type face.”

Any studio beginning to adapt its collaborative workflows in this way needs to ask a few basic questions and then begin to sort out the answers: How will the art director, experience architect and copywriter combine with the interface designer and developer? Do we need each of these roles to be handled by a separate individual, or might we begin to see the emergence of ‘uber-creatives’ capable of spanning several roles simultaneously? How will these new relationships affect the collateral that clients have come to expect (functional specification documents, wireframes, personas)? Indeed, how do we begin to re-set clients expectations around both process and documentation?

Advances in interface hardware – I’m referring to multi-touch and Surface specifically – mean these changes in studio make-up and dynamics are set to accelerate as the ‘tactility’ of digital experiences becomes increasingly important. Understanding how to engineer these experiences requires us to rethink the creative process. It’s something we’ve been doing at Conchango for some time, and for which we’re now seeing the rewards.

About planning a Expression Suite training course - Your help needed

matthew.bagwell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:44:00 GMT

So I finally conceded defeat and thought it time to embrace Microsoft's software with both hands. I had a fascinating debate at last night's Silverlight user group about why some designers might have been inherently skeptical or slow to adopt the Blend suite but that’s another blog entry...
One of the thoughts I have been playing with is creating a practical training opportunity with some of the talented team here who have built significant expertise though exposure to the software in 'live' contexts. Many of us will have seen 'demos' where the software is used but far fewer have had the opportunity to try it in a 'near real' environment with experts to hand to show work arounds, techniques, short cuts etc.
The initial idea is for Conchango to create and host a weekend training programme that sees designers and developers transition from complete novices in the Blend suite to at least having some practical exposure and competence. We'd work away with working apps of some sort, responding to real world briefs - like the ones we get every week.

We may even engage some of our finest clients to brief us and 'judge' the work that we create together - I've done this before and it adds an extra element of competition to the output and can be great fun.

This isn't a designer workshop - it cannot be to be effective. So we'd club you together with 'the other half of the Blend Pantomime horse' depending on whether you're a designer or a developer. You can bring your own or we'd supply one!

So it’s a loose idea at the moment and what I really need is your thoughts and feedback to see how we can tailor this to really be of benefit - what would you like to do at a training workshop like this? Have you experienced software training before and what works and what doesn't? Let me know what you think and we'll try and get it off the ground.

Oh, and I hope we'd run the first one this side of Christmas. So that’s a version of the dancing elves app in Silverlight on my Santa list then.

I am not a writer. I fear words.

matthew.bagwell — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:26:00 GMT

Last week, a creative called Paul Arden lost his battle with a long-term illness.

While you might not realise it, you probably know the man’s work even though you may not recognise the name. Remember the hundreds of people walking from the sea to converge as a big smiling face for British Airways? Or the iconic branding device of a slash in purple silk? These are just two examples of Paul’s great work, created while he was creative director at Saatchi and Saatchi.

In later life, he defied his own words, “I am not a writer. I am afraid of words” and penned two great books, Its not how good you are, its how good you want to be and Whatever you think, think the opposite. I call books like these ‘bathroom books’ – they are easy to read from whichever page you hit first, they can be read cover to cover before the water gets cold and the content is more important than their waterproof qualities. Both are thought provoking, providing any creative with that often-needed burst of optimism and inspiration.

Apparently in life, Paul Arden insulted and inspired in equal measure. Read the books for a taste of the latter.

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-How-Good-Want/dp/0714843377
http://www.amazon.com/Whatever-You-Think-Opposite/dp/B000JMK8R4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208241823&sr=1-2

That iphone

matthew.bagwell — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 23:21:00 GMT

Yes, it is pretty. And even now, people are fascinated by it if you have one. But boy, am I glad I didn't buy one.

I have been trialling one for the last few days. I have learned to live life near a charger - and I haven't used it to do email and make very few voice calls. The battery life is woeful. And using the web is like it used to be several years ago - like watching paint dry! The biggest frustration? The inaccuracy of the text inputs. This is bad enough when you are using the itouch but at the end of the day, you rarely type. On the iphone, you want to but an alpha numeric predictive text phone is so much better. Hopefully some of these challenges will be resolved with iphone2 - we aleady know it has 3G but will other aspects of the UI inputs and responses be improved?

Beyond the brand and its beauty, there is one outstanding redeeming feature. Visual voice mail. Each VM appears independently and can be played with a scrolling controller. So that frustration when you receive a call that has the phone number in it at the end of a 3 minute message and you have no pen? A thing of the past.

Its such a simple solution to a universal 'mobile device' issue. It's nearly enough to convince me to buy one.

Nearly.

Towards Total Experience Design

matthew.bagwell — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:08:00 GMT

So here I go. The first blog. I had said that there was no real reason for me to blog in order to achieve what I wanted to in 2008. How wrong that was! Now more than ever, it feels that communicating through this channel about what we are doing is more important than ever! Why? Well, there is a lot of activity going on in Conchango's creative studio and its hard to market it directly - both internally or externally. Some of the work is pretty confidential. However, we can talk about some of the general principles and I can get some valuable feedback from you. So this will be a 'work in progress' kinda blog. I'll ask questions and make the most of the answers I get back.

Right now, I am thinking about what 'brand' means and more forward thinking, what Total Experience Design could mean - both to the team and to our clients who might develop it with us. The reason for this? So that I can be clear about the our goal and the strategies that will help get us there.

I am starting by describing what a brand platform is. You can see a diagram of a brand platform here.

It starts simple but there's another level or two of granularity to go down to when I have time. For example, corporate identity is made up of about a dozen elements and each one needs to be managed.

The next step will be to layer on the services we provide (e.g. Performance Measurement reports) and some aspects of our methodologies (e.g. aspects of User Centered Design - like journeys). This should give us a multi-dimensional view of what brand experience design and management really means. After all, thats what Conchango really does.

So here are two questions. Why is blogging software so counter intuitive and secondly, what do you think might be in each aspect of the personality wheel? And if you're really keen, do it from a Conchango perspective.

You never know. You might be tested on this later!