Sunrise over London

Woke up this morning and was stunned by the gorgeous sunrise so thought I'd take a quick snap with my phone and share it with you all! Below is the view taken last night - how many tourist attractions can you spot or can you guess where the pic was taken?? Answers on a postcard please (or via the comments facility below!!)

By David McGilvray
Published: 2 March 2010
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Up on the roof

You may already have heard that our brand new London office boasts fantastic meeting rooms, and some great green credentials like a wormery, herb garden, and recycling scheme. We're also pretty excited about the roof top garden, complete with outdoor sofas.

Sure, it looks a bit grey, and wintery now, but we're looking forward to lots of meetings outside come summer. Who's up for a barbie?

By Jo Kerr
Published: 18 January 2010
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UX Camp London

Photos by Adam Charnock

This weekend saw the first, and most definitely not the last, UX Camp London at the eBay / Gumtree office in Richmond.

I was lucky enough to have acquired one of the 40ish tickets that were available for the one day event for user experience designers.

It was an early start to say the least, having booked myself on the first train out of Glasgow Central, the 4.25AM west-coast service to Euston. I had sprung for a First Class seat with the intention of making myself comfortable and having a pleasant nap through the trip. Unfortunately it seems that Virgin have designed their seats to cause near constant pain in either your neck or back, with a handy lever that lets you switch from one to the other. The sleep I did manage wasn't the most rejuvenating, but I'm glad I got it.

When I arrived at the riverside venue it looked like most people were already working their way through a pastry or coffee and chatting excitedly about the day ahead. I spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd, and was glad to catch up with a number of people who I had met at the UX London conference earlier in the year.

Before things got started there was an opportunity to take a look at the Wall of Deliverables, an idea pinched from this year's IA Summit. Before the event we had been asked to bring along our favourite UX deliverables. There was to be an open vote throughout the day and at the end the one with the most votes would win a prize. I took along a print out and URLs to an HTML wireframe and an interactive prototype. Alas, I didn't win, but I did manage to get a couple of votes.

Just after 10AM, Cennydd Bowles (one of the unorganisers) introduced himself and described what would be happening over the course of the day. After describing the barcamp type structure of the day he directed the group to the schedule wall, where each attendee could note down the topic of a presentation they had prepared, or a discussion they'd like to have. The schedule filled up quickly and people moved to the rooms that had been made available for our use.

Over the course of the morning and afternoon I moved from presentation to workshop to presentation. Some of the highlights being:

• Are we nearly there yet? A closer look at user journeys - Cath Jones
• What I’ve learned about UX freelancing - Leisa Reichelt
• Using questionnaires effectively in UX
• Saying no is part of our job; what happens when you keep saying ‘OK’ - Simon Doggett
• Design Games 101; better ways for collaboration, facilitation and ideations - Andy Budd

One of the best sessions was an ad hoc workshop on design games by Andy Budd from Clearleft. I've been running prototyping workshops with our clients for a few months now. They usually focus on introducing clients to the design process and design thinking. We present issues we've discovered through user research and play design games to try and solve them.

One game I've wanted to introduce into our work is design the box, where you give your client a blank box and ask them to imagine this is the packaging for their business or website. The idea is that you can leverage people's in-built understanding of packaging and merchandising to get at concepts to guide experience design. Andy's workshop was great hands-on fun, and I was quite chuffed at the box our team knocked out for Gumtree, see the photo above of me trying to explain why we chose the things we put on our box.

While the presentations were informative and inspiring the chat between sessions was equally enjoyable. I caught up with UX people from companies like Rightmove, Skype and Just Giving, freelancers and masters students. 

If there's one thing that stands out about the UX community it's a collective desire to share and collaborate with other people in the industry and in general. Leisa enapsulated the reason she shares so much on her blog brilliantly when she said that everything about her work that she shares with the world comes back in some positive way.

So, please enjoy my slides, and until the next UX Camp London, we'll keep on researching, designing and sharing.

By Andy Bright
Published: 24 August 2009
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Melton Mowbray not all about pork pies shocker

Not for me heady celebrity sightings like Kerry Katona puffing Silk Cut outside Iceland, or La Winehouse in Camden brawl. When visiting the historic town of Melton Mowbray yesterday, to meet with a potential client, I came across Anne of Cleves’s house.

Somewhat of a celebrity on the 16th Century social circuit Anne married Henry VIII in 1540, but escaped with her head after the marriage was annulled seven months later. The Heather Mills of her times, Anne got out with a stupendous property portfolio including the very lovely Melton Mowbray house. An example to us all! And yes, this does beat last month's Chico love-in.

By Jo Kerr
Published: 14 August 2009
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UX London Redux

On Wednesday night I met up with the great and the good of London IA for a redux version of the much lauded UX London conference that took place back in June. The event was a loose recreation of stand out seminars and conferences from the original, presented by people who had attended and watched by those who (like me) hadn’t been able to make it first time round.

Christian Petzny on Dan Saffer. When brainstorming, “Reduce the problem down to a haiku or bento poem.”

Tom Coombs on Donna Spencer and Jared Spool. Musings on  optical illusions, and the importance of clarity of language in navigations.

James Box on Wireframing 2.0. Electronic wireframes - quick and easy to create, and perfect for clients and developers. Good thing tictoc already use them!

Frances and Jane from IG Index rounded off the night with a heated game of D-UX-tionary. Playing boys against girls our team scratched our barnets over terms like ‘mash up’, ‘personalisation’ and ‘open source’. The boys had to draw “radio buttons”. Clearly, the match was fixed.

Apart from this ego busting defeat it was a fantastic night. As a newbie everyone made me very welcome, so big thanks to all the organisers and speakers.

By Jo Kerr
Published: 14 August 2009
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It's YPAC time!

The Young Pavement Artists Competition (YPAC) is Muscular Dystrophy Campaign's annual contest to find the best young artists in the country, raise money for the charity, and have some fun. This year's awards were at the Natural History Museum, and I popped along to meet some of the lucky prize winners, and see some fantastic works of art. It's a little disheartening to realise your drawing is worse than a five-year-old's, but they really are very talented kids!

Erstwhile X Factor contender Chico was in attendance, and presented some of the prizes. He insisted on cosying up for a picture... at least I think it was that way round.

tictoc designed the YPAC website with interactive online drawing tool: see this year's winners and have a go yourself at pavementart.muscular-dystrophy.org

By Jo Kerr
Published: 24 July 2009
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Handbags at dawn!

On my way to a morning meeting I unexpectedly passed Mimi Berry's shop on Cheshire Street, just off Brick Lane. Mimi has a beautiful collection of designer bags and purses, which she also sells online at www.mimiberry.co.uk. (Yes, tictoc designed the site, glad you like it!). It just so happens they have a sale on right now, so I had to pop back later on to say hi, and suss out the bags.

Personally, I'm coveting the Domino - strokey strokey soft in perfect dove grey. What are your favourites girls?

By Jo Kerr
Published: 24 July 2009
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Weird & wonderful world of art

I was fascinated by this art installation outside the Royal Academy of Arts in London, theThree Legged Buddha by the Chinese artist, Zhang Huan.

The piece depicts the bottom half of a three-legged Buddha. Two of the legs are supported by posts and the third rests on a Buddha's head. The arch-like structure stands at 8.6m, allowing visitors to walk underneath it. The sculpture is made of copper panels welded together and is supported by a steel inner frame. It is the most significant of his recent over-sized sculptures depicting parts of the Buddha, and is a reference to the past desecration of centuries-old artefacts.

By David McGilvray
Published: 7 November 2007
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tictoc and Patonz at Claridge's

Having been a Patonz partner for nearly two years now, I was delighted to be invited to attend one of their most exclusive black tie events in Gordon Ramsays restaurant at Claridge's in London.

The event was attended by a stunning list of incredibly high ranking business people from the top end of the retail sector around the world and was a fantastic opportunity to explore new opportunities for tictoc and the retail sector.

As always, thanks to Brendan for an amazing evening!

By Melanie Russell
Published: 1 November 2007
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