That's showbiz...

Oscar here, the tictoc office dog.

A penpal from my holiday kennels forwarded me on this fantastic ad for Pedigree dogs biscuits.  He had auditioned but was pipped to the post by the smiling bulldog, that's showbiz!
Click here - Pedigree: Catch

Enjoy...Oscar out

By Oscar the Dog
Published: 4 March 2010
2 Comments

I just haven't met you yet

Who's your secret crush...

Well one tictocer's isn't so secret, twilight's Edward Cullen, who we were lucky enough to have a 'visit' from this week much to the delight of Lucy!

To get the ball rolling, a certain tictocer in New Biz has a secret crush on Martin O'Neil and mine, well that would be telling!

Who's your secret crush, we promise not to tell anyone.

By Fiona Dorman
Published: 19 February 2010
7 Comments

Tonight Matthew I’m going to be...

...Paul, your new Front-end Developer (Cue the smoke and Stars in Your Eyes theme music - dah, dah, dah, dah ,dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, daaaahhh). Now that I’m into my second week here at tictoc and have already met everyone in the office I thought I should introduce myself to the rest of the world via the blog. Hello world!

Me in brief:

My name is Paul, I like the web, design, designing, development, developing, drawing, music, ice hockey, football, playing music, making music, playing ice hockey, playing football, macs, my iphone (currently addicted to actually), food, eating food, drinking (to stay hydrated obviously), tv (particularly Curb your Enthusiasm, Lost, The Simpsons and South Park), movies, most other things to be honest.

Let me know about you!

Paul

By Paul Daly
Published: 3 November 2009
3 Comments

Hello my name is Lucy

Hello tictoc blog readers, I am Lucy and I have joined the tictoc family as their new project manager.

In the interest of getting to know everyone a little better, I thought it would be good to share! I tell you all a little about me, you know, not the boring CV stuff but the stuff you might actually be interested and in return you do the same!

So here goes.....

I love the wee people in my life, there is a lot of them and they each make me so happy, I have a flumpy carpet, I LOVE music but I really hate jazz...jaaaaaazzz, favourite song is Mr Blue Sky by ELO, sunshine makes me so happy, I love reading sunday papers with good coffee NOT Starbucks, I once travelled to Swaziland and bought a 'Swazee Candle' I later found them in TK Maxx on Sauchiehall Street......ufft! I have watched all of the West Wing twice, I love red wine so much that I actually went to Chateauneuf du Pape, I secretly watch Time Team....hmm no secret anymore, I am in the middle of reading Twilight and I am a wee bit in love with Edward Cullen...wrong? I have a shameful love of trashy magazine....go on Britney get your lips done! I am really looking forward to my new job, I think its going to be great!

Overshare?

Over to you!

By Lucy Halpin
Published: 11 September 2009
5 Comments

Top tweeter Kate's just soooo polite!

Having spotted a tweet of Kate's yesterday I felt I had to pop a comment on the tictoc blog about the fact that she has made the top 60 Scottish Tweeters list and, as I'm sure those who know her will agree, has been quoted very accurately!

The people were picked on the basis of how often they tweet, the quality of tweets, how often they retweet and followers (not the number of followers but who their followers were). Here's the quote from the site :

Kate Wooding
Quite possibly one of the most polite people in Glasgow.

Feel free to visit Kate on Twitter and send her a tweet to keep her at the top of the list and find out more about her love of courgettes, her Figaro car and what's in her Graze box this week!

By Melanie Russell
Published: 25 August 2009
1 Comment

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
0 Comments

Lance's impromptu Twitter ride in Glasgow

Well Lance Armstrong certainly knows how to cause a stir! Late last night the seven-times Tour de France winner twittered "Hey Glasgow, Scotland! I'm coming your way tomorrow. Who wants to go for a bike ride?". The response to the impromptu bike ride was instantaneous, mainly from myself and Colin! At 10pm last night I found myself out in the dark oiling my chain and testing the brakes. I also had to take off the child seat :)

On the flight to Glasgow from America Lance twittered again telling us all to meet in Paisley at noon. This scuppered any plans we had of meeting the legend but several hundred people did brave the rain and media to meet and ride with the man himself.

To add to my woes it turns out he headed out towards the village I live in. So I texted my wife to tell her he was passing, hoping for some sympathy. However, her reply of "I could feel his presence" was only to be expected.

The power of twitter still amazes me!

By Alan Masterson
Published: 18 August 2009
1 Comment

Mel "Mrs Baxter" Russell makes plum jam

I decided that this year I had to make better use of the fantastic crop of plums we get from our tree therefore made a stab at making jam! I've distributed jars to the girls here in the Glasgow office (sorry boys, didn't really think you'd be that bothered!) so will await their feedback! I can't promise I'll be the next Mrs Baxter as I just couldn't get the bloomin stuff to set so it's probably more like plum syrup! 

Enjoy!

By Melanie Russell
Published: 17 August 2009
2 Comments

Heralding in a new era

tictoc is the subject of today's SME Focus in The Herald (that's p23 for those of you with the paper version), as our very own Mel Russell sat down with the boys from the press to answer their questions and give them an insight into the joys and growing pains of running a digital agency.

Their questions were tough and cut straight to the heart of the matter, and we think she did a great job of answering them. Plus, her dad said he thought she was very refreshing and didn't give the stock answers you see most weeks. So there.

If you want to know more about Mel's days as a florist, or exactly what she thought when she opened the front door to a wall of floodwater, you only have to ask: now's your chance!

By Kate Wooding
Published: 3 August 2009
2 Comments