This a neat tool that alot of our users and readers may dig.It’s called Kuler. Here is the description from their site: Kuler is brand new from Adobe labs, kuler helps you explore, create and share color themes for your web pages, design projects and other creative work.

I think this is a nifty tool for your utility belt. I find a lot of designs are looking the same..and a lot of times we don’t even realize it but what separates a good design that gets people’s attention in a positive way, is usually because it involves a new color scheme that people aren’t used to seeing but find aesthetically pleasing.

There are a few other tools that do this to some degree but 2 things make this stand apart. Firstly, with other color scheme sites you have to save the image or record the hex values or use your own eyedropper to use the color scheme. With kuler you can download directly as a swatch to illustrator. Secondly, you can create your own theme and share it with the community. Others can comment on your theme and you can comment on theirs etc.

Sometimes what makes nice photos of nature is the natural use of colors together. I may start taking photos of nice scenes and making a color theme out of what I see.

Find out more at http://kuler.adobe.com/

Have fun,

Bernie

Posted in GUI, Tools ~ 3 Comments
Written by Bernie

I have been pondering this post and the ones to come a great deal. I think I have started to write this post a half dozen times never actually having the time to really bang out all of my thoughts…it seems that there is always something else coming up on the radar.

So as I had mentioned previously ConceptShare was featured in Techcrunch. We have been very happy with the response and we are continuing to follow the growth as the story gets pulled deeper into the social fabric of the net. We have been busy tracking all of coverage as it pops up around the net. We are having to translate alot as the stories have been shared in to many languages to name. It is interesting to see the effect that delicious and other social bookmarking services have and how they really move relevant information to the right people.

The other interesting fact of the techcrunch story is the high caliber of the traffic that it generates. It is interesting to watch the trends that are generated. We have been using www.opentracker.net to give us the real time stats to give us the who, when, where how on the traffic. This service has to be one of the most complete packages that we have ever used. We could watch the real time effects of stories and referring sources. This was actually more helpful then technorati to track the referral sources. I think this will be very helpful as we continue forward. It is always nice to know who’s interested….

The article spawned some incredible conversations with some truly fantastic people. Many of which have been very passionate people who have been waiting for a solution like this. It is great to know that there are in fact others out there who want the ability to share visual ideas and manage the discussion in a relevant way. You can see it in their face and hear it in the voice when they really get it. Why do they get it? Because the pain is very real to them. These are people who have to share everything from fashion designs, creative print, pictures, product design…etc. They aren’t sharing for the sake of sharing. They share because they need feedback on the image itself, they need direction and feedback to take that design to the next step, wether that be to an new iteration or to production. They don’t want more realtime meetings about small design changes. These are people who don’t want to get a faxed back proof with design changes. These are people who are tired of trying to read multiple threaded conversations together emails to elicit feedback . These are people who want a better way.

This week should be even more interesting then the last few. I will try to be a bit more vocal as to the things going on.

cheers

scott

Posted in Business, ConceptShare ~ No Comments
Written by Scott

We are running at a rapid pace lately and we all wear many hats here and I had to quickly make up a postcard for a upcoming Trade show. I want to talk about 3 services (including ours) that make this really fast (and cheap) for us and how we use ConceptShare to develop them.

I have been using iStockphoto.com recently which is a great social stock art service. High quality photos at good prices. I usually have several tag lines in mind and a few vision ideas. I start browsing with some various keywords and save several to my light box in istock. At this point I have a lot of photo ideas now in my light box and I need to start incorporating them in some layouts to see how they workout. Now I don’t want to commit to any one image until we decide which direction we are going to go in, so I just copy the web preview image from istock. It has the watermark which is ok for now because the look/headline I want to develop first. I do wish they had a save comp like Comstock has for registered users. I just need something to get the idea across. It doesn’t have to be big just lose the watermark. But it’s all good, I start assembling some of the concepts in Photoshop and then I upload them into ConceptShare so I can share them with the rest of the team to help me make a decision. The comps are fairly low res, partly because the photos comps are low res but its just to help me narrow down some ideas and pick a few to develop more. I probably won’t purchase one until we are down to the final 1 or 2 tops.

ConceptShare enables me to setup a project with several concepts and I start adding some initial comments explaining where I was going with the creative choice. This will be the project where all visual design work related to this postcard will reside. I will upload the finals here as well for proof reading as they develop. New people added to the spot will see how the entire piece developed and be able to read the comments to see how we got here. Once I added a few people to the space I await their feedback and go onto something else. It takes less than an hour before the first few comments start to come in. They are very helpful in eliminating some of the choices. Some comments involve larger logo placement, headline changes and some color changes. I make some of these simple changes to the low res comps and upload them again. During the process one of the members is actually working from home. We have very little actually dialog besides ConceptShare comments and chat window.

As we get close to the final we have already gone through 4 rounds of new uploads with about 8 concepts inside of ConceptShare. The whole process happened over a span of about 4 hours. Which really isn’t bad because thats from start to final and I was able to do many other things during the time between uploads. It is very productive and I can see whats happening if I choose to, unlike email or other methods. As the design and headline was finalized I now feel comfortable purchasing the highres istockimage and assembling the final layout. I upload the final print ready version to ConceptShare for one last once over then I am ready to send them to the printer.

I have fallen in love with Overnightprints.com, a fantastic service that enables me to upload any print ready art or design using their wizard (which i don’t use really but good for non-designers). They print almost immediately and ship out next day in some instances and a few days for a bit cheaper. Some local printers wouldn’t even take the file til the week after. The print quality is amazing and you can proof right away. They do brochures, business cards, letterhead and post cards. They are a great service and I ecommend companies of all sizes giving them a whirl.

Have fun,
Bernie

Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Product Design ~ 8 Comments
Written by Bernie

With World Usability Day on the horizon I thought I would make a post  about how  ConceptShare is used for usability design. We certainly use it for everything  here (marketing, inteface, web) and a lot of our testers are using it for their web apps  interface design along with  general web design interfaces and navigation.

ConceptShare works best when it is initiated early in the design process. It’s the equivalent  of “Hey check this out so far tell me what you think”. That’s easy if you are all in the same room, but that’s not always the case.  

Usually someone mentions an feature requirement and the first step is to jump into Photoshop and quickly mock something up. I have a library on my computer of blank interfaces, buttons, dropdowns etc  so I can mash up something pretty quickly. I then upload it in to workspace inside of ConceptShare. Because it’s not a live site and just a mockup I start by adding comments and draw arrows indicated what I meant to happened when buttons are clicked. Depending on the action I will also upload the end result of a click like the form that would open etc. ConceptShare makes it easy to describe what I had in mind for the actions and point to the button in question in context..

Previously I would  have to send the screen.jpg by email and try to describe the actions and design intentions in the body of the email. Or if I had more time I would use the brush and text tool in Photoshop to draw and comment . Neither of these methods are very interactive for my partners of who I need their feedback to continue. They would have ended up replying to my email with small useless feedback that doesn’t help me out much, stuff like ‘looks good’. Providing them more tools and the ability to reply to my initial comments put things in context and lets them know what I want feedback on. Now I get comments like “Do we really want this to be a pop-up?  I think this should open inline”.

 

I usually invite Scott first because our developers are busy building the last features we requested. We go back and forth  over the next little while entering the workspace at different times and differently locations and I get the first feedback from another person that can comment on if the interface feels natural and they can understand what happens next. This would be the equivalent of the a paper prototype I suppose. After Scott’s comments and maybe a few others. I go back to the drawing board and make some changes and start the process again. Sometimes we go through 4-7 versions before we bring the developer in. We then bring the developer in, again these are all flat screens. The development team can now comment from 2 perspectives. 1) another voice about how natural the button location or actions are and 2) a development perspective on implementation and perhaps insight into what would take longer or changing things because we did this same function somewhere else so let’s keep consistent or save some time by making it similar. The developer has the ability to see how the screen developed to this point and I have the ability to reply to their comments to answer questions or debate decisions. This all happens over time and we don’t all have to be in the workspace. When we are we use the real-time chat quite a bit. If the comments require it. I go back for a final screen with the new comments and all user get a email letting them know a new design is there for the picking. 

Overall this really speeds  our development process because after I upload a screen I can then start working on something else in ConceptShare like our brochure or our website. I don’t have to wait or book a meeting at 1pm so we can all be there at the same time. We don’t work like that and most people don’t as much anymore.

Posted in GUI, Usability ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie

We have just hit the pages of Techcrunch.

Check us out …

cheers

scott

Posted in Technology ~ 2 Comments
Written by Scott

No turning back now …..http://www.conceptshare.com is now live for everyone to see.

Of course it is not finished …..it will never be finished …it is growing ……We will be adding lots in the coming weeks.

cheers

Scott

BTW: Demo videos are hard to do in one take. Pardon my mistakes.

Posted in ConceptShare, Innovation, Product Design ~ 5 Comments
Written by Scott