We have been heads down lately working on V2 of the ConceptShare interface and I want to share with you an example of how we are using ConceptShare internally to get the job done quickly.
With some bugs or changes you can get away with email or textual bug trackers with screens attached. I personally think it is much easier and faster to use ConceptShare. We built this tool for almost exactly this purpose and it maybe how a 3 person startup could launch an application so quickly.
In the first example you can see that I can quickly illustrate a change in the application visually. I need to make the developers understand a very specific visual change and the intended result without interrupting their work flow or scheduling a meeting. I usually upload 5-7 of these at one time. The change is that the zoom tool is too close to the menu side and I would like a bit more padding. Most bugs/visual changes are more complicated than this is a quick example.
I can’t even imagine describing this change in email or text but it might go something like this.
“Hi Guys,
The zoom slider is off a bit a bit too close to the menus and needs to be shifted to the side a few pixels I am not sure how many.
Bernie”
Responses:
” The whole slider or just part of it?
How many pixels?
Too close to which menu?”
ConceptShare reply feature enables an unlimited number of questions from development or beta testers with easy management and NO MEETINGS.
The other neat thing we are doing is using the Concept Folders feature to drag and drop concepts into the Done Folder or into the appropriate folder for each development team the Workspace or Web Manager. The entire team is in the workspace and have their opinion about various visual changes to be made before they are implemented.
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare, GUI, Usability, Visualization ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie
This is the most excited I have been about making a blog post in a long time. There is a lot of great stuff happening at ConceptShare and this is just the first in series of upcoming announcements. The family has been forced to grow quickly in order to meet the overwhelming demand for ConceptShare. Since our inception last year, ConceptShare ran as a 3 person company that has managed to build ConceptShare from a crazy idea on the back of a napkin, into a major player in the design collaboration space who’s client list reads of Fortune 100 companies, major advertising firms around the world, freelancers, web shops and even recently a few professional sports teams and leagues. Our rapid growth into new markets around the world and an increasing number of strategic partnerships with leading technology companies have lead us to the point at which we needed more hands on deck to manage the non stop flow and action around the office.
We didn’t want to add just anyone to the team ….we wanted to build a team that would carry forward our passion and dedication to our users. We think that we have assembled a truly kick ass team!!! Matthew Richer, a extremely talented web application developer joins co-founder Chris D’Aoust on our development team. Newly appointed Business Manager, Darren Petras brings his financial, legal and sales background to help run our global business. Special Projects Manager Dennis Reich adds his technology and business experience to help with the our ongoing list of partnerships and growing custom projects that need special attention. And last but not least we welcome Will Pate as our the ConceptShare Community Evangelist.
The final hire needs a bit more room. Every once and a while you have the opportunity to really work with people that are truly great ….this is one of those opportunities for the ConceptShare team. Will brings a tremendous amount of experience and passion to his role within Conceptshare. He has worked with the great guys over at Flock, Rain City Studios and currently the co-host of commandN. He really fits with the culture that we have built.
The next few months are going to be truly crazy. We have a new interface being rolled out, new partnerships to announce and a bunch of exciting developments that are going to make things even better for our users.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare ~ 11 Comments
Written by Scott
Nokia …are you launching a music service on August 29th? Come on …let us in on the secret.
The rumor is:
Fortune has learned from sources involved in the project that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will launch the new worldwide service Aug. 29 at a London event that will include live music at the Ministry of Sound nightclub. The new Nokia Web site will let consumers download songs to their PCs and transfer them to mobile phones and other portable music players, similar to Apple’s iTunes. Nokia is expected to let users transfer songs to non-Nokia phones using digital-rights-management software. Fortune
They have launched a site that is meant to intrigue users into uncovering more. The site actually has 4 messages that users have to pause the video as it constructs the outline of the new phone. I couldn’t tell too much from the futuristic message that is reminiscent of something from the minority report.
Check this site out and see if you can discern what they are telling us …..
www.070829.com
Here is a banner that is linked to the site.
[flv]http://www.bannerblog.com.au/banners/PID_285278_300×250_v2.swf[/flv]
link
My only question …can Nokia compete with itunes ? They had limited success with the ngage which was designed to be the entry for nokia into the handheld game arena. I guess we have to wait and see what they have come up with on the 29th.
cheers
Scott
UPDATE : when you look at all four of the orientations you get to subscribe to this rss feed : http://feeds.feedburner.com/070829
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Posted in Business, Technology ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott
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
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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
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Product Design ~ 8 Comments
Written by Bernie
I was very impressed with the new menu graphics a few days ago on a random visit to Harvey’s. (That is a well know fast food chain in Canada.) This is one of those rare times that you see that alot of thought and design has gone into the design of the new menu’s. They are simple, elegant, visual and to the point. This photo is just of the drive thru, yet it still managed to say everything it needed to say. I commend the use of spacing and vibrant colors and imagery in the design. It breaks up a typically cluttered text based menu system you see everywhere else with a natural visual selection experience. Check out the condiment area near the bottom right. Such a visual design also transcends language barriers. The prices are simple and to the point as well.
I also noticed they did not give a lot of attention to the fast food staples such as fries and soft drinks, but theres no mystery there anyways. Showing a plastic cup with condensation on it doesn’t do much for my thirst anyway. They captured their core essence, their marvelous tasting, custom topping burgers. And did so in a way that makes you wonder what they filled all that space up with before. It’s nice seeing UI design thought in other places.
Good job,
Bernie
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Posted in Business, GUI, Innovation, Usability ~ 1 Comment
Written by Bernie
This post has been sitting in my drafts folders for a while….I wanted to get it out.
There is much being said about the elusive ‘web2′ bubble, some say there is one some say there isn’t, some say ti is bursting so say we haven’t seen it yet ……..there is even the debate raging over if it should even be referred to as web2.0. Regardless there is something afoot ….. but what is really to be gleaned from what is happening. here is my take on it.
People are ready for new experiences. The new breed of ‘web2′ apps have started to introduce web applications to a broader market. Flickr, Digg, Youtube and MySpace have created people who now turn to the web for more then flat web pages. Many of the ‘web2′ apps continue to be for extremely early adopters. But the trend is moving into the mainstream more and more. ALA youtube.
People will pay for products that they find value in. People always want to ask the million dollar question “What’s the business plan?” The ‘web2′ space has lots of companies that are looking to capture their piece of the pie. Out of this there have been some interesting business strategies that i have run across. The most logical one from my point of view is build a great service and charge people to access it. this is certainly not a new idea although there seems to be a back lash from the early adopters crowd who will always feel that things should be free.
Business is the next progression. The real boom will happen when the ‘web2′ applications start making the migration over to the business market. Lets face it there only needs to be a few photosharing sites, rss aggregators or any other product directed at the general public ….but what if that rss aggregator was repositioned for use in the SMB market? Business will pay for services. They do it now.
Have a great product or service. I think that this is often overlooked. Some of the things that i have seen as of late don’t have the legs to be a great winners. It isn’t because they are void of some programming prowess or anything like that …quite the opposite ….the technology is astounding it is the need they have missed. I think that people need to fix peoples problems. One of the ways that we have looked at problems is to look and see what you could fix in your own life …..
Communicating better. The connectedness of the world is every where. Everyone has a voice and you have to listen to everyone. This is a great change from the old PR way of talking to the people. IT has really become a back and forth. You have to be listening and addressing the concerns of all your customers. Upset customers are not that far removed from the WSJ ….we have all witnessed the story of a disgruntled blogger posting …and days later it is front page coverage (momiles, kyptonite) In my estimation it is a more sincere interaction that you are able to have because of the power of blogs and the web.
Lots of niches. This is a hockey analogy, Guy Kawasaki will appreciate this. You can play the open ice or you can play the boards. Find a niche market in the corners and stick to it and grow it. Not everyone can play up the center. There are a tremendous number of opportunities for companies to find and grow with these markets.
Take it as far as you can. This was a quick add in but there is a real trend towards small teams taking a project to the absolute furthest that you can and then seek help. The old style was to have an idea, sell that idea to an angel or vc and get rich. But this new way is much more productive and i think that it reassures the investor that this is something real, this is something that we have given up every free amount of time we have had and here it is …
It takes alot of pressure away from an investor if they can see your vision and touch it and try it perhaps. We worked for months prior to our inception during every free moment we had to build it. When we showed our angel ….he saw a product that was 80 % done ….not screens, not white board….real product.
Our strategy ….for what it is worth. Be small, be agile, fix a real problem, make a great product and a great customer experience, tell everyone who will listen, and listen to everyone that will talk about it.
Lets see if it works.
cheers
Scott
Blogged with Flock
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Posted in Business ~ 2 Comments
Written by Scott
So …..we are ready to launch ….well not today but we will be launching at TechCrunch/August Capital Party August 18th.
The party is being held here….
Stay tuned for more ……
Cheers,
Scott
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Innovation ~ 8 Comments
Written by Scott
So things have been fast and furious for us for the last month or so. We were in Toronto for the BarcampTdot. Got to meet some great folks! We were really overwhelmed by the spirit of the Barcamp thing. It is weird how a dusty open space turns into a hub of activity for the weekend. Full on wireless and top quality sessions. I think that everyone who presented a session did a great job.
this has spawned a number of great things. http://barcamp.org/BarCampEarth
Next was Mesh ….wow those guys put on a first rate conference. There we made some new freinds and things got even crazier ……
I came away with an overwhelming feeling that we are on the right track. We are not alone in this. We met other entrepreneurs who we could relate with and discuss what has and hasn’t worked. We couldn’t have been happier with the few days in TO.
So much more to tell ….
cheers
Scott
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
ConceptShare was born from our needs as visual communicators. It is a revolutionary new way to share and manage ideas visually. ConceptShare fills a void for anyone who needs to communicate design concepts visually and receive effective feedback.
We are very excited about letting CS loose on the world. Right now we are still tinkering to ensure that your experience is going to be great. Thanks to all those who have signed up for the beta and we haven’t forgotten about you.
Cheers
Scott
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Posted in Business, ConceptShare, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design, Technology ~ No Comments
Written by Scott
