There have been some recent changes to the My Workspaces module in the new ConceptShare UI. We have already received a lot of great feedback on this feature and have already made a few key improvements.

Our core goal was to maximize the number of workspaces you could see at one time as well as be able to perform key workspace actions quickly. While this may not seem like much of a productivity gain to the free users (1 free workspace), it is of great benefit to the paid subscribers of which some have over 200-500 active workspaces at any one time.

The workspaces that you belong to are represented by thumbnails. You can mouse over any workspace thumbnail to access its Workspace Actions menu. You quickly add people, concepts or edit the workspace as well as launch the workspace from this menu.

Newly added! is the ability for Account Managers to Disable and/or Delete a workspace from this menu as well. This feature was based on your user feedback and now you won’t have to enter the Edit menu to disable or delete your Workspace. As before Workspaces that are disabled do not count towards your package total. Workspaces must still be disabled before you can delete them. Disabled Workspaces can also be hidden from your main page.

Have fun!

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Posted in ConceptShare, Design , GUI ~ No Comments
Written by Bernie

Widescreens are everywhere and it’s now starting to more seriously affect GUI design. Designers are forced to have to think differently. What was ok for just 4:3..isn’t anymore. It’s now almost impossible to get a 4:3 TV, (Best Buy officially stopped carrying analog TV’s a few months ago), Laptops and desktop monitors are no different. It seems thats all they sell and that’s all people want to buy.

In a recent look at our web hits for ConceptShare.com we are showing that close to 50% are using widescreens. This may actually be even higher for our own target market assuming some of the traditional proportions coming up might be media, financial and casual visitors. Another interesting point is that there are over 296 different resolutions most of which are wide…Is that even possible? Well it is… I checked again.

Height is quickly getting lost in favor of width. Things like favorite Links, virus software and others are taking up even more valuable browser height with rows pushing the viewing area further and further down. As a designer you feel like a bed of nails is coming down on you like they do in the cartoons.Arrgh!

At ConceptShare we saw the number of users with widescreen monitors increase dramatically during the first year of development. We have recently, (now with V2) managed to squeeze out some more vertical space by adding a second column on the right side and eliminating some of the menus that were below taking up valuable vertical real estate. We felt that the widescreens can afford the extra menu column and if you don’t have one or just happen to love the extra room, we’ve added a customizable interface so you position your layout anyway you like and even save it as well. This should appease almost everyone because you can at the very least customize the layout the same way as v1 looked. For those that push the limits of widescreen heaven, (and you Apple 30” 2560×1600 people know who you are), ConceptShare becomes a dream with a very large work area because the interface was built to scale and benefit those with large monitors… because that’s how we would want it.

Look at the difference between V1 and V2 released earlier this month.



ConceptShare V1- Default Screen @1920×1200


ConceptShare V2 - Default Screen @ 1920×1200

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Posted in ConceptShare, GUI ~ 2 Comments
Written by Bernie

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

A while back we posted that we were setting up ConceptShare Labs as a way to engage the ConceptShare community in shaping the direction of the product. The community driven ideas filtered up from the needs of our users. When we introduced our first group of users to the workspace we weren’t really sure what to expect. The group consisted of a wide variety of users.

• Graphic Designers
• Architectural
• Engineering
• Software developers
• Product designers
• Web designers
• Print & Pre-Press

The goals for this project space

• Engage our users in the direction of the product
• Continue to improve upon the user experience with great tools
• Prove ConceptShare as tool for innovation

Once the workspace was created we simply posted design mock-ups along the product road map. We found that the flexible nature of ConceptShare made the discussions very relevant. Users from around the world didn’t have to sync to the schedule of EST. It was interesting to see how quick on the trigger some users were; we would post new designs and users would instantly come online after getting the notification email. We would start the discussions generally with a general description of key features, from there questions and suggestions began to grow.

As we made changes new designs would be uploaded replacing the older design. Starting the review process again. This drastically reduces the time between iterations. What would have taken many months of back and forth via email and meetings were completed in weeks.

Features being Discussed

This is a look at the concepts within the workspace. Once features were implemented concepts are moved to the completed folder, resulting in a clear experience. (Drag-and-Drop Folders are a graduate of the Labs)

A typical discussion in ConceptShare Labs

The users really took to using ConceptShare to discuss the new features. The ability of CS to structure discussions around specific elements of a design ensured that users were able to discuss fine elements of the design. Layering of comments keep users focused on the discussion at hand and away from comments and markups of other discussion items.

Users discuss the crop tool idea. You can notice that this was one comment of three on this particular mock-up

Continuous Innovation

We have more then one workspace underway in ConceptShare Lab. We are ready to roll out the GUI Upgrades 2 workspace to more users with the next evolution of GUI improvements. We also have other projects that we are working on quietly with the internal team. The flexibility of ConceptShare allows us to work internally first and then open up the workspaces to more people when we are ready.

We have some interesting stuff that is going to come out of the Labs in the coming month or so. These should prove to be very interesting to our users and greatly extend the use of conceptshare by ……oh wait that is another post.

The Result:

We have completed 11 features thru this process and it has proved to be incredible. We are very committed to this process as it has allowed us to be incredibley agile as we develop. We are a small team so the ability to have a feedback loop that is so accessible and instant makes the process faster. By integrating the feedback loop tighter to the design process we were able to take fast steps getting feedback needed along the way. This is a stark contrast to older styles of design where the design might get a lot further along in production before getting feedback.

We accomplished the goals that we had set out for this workspace.

• We had the conversations with our users giving them a real stake in the next generation of features.
• We created some incredible new features that have greatly added to the effectiveness of ConceptShare as a tool for business.
• We demonstrated that ConceptShare works as a tool for innovating.

We look forward to the release of the next round of GUI upgrades to the community. There’s lots of things that have been asked for that and we are really excited to let them loose on the ideas.

I hope this article is helpful, I wanted to give you some food for thought about how a different approach to the design process worked for us. Opening up for feedback early, coupled with the proper tools create a very fast development cycle. Think how this can apply to your product, your users, your designers.

Cheers

Scott

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Posted in ConceptShare, GUI, Ideas, Innovation, Product Design ~ 1 Comment
Written by Scott

ConceptShare has launched with enough usable value that will help out a lot of firms, software companies, designers and creative people, theres more to come but it solves a real problem now. Our crazy account creations and early sales figures have shown this but there is something thats brewing in the background.

Now that the platform is there and circulating around and people are seeing how it can help. All the pieces are there for our expert model. What is our expert model? Well..we think there are a lot of talented people out there who have a lot of skills that can contribute to any visual project. We envision a community of these people that would open themselves available to be tapped for what’s inside their heads. You don’t need them to do the work. Just give their experience, feedback and wisdom to your project. For some people they only need 10 minutes in front of a design to say “change that, wrong color, move this down below” etc. etc. ..We believe the expert directory will contain usability people, designers, business people, ad execs…you name it.
How does it work. From a users perspective we will have soon a direct expert registration in which you will not need a ConceptShare account to list yourself. You can upload a bit of your portfolio some information, links etc.. Natural fits are people with experience or education in design, usability and human factors, color, photography, advertising etc. but anyone is useful..Tag yourself with your hobbies..Who knows, PING golf may want to select a bunch of golfers to discuss new ads, or equipment.

The account holder who needs expert help can browse the directory and invite people based on their skills, demographics or reputation. Not everyone has a UI guy on staff, or a logo guy. So why not ask an expert?
Compensation: We are still working all this out..for now its just fun to help others with design and its not a lot of work to give feedback. We figure reputation points and rating is a good way to start. We want people with good reputation and those that create alot of value for others to be compensated in some way. But its not labour work. its mind work so what would people pay for recognized experts. I assume people that have proven themselves invaluable to ConceptShare users would create their own celebrity in our directory and could set their own prices.
Let’s Survey!!

How much would you pay for one feedback session with:

• Jason Fried on your new web app interface
• Seth Goodin on an AD campaign
• Guy Kawasaki on anything
• Tom Kelly (IDEO) on anything
• Tom Peters on anything
• Famous Photographer or Photoshop re-Toucher
• Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots on your football offensive plays that you uploaded field diagrams and have drawn arrows showing movement and routes.

Bernie

*** Update***

We do not actually have these people in our expert directory this is a hypothetical question. Please do not email these people inviting them into your space.

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Posted in GUI, Ideas, Innovation ~ 6 Comments
Written by Bernie

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

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Posted in GUI, Tools ~ 3 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.

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Posted in GUI, Usability ~ 1 Comment
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