Luke Priest Magazine

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Subscription
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Editorial
Editor-in-Chief - Luke Priest
Managing Editor - Sky Leigh
Art Director - Dan Roger
Production Manager - Andrew Simpson
Copy Editor - Callum Maullin
Columinists - Joe Gray & Craig Bates
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Contents
subscription and editorial
(page 1)
the future is near
(pages 3-6)
interaction design studios
(pages 7-10)
up and coming designers
(pages 11-12)
whats new?
(page 13)
glossary
(page 14)
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The future is
Near
13 design predictions for 2017
1. Failure mapping
Journey-maps and user flows are the bread
and butter of UX design — they provide the
basic framework for understanding user
touchpoints across the full cycle of interactions
with your product or service. Over half the
world’s population will be online by 2017,
and the enormous influx of new users will
bring about a disproportionate amount of
digital-novices, such as the elderly and the
Global South, who we’ll need to specially
design for. Similar to journey-mapping, the
practice of failure-mapping will allow UX
designers to better understand, anticipate,
and model non-ideal scenarios, allowing us to
better handle incorrect usage of products and
services.
2. micro-mini interactions
The internet was abuzz with talk of
microinteractions in 2015—a term which
refers to single task-based interactions with
a product, like setting an alarm, liking a
comment, or pressing a login button. Every
time we open Facebook or visit LinkedIn, we
are subconsciously engaging in dozens of
microinteractions—many invisible, too small
to even notice.
Micro-mini interactions are fast on their way
to everyday use, the implications of which are
tremendous in scope. Firstly, the ways that we
as users and consumers experience devices
will change greatly; every touch, scroll, pinch,
zoom, tap, click and so on will be rich
with unique animations and feedback –
attention devoted to the most minute of
interactions will create far more engaging
experiences for us all. Likewise, designers
will find new ways to capitalize on newfound
user-engagement, both in terms of designing
new features around these “interactions
within interactions”, as well as devising
new interfaces for the abundance of new
interactions that the apps of tomorrow will
bring!
3. proliferation of
weather apps
For better or worse, weather is an integral part
of our world. It impacts our every experience,
however subtle, and is thus an omnipresent
variable in the way we experience everything
else in our lives – including the apps on our
phones. Rain or shine, we take great delight in
tracking its course and planning accordingly.
While weather patterns of the past have
remained fairly consistent, mitigating the need
for constant, synchronous weather tracking,
the dramatic climate shifts of the near-future
will bring about extreme environmental
conditions that necessitate the need for ever
more vigilant weather tracking.
2015 was a record year for weather apps, but
the demand for them will only continue to
skyrocket.
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4. tamagotchi gestures
As our products become increasingly
anonymous, autonomous, automated and
homogenous, we’re starting to feel a pushback
from users. The greater UX community has
been observing calls for an earlier time—the
era of the mechanical watch—where objects
had personality and flourish, even at the
expense of functionality and precision.
More and more product designers are
deliberately invoking the Tamagotchi Gesture
in their work—crafting personality and charm
by imbuing their products with a certain
obsolescence, incompleteness, and fragility.
6. de-linearty
Greater simplicity does not always mean
greater usability. Nevertheless, 2015 became
the year of simplification for apps and
services—navigation menus narrowed in,
interactions became compartmentalized
into step-by-step processes, and users were
constantly placed on rails, forced to interact
with content in a fixed order along a linear
path. Users might enjoy these overly-simplified
systems for now, but in the words of Ian Fenn,
UX Evangelist:
“Poor design teams deliver the UX people ask
for. Great ones deliver the UX that people
need.”
We’re already witnessing a pushback from
users against these linear experiences — users
don’t want to be herded from one screen
to the next like cattle. The future is about
affording the user with maximum agency over
their experiences, and as advocates for the
user we must give them just that.
7. optimized interstitial
anxiety
5. hapnotic feedback
Haptic feedback refers to the use of the sense
of touch in a user interface, such as a virtual
keyboard, whose individual keys provide tactile
feedback when pressed. Haptic technology
has grown increasingly more sophisticated
with the proliferation of high-end mobile
devices. These advancements have enabled
interaction technologists to develop new
and exciting ways of modifying user-behavior
through subtle haptic cues, like using a
sequence of subtle pulses and vibrations to
direct a user to a “purchase now” button in
the event that they are stalling on a particular
product’s display page.
A common phrase amongst serious
Interaction Designers, interstitial anxiety
refers to the momentary state of tension a
user experiences between an action (clicking
a button) and a response (moving to the next
page). High latency and load times between
action and response can trigger this brief
experience of anxiety, during which the user
is momentarily left in the dark — powerless
and confused — caught between seams. If left
unaddressed, this anxiety can quickly build up
to create a poor user experience that will drive
the user away from your product. But clever
designers are instead learning how to channel
this anxiety, by creating transition elements
that allude to the next screen in the sequence,
users are permitted to momentarily preview,
and thus anticipate, rather than worry, about
what will happen next onscreen.
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8. migration from design
evangelism to design
proselytism
Design evangelists advocate for the use of good
design, both in principle and in practice, with
the ultimate goal of converting non-designers
into design-thinkers. They extol the virtues
of design-thinking to the uninitiated, so
that they too might pursue best practices in
their personal and professional lives. While
I’m in full support of design evangelists and
everything they do to further the cause of good
design, I’m afraid that mere advocacy alone
is simply not enough to convert others to the
practice of design thinking. From technology
evangelists to marketing evangelists to sales
evangelists and so forth, too many parallel
industries with conflicting messages exist for
us to truly communicate our message and see
it implemented in the workforce. Even worse,
our message is becoming abstracted, reduced
to bullet points and slide shares, our ideas
included solely for the benefit of others’ SEOs.
Fortunately, there’s a growing trend, online
and off, of designers who are standing up for
themselves and their craft. These designers
are not just advocating, but championing,
the power and elegance of a design oriented
world.
9. age-responsive design
Responsive design is all about
adaptability — restructuring your content to
the respective device of the user. This is only
the first step, though — far more will be done
to truly meet the user where they’re at. Just
as sites are already reformatted to adapt
their layout to a wide range of devices, so too
will they be able to adapt their content and
structure to a wide range of ages.
Online advertising has already been tailoring
its content to the specific interests of the user
for quite some time, and soon sites will be
doing just the same; an 8 year old and an 80
year old don’t read the same books or watch
the same television, so why do they share the
same online experience? Websites should not
be one size fits all. By 2017, an abundance of
metadata will inform age-specific adaptations
on websites:
- Navigation Menus will expand and contract
depending on the perceived competency of
users
- Font-sizes and spacing will naturally increasing
to accommodate the eyesight of the elderly.
- Color schemes will change; the young will
experience more saturated hues; the old
more muted palettes.
10. digital trust design
“Engendering the feeling of trust in a product
is among the chief roles of any good UX
designer.”
Ask any CEO, Marketer, Salesmen or Designer
what the most important factor in a successful
business relationship is and they’ll give you
the same answer: trust. The same is true of a
user’s relationship to a product. Engendering
the feeling of trust in a product is among the
chief roles of any good UX designer. However,
the significance of trust in digital products has
yet to be fully realized.
With growing concerns over security and data,
trust is harder than ever to build and maintain
on the web — the vast majority of Americans
don’t trust the internet whatsoever, presenting
product owners with a glaring dilemma. As
data-breaches jeopardize more and more
product-user relationships, identifying new
channels for establishing trust is critical to
brand differentiation and success.
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11. user offboarding
12. brokered ai networks
“A good product is like a cinematic
masterpiece.”
User Onboarding —, the process of locking in
new users by providing them with must-have
experiences early on — has been an area of
intense focus in product design. However,
onboarding’s counterpoint, User-Offboarding,
has been ignored by many — but not for long.
A good product should be just like a cinematic
masterpiece:
1. First there’s the opening introduction
(user onboarding) — the opening hook that
draws you in; the user interacts with a lovely
animation or a delightfully simple interface or
even a free chest of gems.
2. Then there’s the plot itself, where the
protagonist deals with whatever turning points
or discoveries come their way — the user
finds an item they’d like to purchase — maybe
its out of stock — maybe they add it to their
cart and proceed to checkout.
3. Then there’s the climax (the feedback
rush) — the protagonist saves the day or gets
what they want — the user purchases the pair
of boots in their cart.
4. And finally, there’s the resolution — the
protagonist gets married or walks off into
the sunset. In product terms — this is the
essential User Offboarding moment — it’s
what happens when the purchase is
completed — when the message has been
sent — when the article has been liked and
shared.
As designers strive to create more holistic
start-to-finish, cinematic experiences, we
will begin to spend much more time curating
these final off-boarding “sunset” moments.
Artificial General Intelligence is still the stuff
of science fiction — but lesser, more practical
AI’s, virtual assistants and digital concierges
are right at our doorstep. These personal
“intelligent” assistants are entering our lives
at a staggering pace — everyone that owns
a smart phone has access to at least one of
these AIs, and the world is coming to terms
with the reality that AI is here to stay.
Simple activities like setting alarms, scheduling
reminders, answering questions or controlling
smart switches are being contested between
multiple AI’s designed to fulfill the same
tasks. The smart helpers are not designed to
negotiate any division of labor amongst one
another, leading to redundancy, contradiction,
and overall dyisfunction when their original
purpose was to simplify things. Individual
AI companies are unlikely to cooperate with
another in this competitive arena, leaving
it up to designers to broker these heated
relationships between artificial intelligences.
13. textile design
Google’s Material Design has been showing
up in trend forecasts and predictions since
2013, but it didn’t truly makes its debut until
2015 when it became the mainstream norm
for web design. However, that is all that is
subject to change soon.
Also known as “quantum paper,” Google’s
Material Design language is the digitally
evolved form of physical paper itself,
incorporating many visual metaphors from its
analog equivalent.
“Unlike real paper, our digital material can
expand and reform intelligently. Material
has physical surfaces and edges. Seams and
shadows provide meaning about what you can
touch.”
Credit to the Author - Chase Buckley
All images and information taken from the original article.
https://uxmag.com/articles/the-future-is-near-13-design-predictions-for-2017
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Meet Hudson
Integrated, the User
First Digital Agency
Since its founding over ten years ago, Hudson Integrated, formerly known as Hudson Horizons,
has weathered through the many phases and transitions on the web and digital industry. Over
more than a decade, the agency’s core work has been to help businesses utilize online spaces
to their full potential. The team’s agility helped the agency stay current and on top of rising
trends throughout the years.
The current 16 full time employees at Hudson Integrated work on projects for a wide range
of clients in the areas of digital marketing, responsive design, and web and app development.
The majority of Hudson’s clients come from within the United States, but in the future they
would like to gain more international projects.
Leading this digital-savvy team is CEO, Founder, and President Daryl Bryant. Having been with
the agency through its early days, Daryl brings to the table years of knowledge and experience
that are irreplaceable. His knack for leadership and entrepreneurship have led him to serve in
other board roles for other companies and projects as a professional. We talked with him to
pick his brain on all things creative and what his thoughts are for the future of the industry.
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question and answers
Describe your agency in 3 words:
Nimble. Driven. Inquisitive.
What are some crucial components to creating a successful digital campaign?
Consistency and creativity are really important, as well as up-to-date technology. You can
have a great idea, but if the message doesn’t translate across different digital platforms, the
inconsistency will hurt what could have otherwise been an awesome campaign.
What are some challenges you and your team face on a daily basis and how do
you overcome them?
On a daily basis we face pretty much the same challenges as every other working professional.
Simply, there just aren’t enough hours in a day. I’m convinced that if the people on my team
didn’t have to sleep, they wouldn’t. In terms of making sure we’re effectively managing our
time, we use a project management software, and we also meet once a week to talk about
anything we think might be positively or negatively impacting the company. We call those
meetings Fireside Chats. By regularly taking the time to sort out where we’re at as a company,
we save time in the long run.
What is a campaign(s) you worked on that was especially successful and why?
Luckily, most of our campaigns have been successful. However, one of our coolest success
stories is turning a little mom and pop shop from Montana into a national retailer in less than
a year. We were able to do this through social media listening – or more simply – REALLY paying
attention to and analyzing customers’ needs, and then tailoring our marketing and advertising
based on that data. We identified a niche market and have been serving it ever since. We are
their digital agency of record.
How did you become interested in digital media and marketing?
I’ve been interested in digital media since the very beginning. I’m a total tech geek, and my
business partner is too. In terms of integrating digital marketing into our business – that came
a little bit later. Basically, we realized that building websites was integral to modern marketing.
As the Co-Founder and CEO at the agency, what are your daily activities?
I make sure the company is moving the right direction at all times. I oversee all operations and
business development, and I make sure that we’re attracting the right type of clients for our
talents and processes.
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What excites you most about your job?
The most exciting part about running an agency is seeing our clients gain success through our
efforts. We’ve made it a priority to work as partners with our clients; we become, in short,
an extension of their internal teams. To me, nothing is more exciting than partnering with
businesses who are serious about using digital to become leaders in their industries.
What does the word creativity mean to you?
Creativity is not being afraid to step outside of what’s comfortable in order to achieve something
greater than what has been done before. To be creative, you need to check your ego at the
door, because you’ll have 100 mediocre ideas before you come up with an outstanding one. It’s
a process. Unlike web development, creativity doesn’t have a set of functional specifications
or a universal code. It’s work that requires one to be disciplined, determined, and open to
constant experimentation – you can’t give up just because one idea flopped. Persistence is just
as important as creativity.
What do you do for inspiration?
We stay updated on digital from a number of online publications, and we also find conferences
really useful for inspiration. Publications include AdAge. eConsultancy, TechCrunch, and Ragan.
Similarly, Accenture and Forrester have published so much awesome research on the digital
industry in the past few years; both have been useful in examining the agency space. As for
conferences, we like to attend events focused on ideation. This fall the team will be attending
Delight Conference in Portland, Oregon, which should be really inspirational.
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Please list a few of your favorite digital brands:
From an innovation perspective, Uber is amazing. The fact that they completely changed an
industry that had been around for over 100 years in just 3 year’s time – all because they took
advantage of technology and user empowerment – is really inspiring. From a more traditional
perspective, the beauty retailer Sephora is absolutely killing it in terms of UX and search. Plus,
its website design is so sleek beautifully branded.
What do you like to do in your free time?
In my free time I like to stay active, spend time with my family, and support my alma mater’s
business and entrepreneur program. I speak at the school at least once a year, and mentor
aspiring entrepreneurs as well. We’ve had many interns from the business school, and it’s
always rewarding to see them acclimate to the working world as opposed to classroom. I also
speak at events for Multiple Sclerosis, which is dear to my heart since I’ve struggled with it
myself since I was 23 years old.
Which countries excite you most in terms of digital creativity?
Australia and New Zealand have done pretty innovative stuff, but I am very proud of the digital
creativity in the United States, too.
Where do you see the industry going in 5 or 10 years?
Well, digital certainly isn’t going anywhere. Where it’s headed is mostly speculation at this
point, but I think wearable technology, and more broadly, the Internet of Things will only
become more mainstream. Brands will need to figure out innovative ways to stay relevant
as consumers make different technologies part of their daily lives. I also see search engine
algorithms moving slowly toward a more human-centric model, which is part of the larger shift
toward user experience and empowerment.
What is a digital trend that is here to stay, at least for the relative time being?
Marketing automation and programmatic advertising. Basically, any technology that allows us
to work smarter and not harder, will remain as cornerstones for the foreseeable future. Also,
user behavioral data will continue to drive the most successful digital brands.
What advice do you often give to people who are starting to work in your same
field?
The best advice I can give is to stay creative and to leverage technology wherever possible. In
the digital world, time is of the essence like never before. So, if you can find ways to streamline
traditionally manual work, you will free up more time for creativity and innovation, both of
which characterize top industry leaders.
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anum qureshi
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Interviewer: Luke Priest
Interviewee: Anum Qureshi
Up and coming
designer
interview
Interview setting: The interview was conducted over a Skype call. The interview took place on
Friday, 06 January 2017 at 2:45pm.
Affiliation with the Interviewee: The interviewer and interviewee are both long-time
friends, they both study Interactive Media Design but at different universities. (Interviewer at
Northumbria University, the interviewee at University of Lincoln).
Interviewer: What drives you to take part in this course?
Interviewee: I’ve always thought to be a creative person and I would like to learn all the
different aspects of design which this course seemed to offer, hopefully I can create something
that would be used world-wide for the better.
Interviewer: Would you recommend this course to people looking to come to University for
something similar?
Interviewee: Definitely, you cover a lot of aspects of design, its ideal for learning all you need.
Interviewee: I like to take part in any local social events, drawing also takes up a lot of my time,
learning how to play guitar and listening to music almost every hour of the day.
Interviewer: Did you have any background that is related to IMD?
Interviewee: I studied IMD in college before coming to University but we mainly covered
websites, animations and graphics.
Interviewer: Have you published any works of yours online?
Interviewee: I have an instagram that I’ll post some of my drawings or little creations on but
nothing much more than that.
Interviewer: What do you planned to do after graduating from this IMD course?
Interviewee: Hopefully get a job offer from a design company for the work experience and
work on building my own business in my free time.
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Whats new?
gunslinger stratos iphone 7
Gunslinger Stratos is a frantic third person
deathmatch shooter published by Square Enix
which is setting itself apart in the Japanese
arcade scene.
Stratos lands in the midst of a wave of on-line
versus machines including Dissidia Final
Fantasy, Mobile Suit Gundam VS and Pokken
hitting the market, involving gameplay in
which generally you circle strafe around
z-targeted opponents as you duke it out in
the arena.
These machines have all been sporting very
standard control schemes and peripherals,
but Startos is here to supply the truckload
of wackiness you’d hope to find in a good
Japanese arcade.
The dual pistol light-gun “point n‘ shoot”
controllers are likely to be the first thing that
catches your eye about the machine. Light-gun
mechanics merged with a 3rd person camera
and a moveable character might sound like
a logistical nightmare, but an analogue stick
mounted on the back of each gun provides
the level of control necessary to make it work
nicely.
The iPhone 7 is the latest iPhone to be
released from Apple after being released on
16th September. Prices for this product varies
depending on the amount of storage capacity
starting at £599 for 32GB, £699 for 128GB and
£799 for 256GB. Most U.K. mobile operators
now have the product available on contract
and comes in 5 colours, gold, rose gold, silver
and two blacks the premium looking and the
mirror finish jet black. The iPhone 7 has the
same features as the iPhone 6s but with more
upgrades and modifications.
The iPhone 7 has now got a new force
touch home button that is more responsive,
customisable and solid state. The force touch
function uses the taptic engine and provides
haptic feedback for quick actions, messages,
notifications and ringtones. Another key
feature to this product is that it is now water
and dust proof, one of the first iPhones to
have this.
The camera on the phone has also been
upgraded and now has a 12MP, f/18 camera
on the back and a new six element lens with
larger pixels. Apple claims that it is 60% faster
and 30% more energy efficient. There’s a new
quad-LED true tone flash and a new flicker
sensor, too.
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glossary
ethnography
Ethnography is the systematic study of cultures
and people and it is designed to research and
report the knowledge and system of meaning
in the lives of a cultural group. It usually
involves a researcher observing a society
from the point of view of the subject or the
cultural group of the study. Ethnography
helps to represent graphically and in writing
the culture of a group. A typical ethnography
is a holistic study which includes a brief
history and analyses the terrain, climate and
habitat of the culture or subject. It can also
help understand the social life of humans and
their behaviour.
virtual reality
Virtual reality is an artificial environment
that is created with software and presented
to the user in such a way that the user stops
belief and accepts t as a real environment.
On a computer, virtual reality is the primary
experience through two of the five senses:
sight and sound. Virtual realities simplest for is
a 3D image that can be explored interactively
at a personal computer by manipulating the
keys and mouse to in different directions.
Others involve 360 degree display screens,
augmented rooms with wearable computers
and haptic devices that let you feel display
images. More recently virtual reality has been
used to help medical practices by allowing
more methods of teaching paralyzed patients
to walk again.
the cloud
An online storage facility for all our files. As the
Internet has become hugely more accessible,
with most of us being near a Wi-Fi hotspot or
mobile network at all times, we are able to
store our files online rather than on our
hard drives. These files are stored on
computers/servers located in warehouses
all around the world. This enables us to save
space on our hard drives by storing these
files elsewhere. Examples of this service
include Google Drive and Apple’s iCloud.
Advantages include that storage is easy to
upgrade/downgrade depending on your
needs, and your files are available from all
your internet-connected devices.
html5
The 5th revision of HyperText Markup
Language, used to display content on the
World Wide Web. It is the ‘behind the scenes’
language that describes what a webpage
should look like. It aims to replace HTML 4, an
out-dated system that is nearly 20 years old.
Unlike previous versions, it has been designed
to be able to display a number of different
types of content, such as music, video, apps
etc., which reduces the need to download
external plugins, which may contain viruses. It
has a simpler, more straightforward element
structure to pages which makes them easier
to create and more efficient.
information
architecture
Information architecture (IA) is the practice
of deciding how to arrange the parts of
something to be understandable. IAs are in
websites, apps, software and even physical
places. A good IA helps people to understand
their surroundings and find what they’re
looking for in the real world as well as online.
IA is an important skill within UX and other
disciplines, such as content strategy, technical
writing, library science and interaction design.
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