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S’all in the details: Instagram 2.0

September 21st, 2011 by Chris Hendrixson

Welp, yesterday Instagram rolled out version 2.0 of its popular (and growing) photo sharing app for the iPhone. Live filters, new filters, higher-resolution photos, etc. You can read more about that stuff here, but I want to focus on a relatively small but important update: the app icon. As a designer I’m often enamored by beautiful app icons, especially on the iPhone’s retina display. They are an important part of a product’s identity and although you have already been “sold” on the app since you’ve downloaded it, the icon is a detail not to be overlooked. It captures the essence of your product in all its square, little, rounded-corner glory. I think the Instagram 2.0 icon is a wonderful update. Just like the app, I liked the icon just fine before. Isn’t that the best kind of update though? Something you already like gets even better. Apple is great at this. The Instagram icon update is subtle and at first glance I couldn’t articulate what was different about it (more shadowing, more contrast, INST to Insta below the color stripes) but I knew it was different somehow. It feels better. Sometimes things don’t need an explanation, it’s just ok that they “feel” better. They certainly did not need to update the icon but I’m glad they did. This very high attention to the minor details is a characteristic of a “great” brand/product and something often overlooked by a “good” one.

(The layout of the Instagram icons above is a nod to one of our favorite and most visited blogs, Brand New.)

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Make the logo bigger. Seriously.

September 9th, 2011 by Dan Barczak

Under Armour Maryland Pride Video from NewMedia on Vimeo.

I couldn’t help but fall in love with Maryland’s new football ensemble, while flipping through ESPN the other night. I personally love the design. Not because it’s any better than Penn State’s classic old-school cool, or Oregon’s flashy neon from Nike. I love it because it made me stop dead in my tracks and say “what the hell is that?” I love it because it got my attention. It made Maryland football relevant. And it got people talking. That is great design.

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PBJ #8

July 5th, 2011 by rachel.mason@hyperquake.com

Focusing on our goal of creating an interface to encourage people to explore new places, events and areas of Cincinnati, we began brainstorming user stories. Each of us thought of the possible desires a person might have for using the app and created narratives in the frame of, “As a { role }, I want { feature }, so that { benefit }.” For example, “As an indecisive person I want an app that helps me make decisions, so I can spend less time debating.” We had many great responses. There were differing scenarios across the spectrum, ranging from general to specific. Some user narratives overlapped in content, while others were unique.

To filter the stories, we will bucket the narratives and try to define the features and benefits we’ve suggested. Next we will have to determine which narratives are most relevant to our goals so we can focus our attention as we continue to develop our ideas.

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PB&J #7

June 30th, 2011 by matthew.cole@hyperquake.com

Today’s meeting took us a few steps back from sketching/mapping out the app to reevaluate who and what the app is for. Some of this reappraisal arose from the weekend’s outings by a few Quakers, who came back with a few jotted notes and ideas about their adventures. In short, we began to see that heading down one path would lead to the creation of more of a “Suggestion” app instead of the “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” direction that had previously resounded among all of us. To stay on track, we need to remember our core goal:

“Create an interface to the city that encourages people to explore new places, events and areas of Cincinnati.”

With that in mind, our next step is to begin setting up some use-case scenarios from the perspectives of several potential users (e.g. Visitors to Cincy, Bored long-time Residents, New-to-the-town Users and Users taking out family or friends (Entertaining)). These scenarios will serve as guideposts for development, keeping us focused on our users and what they will potentially be doing with the app.

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PBJ #6

June 24th, 2011 by Kate Kovalcin

We made some breakthroughs as far as our process goes. We’ve come to an agreement about the hierarchy of our ideas and now it’s just going through and problem solving along the way. We have a pretty clear vision of how we want it to start and now it’s just making some decisions about filters and questions. We have some really awesome ideas about ways to expand the app, but for now, we’re just excited to be figuring out the basics.

Posted in Design, Fun, Technology, Thinking | 17 Comments »

PBJ #5

June 23rd, 2011 by Chris Hendrixson

We have a few good ideas, a couple that are solid gold and a handful that are just crap. The PBJ team is currently working to narrow our focus a little bit and start to move from idea to some early-level sketching/prototyping of aforementioned solid gold ideas. Stay tuned …

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Posted in Design, Technology | 188 Comments »

FDA Reveals New Graphic Warnings

June 22nd, 2011 by LeAnne Wagner

If you’ve ever traveled abroad and purchased cigarettes, the new FDA issued graphic warning labels may not surprise you much. Yesterday the FDA revealed nine graphic warning labels that will eventually replace the current text based warning labels. By 2013 the new labels will be required to cover at least 50% of every box sold in the US. I’m not a big smoker, but the labels would definitely make me think twice before lighting up. Canada has been using similar graphics since 2000 and survey of smokers conducted in 2001 (one year after the launch of the graphics) revealed some promising results. (The survey was funded by the Institute of Cancer Research of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, read more.)

  • 90% of Canadian smokers had noticed the new warnings
  • 43% are more concerned about the health effects of smoking because of the warnings
  • 44% said the new warnings increased their motivation to quit smoking, and of those who attempted to quit
  • 38% said the warnings were a motivating factor

Interesting to note is the mix of graphic styles used in the new warnings. It feels like they mashed three different campaigns together to form this eclectic mix. I wonder if this was intentional in hopes to reach the diverse range of smokers or just a poorly executed campaign.




And for your viewing “pleasure” I’ve included a few  graphic warning labels from other countries.

Canada

Brazil

Not sure what country, but man that's scary.

Posted in Design | 169 Comments »

PBJ #3: Ahoy, thar’s brainstormin’ off the starboard bow

June 20th, 2011 by erik.taylor@hyperquake.com

Today we sat down to further narrow our scope for PBJ’s yet unnamed project. While we may have spent more time discussing social groups like hipsters, bros, and several other derogatory labels, we did however come up with a unique idea that got several of us excited. While discussing how to differentiate ourselves from other apps or websites that offer event information and feedback like yelp or urbanspoon, Dustin threw out the idea for an app styled after the choose your own adventure books many of us remember so fondly. You could see the wheels turning as we all thought of some of the cool possibilities this could lead to. Map and GPS integration, picture tagging, commenting and social profiles were just a few of the ideas being thrown around. Needless to say we are still in the dark ages of this project, the “create your own adventure app” was something to get excited about. Here’s a recap of a few of my favorite ideas:

  1. plan your night on the fly based on your mood and get recommendations on where to start your adventure
  2. location based check-in and picture tagging to document the adventure
  3. achievements or reward unlocks for creating unique adventures or incorporating new venues
  4. adventure categorization based on social groups
  5. the ability to share your adventure with others and comment on adventures
  6. a profile and social factions of users with similar adventures

These are just a few of the ideas we talked about and we still have a lot of polishing to do from a scope and ideation standpoint, but I for one am excited to see where this goes. Check back next time to see how our idea changes and evolves.

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Posted in Design, Technology | 209 Comments »

PBJ #2 : More Brainstormin’

June 16th, 2011 by Chris Hendrixson

Today we started to narrow down our focus a bit on our yet-unnamed project. More post-it notes and white-board-chicken-scratch. Today we decided that we want to make a product, one that is conjured up out of our collective creative minds as opposed to one for a particular client. So far we are pretty sure we want to make an iPhone app. We are in a debate about whether the app will be more entertainment or more content-delivery focused or (more likely) some combination of both. We are all intrigued by the thought of adding a game layer to the experience, which could come to life in a wide variety of ways.

Some random thoughts from today’s brainstorm:

• Do people REALLY check-in with mobile devices and WHY do they do this?
• Make something cool that we all would use and there is a good chance others will too
• Crowd-source content
• Infuse the experience with “inside jokes” and other funny Cincy stereotypes
• Be upfront and honest about Cincy at all times (don’t sugarcoat!)

Our current mission statement: To show the world that Cincinnati doesn’t suck.

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Posted in Design, Technology | 339 Comments »

PBJ #1 : Brainstorm

June 15th, 2011 by LeAnne Wagner

Today was the first day of PBJ, which is an experiment between our design and tech teams to create a project over our lunch breaks throughout the next month (or however long it takes). In case you’re curious, PBJ stands for Power Brainstorm Jam, which beat out other awesome names like Lunch Storm, Footlong Ideas, and many others inappropriate for listing on here. Clearly our strengths are not in naming. The guide lines and goals we decided on today are pretty simple. 1. Meet every day at lunch. 2. Document the meeting events/progress on the blog daily. 3. Create something that is an example of the type of work we’re passionate about and would like to do more of.

With that being decided, we began trying to figure out what we’d like to make. The post-its in the image below represent some of the topics discussed. After some round about discussion and hazing of Dustin and his hipster ways (i.e. v-neck sunburn) we settled on creating an app for Cincinnati. What exactly that app is doing, we’ve yet to decide, but some of the popular topics were the CAC, finding venues or restaurants, uncovering the “cool” things, Midpoint Music Festival and general connecting and reviews while on the go.

Our next steps will always be outlined here on the blog as follows:

#1 homework:

  • Do some research into the various apps and websites that already exist and play into the spaces that we discussed today. Which ones do you use (or think you would use)? Which ones are doing it right? Which ones have potential for us to build on? Due Thurs.
  • Think of 1-2 app ideas that have something to do with Cincy. Think about something that you would find useful and/or fun yourself.  Due Fri.

Thurs: Share research on existing apps and websites with the group.

Fri: Share app ideas with the group. Hopefully some will bubble to the top and maybe we’ll even get it narrowed down to 2 or 3.

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Posted in Design, Technology | 165 Comments »

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