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Business Calendar started out as a side project, a one-man show, and is now run by a team of eight in Berlin. The app was very successful right from the time Android entered the mainstream market, and it now has an active user base of 2 million. But instead of modernizing the design and usability regularly, the developers focused on implementing user requests and customization options. Outdated design and new features stuffed in had made the app heavy and complex — full of features, hard to maintain for the team, hardly accessible for new users.

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Knowing they needed a redesign but having few resources themselves, the team approached Opoloo to get design and interaction on the same level as the development. For the task, we delineated goals to attract new users and keep the existing user base satisfied:

• Improve user experience
  Strip down and reorganize the user interface to revive the simple, fast, efficient work process of a productivity tool.
• Improve accessibility
  Keep old users happy, lower the barriers for new ones.
• Incorporate task management
  Integrate tools that users need every day to create more value.
• Apply modern design standards
  Address the main criticism: “Could be prettier.”
• Extensive tablet support
  Improve the tablet experience as a first step to ubiquity.

The hardest part of any mobile calendar’s interface is the density of information, with each little piece fighting for attention: grids, events, time indicators, text labels, colors and other elements to interact with, manipulate and customize. Finding the right balance is what makes for an accessible calendar UI. Below are a few tricks we pulled with the presentation of data (i.e. how pieces of information are consumed, searched for and compared).

Although an iconic and heavily used feature of Business Calendar, the favorite bar was barely accessible: It became too small and too crowded to use as the number of calendars grew. Our solution was to use Android’s black system bar as an optical trick: The favorite bar now feels much taller and easier to tap, due to the black-in-black design. Additionally, we improved touch targets, made visible and invisible states clearer, and implemented a scrolling pattern to house more calendars.

The post Making time for your self appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.

Business Calendar started out as a side project, a one-man show, and is now run by a team of eight in Berlin. The app was very successful right from the time Android entered the mainstream market, and it now has an active user base of 2 million. But instead of modernizing the design and usability regularly, the developers focused on implementing user requests and customization options. Outdated design and new features stuffed in had made the app heavy and complex — full of features, hard to maintain for the team, hardly accessible for new users.

Knowing they needed a redesign but having few resources themselves, the team approached Opoloo to get design and interaction on the same level as the development. For the task, we delineated goals to attract new users and keep the existing user base satisfied:

• Improve user experience
  Strip down and reorganize the user interface to revive the simple, fast, efficient work process of a productivity tool.
• Improve accessibility
  Keep old users happy, lower the barriers for new ones.
• Incorporate task management
  Integrate tools that users need every day to create more value.
• Apply modern design standards
  Address the main criticism: “Could be prettier.”
• Extensive tablet support
  Improve the tablet experience as a first step to ubiquity.

The hardest part of any mobile calendar’s interface is the density of information, with each little piece fighting for attention: grids, events, time indicators, text labels, colors and other elements to interact with, manipulate and customize. Finding the right balance is what makes for an accessible calendar UI. Below are a few tricks we pulled with the presentation of data (i.e. how pieces of information are consumed, searched for and compared).

Although an iconic and heavily used feature of Business Calendar, the favorite bar was barely accessible: It became too small and too crowded to use as the number of calendars grew. Our solution was to use Android’s black system bar as an optical trick: The favorite bar now feels much taller and easier to tap, due to the black-in-black design. Additionally, we improved touch targets, made visible and invisible states clearer, and implemented a scrolling pattern to house more calendars.

Let’s be honest: We designers can be difficult to work with. We might come from a controversial company culture, work an unconventional schedule or get impatient whenever our Internet connection is slower than the speed of light. Would you be at ease with a service provider who matches this description?

When talking to potential clients, be aware that many will have never solicited a professional design service and likely have little understanding of the design process itself. Keep in mind, too, that some clients have had a poor experience in the past. For many clients, it can be an anxious jump into the deep unknown, a big financial investment steeped in risk.

But why should any of this matter to us? After all, it’s not our money. Being rewarded for our time and effort should be all that matters, right? This is true to an extent; our knowledge and experience shouldn’t be seen as a free commodity. However, at times, a little patience and empathy are required on our part.

The post Fancy Buffet Design appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.

This film was made thanks to the enormous commitment of many wonderful people.

4 trips, 840 hours spent on Zakynthos, 2000 km travelled on the island, 28 days of shooting, 3TB of timelapse footage, 380 hours of post-production, 100 kg film equipment weight.

It took me a couple of weeks to finish the first draft of the chapter, then it was reviewed for the first time. Vitaly gave some nice feedback about where I could go into a little more detail (he is always thirsty for more knowledge), so I did. After the second review, there wasn’t much to edit anymore. I went over the chapter one more time and sent it for proofreading.

We used Basecamp as the communication management app. By “we” I mean Vitaly, the Smashing team, and everyone else who worked on the book. It was my first time using Basecamp and I quite liked it — it helped keep everything organized and in perspective. Knowing where everyone was in the process of writing was also quite helpful.

When I told Vitaly I wanted to write this article to introduce the SVG chapter to you, he asked me to be as critical of the entire writing process as I wanted, and mention anything I did not like about it, or even about him! But I couldn’t come up with anything, really.

The one and only criticism I have is the delay in the release date. I’m a very punctual person and when we started working on the book it was scheduled to be released in March and to start shipping in April, but it took a few months more to do that. That said, everyone who worked on the book also had a ton of other commitments and stuff to do besides writing it, so delays like this are only natural, I guess.

tem

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We used Basecamp as the communication management app. By “we” I mean Vitaly, the Smashing team, and everyone else who worked on the book. It was my first time using Basecamp and I quite liked it — it helped keep everything organized and in perspective. Knowing where everyone was in the process of writing was also quite helpful.

When I told Vitaly I wanted to write this article to introduce the SVG chapter to you, he asked me to be as critical of the entire writing process as I wanted, and mention anything I did not like about it, or even about him! But I couldn’t come up with anything, really.

The one and only criticism I have is the delay in the release date. I’m a very punctual person and when we started working on the book it was scheduled to be released in March and to start shipping in April, but it took a few months more to do that. That said, everyone who worked on the book also had a ton of other commitments and stuff to do besides writing it, so delays like this are only natural, I guess.

Just like all of our Smashing Books, the book isn’t concerned with trends or short-lived workarounds. It’s focused on actual techniques used today in real-life projects. We’ve designed the book to be as practical and hands-on as possible. No fluff, just the techniques that have actually worked or failed, and why.

Every chapter stands for itself. It delivers the value you expect, but it should exceed your expectations by far, too. We designed it to stand the test of time, too; to be more than just a manual or a guide. It’s really about the bigger picture you need to make smart decisions, faster. Hardcover, 584 pages. eBook contains 2 bonus chapters. Free worldwide shipping — obviously.

Now, a standalone release post would be boring and predictable, so how about bringing another perspective to the magazine instead? Below you’ll find some insights about the writing process by one of the authors of the book, Sara Soueidan, who has contributed an 80-page long compendium of useful techniques, tricks and strategies for dealing with SVG.— Ed.

The one and only criticism I have is the delay in the release date. I’m a very punctual person and when we started working on the book it was scheduled to be released in March and to start shipping in April, but it took a few months more to do that. That said, everyone who worked on the book also had a ton of other commitments and stuff to do besides writing it, so delays like this are only natural, I guess.

Just like all of our Smashing Books, the book isn’t concerned with trends or short-lived workarounds. It’s focused on actual techniques used today in real-life projects. We’ve designed the book to be as practical and hands-on as possible. No fluff, just the techniques that have actually worked or failed, and why.

Every chapter stands for itself. It delivers the value you expect, but it should exceed your expectations by far, too. We designed it to stand the test of time, too; to be more than just a manual or a guide. It’s really about the bigger picture you need to make smart decisions, faster. Hardcover, 584 pages. eBook contains 2 bonus chapters. Free worldwide shipping — obviously.

Now, a standalone release post would be boring and predictable, so how about bringing another perspective to the magazine instead? Below you’ll find some insights about the writing process by one of the authors of the book, Sara Soueidan, who has contributed an 80-page long compendium of useful techniques, tricks and strategies for dealing with SVG.— Ed.

The post The Adventure of Life in 4K appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.

When talking to potential clients, be aware that many will have never solicited a professional design service and likely have little understanding of the design process itself. Keep in mind, too, that some clients have had a poor experience in the past. For many clients, it can be an anxious jump into the deep unknown, a big financial investment steeped in risk.
But why should any of this matter to us? After all, it’s not our money. Being rewarded for our time and effort should be all that matters, right? This is true to an extent; our knowledge and experience shouldn’t be seen as a free commodity. However, at times, a little patience and empathy are required on our part.

Many designers will agree that clients, for the most part, need us to guide them through the design process (minus the industry jargon), to ask the difficult questions and ultimately to reassure them by delivering measurable results.
In essence, client experience is the sum of all experiences between a client and the service provider over the duration of their relationship. Whereas customer experience focuses on the relationship between a client and their customers through one or more services or products, client experience focuses solely on the working relationship between a client and the service provider — in our case, the designer — a relationship whose purpose is to achieve measurable business and commercial goals.

We should regard clients as our primary customers, for they are the ones who pay the bills. The better the result and experience, the more likely they’ll pass any future work your way. Of course, being a good service provider doesn’t necessarily mean saying yes to whatever the client wants.

It means carefully explaining and providing to clients what they need in order for the project and their business to succeed, and being pleasant to work with along the way. While being a user advocate is great, we don’t necessarily have to be right about everything. What we do need to do is to enact positive change for the client to improve their customer experience.

The client could be an individual, a startup, a department in a corporation or the corporation itself. You could be liaising with the CEO, the CTO, managers, colleagues and participants from a variety of departments, coworkers, peers — people who ultimately have a viable and legitimate interest in the work you’re doing and the outcome of the project. We often refer to such people as stakeholders.

In more complex environments, such as large corporations, you’ll rarely have direct access to C-level executives. However, be prepared because they will probably take an interest at some point. Remember that the responsibility of your lead contact is to inform the senior team on the progress and direction of the project.

Whether a project’s team consists of one or more stakeholders, you can be certain of one thing: Stakeholders will at some stage express differing and potentially conflicting opinions about a project. At the start of a project, stakeholders will often depict their concerns as being high priority. These opinions (political, procedural, financial) are often based on personal experience and on the experiences of those in their department.

Given human nature, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Nevertheless, your responsibility is to take everyone’s needs into account, to balance them out and to understand the bigger picture. Just improving the client’s overall customer experience is not enough. For meaningful and long-term success and to effectively support the customer experience going forward, change has to start within the organization. Provide the core team with tools and processes to manage, solve or even hack internal conflicts, to collect meaningful feedback and to seek approval for pieces of work.

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A hundred buildings! Why not just make it 200 or 1,000? The truth is, Kushner easily could have gone higher. More than ever, today’s architecture is fueled by an acceleration of technology, material science and down-to-try-it attitude. As Kushner argued in a recent post in Medium, just like the ‘70s had Brutalism and the ‘90s Deconstructivism, today might very well be the age of experimentalism in architecture.

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It’s a great time to be a curator-consumer, because never before have so many aesthetically neglected industries been given branding and packaging makeovers. It’s not just bougie chocolates and cleaning products either. As the book shows, these days, you can also pick a roofing company that has a well-designed logo and business card, or a dermatologist with smart branding and great-looking forms for you to fill out.

Back in the day, editor Robert Klanten says, “If you’re a roofer, a barber, a nail bar, or you produce wooden toys, your visual output may be very, very sad and sort of low key, or based on stock photography.” That’s changed over the last 10 years, as people have left office jobs to pursue smaller, more personal businesses. And when they do, “they want to express themselves,” Klanten says. “They may not make as much money, but they’re devoted to what they do.”

Start Me Up! is a sign of the times. The book covers small businesses all over the world, and in all manner of trades. There’s a bakery in London, a kitchen knife company in Tel Aviv, an acupuncture and homeotherapy practice in Barcelona, and a cotton handkerchief seller in Nara, Japan (among many others).

It doesn’t matter how niche the micro-industry—it’s clear that the ballooning number of entrepreneurial projects in the world make for fierce competition. Businesses need to speak to customers holistically, and one way to do that is through notepads and gift boxes. These types of branded materials even show up in non-creative fields, like physical therapy or head hunting. There are plenty of cleverness and visual puns to be had, but a lot of the companies seem to share a spare, squeaky-clean aesthetic, which Klanten says might be part of creating a sustainable business: “People tend to create something that seems to guarantee visual longevity. Whatever they do, they try to be authentic, reliable.”

The post Copywritting your life’s content appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.

It’s no secret that the crowdfunding industry is booming. It seems like every day you hear about an exciting new startup crushing their campaign goals and launching their company via Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

Despite the rapid growth of crowdfunding platforms and campaign successes, crowdfunding is still a foreign concept to most. As such, let’s briefly explain the mechanics and guidelines for a more solid foundation before exploring launching a software startup with crowdfunding.

With the advance and expansion of e-commerce, which now accounts for 7% of all consumer retail according to US census data, individuals are shopping locally less, now being able to buy anything with the click of a button. This has democratized the consumer–business relationship because customers have a far greater choice.

With the power to choose, consumers are opting more for small startups and more personal connections. Hence the explosion of crowdfunding. Furthermore, backers prefer to be early adopters, people who get the product first and are actively part of the startup’s success. In addition, entrepreneurs who were once unable or unwilling to pursue financing can now cut the risk and crowdfund instead.

As a crowdfunding consultant and host of Art of the Kickstart, a podcast and blog on all things crowdfunding, one thing I get asked about incessantly are crowdfunded apps. Many of social startups and mobile apps companies raise massive outside investment looking to change the world and result in stock market launches (initial public offerings or IPOs) or acquisitions down the road.

Despite these successes, most people would be hard pressed to name a single crowdfunded app. Personally, I’d never heard of a successful crowdfunded app before performing in-depth market research for my first app client. Such apps are rare. But why?

Crowdfunding seems the perfect platform to launch an app or software product. Unfortunately, non-tangible products are poorly received. This stems from the origins of crowdfunding, because crowdfunding was originally conceived as helping creative people create that which could never exist without funding. For example, films have inescapable budgets, and physical products need molds, manufacturing and expensive minimums. Neither is possible without significant startup funds. However, apps and software are the exact opposite. Time and expertise are all that is necessary, inventory costs are zero and there is funding aplenty for those willing to part with equity.

The post Crowdfunding Your Ideas appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.

Business Calendar started out as a side project, a one-man show, and is now run by a team of eight in Berlin. The app was very successful right from the time Android entered the mainstream market, and it now has an active user base of 2 million. But instead of modernizing the design and usability regularly, the developers focused on implementing user requests and customization options. Outdated design and new features stuffed in had made the app heavy and complex — full of features, hard to maintain for the team, hardly accessible for new users.

Knowing they needed a redesign but having few resources themselves, the team approached Opoloo to get design and interaction on the same level as the development. For the task, we delineated goals to attract new users and keep the existing user base satisfied:

• Improve user experience
  Strip down and reorganize the user interface to revive the simple, fast, efficient work process of a productivity tool.
• Improve accessibility
  Keep old users happy, lower the barriers for new ones.
• Incorporate task management
  Integrate tools that users need every day to create more value.
• Apply modern design standards
  Address the main criticism: “Could be prettier.”
• Extensive tablet support
  Improve the tablet experience as a first step to ubiquity.

The hardest part of any mobile calendar’s interface is the density of information, with each little piece fighting for attention: grids, events, time indicators, text labels, colors and other elements to interact with, manipulate and customize. Finding the right balance is what makes for an accessible calendar UI. Below are a few tricks we pulled with the presentation of data (i.e. how pieces of information are consumed, searched for and compared).

Although an iconic and heavily used feature of Business Calendar, the favorite bar was barely accessible: It became too small and too crowded to use as the number of calendars grew. Our solution was to use Android’s black system bar as an optical trick: The favorite bar now feels much taller and easier to tap, due to the black-in-black design. Additionally, we improved touch targets, made visible and invisible states clearer, and implemented a scrolling pattern to house more calendars.

Let’s be honest: We designers can be difficult to work with. We might come from a controversial company culture, work an unconventional schedule or get impatient whenever our Internet connection is slower than the speed of light. Would you be at ease with a service provider who matches this description?

When talking to potential clients, be aware that many will have never solicited a professional design service and likely have little understanding of the design process itself. Keep in mind, too, that some clients have had a poor experience in the past. For many clients, it can be an anxious jump into the deep unknown, a big financial investment steeped in risk.

But why should any of this matter to us? After all, it’s not our money. Being rewarded for our time and effort should be all that matters, right? This is true to an extent; our knowledge and experience shouldn’t be seen as a free commodity. However, at times, a little patience and empathy are required on our part.

The post Prototype Animations In Keynote appeared first on Maryam Eivazi.