I always had a problem with the term 'User Experience (UX)' being used to describe a particular discipline - not that I don't agree with the fact that's what they are predominantly concerned with. I just don't like that it seems to imply that other disciplines are NOT about user experience.
I am a graphic designer, and it is definitely (should be) about user experience. But that's probably very obvious - so I didn't complain.
And there are developers.
I recently read an excellent blog about the UX developer by Leisa. She makes a point that some front end developers are so in tune with the idea of user experience, they can be called UX developers for their contributions.
I cannot agree more. But I also agree with one of the comments the article has - "UX dev is just a good front end dev". Because of front end development's closeness to users, in the same way as the visual design and site architecture, it has to take user experience into consideration to do a great job.
What about the back end devs?
You might think, well, it's not important that they understand UX - after all they are not creating direct touch points to user journeys.
I am lucky enough to have worked with some back end devs (i.e. Stuart and David) with strong UX understanding, and oh my, it REALLY makes a difference.
There would be no 'you can't do that because it's not built / structured / stored in the right way', because they understand the importance and WHY you're asking certain things to happen. They would be coming up with alternatives to achieve your goal, or find the way around it. They could suggest you a new way of doing things which you thought technically not possible (or plainly not thought of), because they understand the user journey and user experience principle. It's the same in any disciplines - you can solve problems so much better / quicker when you know WHY something needs to happen rather than just WHAT needs to happen.
So my conclusion is - UX devs definitely exist and it includes ALL devs. If in doubt, try working with one. It's so good, you don't want to work without them ever again. :-)
Location: Clerkenwell
Salary: Excellent plus Share Options
Red Badger is a creative software consultancy – we are working on some really innovative projects with some excellent calibre clients. Our integrated teams (PMs, BAs, UX, Designers, Devs, UI Devs, Testers) collaborate using agile project methodologies (Scrum and Kanban). We are a startup, having been in existence for 18 months and are growing rapidly. We are in need of a charismatic, talented Agile Project Manager to integrate into our talented team. You will be working on some very exciting projects ranging from Rapid Prototyping/Concept Lab type environments to longer term engagements.
You will need:
Desirable:
This is a great opportunity to work with in a really sociable, fun environment. Red Badger is still young but growing so you’ll be involved at an early stage in our history and to have influence in shaping our future.
For more information or to apply please contact us here: hello@red-badger.com
As we now roll full steam ahead into 2012 I thought I’d take the time to do a blog on Red Badger’s year in 2011.
The Beginnings
Red Badger was formed in May 2010 with Stuart Harris, David Wynne and I investing some of our savings into building a company based on specific ideals with a specific long term strategy in mind (this has evolved over the last 18 months). We wanted to be in full control of Red Badger’s destiny and as such decided not to seek investment of any kind. We also made an executive decision that we wanted to dedicate ourselves full-time to Red Badger so decided that we wouldn’t contract ourselves out to clients as individuals to fund the building of the company. This of course had it’s implications. We all quit our jobs and for the next year we would be working in each others homes, building up the company with no income whatsoever.
Into 2011
As we entered 2011, the company was nearly 7 months old and we were still just 3 guys working from each others homes. 2010 had largely been about creating a presence. We formed some key partnerships, pitched to potential clients and generally got ourselves out there. In October, we also started to design our twitter app, Birdsong for Windows Phone 7. By January 2011 we had two main channels of work - we had been working on a couple of large pitches (amongst others) for 2 very big clients and developing Birdsong. By 25th January v1.0 of Birdsong was available in Microsoft’s Marketplace.
Birdsong
At this time, Windows Phone 7 was in it’s infancy having only been released in November 2010 – having been involved in developing on the platform in its beta stages, we had every confidence in a bright WP7 future. However, we knew that Birdsong wasn’t going to contribute to building the foundations of Red Badger in monetary terms and in fact didn’t plan for Birdsong to be making large contributions to Red Badger revenue in the long term as only a small percentage of apps actually make companies a lot of money. Birdsong for us was all about building a Red Badger presence.
The first half of 2011 was an incredibly enjoyable time for Stuart and David being able to focus on developing Birdsong, shipping features in response to customer demand – part of this involved creating a good customer service platform through Zendesk. We also started to do the promotional work around it, engaging with Microsoft at an early stage. The Microsoft activity is on-going but you can read the Microsoft Case Study on-line.
We knew that Stu and Dave’s time on Birdsong was going to be short lived once client projects came through so we had to ensure it was architected really well (This is a given anyway) to allow for someone else to come in, learn the code-base and take over where Stu and Dave left off. By May and over 1,000 BDD specs later, Birdsong was doing pretty well – it was on v1.4, was the leading premium social app on the WP7 platform and had gained some notoriety among the WP7 consumer base and internally at Microsoft. It was achieving what we had set out for it.
We have ambitious plans for Birdsong, were aware that it still had a long way to go and was by no means perfect but were preparing ourselves to have to leave it for a while.
The Madness Begins
In parallel to developing Birdsong we had been working hard on a couple of pitches (amongst others) for 2 really big clients for quite some time (At time of writing neither project is live so we can’t talk about them yet which gives you an indication of their size). In April, we finally won both projects with both of them due to start just a few weeks apart in May and June.
All of a sudden, we needed to build two project teams of ample size and find an office to run them out of. We started plugging into our network of people we have worked with before. We knew they were very high quality but availability was an issue. Everything we do is Agile and built on a UCD approach so we needed integrated teams consisting of a PM, UX Consultants, Designers, Developers, UI Developers and Testers.
With a lot of hard work we somehow managed to assemble two teams with the right people to work on our projects - 90% of which we had worked with before (Which eases the worry of whether you’re getting quality or not).
At the same time, another startup - Fluxx was formed in April. They are a digital strategy company setup up by a number of our friends and former colleagues at Conchango. They had just found a lovely new office in St. Paul’s that would cater for their growth expectations over the next 2 years but at the time they had ample space spare. We were in discussions to partner with Fluxx as a development partner so it made sense for both companies that we would sublet a floor in their building for 6 months.
So, with project wins in place, a new office and a staff rota of the highest quality we secured a bank loan to get us off the ground with rent, buying furniture and equipment. We moved into our new office in May, raring to go.
The Projects
Both projects were very different but both incredibly challenging and innovative. One is an interactive 3D HTML5 website for a large automobile company with no dependency on Flash for modern browsers. The other is a large Government project that I can’t say anything more about. Both are mutli-platform with Web, Mobile and Cloud elements.
The first thing to do was to get the processes and systems in place through which we would run our projects – we now had clients in Germany so a cloud based infrastructure fitted perfectly (See: How The Cloud Underpins Red Badger’s Business) to allow for a remote but collaborative working environment. We also had to educate our clients in the way we approach and deliver projects.
In May, we kicked off our first project, meeting in Hamburg for 2 weeks for project planning and requirements development (Sprint 0). Once that project was underway we started the kick-off for the 2nd project.
It was a very interesting time, integrating two new teams from scratch, getting used to the new office and spending a lot of time flying between Munich, Cologne, Hamburg and London. Over the next few months we iteratively improved the processes of the projects and solidified our working relationships with both the clients and the Red Badger team internally.
Both of the projects have gone incredibly well and are both still on-going 7 months later.
The Intern Programme
With all of the above going on, it is easy to understand how difficult it had now become for us to focus any time on Birdsong development. This presented us with an issue as we have long term ambitions for Birdsong but it is very difficult to dedicate a resource to it that can be earning us up to £1,000 per day when Birdsong has only made us about £3,000 in a whole year. We decided to align Birdsong development with our plans for developing talented youth by using Birdsong as a training platform for our interns.
So, in June (Earlier than initially planned) we launched our intern programme. We advertised for a few months through our blog and a number of University job board sites. In all, we had 65 applicants for 1 position (admittedly some of these were students that seemed to be applying for everything regardless of position and relevancy of their skillset) so there was quite a lot of work to narrow these down to a final 8. We then set the final 8 a coding challenge, reviewed the code that they sent us and ended up interviewing 3. We finally offered Joe (an incredibly talented and self motivated student at Kings College) a part-time position due to start in November. (Joe’s Blog).
We have given Joe the responsibility of owning Birdsong development and support. We are investing in his long term future at Red Badger (we are investing our hopes on him joining us after graduation) so take a senior developer off of projects to pair programme with him when he is with us. This is costing us over £1,000 a week in developing both Joe and Birdsong but we think both are worth it. If we didn’t have Joe we simply couldn’t justify doing this just for Birdsong development.
Joe has now been with us for a month, has two weeks off to sit exams in the first two weeks of 2012 but is making fantastic progress. There is an incredible amount of code to familiarise himself with but he has almost completed the Trends functionality (a good feature to ease him into the dev) and will soon be able to start moving on to more pressing bits of functionality such as updating the Push Service (which we know is in need of some desperate attention). So hopefully, Birdsong users won’t have to wait too long for an update. Watch this space...
Growth, a new office and new project wins
As well as running our two main projects (delivering quality is our primary focus), the second half of 2011 has been about solidifying partnerships, trying to secure new business, and growth (which is dependent on an improving cash flow).
At the beginning of December we moved into a new office as we were growing out of the Fluxx space (at the same time Fluxx were getting big enough to grow into the space we vacated). With so much going on it is taking us some time to get the office in ship-shape but the interior designers have been in, we’ve got water supply/drainage fitted and now need to get the kitchen fitted and let the interior designer do his work. Hopefully it will be done within the next 6 weeks and working in a messy office will be no more.
An important part of our growth is to hire permanent staff so we have started converting some of our contractors to permanents and bringing in other new permanents into the team. Rachel has also joined as Client Services Director (blog) who is responsible for business development and marketing so this should give us the extra focus on new business that we need. We need more people across a varied skillset but finding the right quality (which is absolutely paramount to us) is difficult so that is one of the challenges we face. A nice problem to have.
As well as growing and moving into the new office we have also won new projects, most significantly with a major media corporation doing some innovative rapid prototyping using Node.js (See Steve’s Blog here). We are well shaped for 2012, with 3 large parallel projects and some smaller ones to fit in also. There’s lots of hard but fun work ahead of us.
Moving on to 2012
2011 was a year of transition. 2012 will very much be focussed on securing the future of Red Badger. We have had a great 2011 but it would be naive of us to think we are out of the woods entirely. We are still very young so our focus must be to grow steadily and sensibly and to win new innovative projects with both new clients and existing ones. The first 6 months of 2012 will be very interesting. In the 2nd half of 2012, if all goes to plan, we have some interesting product development plans to kick-off.
We of course will continue to develop Birdsong, hope to take Joe on for a year long full-time placement in June and may potentially bring in new interns/grads in the summer to bolster the Birdsong development team.
We also will be doing a re-branding exercise and overhauling our desperately out of date website. We just haven’t had the time to do it up to now so hoping to get something moving on that this month.
Exciting but challenging times.
Ravensbourne
I realise in this (now rather long) blog that I haven’t mentioned Ravensbourne College. Ravensbourne is an innovative, creative University on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London. They offer great support services to their post-grads and an incubation programme (with the help of a European Development Fund grant) for startups in London. This acts as a stimulus for new entrepreneurship in London. In Jan 2011 we were accepted into the incubation programme which provided us with free facilities and meeting rooms as well as an opportunity to work with other incubatees that were based there. This very much provided us with a platform from which we could launch ourselves. Our first meetings with our clients were held there and our first projects were won there. So, our gratitude goes out to all at Ravensbourne, especially Chris Thompson (Who heads up the Ravensbourne Programme) and Carrie Wootten (Head of Enterprise and Innovation).
Finally
Happy New Year to you all. I hope 2012 is as good for you as I’m hoping it is for us. I have a good feeling about it.
Over the past couple of months, a small team at Red Badger has been working on a number of HTML5 prototypes for an interesting client. Speed of development and easy iteration have been essential so we've taken the opportunity to try out a new technology stack which has given what we were looking for and is exciting the whole business.
Maybe a demanding prototype schedule isn't the ideal place to chuck away everything you're used to and start afresh, but actually a lot of the front-end development has built on tools and themes we've worked with throughout 2011 and we've found that the speed and ease of using Node has more than compensated for the learning curve. So, what have we been using?
Server
Node - Underpinning everything we've been doing in our prototyping project; Node is fast, event-driven and built on Javascript. Its been fascinating for myself, as a primarily front end developer, and Stuart with an ASP.net background to see how our respective specialisms are converging on a single set of tooling. The module loading system, NPM, which is similar to Ruby's Gem ecosystem, also makes it incredibly easy to pick up and play with the many extensions that are out there - and to create your own too.
Express - A development framework for Node, giving RESTful routing and content negotiation. After working with Open Rasta in .net MVC on a previous project, the ease of setting up applications using Express has been a delight.
Jade - With Express providing the application routing and view rendering, we next add Jade for templating. A HAML-style syntax, offering us simplicity and brevity but compiling to really well-formed HTML and easy to use with HTML5 data-* attributes for Knockout (which we'll come to later). In fact having used Jade for a while now I'm not sure I want to go back to writing "proper" HTML.
Step / Async - Node's asychronicity takes some getting used to after having worked with linear control flows for such a long time. Imagine AJAX callbacks as the fundamental way a language works - you can't rely on other parts of your application providing data at the moment you need them, so you need to be able to create queues for parallel and serial execution. Step and Async are two modules we've tried out for this, both have their benefits but Async seems to be slightly in the lead for what we're doing.
Now - The other great benefit of Node is its ability to serve real-time applications, and the Now module takes this to almost magical levels. Existing as a namespace on both the client and server simultaneously, you can call client methods from the server (and vice-versa) to push data instantly as a general or targetted broadcast. Seeing this in action has really convinced us that Node is something to get excited about, and has wowed the client too!
Client
Knockout - We used Knockout on other projects throughout 2011, but with Node's inherent ability to supply real-time data its really coming to its own. It's a Javascript library implementing the MVVM (Model-View-View Model) pattern, which should be familiar to Silverlight developers, and makes rich UIs a breeze to update. The new 2.0 version, released during the Christmas break, removes the reliance on jQuery for its default templating which really opens up its flexibility.
Underscore - Described a 'utility-belt library' for Javascript, Underscore is another tool that is compimentary to the likes of jQuery and adds a whole raft of functional programming methods to objects and arrays (among other things). It also runs as a Node module so we can make use of it on both client and server, great for code consistency.
Ender - In fact with Knockout and Underscore at work, it was beginning to feel like jQuery had been relegated to just a "ready" utility, DOM selection and effects. That's a lot of weight for something we weren't using very much so as an alternative we're trying out Ender, which allows you to compile your own library from smaller modules - such as the lightweight DOM selector Qwery. And it all installs and builds in a similar approach to NPM.
LESS - A CSS pre-compiler, and another tool we used during 2011, but as a native Node module its integration is now much easier. If you're developing in a Node environment you can use it to watch for LESS file changes and compile locally (we also use LESS.app on OS X), and then deploy the LESS and have the server startup create a complled and minifed version in production. Alongside Jade and Coffeescript its beginning to feel like compilation from more efficient syntaxes down to browser-readable files is becoming a key element to web development.
The whole picture
As well as this Javascript-oriented development we've also been trying out MongoDB and Redis for data storage as part of the stack, with equally encouraging results. And to make project compatibilty and pair programming between our Windows, Mac and Ubuntu users easier we've given JetBrains' Webstorm (and PHPStorm) IDE a thorough test drive - given it has all that familiar Reshaper goodness from their Visual Studio tools its looking like a great combination so far.
It might seem that, with all these Javascript-heavy technologies in HTML5 documents, older browers won't get a look in. As we're prototyping on this project perhaps its not important, but actually support is pretty good. Every view Node creates is sent as rendered HTML, just like any other web server, and in fact due to its speed we're finding that we can make sites less "AJAX-y" than we might otherwise - which of course is better overall for accessibility and discoverabilty. On the client side, Knockout is compatible back down to IE6 and even the 'magic' of Now is mobile compatible, with beta support for older IE versions. Of course we want to move away from those legacy browsers as much as any other developer, but if it's a client requirement this stack can still provide it.
So as a result of these experiences we're investigating using Node and its related technologies more widely at Red Badger during 2012, its already looking like its going to be an exciting year!
Salary: £excellent plus share options
Red Badger is rapidly expanding and we are looking for amazing UX design consultants to join the team at our new offices in Clerkenwell. We are passionate about innovation, agile development, and integrated teams, so you’ll be working closely with some of the best UX consultants and developers around, crafting engaging and immersive experiences which look beautiful and flow effortlessly.
Nice to haves:
This is an exciting opportunity to join a small team at the start of its development when you can help to shape the organisation and the culture as we grow. We are winning new clients very quickly, so we expect the team will expand substantially in 2012.
Red Badger is rapidly expanding and we are looking for amazing design consultants to join the team at our new offices in Clerkenwell. We are passionate about innovation, agile development, and integrated teams, so you’ll be working closely with some of the best UX consultants and developers around, crafting engaging and immersive experiences which look beautiful and flow effortlessly.
Skills:
After joining Red Badger a couple of weeks ago, I thought I should share who I am, and some of the things I'll be working on in the near future. I’m a student at King’s College London studying Computer Science and I applied to join Red Badger a couple of months ago to gain some experience of developing real software in a company which do things the right way.
After a friendly email exchange, I was invited to take part in a programming challenge to whittle down the number of applicants, and give the real developers (now my mentors) a feel for my experience. With a background in C#.NET and web development, combined with a passion for cutting edge technology, Red Badger are a natural fit for my current skillset and how I’d like to develop my skills in future.
My first couple of weeks have so far introduced me to how development at Red Badger works; Agile and highly creative with a strong emphasis on User Experience and Design,development starts with writing spec’s to ensure code quality, attention to detail is very important. I have also spent some time getting acquainted with the tools Red Badger use during collaborative development, such as GitHub for source control and TeamCity for Continuous Integration with integrated Unit Testing.
My main project initially will be Birdsong, Red Badger’s fantastic WP7 twitter client. This should please many of the current users, as it will be receiving a lot of care and attention over the coming weeks after a period of neglect! There are a few features in the pipeline, including support for Trending Topics (both local and global), ReadItLater/Instapaper support for tweeted links and large-scale improvements to the push service.
If you are a current user of Birdsong and have a feature request, now would be a great time to submit it to our support site at http://support.red-badger.com. If you aren’t a current user and you own a Windows Phone, what are you waiting for!
I look forward to learning lots and adding real value to the project and any others I may be involved in in the future!
We’re looking for an experienced developer to come and join the ranks of our lean, fast growing, tech loving, passionate and dynamic team. The projects we are working on are all innovative and cutting edge, with totally immersive, amazing front end design and UX - we just don’t do the boring stuff.
Producing software across web, mobile and cloud you’ll be working in close, multi-disciplined teams surrounded by some of the industry’s best developers, designers, UX architects and testers. Our clients (who love us) are large and well known, and this is an organisation that you will be proud to be a part of.
You will be passionate about technology. You will always strive to understand the latest and greatest, keeping a keen eye on developments in the world of software development, platforms, architecture and patterns. You will be tenacious and passionate about doing things the right way and building beautiful software. You will be interacting with clients on a weekly basis and be a great communicator.
You need to have C#.Net, HTML5 and JavaScript. Familiarities’ with leading patterns, practices, methodologies and frameworks surrounding those technologies are a must. If you’ve worked with Azure,NoSQL databases, node.js or XAML – all the better. You'll need to be adaptable as we are always looking for better/new ways of doing things, which includes trying out new technologies.
Ideally you’ll be used to working in an Agile manner and will be familiar with Scrum and/or Kanban. You’ll enjoy pair programming, working spec first and use the IntelliJ ReSharper keyboard layout (just kidding…kinda). If you’ve previously worked in multi-disciplined teams that would be a bonus, if not – you have much to look forward to.
Creativity and passion are the key.
If you think that sounds like you and Red Badger sounds like the sort of place you want to work then get in touch. Please send your CV, Stackoverflow profile, GitHub profile, code and anything else you think we might be interested in to hello@red-badger.com – we can’t wait to hear from you!
As anyone that has read this blog before knows, Red Badger has been developing on Windows Phone 7 since the very beginning. Now Mango is out, it’s features have got a lot more interesting. I have been waiting with bated breath to see what cool apps will be coming out on the platform now that Mango is readily available.
So, I was incredibly surprised and intrigued when I got an invite to the Alphalabs.cc launch event in collaboration with onedotzero Adventures in Motion Festival. If like me, you are into electronic music, motion graphics, animation, immersion and generally anything innovative, then you should find out who onedotzero are if you don’t know already. I have been coming to various events put on by onedotzero at the Southbank in London for years. This weekend they are celebrating their 15th birthday by running the adventures in motion festival at the BFI Southbank showcasing a mixture of interesting screenings (screenings include subjects such as; Bjork’s unprecedented contribution to the medium and art form of music video), interactive installations (you’ll probably hear me talk a lot about immersion in the coming months), talks and workshops, some live audio/visual performances and some educational conferences. I’d recommend it to anyone.
Anyway, back to the Alphalabs.cc launch event. I had no idea what to expect at all and I didn’t know who the guest speakers were either. After picking up my complimentary breakfast from Benugo and getting my pass we were ushered into the studio. There were the usual Microsoft suspects, Will Coleman and Paul Foster, both Microsoft Developer Platform Evangelists for Windows Phone 7. There was also a large contingent from the Windows Phone User Group including Matt Lacey on the presenter’s roster. There was however, a very mixed crowd. A clear mix of art/creative and tech.
Shane Walter – OneDotZero Creative Director, made a number of inspirational talks that if you have been to onedotzero before, you’d be used to by now. Particular things he said rang close to my heart, particularly when discussing how artists/creatives should be integrated with developers (integrated teams of creatives and developers is something we believe in and practice at Red Badger). Such quotes as “Everybody is creative” & “We are social beings” (asking everyone to turn first to their left and then to the right to introduce the audience to each other and watching our behaviour to prove his point) gives you a glimpse at the sort of stuff he was talking about. This talk painted a picture of what was to be demoed.
After an intro to Windows Phone 7 by Will Coleman and a brief talk from Nokia’s Keith Varty – Head of ecosystem & services – Nokia UK & Eire, we got onto some demos…
First up was Team Holotronica & Stuart Warren-Hill with Vequencer. Stuart Warren-Hill is one half of the Hexstatic duo, a ground-breaking audio/visual electronic music act who’ve been experimenting with 3D A/V shows for years. Vequencer is a dynamic 3D visual sequencer. It basically allows you to use 8 instruments (such as bass drum, closed hi-hats etc. for you budding music producers out there) to sequence a live track loop in a 32 beat bar. As your track plays, there is a dynamic 3D visualisation in the centre of the application that reacts to your sequencing. I had a play and could have played with it all day. The 3D visualisation was written in XNA in collaboration with Martin Caine (of Retroburn Games) & Simon Jackson (both admins of the XNA UK Usergroup). What was also really cool was that there is a group collaboration option which allows multiple users (up to 8 simultaneously) of the Nokia Lumia 800 to connect their phones together and have a jam (presumably each person being in control of an instrument each). Matt Lacey (founder of the Windows Phone User Group) had developed the interface to allow the software to sync across multiple phones, a feature Stuart demoed to us across 4 Nokias. It was a truly engaging musical/visual app that (I’m sure to Microsoft’s pleasure) fully utilised the new WP7 Mango feature that allows apps to combine both XNA and Silverlight in the same application. All of this was developed in 2 weeks and it’s already looking very slick. There is a whole host of other features that could follow. Speaking to Stuart, he has every intention of his next album being produced entirely in Vequencer. I can’t wait for it to come out so that I can start making music with it myself. A great start to an entirely new type of use of Windows Phone 7.
Next up was Max Hattler and IndieSkiesGames to show Kaleidobooth. Max Hattler is a London based experimental moving image artist from Germany. He showed us some of his previous works all of which were very focused on symmetry. Kaleidobooth is an experimental art project using the Mango camera API to create a dynamic kaleidoscope application that adapts to both what the camera is looking at as well as sound inputs. What I found interesting is that Max had never worked with developers before so they discussed a little about their working environment, how they collaborated and the challenges they faced (Very much in the spirit of what Shane Walter had discussed earlier). Max was based in London, IndiesSkiesGames in Derby. They ran a tightly managed project using 37 Signals’ basecamp to collaborate. Again this was a 2 week project and the output was impressive. I didn’t get the chance to play with Kaleidobooth but it looks like a lot of fun and is due for release in early 2012.
The last demo was of Redshift. This is a 3D racing game through music videos created by digital art studio F’eld, Treehouse Dev, Edward Powell and music provided by artists from a favourite record label of mine - Numbers. Presented by Vera Glahn of F’eld, Redshift was again a prototype that was only 2 weeks in the making but was already looking pretty impressive. It takes advantage of the Mango’s accelerometer and gyroscope features to allow the the user to race through a 3D world by changing the tilt of the phone in a steering wheel kind of manner. Visually it’s still in it's early stages but is looking like it’s going to be a really engaging, immersive game with a killer soundtrack blending electronica with hip-hop beats.
All of the above apps demonstrated a wide use of Mango’s new features and showed just how easy it is to develop on the platform in comparison to other platforms, showcasing some really polished (and complex) apps that were developed in just 2 weeks.
The collaboration with onedotzero to create Alphalabs.cc is a fantastic move by Nokia and Microsoft. It’s basically an experiment to merge technology and art to inspire experimental projects on the platform. If you sign up to alphalabs.cc you can start to submit your experiments to be showcased on the website straight away and there are cash prizes ranging from £500 to £5000 for the overall winner.
At the end of the session, everyone in attendance got a free Nokia Lumia 800 so I’ll be retiring my HTC Trophy 7 now and testing the Nokia. I’ll blog about the experience in the next couple of weeks hopefully. After the session I enjoyed a beer before heading off to see some experimental music videos from the likes of Michel Gondry at Wavelength 11.
Unfortunately there is only 1 day left of the onedotzero festival but if you get time, I would get yourself down to the BFI to see some screenings and art installations. Tatsumi at 15:50 today, a screening paying tribute to Yoshihiro Tatsumi would be a highlight for me.
So I've joined the team at Red Badger, and now that I'm 2 weeks in I thought I'd share some musings. For those that don't know me, I'm the new Director of Client Services, which means I'm going to be responsible for all things business development, account management, marketing and generally helping the team to grow the business. And refreshingly, that doesn't just mean "make as much money as fast as possible", but rather focus on interesting, value-adding work which plays to the company's strengths - use of cutting edge technologies, blended UX and delivery teams, innovation and creativity. So I've spent a couple of weeks settling in and doing all the things you'd expect. I've been getting to know the team, meeting some of RB's very impressive clients, telling some of my own contacts about the company's capability, and the thing I've spent the most time on so far is drawing up a business development strategy for the company. This is still a work in progress and needs lots of input from the founders, but it's starting to take shape. One of the things I love about smaller companies is you can be creative, unconstrained by history and structure, and just come up with some great ideas and go after them.
Here's what I've noticed so far:
The focus - the guys who set up the company are friends I've worked with in the past - they were always outstanding and focussed but doing their own thing has amplified this, and their commitment has rubbed off on the entire team. Everyone's top quality, really into it and switched on. And how many consultancies can you say that about?
The team feeling - usually there's at least some friction between the UX guys, the developers, the project manager etc. Not here. Everyone seems to instinctively, and through experience, get what each other is trying to achieve and they can genuinely work together. lovely.
The techy-ness - whilst it's integrated and design focussed, this is a very technical company. The guys are forever trying new things, just to see if there's a better way, which really pays off.
Just doing it - I've spent some time recently at an organisation that provides advisory services on cloud computing and other venerable subjects, which is great but very slow and time consuming. None of that here - we're just doing cloud, we're just doing 3d, we're just doing multi-channel, we're just doing mobile. There's no fuss, no-one's shouting about it and trying to turn it into a pretty picture, it just happens.
So I'm excited, which is a good place to start. The work we're doing at the moment for customers is very exciting, the focus areas for the next 12 months are pretty cool, and some of the new product ideas the team are thinking about will blow your mind. But more on that stuff later. For now it's just "hello, I'm here, taking it all in, liking what I see so far....."
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