Design Lab

Alexander Younger of Designlab

http://www.designlab.net/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander305454

ay@designlab.net

• Alexander started Design Lab in the last 20 years
• great brands- financial, retail diversity
• green company - believe in giving back to the planet
• solar panels to power the lab

Mobile Market –— its HOT
infographic courtesy of www.luke.com

• 371K babies are born per day
• 378K iphones sold per day
• 562K iOS devices
• 700K Android devices activated per day

Web vs Mobile Time usage

• mobile apps vs web consumptiom minutes per day
• Mobile GMV - $billions of dollars

Best Practices in mobile design

• Key idea
• establish business goals - know your audience
• keep it simple
• get inspired
• go social
• remember the rankings
• measure!
• know it will deliver a sound business resul

ie Angry Birds

• great game, easy to play, free game - u get hooked and buy additional levels
• advertising in the game
• build a phenoman around the game - sell branded items - ie tshirts, birds etc
• engaging fans, woo and keep fans on different types of screens
• product is experience
• ROI $, good will, causes awareness etc
• not just about the APP but everything around the APP

Keep it simple — Dont make me think


DONT’s

• good CTAs 
• advanced functionality should be easy to find - shortcuts make it intuitive
• labels - keep em clear and consistent – ie about us - being too clever - use the tried and true,
• icons should be obvious not cyptic — need to have 1 second understanding or words underneath
• Scrolling vs multiple pages - scrolling is better
• Usability Test — insist on this - essential to have customer feedback - require people input

Get inspired

• know what the competition is up to
• be on top of new innovations
• save time and money

Best Practices
Remember the Rankings

• rankings are extremely important
• featured in app store  free advertising

Go Social

• invite users to write their feedback and ideas
• make it personal

The Beer Store
http://www.thebeerstore.ca/

Alexander shared a case study Design Labs worked on.

• website
• redesigned it - kept it nice and simple
• built in drupal
• designed to look like an app

The Beer Store App options

• no app
•  App that skins the mobile website - why? why download it then and bad rankings
• Full app - trying to be cool and build a strong social relatnsihp
• app should encourage sampling -ie competition tasting checklist

Designed the Beer Passport to encourage sampling

• community building
• store and beer finder

Thoughts on QR codes

• slow adoption rate
• tricky to use

Responsive Design  — Some examples
full control of navigation and look and feel on different screens

www.barackobama.com

www.foodsense.is

www.palantir.net
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/tag/responsive-design/




Measure!!

• things that dont work are just imporant as the things that do work
• require the details that will make an exceptional app
• resonate and deliver

Last bit of advice

• Put together a great portfolio
• have a great attitude -KEY attitude determines your altitude.
• research the company and your interviewer
• ask lots of questions
• life is short dont settle!  6 years average stay7
• ask what your role would be like
• what the environment is
• how am I going to grow here
• only hang out with people you are interested in and are interesting

Your attitude determines your altitude.