Initial design interview with Codaroos
19 June 2010 | admin | 0 Comments
I’m James Mansfield and I’m with Team Australia as the User Experience Advocate.
And I’m Bjarni Wark and I’m doing the Graphic Design for the website.
- So you guys have been going for five and a half hours-ish, have you figured out what your objectives are for your client?
James: Yea I think we’ve got a clear idea of what the objectives are. We spent a fair bit of time, probably in hindsight, maybe a bit too much time talking through what the objectives are and asking a lot of questions. We spent close to two and a half to three hours kind of listing stuff off which was probably a bit longer but I feel like we’ve got a really clear sense of who their target audience is. We’ve established that 90% of their site should be dedicated to.. So we’ve got hearing dogs Australia which they train dogs for hearing impaired people to go and live in their home and help them you know when people knock on the door so the dog kind of alerts the people that there is someone at the door or the telephone etc. So we’ve established that 90% of the site should be dedicated to getting potential dog owners so those with hearing impairments, telling them about whats involved and how they go about applying for and getting a dog so I think that’s, we’ve got a really clear and good sense of that and there’s a couple of other secondary audiences so existing dog owners, as well as donators and sponsors and people who want a part in it. So I think we’ve got a really good sense of the priorities and what kind of information those people want.
- Well this morning you said you wanted to spend 2-3 hours working out exactly what the client wanted so sounds like you’re well on your track. Your biggest challenge so far? Or what will be a challenge in terms of design?
James: I’d say our biggest challenge so far has been, trying to jump ahead too much. We go into small details early I felt like we needed to pull back and look a bit broader to begin with. And I guess, being a lot of people wanting to know certain things, a lot of us are asking the client very specific things, I felt like it was a bit disjointed to begin with but I feel like we’ve really now got it, we’ve hit our straps. The developers have set up a frame work and a wire frame the layout for a page. Bjarni’s started a visual style for the home page. And content, Robyn who is doing content she’s already putting the pages in. And we’ve got a high level architecture, we’ve just finished creating a wireframe for the home page, we just finished and finalized that before we came out. So I feel it’s progressing well.
- So while we are on the topic of visuals, could you tell us a bit about the visuals specifically how you have to approach the specific audience that you have, and how does that influence the visuals?
Bjarni: Well we are working with hearing dogs and it’s also people so it’s combining the two. And trying to convey them as professional working dogs, they’re not going to be cute and cuddly. So making sure that their target audience that view it aren’t thinking oh these are just nice dogs that I might put on the end of my bed and pat and stuff like that, these are actual dogs that work and they’re not for decoration so, the client provided us with a lot of dog photos so thats cool.
James: They’ve got a lot of nice images, they’ve got a lot of strong imagery so it’s a really good advantage for us.
Bjarni: We’ll probably mix it up a little bit so photographic and illustration just to bring across the human aspect. It’s kind of got that more friendly feel swell but still professional.
- So how do you think your team is progressing in the long scheme of things? Are you on track? Are you still working together well? Is there any fights broken out?
Bjarni: We are definitely going that way (forward).
James: I think we’re pretty much on track. We’ve got a really good sense of the important things. And we’ve kind of just said thats it, we’ve got to do that now and go with it so, I feel like for where we’re at, if you had asked me an hour ago I would have said, it would have been far more uncomfortable. But I think now, we’re pretty comfortable about we’ve got a clear direction, we’ve got a consensus on it and we are going with it so I’m pretty happy with where we are at. And I’m pretty happy the client is really engaged aswell, and open, and she’s very articulate and very involved and very knowledgeable so I think we have a lot going for us. We’re quietly confident. But not complacent.
- No scandals to speak of?
Bjarni: Mabe the big monitor.
James: Yea, what happened to the big monitor?
Bjarni: It’s a big magnifying glass. It’s ready for the world to come and watch it.
James: Not really a scandal but we had a..Obviously they want to make money the organisation but one of the managers, who’s not here, a part of it, is a bit uncomfortable about taking people’s credit card details or having a way for them to give money and so we’ve gently pushed the client to see if we can do that. She’s like “Ooh no don’t really want that, he won’t want that to happen. But we managed to convince him, we made some calls and we’re looking at being able to implement that. We think it’s something that is quite important so we’re a bit passionate about and kinda pushed a bit hard to get it so I guess that’s the only thing we would say has been the stand-out thing.
- Cool, thank you for taking the time to talk to us and good luck!
Thanks!
Tags: clients, codaroos, fcp10
