Alex Nichol | Web & UX (User Experience) Designer | Newcastle upon Tyne

Top 5 Trends Influencing UX in 2012

Alex Nichol — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:47:16 +0000

An interesting question about the state of UX in 2012 was raised on Quora last weekend, one that I actually found quite difficult to answer, given that there are so many cool things rocking the UX world at the moment. Whether or not my top five influences will be the top five or not remains to be seen, but these are certainly five trends and movements that will have a massive impact on UX over the next 12 months and onwards. This post expands on my answer on Quora, which was written at about 11pm on a sunday night, and so probably wasn't an insightful read…

{UX} User Experience: Minority Report UI just around the corner…?

Alex Nichol — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:46:28 +0000

Okay, so it needs some refining, but Russian company Displair has come up with an exciting new technology that projects images on to a stream of cold fog, and uses an infra-red camera to track hand gestures. Having boot-strapped …

My Great North Run Adventure

Alex Nichol — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:30:59 +0000

Okay, so this has nothing to do with design or UX, but a bunch of us at Riff Raff took part in the Great North Run yesterday, raising money for Finchale Training College, a nice group of people who help adults with disabilities to get back into employment. We've all been training for around 4 months now, and it has been quite an adventure. In the run up to the event, I was a little anxious and eager to find out what to expect. Googling the subject unearthed precious few helpful accounts of what I was letting myself in for, so I thought it might be helpful to write about my somewhat bizarre experiences here. Hopefully it will prove useful to anyone about to run their first half marathon…

The Future of Retail is Mobile

Alex Nichol — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:37:13 +0000

It seems that the humble mobile app is gaining traction in the offline world, as American home improvement chain Lowe’s have announced plans to replace their checkout scanners with some 42,000 iPhones, according to Mobile Commerce Daily.

The idea …

Google TV comes to Android SDK

Alex Nichol — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:20:49 +0000

Exciting times are ahead for those of us with an interest in the emergence of truly ubiquitous IPTV services, as Google announced to the Android development community this week that, with the upcoming OS update to Honeycomb, Google TV devices will finally be Android compatible.…

Three Clicks or Bust

Alex Nichol — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 09:32:54 +0000

There are lots of popular design myths passed off as 'best practice' these days by armchair designers, particularly within the web design industry. Somehow these guidelines manage to work their way into the public consciousness, often taking root in briefing and specification documents where they eventually become criteria used to measure the quality of a delivered product...

Bringing online & offline together

Alex Nichol — Mon, 16 May 2011 17:09:21 +0000

Last week I wrote an article for the Tech Notes column in The Journal giving one tiny example of how marketers can unite their online and offline activities to create a single seamless user experience.

This is a fascinating topic for me, and something that keeps me up at night scribbling in my Moleskine, so it was great to share a couple of ideas...

Designing the emotional user experience

Alex Nichol — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 08:00:04 +0000

I was reading a blog post recently by a member of our Riff Raff UI design and development team, Richard Powell, and thought I'd share a story that I felt was quite appropriate.

It's a story that helps us to understand how human beings make decisions, and how important it is to cater for both the emotional and the logical side of any customer experience…

An iterative approach to user experience design

Alex Nichol — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 08:00:25 +0000

No successful web project ever started out with a list of KPI's and conversion targets. It's the creative vision that sparks a project into life and drives it to fruition.

But it's all too easy to let our enthusiasm for the genius idea get the better of us, and quickly find ourselves saddled with an expensive collection of digital tumbleweed. But there is a better way…

What motivates you?

Alex Nichol — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 15:17:45 +0000

A conversation I had at studio Riff Raff the other day got me thinking about why I started up in business for myself. It seems so long ago now (almost 13 years in fact) that I could barely recall.

I felt sure it was something to do with freedom and the ability to take holidays whenever I pleased, but when I really thought about it, the answer was actually quite surprising…

Ditching Tumblr for Good!

Alex Nichol — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:40:08 +0000

Okay, I take it back – earlier this year I moved my blog to Tumblr because I found the feature-bloat in WordPress a bit of a ball-ache. Tumblr’s lightweight feature-set is great for quick, impulsive post-writing, which actually encouraged me …

The Emperor’s New Social Strategy

Alex Nichol — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 08:48:52 +0000

When it comes to social marketing, it seems that small businesses in the UK just don't get it. Despite all the buzz surrounding Facebook and Twitter, many SME's are struggling to see any real value in their inclusion in the marketing mix. So is social marketing really just a box of nail-holes, or are UK businesses just doing it wrong?

If only life had a search engine…

Alex Nichol — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:22:53 +0000

I've often fantasised about having an Undo button for life in general, but recently I've found myself imagining what life would be like with a search engine, too...

Live conference streaming debuts on Risky Business 2010

Alex Nichol — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 09:12:37 +0000

The Risky Business conference, hosted by Great Ormond Street Hospital, addresses issues of risk management, leadership and teamwork in high-risk industries, such as medical, chemical, defence and emergency services. Visitors can now register to watch live talks by the likes of NASA, RAF and the CAA as they happen...

Three Riff Raff web projects shortlisted for regional design awards

Alex Nichol — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:23:32 +0000

Three of Riff Raff's recent web projects have been shortlisted for regional design awards The SMACS, organised by digital media collective Super Mondays...

Canvas for the Masses

Alex Nichol — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 09:06:13 +0000

Mix Online Labs has released a free cross-platform plugin to export vector and bitmap images from Adobe Illustrator to HTML5's Canvas element, including support for interactivity and animation...

Has the world gone completely mad!??

Alex Nichol — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 10:54:59 +0000

If it were not incredible enough that companies like BP and LastMinute.com can register a colour as a Trademark, it now appears that interactivity itself has been patented...

The Mashup Generation

Alex Nichol — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 11:18:06 +0000

At Riff Raff, we're looking to hire an experienced PHP web developer, and we've noticed a pattern emerging amongst this latest generation of developers in our region that we find quite concerning; Very few of them seem to have the capability to build anything from scratch...

2010: The year of Clipart Branding

Alex Nichol — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:44:50 +0000

Seeing the new GAP logo, kindly pointed out to me by one of our lead developers this morning, makes me wonder if Riff Raff are in the wrong business. Brand design is clearly a market with more budget than sense!…

Flash is far from dead, but it’s got serious competition

Alex Nichol — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 08:11:21 +0000

One of our Riff Raff UI Developers, @byrichardpowell introduced me to rumpetroll.com this morning; An engaging and extremely unusual web chat experience created entirely with HTML5, Javascript and CSS3...