This has been around for a while now, but I love this classic TED talk by Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman, where he explains how a bad ending can destroy the memory of an otherwise beautiful experience…
At Riff Raff, we leverage social networks like Facebook and Twitter for our clients all the time, taking advantage of their incredible reach to carry marketing messages and drive huge volumes of traffic, but it’s not often that we get around to wielding their immense power for our own objectives…
That’s not a typo! I was stunned this morning to discover that, after less than two weeks of going live, the Riff Raff website had already been ripped off by copycats…
In marketing, we often hear the phrase “Tone of Voice” used to describe how a brand communicates with its audience, defining the character of a brand using adjectives like “authoritative” or “approachable”, and there is often only a single tone of voice dominating the entire space.
In these days of sophisticated customer experience, we need to be a little smarter about how we define our Tones of Voice (yes, plural) to communicate a more targeted message…
We’re looking for a PHP Developer, User Experience Designer and Technical Project Manager to join our growing interactive team, designing and developing scalable websites and web applications for a range of clients across the UK, covering everything from bespoke E-commerce and Content Management Solutions to Social Networking and On-demand TV Platforms across desktop, set-top and mobile devices.
Riff Raff is a smart, commercially-driven interactive design and development company based in Newcastle upon Tyne. We’re looking for exceptional interactive designers and developers; Creative problem solvers with a penchant for living outside of their comfort zone, and an appetite for creating solutions that actually work!
I was privileged to be a part of the Future Tech 2010 Conference in Media City, Salford on Wednesday, surrounded by a broad cross-section of digital media and technology types, including the BBC’s Project Canvas team, exploring the exciting new projects and initiatives launching across the North West over the next 12 months…
A murmur of amusement and disbelief swept across the office like a Mexican wave last week, as one of our designers upgraded to iTunes 10, with most of the Riff Raff team huddled behind his monitor. “You’ve got to see this” he said…
The cupboard-dwelling nerd in me was genuinely excited to read about location-based social networking platform Gowalla making their checkin API available to third party developers using OAuth…
This visualisation of a recipe by Starsammy tickled me so much that I had to share it. Inspired design!
I was a little disappointed when I read about Gartner’s report on the impact of social networking on consumer buying decisions. I had hoped for an incredible insight into consumer behaviour that would revolutionise e-commerce as we know it, but it did little more than confirm what Gladwell had already observed in The Tipping Point…
Technology just doesn’t last like it used to. Take my iPhone 3GS for example; it’s less than 18 months old and already it’s a doorstop. Upgrading to the latest iOS pretty much ground it to a halt…
Mashable are running a poll to find out which user input device is most popular: Touchscreen or Mouse. When I posted my vote the mouse was blazing ahead, which seemed a little ironic to me…
Last month, The Times introduced a controversial new “paywall”, demanding paid subscription to access its content, losing almost 90% of its online readership in the process, according to the Guardian…
Well, I finally switched to Tumblr as my blogging platform. WordPress was becoming bloated with features I never used, and is an absolute spam magnet…
Last month, Microsoft’s Blaise Aguera y Arcas gave a brilliant demonstration of Bing Maps’ new augmented reality features at TED. With technologies like Surface, Skinput and Project Natal, Microsoft are increasingly one of the most interesting and exciting companies in the user experience space…
Almost a year in the making, from initial planning to final delivery, PokerStars.tv 2.0 was finally unleashed on a hungry public this week, raising the bar for online poker experiences the world over…
Yes, that’s one ‘C’ word I never thought I’d use to describe the company who brought us Vista, but whilst leaving the office juniors to plot the next thrilling episode of Internet Explorer, Microsoft have been beavering away on something I find genuinely exciting…
When I heard about this, I was filled with two overwhelming (and yet conflicting) emotions. The announcement that Adobe AIR is to support Smartphone platforms (Blackberry and Android for starters), along with support for publishing iPhone applications came as a breath of fresh air in an arena fraught with difficulty and unnecessary repetition of effort. And yet, somehow I found it hard to feel giddy or excited about it…
As a User Experience designer, I face an impossible catch-22 on a daily basis. On one hand, I have an obligation to my stockholders and clients to create experiences that actually, genuinely work. Every time I craft a proposal, I commit myself indelibly to the delivery of a piece of work that will generate more revenue, attract more targeted traffic or increase social engagement with a brand…
I often come across the assumption that because daily business revolves around a specific medium, one’s design expertise is limited only to that discipline. By day, my primary focus is on designing engaging user experiences for the web, but I don’t consider myself to be a web designer. In my mind, design is far, far broader than that…