With the current surge in growth of tablet devices, and more and more daily reliance on smartphones, how should we really serve content to our customers? For most users, we want our content wherever WE are. Whether that's at work on the desktop, home on the tablet or on the move on the phone. Sounds great right? But what does that mean for those of us designing those 'go-anywhere' solutions?

Approach options

There are a few ways you can approach the design of your products.

1. Linear experience (independent experiences with connected content and branding)
2. Multi-experience (Same/scalable experience on multiple devices)
3. Mobile DNA (carry your stuff with you on your own mobile device)

Which approach should you use? That all depends on your strategy. Over the past few years, we've applied linear and multi-experience approaches to design for various clients (including Aston Martin, Tesco, National Express), however an alternate approach is emerging. We're tentatively referring to it as 'Mobile DNA', and the premise is that the user uses their own content on multiple display devices. Several companies are already taking steps towards providing this solution to their customers.

Nokia's approach

Advances in phone technology are beginning to influence the customer journey, providing a completely personalised experience within the context of third party products. Imagine you get into your car, plug in your smart phone, and your in-car-system automatically contains your choice of sat-nav provider, all your music, fully Bluetooth phone capability for hands-free use... and even better, you take it with you when you park up. Nokia have been working on a system that does just this. A great approach, but it's a proprietary system and will only work with certain Nokia handsets.

Flight of fantasy

You get to the airport, check in using your smart phone, peruse destination information within the airport, pass through the gate using the boarding pass on your phone. Once on-board, you plug your phone into the charging cable, and your content is available through the in-flight entertainment system, supplementing the airline's content. You can play your own music and movies through the seat-mounted system and navigate content using your own interface.

How can this be extended?

The reality is that several companies are trying to achieve exactly this. Jungo, whose middleware offering allows users to plug in their Android, iPhone, iPad (or any other device), and then project the content on the head display of your car. Jungo's offering contains its own interface, but taking that a step further and allowing 3rd Party companies to create their own 'Mobile DNA' apps would provide infinite choice to users on exactly how they want their slim mobile experience to be. Car manufacturers then need only build in a touch screen with a phone connection, saving on costly infotainment systems and giving users the choice and control to use whatever they like.

So what does the future hold?

We'd like to see manufacturers of car and in-flight systems providing their own apps, allowing exclusive content and bespoke interfaces. The third party market could then open up, enabling competition which ultimately results in more diverse interface experiences for users. This then gives rise to users having the ability to customise their interfaces and provide themselves a bespoke augmented mobile experience across multiple devices.

It becomes uniquely your mobile DNA.

We've spent the last few days at Microsoft's offices in Reading going through app development within Windows 8 Metro (recently announced at BUILD). This is all part of the programme now we are confirmed as Windows 8 Build Partners.

In a nutshell, the days were made up of presentations and development labs, giving us the opportunity to start building simple apps that show off different features. We were also introduced to the language of Metro.

App developers are going to live in a world of promises, chromeless windows, content first and charms - pre-packaged extensions into the OS you can use for sharing, search etc. Charms in particularly allow developers to add functionality, with very little code and packaged with the standard Metro UI. Meaning happy users as well, as they'll now have a consistent experience across applications.

Splendid will be taking part in ICE2012 in January, with Head of User Experience Benedict Ireland taking to the stage.

Benedict will be speaking about new approaches to user experience across the gaming sector, addressing commercial, social and technological influences. He'll be joining a host of international business leaders to discuss key insights into the future of the industry.

ICE2012 will be taking place at Earls Court, 24-26 January. Follow the link below to see the latest lineup and register now.

Splendid worked with Microsoft and McLaren to deliver a true interactive experience using Microsoft Surface, allowing users to engage in rich content from McLaren's extensive archive.

Splendid were asked by McLaren and Microsoft to explore how Surface could be used to engage users in a number of areas; the McLaren Technology Centre and at races. McLaren has a rich heritage in top level motor sport and the idea was to bring this to a wider audience.

Splendid worked through a number of sketch concepts with McLaren and centred on a time-line based application that showed the development of key cars in their history. These took the form of two projects.

Project one involved taking creating a company timeline with key racing cars supported by information on championships one, each event on the timeline brought up video, images and text to explore in a mult-touch environment.

Proof two used the same interaction framework of video and photo presentation, taking season event images and mapping them against each race. This version also provided a larger space for Sponsor related content to be shown, with each key sponsor having their own content tab. The device was then deployed into the VIP area of the brand Centre.

This version of the Surface application was deployed in the Brand Centre at the Monza Grand prix in Italy. Splendid provided a resource to ensure the unit was correctly calibrated and used the Splendid created mobile light meter to determine suitable placement at the race event.

Lloyd's RiskMap is a groundbreaking online news tool, which displays emerging risk hotspots around the world.

Lloyd's is the world's leading insurance market providing specialist insurance services to businesses in over 200 countries and territories, RiskMap was a campaign to raise awareness of Lloyd's as the leading expert on risk globally. Lloyd's commissioned Splendid as suppliers to create a standalone web application for RiskMap, a new channel for Lloyd's that will be promoted from the Lloyd's website portal.

Lloyd's RiskMap initiative came out of the 360 Risk Insight project. Research showed that Lloyd's audiences liked 360 web content, but wanted it more condensed, accessible and timely. The intention is to position Lloyd's as a comprehensive hub for news and information about current and emerging risk. This reinforces Lloyd's thought leadership credentials for risk. The audiences are: Risk managers, Market and the business community.

An initial POC (Proof of Concept), had proved successful, and the RiskMap project was undertaken. Working closely with Lloyd's meant fast iterations of ideas and high visibility of our progress and direction. Lloyd's end user input was considered, consumed and responded tothroughout the process.

A complete understanding of the product from concept through to delivery of the website.

We achieved this by:

• Understanding the service that the product was to provide and the key audience base.
• Working to a process of Researching, exploring, wire framing and visual design with key templates and modules through to delivery of a built website.
• A Splendid team based on site at Lloyd's, Lime Street.
• Refining the wire frames and concept with Lloyd's project team.
• Verifying design direction through a series of user scenarios and consistent user testing.

The RiskMap is a global map showing risk related news events in real time. News is displayed by location and by risk category. Real-time news is sourced from Dow Jones Factiva (News aggregator), Dow Jones Newswires, and RiskMap is built to accommodate other news sources as needs expand. Supported by rich and deep contextual information from Lloyd's and other trusted sources. RiskMap is designed to be easy to use, and to allow the user to view information how they want to view it. Three views are provided: Geographical (Map) view, Category view and Newsfeed view. Uniquely, the RiskMap allows Lloyd's to associate their respected and valuable content and messaging along side real-time risk news information.

With Lloyd's RiskMap, you get valuable content from Lloyd's and its partners laid out on the map in real time. The map view gives you an overview of what risk-related events are happening in the world and where they are occurring, allowing you to make focused and informed risk based decisions as events unfold.

Information is displayed through five major risk categories: Political, crime and security; Natural hazard; Environment and health; economic, regulatory and market; Business and strategic. A large variety of international sources supply impartial news and analysis on current and emerging global risk. Accessible filter system allows users to personalise their RiskMap to focus on the risk or location that matters most to them.

A classic data view of news headlines offering deeper, fuller coverage of risk-related events. Convenient search box allows users to effortlessly locate a particular event, location, news story or contact. Content includes news coverage from Dow Jones Factiva, 360 Risk Insight and the Lloyd's News Centre, as well as risk reports and country - specific information.

Launched in 2010, there is already plans set in the future to develop, RiskMap, for example by integrating the natural hazard information, add new risk categories and making the RiskMap available in a variety of different formats e.g. Via mobile, email, large screens or touchscreens.

RiskMap is a strong communications tool for reaching a wide business audience about Lloyd's expertise in the area of business risk, and it contributes significantly to the development of Lloyds.com as an effective commercial business tool.

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

Over recent months Tesco staff across the country have been asked to lift the lid on the day-to-day obstacles that affect their work. As part of a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign, staff members from all departments were able to report on the processes and technology they found troublesome to work with.

A key issue highlighted in response to the campaign was a difficulty operating and interacting with staff handheld PDA devices. These devices are used by general assistants across all departments on the shop floor, providing a range of functionality such as stock checking, price reduction and product returns. Research showed that the existing system was hard to use and training time for new users was too high.

In response Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface, which would speed up user recognition and increase staff efficiency. The new interface had to meet the technical requirements of new Motorola devices running Windows Mobile 6.5, and scale to two different size specifications.

To support this requirement for a simple and easy to use device we designed a complete family of 20 icons to visually represent each of the complex functions available. The resulting icon set provides quick recognition and delivers a consistent design style, which may be built upon as new functions are added. To support this roll out, Tesco have invested in thousands of new Motorola PDA devices, which are currently being distributed to staff across the UK.

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

If you've been following our @howsplendid Twitter feed in the last week you'll know that Splendid have joined BIMA, the British Interactive Media Association. We are also pleased to say that Paul Bishop, Splendid MD, has been voted onto the BIMA executive board. The executive board is made up of some of the UKs leading digital agencies and luminaries.

The BIMA Executive has undergone a dramatic transformation, and this gives Splendid a chance to have their say and get involved with shaping the future of digital in the UK. It also means we get to vote on the awards... though not sure we can vote on our own entries!

In San Francisco on Thursday 22^nd of September, the F8 Facebook conference will get underway, with the aim to bring together the developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are building a more social web.

It will be closely watched by more than just the hundreds of millions of people that engage with the social network supremo's though, my bet is that Google will be wondering just what will the response be to the Google+ service (launched in June this year) that appears to also be making waves in the space.

This is not to say that Facebook would be worried about anyone mowing their lawn just yet, but recently they appear to be "borrowing" features from not only Google+ such as smart friends, but also subscriber mechanisms similar to twitter and other additional features that have popped up on various media sites that are quickly adding social sharing hubs.

What might we see?

Instagram is also having an effect [pun] with photo filtering becoming a craze of sorts and the news is that Facebook may just launch its own stand-alone application that provides similar functionality.

Facebook on iPad is still a mystery but it may just make that appearance this week. It's hard to believe that it's still not done anything until now, leaving users high and dry and relying on 3^rd party solutions to help keep the addiction alive while on the move with the tablet. Though the last thought around this is in connection with Project "Spartan" which involved Facebook reportedly attempting to recreate the entire solution in HTML5 - that would fit with not building a specific device application, but one that would run free in the wild for the foreseeable future.

It is what it is.

In the end, we will see what comes on Thursday and then see how we and our clients can use it.

The Microsoft BUILD Conference kicked off last week (13^th of September) in Anaheim California with some very specific goals to be delivered from Microsoft.

The last few months have seen a lot of speculation, a lot of anger and a lot of hope all wrapped into one cosmos of conflicting geek point of view. Not only were the development communities involved in such speculation, but also commercial folks who felt kind of shaky with what has been an unprecedented era of secrecy from the not so secret big blue ship.

What did and didn't make the cut for the next release of Windows - Windows 8? What would the OS do for consumers and enterprise customers - separately and jointly? How would it run on a slate or tablet type device? Can the tile metaphor work on scale?

So many questions had to be answered, and for the most part I think they were, or at the very least a direction was given that allowed people to understand how some questions should be answered.

And the curtains were raised.

Steven Sinofsky showed his metal though and kept the engagement alive, enough for me to believe that he will eventually take the place of Steve Balmer as Microsoft CEO.

Jensen Harris – Mr Windows 8.

Sure some of Jensen's demos failed, but he recovered with seasoned grace and professionalism, comedic a lot of the time - there was no doubt that he "owns" Windows 8.

The Samsung Windows 8 tablet.

One of the conference buzz-words (and there were many) was "re-imagination". I have to say that the level of demonstrations shown (the ones that worked) were a fantastic level of entry to do just that - allow people to re-imagine what they could do with Windows, working with the Metro platform.

In terms of the Tablet, Samsung as you would expect, has delivered a really sweet bit of kit. I've not had it long enough to know if I would pay for it myself, but the early stages look pretty amazing to be honest.

I come from the old school of device usage, where a desktop is what feels the most natural to me and I have struggled for a very long time to get used to working with a Laptop, a mobile device and all the connections in between that. It's not that I don't use these all on a day to day basis, but I am clarifying that I am not at my most comfortable when trying to respond to long emails or indeed try and compose a blog post like this.

I am writing this post on the new Tablet, and what better way to understand if something is going to work for me, then by putting myself in a position where I have no choice in what I am going to use. I am traveling at the moment between LA and San Francisco, and so I have decided to make the Tablet my only device for the next few weeks to really get a feel for Windows 8 and to know if it is going to work for me.

Is Windows 8 working for me?

I have the Bluetooth keyboard connected and I am typing away like I am on fire and when I am taking that break, I just grab the tablet and go and sit and use the device in a very natural setting. Maybe this is the time that I will now change how I am working, because the device, the polymorphic usages that have been designed into it and the OS, are really making me feel like technology is starting to work the way that I want it to.

I guess the other penny I am waiting to drop is for the OS to start crashing badly, all the time. It just hasn't happened yet which is probably leading me into a false sense of security. Experience tells me that at just the most inopportune time, this will surely kill off all my work and not let me do anything about it. I can't complain can I - there is that giant caveat in place - developer preview.

So all good things to report so far - most impressive is the start up times and even at this stage, the smooth as butter transitions and ease of use to navigate around the operating system and supplied applications.

WinRT and all the secret sauce parts.

WinRT as a concept is a very sound one and by its implementation, it ensures that all language adaptions created for use with Windows in future will yield the same performance runtime on the OS. To clarify what that means, you need to understand that there is no .Net layer to WinRT, so theoretically, regardless of how you create the applications (in terms of language) the results will be the same in performance and experience. I've heard that before as well, so let's just wait and see.

The direction change.

Microsoft have done very well to create a unique and impressive solution that copies from no other, something they were constantly accused of doing in the past. Metro will be a success which is different than saying that Windows 8 will be a success to be sure, but with over 500,000 downloads in the first 24 hours, some people in Redmond must be rubbing their hands together and patting themselves on the back at the moment.

For me it means a new iteration of the Expression Blend book to show how to use the new tooling features and a few other projects can also now be exposed and tested.

All in all, I am happy with what has come out, and I think given a good look, most others will be also.

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

Never before has so much choice existed to tempt customers and users to buy into your products and or services. Your solutions need not only to reach and engage the masses, but also provide greater levels of return on investment in these increasingly challenging economic times.

Get ready for a new platform that is set to change the face of personal computing for a generation and along with it, provide you with the opportunity to show that you are in touch with what your customers want from technology today.

Truly connected experiences are here.

Microsoft announced earlier in 2011 that they would be creating a new tooling environment and user experience that would spread an updated operating system (codenamed "Windows8") across multiple devices and platforms to give you new and exciting opportunities to engage with your users and customers.

The challenge has always been to enable design and development to create these complex solutions with maximum reuse of code and assets as well as reducing the ever growing cost of solution maintenance.

"Windows 8" will enable you to deploy cloud connected solutions across desktops, tablets, smartphones and media devices, with global roaming profiles and unprecedented levels of compatibility with the most favoured hardware in today's marketplace, such as iPads and Android devices.

Choosing a design and development partner is crucial to success

Splendid has for many years been engaged at a very deep internal level with Microsoft on a global basis. We were amongst the first to embrace HTML5 and JavaScript as a technology that would give momentum for the future and so it is no surprise that we have gathered the best of breed skilled resources to offer you a service that is second to none when choosing to enter the next generation of computing.

We have a recognised history of working with emerging technologies such as Surface and other Touch-Centric solutions, the same as what "Windows 8" will bring.

Back all this understanding up with a proven development team who have delivered solutions in the same languages across the Metro Platform and you have the confidence to know that Splendid will exceed your expectations of what is possible.

Everyone else will now need to try and catch up...

"Windows 8" is not just about delivering a solution for the tablet, or for the phone. It's about understanding how solutions and experiences are different on different devices and how your users will expect to engage in all of them, all of the time.

The new Microsoft Metro Platform is the key to delivering all of this technical goodness, and so having specialist in typography, user experience, visual ergonomics and user experience testing means that Splendid will bring you a whole new level of expectation that your competition will struggle to meet.

Other companies will begin to understand these greater challenges as they start to engage with new business. Fortunately for us, we had to solve all the challenges a few years back in preparation for what is coming tomorrow.

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

On September 13^th in Anaheim California, Microsoft is set to unveil the tooling ecosystem for designers and developers wanting to work with the new "Windows8" touch-centric user experience and I believe there could be a possible naming of Metro as a new development platform - not just a UI/UX design paradigm.

The event certainly has some hype surrounding it and oddly enough, Microsoft appear to have been able to keep some pretty good secrets this year surrounding what will and won't be shown.

So what will be shown?

Expression Web - all growed [sic] up!

Yes the geek comes out in me here just a little. I used Dreamweaver CS5.5 over the weekend on a HTML5 project I am working on, and to be honest, it was sort of like the first time you attend church naked - slightly uncomfortable and you feel a little dirty? it touches you in all the wrong places.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can get it right and deliver a tool that finally gets some broad market penetration, though it will need some pretty tight Visual Studio integration I think in order to achieve that.

Tablet Metro UI

I am also not sure if a file system will be exposed on the Tablet. It has made sense in a large part on the phone (not to show it), and the thinking I have been doing points to an effective use of a storage solution without file management really needed. The Metro platform appears to enable the user to select images and files with a completely new navigation experience so this could be interesting and certainly the basis of what would allow broad application sharing - think pushing an image from anywhere straight into a social network feed etc.

Almost everyone who has touched some development on a tablet to date (excluding iPad) will agree that the performance has been utterly shyte. At the end of the day, I hold my breath for this part of the story - after all, it doesn't matter how pretty the UI, how nice a swipe feels, if the solution runs like Molly the three legged pony, on the device, it simply will be rejected outright (even though Molly wasn't - see below).

Considering the Tablet will most likely become the corner stone of the device focus for Microsoft in the consumer space (x-box withstanding) they really need the manufactures to pull out all the good bits for this launch.

What if it tanks?

The Agenda is written here:

Clearly not put together by a Polymath? but keeps in line with the "no details" policy.

I hope to see some of you folks there!

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

Key tasks and responsibilities

• To Develop, manage and document to the agreed format, all production schedules, milestones, projections, estimates and budgets for customer proposals and assigned projects.
• Deliver project outputs in accordance with project plans, costs & to customer expectations.
• Manage project scope, identifying, defining and communicating risks and change requests, before taking appropriate action to minimise impact on the project success.
• Focus on prevention of slippage and overrun
• Primary point of contact to manage customer expectations and communication to ensure that the client is informed on the project status and obtain customer approval and sign off on all major deliverables.
• Manage the project team including assigning individual project tasks, holding regular meetings to monitor progress & ensuring all timesheets are completed on time/budget
• Co-ordinate input from all project members including third party suppliers, and customer staff to ensure a successful delivery
• Ensure all work is produced in accordance with appropriate Splendid processes and that opportunities for improvement are identified and agreed.
• Ensure the relevant repositories are updated and maintained
• Regular and ad hoc meetings with senior management and Account managers
• Lead project reviews and produce project reports with in conjunction with Account leads and in house financial team
• Upon discovery, advise the Account manager of potential new business opportunities within the client.

Required skills and experience

• Business Degree (or similar) with Project Management qualifications
• Project management experience in software development, digital applications, multi media or systems integration
• Working knowledge of Microsoft office and Microsoft project.
• Experience of using a range of tools including Project Server 2007 and Sharepoint 2007
• Understanding of and/or qualification in a project management tool, preferably, Prince 2
• Some understanding of either technical and/or creative development process
• Personal Qualities (Self-starter, Team Working, Communication, Organising, Motivating, Leadership, Negotiation, Decision-making, Flexibility and attention to detail)
• Customer Management Experience

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

Planning for the future

Early on, this was based around the 3 screens and the cloud concept, which in all truth was premature in its marketing (considering that MSFT had made it as difficult as possible to realise that scenario, given the technology placement at the time. Also, Google were not very clear on their direction as always either) but it was enough for us to view cloud based solutions as a connector to all the provisions that we could see developing. So, not necessarily using Cloud as a deployment platform for solutions, but more about the level of profile sharing that could be delivered into devices and the solutions rolled out to each of them.

Regardless, we worked to create concepts that showed the possibility of multi-device experiences that could touch upon a user's journey in various scenarios primarily using technology such as WPF, Silverlight, Surface, Mobile Phones, Tablets and Web solutions.

It's tough to make some of those calls so far out, but that is what it's all about in today's marketplace and already we are looking a few years ahead to work through what we think will have the biggest impacts and benefits to our customers in those times, so the cycle of preparation doesn't stop.

It's all about timing.

I have to really give Microsoft some credit here, because it is in this area that Microsoft really sees the big picture compared to any of the other tech giants. Microsoft funds proof-of-concepts (POCs) in these early stages and although a lot of this is about generating evidence of a feature use in a new product or service, it's also about Microsoft preparing large scale enterprises for what is coming.

These larger clients, can't (and certainly don't) turn on a dime and without this POC proposition from Microsoft, and without these endeavours many of the larger clients would be coming to a halt in terms of their infrastructure improvement and efficiency gains that they expect to keep making year on year.

Splendid sitting in the sweet spot!

Splendid is perfectly placed to deliver these concepts now as internally we have worked hard to build a development team capable of working across the technology stacks with dedicated HTML5, Application, Phone and Web teams all working within a structured process to bring design and exceptional experiences across the greater technology platforms.

Marketing has been slow to catch up!

If only they had a more realistic view as to the cost of designing and developing digital solutions (as opposed to just digital content) the software creation industry as a whole would be picking up at an even faster pace.

What causes such unrealistic views of software cost?

Consequentially when marketing departments then look to increase their spend and their exposure across all their web properties, mobile solutions and potentially even into core production they are soon surprised by the cost of having to work with established companies that have overheads, support costs and governance costs that were not originally part of the small solution creation cycle.

The only answer to this issue is education and the larger players in the market have their fair share of responsibility in delivering that message. Micro-site doesn't translate to micro-budget.

The price is only going to go up.

Good experiences cost money to build. Award winning experiences cost even more.

The excitement level goes up as well!

A lot of the work we do at Splendid is around that concept of making things fun and enjoyable - even the most serious of challenges can in some way give inspiration of coolness, which in itself is fun. Sometimes our clients are very conservative (and don't hide that fact), but even they recognise that "enjoyment" plays a large role in the success of their solution. Enjoyment doesn't have to be purely interactive, it is sometimes in the form of appreciation - attention to detail, beauty and aesthetics or even just caring about the little things.

With what we know is coming, the cool geeky things that generate feelings of excitement and fun are only going to be amplified, along with the ability to add designed, beautiful experiences.

I can't wait until we can show and talk about those some more!

Splendid were asked to create a new user-friendly interface for staff handheld devices, in response to staff comments during a nationwide "listen & fix" campaign.

The ideal person will have the necessary skills needed to work on some of the worlds leading brands and collaborate with designers programmers and be comfortable dealing with clients at the highest level.

Required skills and experience

• Educated to degree level
• At least 3-5 years of relevant digital experience
• Excellent organisational skills and attention to detail
• Experience of UX prototyping tools, experience in Axzure,Visio, Omnigraffle, photoshop Illustrator
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• A confident professional
• As well as competitive rates of pay, we also offer a healthcare package, pension scheme, life insurance and various other in the workplace benefits.

Key tasks and responsibilities

You'll l be responsible for the design of web & Mobile based applications across a number of different sectors. Involved in high level design research, developing user personas and scenarios; producing site maps and user flows; leading design workshops; including designing & producing quality user interfaces.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

The perfect location, Douglas and Gordon's pocket sized branch.

Douglas and Gordon have been operating as an estate agent in London since 1958 and over the years have earned a reputation as one of the most innovative and respected independent estate agents in the city.

D&G commissioned Splendid to design and deliver a new online experience including their primary website and an attendant mobile variant. The mobile site requirement was to provide a 24/7 branch for their time poor clients and to reflect D&G's online brand experience across the mobile platform.

The mobile site built on current scalable technology keeps the continuity of the website look and feel but allows for mobile functionality and touch sized graphics and has been distilled from the main site to meet primary mobile user requirements.

In particular the site needed to be fast, dynamic and flexible enough to be easily changed or updated. Analytics have been incorporated to be able to produce accurate and reliable data that can be used for trend and usability analysis to assist in evolving the mobile site going forward.

As well as delivering a robust highly usable mobile site the project has also delivered Douglas and Gordon a new digital brand on the mobile platform.

We worked very closely with Douglas and Gordon, conducting interviews with both employees and clientele in an attempt to better understand their objectives and assess which features would be suitable for the mobile user. High-level competitor analysis, brand discovery and personas workshops all contributed to this understanding.

We iterated the interaction design collaborating with D&G to verify and hone the feature set to arrive at a mobile design which compelling, useful and supportive of Douglas and Gordon and its products.

Gaining a complete understanding of the company, its goals and direction. This provided a firm basis from which to build a mobile solution meeting their requirements.

We achieved this by:

• Understanding the service that the product was to provide
• Working to a process of research, exploration, wire framing and visual design with key templates and modules through to delivery of a complete mobile site
• A Splendid team working closely with Douglas & Gordon over a period of two months
• Verifying design direction through a series of user scenarios and consistent user testing
• Developing for smart phone systems, iPhone and Android
• Constant user testing on live handsets and emulators

The Douglas and Gordon mobile site provides a simple and effective route to market for this increasingly important platform.

We have distilled the full web experience into a seamless mobile offering by prioritising and refining the functionality to match user expectations.

The mobile site offers, property search, search results, property details, office locator and account login as well as a series of links for users to jump off to the full site should they so desire.

The site search has been modified for mobile so that the search box works harder. Since comprehensive link navigation is difficult to implement on a mobile site the search box will be the first port of call for many users. Allowing users to search for a keyword within a selected category makes things easier as it reduces the chance that the search will produce irrelevant results and begins to narrow the choice for customers.

In the UK web traffic from mobiles are already estimated to be growing eight times faster than traffic from PCs. This site will be able to evolve easily over time and allows Douglas and Gordon to establish themselves with mobile customers in a fast growing sales channel.

The mobile site has had relatively low development cost because of the multi-channel approach we have taken to this project. With this platform in consideration from the outset we were able to recycle the simple control sets and clean branding from the main site into the narrow width version. This project is a clear example of how businesses can create a mobile platform quickly and cost effectively using flexible scalable technology.

Visit www.douglasandgordon.com to find out more.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

The perfect location, Douglas and Gordon's pocket sized branch.

Aston Martin are passionate about the cars they produce and know this is a passion shared by their customers. Aston Martin believe that a sports car should have a distinctive character. They feel it should be built to the highest standards and be exhilarating to drive and own.

Many things have changed over their ninety plus years of heritage, but those goals are still very relevant today.

"To create a car closer to art than the automobile. That was the aim". Marek Reichman, Director of Design.

The ONE-77 is Aston Martin.

At the end of 2006 Aston Martin had started to concept a car that embodied all that was Aston Martin. They took this concept and started to design the ONE-77. The One-77 is the ultimate expression of what Aston Martin stands for and combines modern technology and design with craftsmanship and ultimate exclusivity to create the world's most desirable automotive art form.
Aston Martin wanted to build just 77 cars in an exclusive process that was unique and on a dedicated production line at their Gaydon facility. Aston Martin's issue was that their current in-car system was using dated technology and needed to be updated and improved to match the quality of the car. The long term plan was that this infotainment in-car system would not only be fitted into the ONE-77, but was to form the basis for in-car systems for all future production of cars at Aston Martin.

The primary aim was to provide the expected basic features of a modern car system that included Sat Nav/GPS, phone capability and audio entertainment.

The secondary aim was to provide the features expected of a modern luxury car. Parking cameras, Bluetooth capability and full compatibility with modern audio devices (iPod, MP3 players, address book syncing).

The tertiary aim was to provide the conceptual design of new features unmatched in other systems. Synchronisation of music files, recording in-car video, full telemetry and in-car PC
The system was designed by Splendid, built with technical partner Skyships and then assembled at Gaydon by Aston Martin.

In the winter of '07-08', we created a prototype of the system in conjunction with Microsoft and Aston Martin. This verified menu structures and basic interaction with the joystick. With the prototype we proved basic PC syncing, in-car video recording, a first pass at picking up CAN bus telemetry and GPS/Virtual Earth capability. This was then installed in a mule DBS, which was taken to Millbrook to gather telemetry data and prove the interaction design of the system. The prototype also featured at the keynote at Microsoft's technology conference, Mix 08'. A video can be seen here.

In the autumn of '08', Aston Martin commissioned Splendid to create the system based on the proof of concept.

This meant:
A complete understanding of the product from concept through to delivery of the in-car system. The designing of the entire system and a remote PC-based management and Sync application.

We achieved this by:

• Running an intense 5-month project
• Working to a process of Researching, exploring, Wire framing, Visual design of key templates, modules and documentation
• Working closely with Aston Martin at Gaydon, with the team split between Gaydon and Splendid's London office.
• Analysing many infotainment systems from Jaguar, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Honda, Audi, Ford, Land Rover, Nissan and many others within the automotive industry and outside it.
• Refining the design brief with Aston Martin directors, project team and design department.
• Refining the wireframes and concept with Aston Martin's team
• Working closely with Aston Martin's technical partner to ensure we were working to realistic technical constraints.
• Verifying design direction through a series of user scenarios and consistent testing.

A number of concepts were explored during the project, alongside Aston Martin's internal DIM development project, and the final design was influenced by glassy 'projected' interfaces and to provide a neutral backdrop to the almost unlimited interior trim options.

Working closely with Aston Martin meant fast iterations and high visibility of our progress and direction. Aston Martin input was considered, consumed and responded to throughout the process.

The deployed system features a fully integrated display with all infotainment and HVAC controls being managed through this interface. The input device is a 4-way joystick supported by a home and back button. This was chosen over touch screen or rotary controls for ease of use at the intended driving speeds of the One-77.

The following features were developed;
Audio: The audio system features full radio, CD capabilities along with the ability to choose media from a removable USB thumb drive or hard disk. These can be used to sync media with your home PC. Radio functions include the usual FM and MW but also DAB radio and the ability to create a playlist of favorite radio stations. Full audio settings can be managed within the system that allow users to get sonic perfection with the Bang & Olufsen custom audio system.

Satellite Navigation: A full custom navigation system was designed based on the Navtek platform. With a full safety camera warnings and tailored POI list. A custom icon set was developed for Aston Martin that is also used on the Garmin based system on the Cygnet and Virage models to ensure consistency.

Communication: The system allows users to fully sync their phone and contacts with the car and link this into the navigation system.

Parking: The car features front and rear reversing cameras that are accessed via the infotainment system.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

The perfect location, Douglas and Gordon's pocket sized branch.

The Garmin based Sat Nav system we designed for Aston Martin featured in last nights Top Gear, and got a favorable review. Always nice to see your work on the TV.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

National Express Group is a leading public transport provider with an annual turnover of £2.6bn and over 40,000 employees.

In the UK, the National Express Group provides coach; bus, train and airport transfer services. The Coaches Business provides Scheduled coach services carry around 33m a year nationally, of which National Express carries just over 18m. National Express' coach network is the only national transport network in Britain operated by one company under one brand, serving c.1, 000 destinations, competing with rail and car but with a limited number of viable coach competitors. There core network strength is aided by focused additional services direct to airports, major venues and events. They have iconic "value" brand - 40 years, 70% unprompted awareness and a strong customer base. The service is nationwide and has a multi-channel distribution underpinned by 90k visitors to the National Express website every day and 33m unique visitors annually.

The aim of this project is to design and develop a mobile optimised site for National Express to provide a cost effective mobile solution for handsets that have web-browsing capabilities.

This solution is platform agnostic and will provide an effective route to market for any smart phone irrespective of the carrier, connectivity method, operating system or form factor.

The National Express booking process and log in functionality to view a previously booked ticket have been built and deployed to live. This project follows on from that work to produce a mobile-optimised version of the booking process and account area.

Splendid recommended building a narrow width version of the booking process built in standard HTML due to the platform agnostic nature of this approach. The final deliverable is then usable by all Smart Phone users.

National Express also require this approach as they do not wish to release an app (in particular to the Apple App Store) due to revenue charges that will be incurred.

Working closely with National Express meant fast iterations of ideas and high visibility of our progress and direction. National Express and user input was considered, consumed and responded to throughout the process.

A complete understanding of the product from concept through to delivery of the mobile site.

We achieved this by:

• Understanding the service that the product was to provide
• Working to a process of Researching, exploring, wire framing and visual design with key templates and modules through to delivery of a built mobile site.
• A Splendid team working closely with National Express.
• Refining the wireframes and concept with National Express project team.
• Verifying design direction through a series of user scenarios and consistent user testing.

The National Express Coach booking process is a five-stepped process. The process includes Find a journey, Select a Journey, Add Extras, Delivery, Payment and Confirmation. The mobile site has been reduced in width from the website due to the mobile screens and slight alterations to suit the interaction, function and experience need to operate on a mobile phone. Clear and intuitive now with a more commercial look and feel provides National Express with a long-term solution as there business going forward as well as still providing value for money for the consumer. A solid foundation into the first step of mobile. The site will be closely monitored to consider whether further functionality will be added to the mobile site. The step into mobile is more than a brand exercise as the mobile site only concentrates at the moment on booking a ticket.
Launching in April 2011, there are already plans set in the future to develop, National Express Coaches whole site, to enhance the consumer's experience.

National Express Coach is a strong booking engine for a national coach business reaching a wide audience in the growing Coach market. It significantly contributes to the financial success of National Express Coach in an economy that is climbing from recession and where the population is careful with how much it spends on travel.

Visit www.nationalexpress.co.uk/coach to find out more.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Putting eBay's huge knowledge of buyers and sellers to good use.

eBay first launched its advertising business in 2008 and we worked with them on the launch. The core objective of the website was to showcase the various advertising products available.

In 2010 eBay's advertising business had grown and the needs of the site inevitably changed. The new head of eBay Advertising, Alex Marks, wanted to position the business clearly in the market, and the basis for this was the concept of consumer know-how.

The question was, how to turn the concept of consumer know-how into a reality, and allow eBay Advertising to use it to gain competitive advantage?

eBay has access to a huge range of information on buyers and sellers. So the website had to provide a way for, a portion of, this information to be displayed and grab the users attention. This was achieved through the creation of a knowledge hub, which included various in-page modules that could be re-used across the site. Their goal of these components was to provide relevant information that a user would be interested in, and to drive them towards the knowledge hub.

During our process of understand, design, develop and deliver we also found that the brand could be enhanced through other customer touch points. As an example, this lead to the design team creating various assets, such as email marketing graphics, that could be used by the various customer facing departments to re-enforce the concept of consumer know-how. These were heavily branded and could include, or be accompanied by useful information from the eBay knowledge-hub.

The point being, if you want to own 'consumer know-how' as a brand position, you need to re-enforce it every time your customer interacts with you.

The final solution involved a website, press ads and various marcoms materials. The website was of course the star of the show and included a mixture of standard information users would expect from an advertiser's website as well as information that helped position eBay Advertising a thought leader with real consumer know-how.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Putting eBay's huge knowledge of buyers and sellers to good use.

Splendid are to Speak at the IMRG usability seminar on Tuesday 5th July. Andrew Jamieson (Splendid) Will be speaking on the principles and practice of User Centered Design and will be illustrating the issues with relevant real world examples.

The session will be chaired by David Hawdale, CXO of Hawdale Associates, with presentations and insights from (with more to be confirmed):

- Adyen Payments
- How Splendid
- Oban Multilingual
- Yuseo

This session will provide essential information and advice on how to increase your ROI and ensure customer retention.

Central London Venue yet to be confirmed.

Putting eBay's huge knowledge of buyers and sellers to good use.

On the 2nd of June, Microsoft President of Windows, Steven Sinofsky let the cat out of the bag and showed the world the first glimpses (technically I think we can call it a Prototype) of the next version of the Windows UI/UX - still being referred to as a codename of Windows8. I haven't said new OS here, as my understanding is that the kernel has not been rebuilt, just had more tweaks applied.

It didn't take long for the following video to make its way up on to YouTube from the Microsoft team directly.

Why do this sneak peak now?

Rumour has been flying for quite some time as to the possibilities of a showing of the new UI, and for most of us, the smart money has been on it containing an integrated HTML5 based desktop. Internet Explorer 10 built directly into the OS (gets around those pesky anti-competitive parts) and for those that join dots with the Microsoft messaging that comes out of Redmond, you will be starting to read into the reasons why IE10 was shown at MIX11 with a strong push by the collective messaging for people to begin to adopt HTML5 and related technologies.

Another rumour is now starting to build. And this one is around what Apple will do in response to this.

My money has been on Apple revamping its entire UI/UX solution for iPhone/iPad for some time now, as the hardware is where it is at - beautiful and loyally craved by fans (and rightfully so), but even the most hardened Apple fan will admit that the UI/UX is perhaps the poorest offering on the market.

The solutions provided to the Apple marketplace are undoubtedly the leading choice, but it says something when the manufacture of the platform makes the rest of the experience feel like you're crowning after a large sitting of spicy food - confidence is lost, and you start to perspire.

So whether it is to secure the "we got here first" scenario, or as a primer to bring the development communities back to Microsoft, the sneak peak was a strategic move in order to build moment for a launch.

Microsoft can't act like Apple in these scenarios (or many other to be honest), in terms that they can't keep it a secret, to release onto the world on one day.

Unfortunately, Microsoft customers are big businesses and governments (people playing with real money and real peoples lives), so keeping confidence with those folks, ensuring they are explained how backward compatibility will work for them, is key to Microsoft maintaining its grip on the install base.

Was Metro really a surprise?

Metro was also pushed out by the Surface team as the UI/UX of choice, which makes sense for development based businesses to use Metro on a Surface and to create similar experiences for all their customers. Why you probably wouldn't want to do that, is another post that I may write shortly - but Metro works (if not a little boringly) on Surface2 also, when applied against the guidelines.

So when you see Metro used on a very small screen such as a phone, and then ported successfully onto a much larger touch based solution such as Surface2, it doesn't take long to join the dots and understand how Metro could work on a PC desktop and or a tablet based device.

Metro works, and it will work very well for "Windows 8" across all devices. The familiarity between all the devices at work, home, on the move and in large spaces will become much greater; along with the everlasting push into the lounge room with the potential for the X-Box to be the next target for Metro, once the Microsoft Media deals are worked out and ready to roll (project Ventura).

The marketing was still poorly executed.

The problem is that rarely does the partner community of Microsoft take into consideration the reasons behind such announcements in a global sense and from a strategic point of view.

Take the developer community as an example:

Developers are now screaming, because they didn't hear the words "Silverlight", "WPF" or anything other than "HTML5 and JavaScript".

Truth be told, they will need to wait until BUILD to get those answers. Marketing and messaging folks could have handled that news delivery better to those folks, to stop them speculating that the world is coming to an end.

Take ISV's (independent Software Vendors) as another example:

Inevitably, Microsoft shows the new UI running their own solutions such as Excel (which we would be surprised if that was never going to work), but they have done nothing to ease the anxiety of the millions of ISV's out there.

These ISV's that have collectively invested crazy amounts of time and money into their solution developments - and they will eventually be given their spoon of honey. But at the moment, they are shitting broken glass, because once again the messaging folks couldn't get it together in time to inform these folks.

How could they get the message out more positively and build better conversations?

Microsoft love the concept of people having conversations about. er.. Microsoft.

They think that by releasing this video and showing off some upper thigh, that enough conversation points will generate interest in what they are doing. Not all of those conversations are nice conversations though without the proper construct, and generally, unless you can seed a conversation with primary points at the beginning, rarely does it end the way you want it too; quickly you lose control over rampant speculation.

This is exactly what is happening at the moment.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Splendid have been working with Aston Martin to design the ultimate satellite navigation for the ultimate car, the new Virage.

Building on our work for Microsoft and Aston Martin around a connected in-car experience, that was a key note at Mix08) we have been working Aston Martin to design the interface for the new satellite navigation system. This new system is based on the Garmin platform debuts in the new Aston Martin Virage, controlled by a joystick on the centre console and a touch-based version in the new Aston Martin Cygnet. The Garmin versions used are the GVN54 and Garmin n?vi 1690 respectively.

The interface is designed to flow the Aston Martin Pure brand ethos and create a superior user experience for drivers, allowing them to change graphical map setting as well as language. The Splendid designers worked closely with the Aston Martin Design team to ensure the levels of legibility and usability matched those required for the new Virage, close attention was paid to how the system worked in daylight and nighttime visibility conditions.

You can read some reviews of the new Aston Martin Virage below, and it seems the new Garmin based sat-nav is a big selling point. To quote c-net "The Virage's sat-nav, provided by Garmin, is a massive improvement on the Volvo-sourced nav system in previous Aston Martin cars. The graphics look fabulous" or what Auto Express thought "The car also debuts Aston's new Garmin navigation system, which provides clearer, more modern mapping than the set-up in previous models. It adds to the upmarket feel. And with its good looks and character, the newcomer is a fine addition to the line-up."

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Douglas and Gordon are one of the largest independent estate agents in London with 14 offices and over 180 agents covering lettings, sales and property management in the most sought after areas in London.

Splendid have been working with D&G for the past year to design and deliver a full service real estate web site which reflects their innovative attitude to business and the high service level expectations of their clientele. The site needed to cater to a variety of audiences including buyers, sellers, renters, landlords and residential management companies.

Splendid employed their User Centred Design methodology in this project and spent considerable time with the senior management of D&G to define the experiences they wanted to deliver to their clients. The project team drew on lessons from their current web presence as well as looking as best practise developments in the sector both locally and internationally. Splendid also undertook a comprehensive review of the D&G brand in action including a full site audit along with a number of interviews with D&G staff and clients.

The final site design introduces a refreshed digital brand and incorporates rich functionality aligned with seamless user interaction to deliver an online experience which reflects D&G's strong offline brand.

The site has a number of innovative design and interaction features for users including:

• Dynamic mapping tool allowing users to define and save their own geographic search areas
• Mapping searches showing local amenities, utilities and transport links
• Quick view comparison tables allowing users to assess key data on multiple properties at a glance
• Quick access property search filtering by feature (garden, pool, garage etc.)
• Quick access property search filtering by lifestyle (shopping, near the river, family oriented etc.)

For D&G we have worked to ensure the site administration matches their internal workflows and gives them the flexibility they need to maintain a dynamic, current site including:

• Intra-site marketing features
• Flexible page composition CMS including preview views
• An extensible site structure allowing section additions
• Tiered security allowing different business areas autonomy over their site sections
• An aggregation platform providing a single sign-on interface

This has been an interesting, challenging project with a dynamic forward thinking client and we are pleased with the successful launch of this site and look forward to seeing how it is received by the market.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Douglas and Gordon are one of the largest independent estate agents in London with 14 offices and over 180 agents covering lettings, sales and property management in the most sought after areas in London.

Last year around 3,000 developers and IT pros joined Microsoft for a week of events designed to inspire and inform, showcasing the latest Microsoft technologies, products and platform investments.

Splendid have been asked to contribute two sessions around User Experience and Development, being delivered by Ben Ireland and Brennon Williams respectively.

Agenda

Expression Blend 4 - Design, Develop, Deliver

In this session, Brennon discusses the importance of design iteration through rapid prototyping moving towards build using SketchFlow. Also demonstrated in a production context is using Microsoft design resource templates to accurately implement the WP7 Metro styles and layout requirements. The attendee will take away from this session . Designer/developer collaboration through process understanding . Using SketchFlow for WP7 solutions . WP7 Metro resources . Implementing Metro Style and Layout principles using Microsoft resources

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Douglas and Gordon are one of the largest independent estate agents in London with 14 offices and over 180 agents covering lettings and sales in the most sought after areas in London.

Splendid recently worked with Douglas and Gordon to design, develop and deliver a Microsoft Surface installation for the opening of their new Notting Hill branch in Westbourne Grove this year.

The project was to create two applications the first of which was a competition fulfilment interface for an offline campaign.

This initial application enabled participants who had received competition entry tickets to enter a £5000 prize draw by coming in store with the tickets they had received offline and using the MS Surface interactive scanning technology to validate their entry (via the printed ticket tag) and for them to then select and entry number (from the table interface) and enter their details.

The result of this installation was a successful influx of potential clients drawn into the branch from the offline campaign.

Additionally we worked with Douglas and Gordon to design a more permanent application using the Surface mapping technology and allowing agents to sit with clients around the Surface unit to browse maps and satellite imagery of London complete with bespoke, relevant informational overlays (utilities, amenities schools etc.).

The Surface unit is an integral part of the Douglas and Gordon Notting Hill branch and is central to their dwell space.

This project has been a resounding success for D&G and they hope to replicate this success with their next branch launch.

Douglas and Gordon are one of the largest independent estate agents in London with 14 offices and over 180 agents covering lettings and sales in the most sought after areas in London.

On May 10^th, Microsoft announced that it will acquire Skype Global for USD$8.5bn (in cash) after an approval from both boards of both companies had passed.

The numbers are quite large in terms of both user base and cash but in real terms, the significance of the deal is more about the long term strategic value of the Skype service to Microsoft's plans to reassert its dominance in the consumer market and to protect its current lead in the lounge room entertainment market. It also makes sense for Microsoft because of the search numbers, but more on that later.

The following video shows a pretty shabby press conference to be honest, but the main parts are there.

Microsoft/Skype Purchase Press Conference

Did eBay really get roasted?

Skype co-founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis also owned another little company called JoltID, which was the owner of the IP, and once it became clear that eBay thought it could run off with the tech, JoltID tried to buy Skype back. That didn't go quite to plan so they sued eBay to force their hand and by that stage, eBay had no choice but to settle as they were planning an IPO for Skype that could probably save them in terms of credibility; considering the mess they had gotten into trying to make the Skype service work with the auction business after the acquisition.

eBay then did the unthinkable in 2009 and sold 65% of the business just before the planned IPO of Skype. Here was a company making year on year gains with almost USD$600m in revenue for 2009 (USD$551m 2008) while eBay had just suffered three declining quarters in a row and was entering year-over-year decline. Skype was pretty much the fastest growing connected business on the internet at the time with close to 405m registered users and instead of waiting to cash in on the IPO and then shift it through that vehicle, eBay cut and ran as soon as someone through a wad at them.

As we all know now, eBay has stabilised their ship but in terms of the black mark Skype, eventually eBay had to write off a stunning USD$1.7bn on the deal. Oh dear.

What should Microsoft do with Skype?

If Microsoft can take Skype and push a lot of it into their cloud based ("Azure") service, and fundamentally provide a superior voice experience, they will find an even greater swell of people using Skype (currently around 30m concurrent connections) and it will bring with it, the realities of video calling into daily life on a much broader scale than currently seen.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Skype pop up on X-Box very fast indeed to take advantage of the Kinect sales that have all the hardware (camera and microphone) built in and we have already seen a preview of Skype for Windows Phone, which will release very shortly with WP7 MANGO as was demonstrated at the Mix 2011 conference.

Microsoft will try to accelerate the usage of Skype now, not just because of the benefits back to their own platforms, but also because it has large market share in mobile platforms such as iPhone and Android and the quicker Microsoft can get those users re-engaged with Microsoft enabled services, the better.

Why Microsoft bought it. and will Windows 8 sell it?

Skype is an enabler of the strategy in a single instance.

Google has its own video conferencing facility, as does Apple with FaceTime, but neither compares to the numbers that Skype throws up on the board, year in, year out.

With so many dominant parts to Microsoft, they swiftly needed a connecting solution to tie all their disparate platforms together in the area of voice and video communications. More importantly, Microsoft needed a trusted brand to take to the next generation of OS platforms when they roll out in the coming year, and let's face it - Microsoft can easily build a Skype, but they don't have the ability to market a Skype from scratch.

Skype is a fundamental building block for the plans to enable communications between all of Microsoft's consumer facing devices and OS end points, from the desktop PC, to Slate/Tablet, Windows Phone and then the real cash cow which is Consumer Entertainment falling into the X-Box Games and Entertainment platform. As I've said previously, "Windows 8" should most likely promote that concept of connected experiences across devices and now Microsoft has a platform that lots of people on the planet are familiar with, trust and will recognise when its demonstrated running on the new OS, across devices and through a cloud service.

You will be able to video and voice your contacts from any Windows solution, be it on the move with your phone, playing games or watching videos in your lounge room or at work on your PC. You will be able to communicate with your friends that run Apple or Android, unlike their offerings and that is why Skype wins, why Microsoft wins and why "Windows 8" will be ahead of the game in terms of connecting you in future.?

Search matters. Bing is the end goal

• Windows has well over a 1bn users.
• Nokia has a global user base of 1.3bn users.
• Skype has over 500m registered (170m connected) users
• Hotmail (worlds' largest email provider) at 360 m users
• X-Box has over 50m users

The numbers go on and on when you look at the Microsoft Office user base, or the Explorer user base etc.

That is a staggering amount of coverage in terms of people interacting with a digital device and software that is owned by one company. Apple wish they could think in numbers that big, and Google too would like to think they could one day play on that scale, but in reality they are both so far behind Microsoft in the commercial stakes that Microsoft can afford to not be the coolest kid on the block, although strategically that also needs to change rapidly in order to maximise all the investments that have been made.

The user numbers are extremely important. Search and the monetisation (advertising) of search is based on users.

Whilst Bing doesn't exactly look like taking over Google anytime soon on the open web use scenario (Desktop searching), Microsoft may have the last laugh when it comes to search reach and eventually add revenue.

Bear with me here on this postulation.

When I use a search engine, I almost instinctively choose Google every time as most others also do. But the back door of search is when you are using search without really thinking about it, when you have disassociated search from the context of how you are interacting.

When you use the search feature on a Windows Phone, you are not using Google to perform it. You are using Bing. When you eventually will use the search features on your TV for web delivered cable services you will be using Bing and not Google. In your car, the same thing and there is a complete range of additional services that are being quietly injected into your day to day use that are more often than not, popping up as a Bing search rather than a Google one.

So where at present, searching the web is the biggest pot for revenue generation based on keyword sales - in the not too distant future, searching in context with the device you are using, and the experience you are interacting with will be the major touch point for search. All of sudden, buying keywords from Bing instead of Google will result in better market reach with their massive user base and with the potential to be more accurate than a blind web search.

In point of fact, you only need to look at Microsoft Advertising and how their mandate has changed in the last year. They have gone from trying to introduce brands to Microsoft's product range, through to a now pure advertising platform team. Showing you how you can push the same campaign across multiple channels to reach the greatest potential audience. Frankly, an audience set that dwarfs web based search.

So the Skype purchase adds to that sea of numbers to push advertising too and it also stops one of the competing giants from getting that facility.

Facebook (even more than Google or Apple) should have acquired it and one could almost suggest they have been caught napping.

In those terms, $8.5bn is probably a pretty cheap figure and one could almost say it is a coup for Microsoft.

Sources:

The Register, Microsoft Corporation, Nokia Corporation, Skype Global
Special thanks to Ben Horowitz of Silver Lake Investments

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Douglas and Gordon are one of the largest independent estate agents in London with 14 offices and over 180 agents covering lettings and sales in the most sought after areas in London.

The Splendid team are back from Mix2011 in Las Vegas, some great networking and good times had by all.

One of our highlights is our annual drinks event at the Crown & Anchor (A traditional Vegas English Pub) which is no a permanent fixture of the Mix event. We had some great folks attend, lots of senior Microsoft folks from DPE and the product groups, global agencies and even a very senior person from Google.

So thanks to Microsoft UK and Microsoft Corp for their sponsorship of the event.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Explore Wired magazine content with the power of HTML5, ladies and gentleman we give you The Wired Mind!

Wired is the magazine about what's next, the trends and the big ideas that will change our lives. Each month, through thought-provoking features and stunning photography, wired explores the next big ideas in science, culture, business -- wherever innovation and new thinking are reshaping our world.

Since the US edition of Wired launched in 1993, the magazine has been synonymous with informed and intelligent analysis, and a consistently reliable predictor of change. The UK edition, launched in April 2009, is similarly committed to bringing readers the best writers and photographers; compelling long-form journalism; extraordinary photography and design; and the people, products and ideas that matter.

'The Wired Mind' is a visualisation tool that provides another way to browse the content on Wired.co.uk. It's been created in partnership with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 browser to show off some of the great things you can do with a really fast standards-based browser. You can explore the Wired Mind by searching for tags, or by seeing the most popular tags on a particular date.

Condenast Digital came to Splendid with the concept of using the metaphor of a mind or brain as a way to navigate content on the Wired.co.uk site. We first created mood boards around two distinct visual approaches to the wired mind project, once a visual direction was identified we worked closely with Condenast sketching ideas around fun and exciting ways to navigate around Wired's article tags and their relationships.

We achieved this by:

• Understanding the broad concept and what Wired.co.uk wanted from the microsite
• Working to a process of researching, exploring, pencil sketching and visual design with key templates and modules through to delivery of a cutting edge HTML5 microsite.
• Verifying design direction through a series of moodboard presentations and brainstorming sessions
• Refining the sketches, concept and interactions with the Condenast project team.

Without hardware acceleration, browsers only use about 10% of the processing power your PC has to offer. Internet Explorer 9 unlocks that other 90%. Internet Explorer 9, taps into your graphics processor through Windows to harness the full potential of your PC. High-definition videos are smooth, graphics are clearer and more responsive, colours are truer, and websites are more interactive. Combined with the new JavaScript engine, the web performs like an application installed directly on your computer.

The new hardware acceleration and JavaScript optimizations in Internet Explorer 9 allowed us to composite hundreds of visual elements without affecting performance - a feat that was not previously possible in a native browser environment. Developing for a standards-compliant HTML 5 canvas implementation allowed us to create a fluid interactive experience that works across browsers. Finally, the Web Open Font Format and CSS3 were used to add the finishing touches that make The Wired Mind a great application.

We're looking for an experienced UX Designer to join the team in our Golden square office in London.

Speedy are the leading UK equipment rental and services company and asked Splendid to design and build a digital platform for growth of the business.

(Speedy) was founded in 1977 and is the leading UK provider of equipment rental and support services to a wide range of clients across the construction, infrastructure, industrial, manufacturing and facilities management sectors - as well as to local trades and industry.

The website however wasn't the leader in its field and Splendid were tasked with creating a cutting edge digital platform for future growth.

The main objectives for the site were;

• To create a single Speedy brand experience
• Create a Microsoft .Net based infrastructure that connects into Microsoft Dynamics for future business growth
• To provide an ecommerce platform for rental and sales

The first task, as always at Splendid, was to understand the business and commercial model. Speedy is made of three core areas; Rental, Sales and Services. Each business group has its own unique characteristics but all three would need to be combined to create a single unified user experience.

The User Experience team spent time with each business unit understanding requirements and running workshops to prioritise functionality. We also conducted store visits and interviews with Speedy customers to understand the full business cycle.

This knowledge was the taken into the wire frames and interactive prototypes that were tested with users to ensure the site exceeded expectations.

Development of the site utilised Microsoft technology and was integrated into Microsoft Dynamics to provide business intelligence to Speedy.