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Ostmodern - A digital design studio with an agile approach.
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Ostmodern is an award-winning company that delivers digital strategies and products that work.
We are video on demand experts, social network enthusiasts and user-centred design evangelists. Our work builds on established conventions of functionality and usability while offering a way of working with our clients that blends design disciplines to produce the best results. We make products that people want to use.
WORKING WITH US -
The trinity of owner, designer and developer
Due to the way we work, we often operate as a design team embedded into a project/company.
Working this way, enables us to become part of that company for the duration of the project (and beyond), benefiting from greater communication, teamwork and innovation.
The more we work this way however, the more we notice how often there is a dysfunctional relationship between owner, designer and technical developer.
The problem often stems from one team not understanding or trying to accommodate for the pressures and requirements of the other team. This will often exacerbate the problem; on one side unrealistic expectations are set and not met, while on the other a ‘you can’t do that’ syndrome develops with little attempt to find workarounds.
Left unchecked, this gap often widens into more of a cultural one, with those in the business seeing the development team as ‘heavy lifting engineers’ (mostly in an affectionate way) and those in dev referring to those in the business as ‘out of touch suits’ (mostly not in an affectionate way). In truth, if a common language can be found, these two groups working in harmony results in an incredibly rich, collaborative realtionship.
From our experience, bridging this gap and establishing a common language begins with the following steps:
- Having a vision
- Communicating the vision
- Sharing ownership of the vision
- Creating a strategy for realising the vision
As a UXD team, we often find ourselves founding and leading these steps on the projects we work on. We regularly have to work hard to overcome a perception that design is somewhat elitist and demonstrate that it can be a bridge between previously isolated members of the product team. In short, giving a context, vocabulary and channels that enable everyone to communicate productively.
On reflection, good UXD is mostly about facilitating the wider product team to design the product together.
June 3rd, 2009 by TomDriver Experience Design
A fascinating insight into the inner workings of a modern F1 car steering wheel.
It never fails to amaze me how handmade and low tech these things are. Quite literally looks like it’s been made in someone’s potting shed with bits and pieces from Maplin’s.
After seeing the drivers grappling away with fiddly rotary nobs and push switches, while wearing thick nomex gloves and traveling at 160mph in a 4G corner, i’d love to have a look at simplifying some of the ergonomic and cognitive flows.
All looks like a bit of an overly-complicated “technical engineering solution” to me…
May 26th, 2009 by JodyReflecting on Project Kangaroo
It’s been a couple of months since the death of Kangaroo , so we took some time to have an internal debrief on process and project development. Here’s what we found…
A successful user experience is when all components of a product and brand work together in harmony, reflecting users mental models, helping them to achieve their goals and simultaneously those of the business.
More often than not, sites that offer poor user experience, represent a lack of communication within the business, with blurry understanding of business objectives and deficiency in knowledge about their users.
In short, the user experience of a product is often the mirror through which a company can view itself, warts and all. So, what did Project Kangaroo see when it held up the mirror?
The Kangaroo case study is a uniquely troublesome one. Any project that has an arbitrarily enforced ‘pause’ in its development, is going to be difficult to keep fresh and relevant, particularly in a rapidly changing environment such as VoD. One of the biggest challenges working on the design and architecture of on Kangaroo, was that it was already developing legacy issues before it had even launched.
Naturally, in a developing market startup, full of talented passionate people, there was a palpable sense of frustration about not having a live product to learn from and build on. This frustration manifested itself into a roadmap where the emphasis was focussed on a drive for new features and functionality, with no real desire or context to revisit any previously completed bodies of work.
This isn’t usually a problem in the lifecycle of a normal project. -When the basic product launches, it quickly becomes apparent that many of the assumptions made about users behaviour were inaccurate, offering opportunities in the context of newly developed functionality. In the case of Kangaroo, we hadn’t had the opportunity to consolidate the core product in light of user feedback.
Without a live product to learn from, it is important to get something in front of users as regularly as possible, while ensuring that as many of the team as possible get the opportunity to watch this happen. This was achieved in the form of rapid iterative prototype testing on any new pieces of functionality.
In the last few months of the project, this inclusive multidisciplinary approach to UX combined with a transition to Agile, resulted in good communication and a real exploitation of the creativeness within the various teams. There was also a shift within the business, inspired by a visible beta site and the reality of launch, to review some of the existing design and IA and consolidate the product. We were really beginning to see the results of these processes.
On the day the Competition Commission ruling was announced, we were in Reading about to start a day of testing on the live site. Not really knowing what to do, we decided to see how the site stood up against the two perceived industry leaders in VOD, iPlayer and HULU . We encouraged users to spend 10 minutes on each one and let us have their thoughts. The response was eight of the ten users reporting that Kangaroo would be their preferred provider for a variety of reasons:
- Scope of content offered
- Ease of location & playback
- Well crafted page design that allows key tasks to be performed with great ease
This was a somewhat bittersweet confirmation of all the hard work for all those involved in the UX, throughout the project.
April 27th, 2009 by TomAgile - A modern approach
We’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about how we, as user experience and visual designers, work with our technical development partners to ensure the design integrity of finished products.
Whether by instinct or the benefit of bitter experience, our preference has always been to work as part of a multi-disciplinary project team. -A luxury that is seldom afforded to us. However, we’ve always endeavored to extend our approach of combining information architecture, user experience, brand and visual design to the wider project disciplines.
Successful internal project communication is a commodity that is often in short supply, particularly between the business, design and technical development teams. There’s no substitute for getting the right people in the room at the correct stage of a project. Getting this right, ensures a shared understanding of the origin of decisions and allows everyone within the team to work with a firm understanding of the broader context.
There is however, a clear problem when working with multi-disciplinary teams in a waterfall approach: Convincing a project manager that it’s a worthwhile investment allowing a technical project member to spend time involved in the design process and vice-versa. -Illustrating the time that will be saved later, (instead of ‘bug’ fixing the inevitable ‘broken’ parts of the product) still doesn’t seem to justify the up-front cost to the client.
So what’s the answer? Agile development?
It would appear to be a perfect resourcing solution. Instead of having the whole team sitting around for weeks pontificating about design, let’s start building now and stick the designers in the development team to solve problems as they arise!
There can be a tendency as a designer to instinctively feel resistance to this approach for a number of reasons, not least because the technical team has instigated it. Another cause for resistance is the built in assumption that designers can conceptualise, architect and design a product on the fly while it is being built in a 30 day sprint. A designer (we’re a sensitive lot) can’t help but feel slightly chastened at the lack of understanding for how much work is involved in the end to end design process.
We originally approached Agile with a mixture of optimism and trepidation. However, after establishing the nature of our relationship within teams, we found it to be even more successful than anything we’d achieved, working as multi-disciplinary teams in a traditional project lifecycle.
Our initial reservations about Agile stemmed from the concern that we may not have enough time to explore and therefore establish the bigger strategic picture. However, we quickly learned that provided a bit of a head start is established and that user testing includes both features in development as well features from the product backlog, we had enough room for manoeuvre.
In addition, we’ve found that the flexibility of being able to revisit or redirect product features on a monthly basis, interwoven with user test cycles, has afforded us much more control over strategic product direction. -In a fast changing landscape such as this one, we’ve found this not only liberating but an essential part of future product development.
Some further reading on UX and Agile:
Adapting Usability Investigations for Agile User-Centered Design
12 Best Practices for UX in an Agile Environment
Agile Usability: Best Practices for User Experience on Agile Development Projects
February 13th, 2009 by TomProject Kangaroo
Project Kangaroo has been blocked from further activity by the Competition Commission.
We’ve been engaged on the project for the last two years, as the agency responsible for overall creative direction and visual/interaction design.
6 months ago, we took over the role of leading user experience and developing the site information architecture too.
Seeing a project fall at the eleventh hour after putting in so much work is always going to be difficult. At the moment, like everyone else involved, we’re still a bit shellshocked.
An NDA prevents us from being able to share any of the design, branding or UX work at this stage, but hopefully we’ll be able to show the world what it’s missing in the very near future.
In the meantime, we’d like to thank everyone that we’ve worked with both past and present, it’s been an exciting ride.
February 6th, 2009 by JodyStep aside web 2.0…
Anthony Rose (iPlayer chief and rockstar lookalike) gives us his thought about forthcoming developments in the rapidly changing world of VOD or Broadcast 2.0 as someone has imaginatively coined it.
He hints at a couple of interesting areas of development, one is the inevitable fusion between VOD and social networking, enabling users to treat their friends and other users as editors of choice (as is already prevalent on sites such as last.fm ).
Another interesting area is that of having a single cross-platform viewing profile, enabling users to manage their viewing history and behaviour from wherever they happen to be. Something that users will expect more as they become familiar with the concept of the cloud (utilising applications like spotify )
As the iPlayer seems to be the current UK industry standard in terms of VOD, we’ll look forward to see which basket it puts its eggs in next.
January 1st, 2009 by Tom