Headspace Design

Projects : Aquatera Extranet

2012-04-22T21:52:48+00:00

Aquatera, a water utility based out of Grande Prairie, Alberta, needed a way to keep all 100+ employees connected across a broad spectrum of departments, from Waste Management to Tech Support, HR to finance. Plagued by the woes of Sharepoint, we designed and developed a custom extranet that keeps discussions, comments and notifications together and lets admins specify permissions across various departments. There is a calendar, file uploads section, live chat and Google Docs integrations. We are currently working on a Payroll section and ticket and equipment booking functionality.

Projects : National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health

2012-04-22T21:47:10+00:00

The National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health is a federally backed organization with a long name but a focused purpose - to translate and share information to public health in areas surrounding social and economic factors that influence health. We worked with them to develop an online strategy, website and online learning community that let's members discuss information, and create and manage discussion groups. The website is built in responsive design, which allows it to scale and adapt on a variety of screen sizes.

Blog : Tearing someone a new one - via email

2012-04-17T18:31:48+00:00

Email is 70% useless.

As someone unfortunately known in our office for writing 'Rackigrams', that is, pointed emails that are specifically designed to let someone know they're an a-hole, I have learned something:

Email should never be used to express anger when you want to preserve a relationship. It causes hurt feelings and needless drama, particularly because to the reader, you sound about 10 times angrier over email than in person (unless you're Steve Jobs apparently).

In an email, writing "I'm disappointed in your services" sounds to the reader like "I'M DISAPPOINTED IN YOUR FACE, YOU S.O.B". Talking in person however, we use inflection in our voice and soften our language with things like "Sort of", "a little bit", "pretty bad". If you aren't worrying about severing the relationship, then great. Go to town.

Now in a lot of cases, email can be great. Particularly when you want to send a message that has multiple components, broken out in headings, in a numbered list, and you want to offer up this soliloquy with no interruptions, no counter-arguments, questions or even expressions of agreement that get in the way of communicated your multi-facteted point, and keeping a handy record of the exchange. Just be sure that you are overly polite to compensate for the lack of inflection.

If you need to tell someone they're an idiot, do it over the phone or in person. Yes, it may require working up some nerve. A bit of uncomfortableness. But it's worth it.

Two incidents over the past month involved someone sending a nasty email and me responding in a nasty manner. In a way the results were achieved, but at the expense of good relationships.

On the other hand, two other occasions involved me being upset or annoyed at someone and waiting until I could speak with them. One was a client who implied in an email that something was our fault when it had nothing to do with us. I wanted to blast him, but instead I waited, called him, and kindly explained it to him. Some words were exchanged, but overall the tone was friendly and professional. Our relationship is good and we both understand each others points.

The other occasion was just in the last week. A trusted colleague sent an email to me and some other team members that sounded apathetic, flippant and irresponsible. Everyone who read it was understandably pissed. I felt my fingers reaching for the keyboard, ready to carefully craft a world-famous Rackigram, but then I relented.

We had a meeting booked in a couple of days anyways so I waited until after the meeting to discuss the email. As it turns out, our colleague had written it quickly and used incorrect language to explain his position. When he explained in person it all made sense and was much more inline with his character. Crises averted, problem solved, everyone was happy.

I hate to think of how it would of turned out if I had emailed him.

Blog : New digs

2012-03-11T23:23:56+00:00

We officially have a new space and are moved in! This weekend, the desks and furniture came in, and we're ready to begin our first work-week in the new space. The studio space is located in the Hydrostone Market in Halifax, and we're already worried about our waistlines - there's so much good food, coffee and wine on this street. We'll post new pics once the team is fully inhabiting the space, but in the meantime, here are some quick shots after the furniture got moved in.

Blog : Podcamp Halifax

2012-01-23T17:52:51+00:00

Yesterday I attended Podcamp Halifax, which is a great annual, free event full of presentations about the web and social media. It's a great place to connect with people face-to-face that you know from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, and learn new things that can help you with your business.

Much kudo's to the folks who put it on including Craig Moore from Spider Video. To those who came, it was great meeting you and I hope to you next year (or sooner)

I was privileged to put on a presentation based on Aarron Walter's book, Designing For Emotion. It attracted a good sized crowd and seemed to resonate with the people in attendance. Here were some mentions on Twitter:

HarmonicDev Harmonic Internet

GREAT talks yesterday by @brightwhite @kyleracki @SpiderVideo and keynote speaker @julien #podcamphfx and big kudos to the event organizers!

HStu Hannah

Designing for Emotion session with @kyleracki is packed and has tons of great ideas about creating human websites. #PodCampHalifax
22 Jan

TheRedSparrow Carly Murray

Design for emotion is a full room, very exciting! #podcamphfx
22 Jan

RegisDudley Regis Dudley
Add an element of pleasure for people using the website. Make boring tasks fun. Via @kyleracki #PodCampHFX
22 Jan

mattrogers222 Matt Rogers

Love the analogy usable=edible. Need to make web experiences not only usable but pleasurable #designforemotion #podcamphfx
22 Jan

I've also included my presentation in a PDF form for those who attended if they'd like it for reference.

Blog : Developer Wanted

2012-01-18T22:09:16+00:00

We're looking for an awesome web developer to join our team.

You are an intermediate to advanced developer with at least two years in the professional field. You are experienced building everything from basic CMS sites to robust web and mobile applications.

You write in PHP, advanced MySQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and know OOP and MVC concepts inside and out. Ideally, you work in a framework like CodeIgniter. You use source control like GIT and Subversion. You can work within a team environment with other designers, strategists and front-end developers. You can closely follow instructions from our lead designer/strategist and our director of technology, but you can also innovate some intensely creative solutions when the need arises.

Applicants should apply using our contact form and list their qualifications and experience within the body of the email. Successful applicants will be emailed to request an interview.

Blog : The year behind and the year ahead

2012-01-09T04:35:15+00:00

Just a quick post to let everyone know I'm still alive. We had a busy December, more of which I can talk about soon. So far January is off to a great start.

Last year had it's highlights and challenges. We got to the beta stage of our proposal software, Pitch Perfect. I demo'd the app at Democamp Halifax and was completely blown away by the response, and by the event. The contacts I made there, and subsequently at Mentor Camp, were amazing. Even though the product isn't yet ready to be commercialized (although we've got big plans this quarter), the challenge to get it built in the first place were well worth the effort.

We are ready to soon launch our social media monitoring software, Social Gopher, which has been a long time coming. This month we launch version 1.0 and will be excited to hear users feedback on it. The aim of Social Gopher is to make monitoring easy for small to medium size businesses, and offer relevant search data.

This past fall, Amy Wheaton, our project manager extraordinaire had a bit of an early leave to have Baby Eli. She's busy managing different schedules now, namely feeding and sleep schedules, so we've been doing our best to balance the influx of work and make sure everything runs smoothly. So far we're managing well, but we expect some growth this year, so stay tuned for job postings on this very blog.

I just wanted to write a short thank you to all of our loyal clients, new clients, freelancers, staff and friends for the great year in 2011 and we look forward to working with all of you in 2012.

Projects : Future We Want.org

2011-12-09T15:59:00+00:00

The Future We Want (FWW) is a global initiative to envision what we want our lives and communities to be like 20 years from now. Backed by the UN, the group aimed to create a website that would inspire globally conscious individuals to submit their ideas for a better future.

We were tasked to design and develop the website, which included a blog, an idea submission form that would automatically show ideas submitted to other users, and an inspirational video section. It was also built in responsive design, so it scales nicely on smart phones and tablets.

Within the first 2 weeks the site generated almost 13,000 page views and almost 100 ideas and counting.

Blog : How to lose a sale

2011-11-03T19:31:18+00:00

I was looking at a website today and noticed a link to an online application for payroll. Great, I thought. An alternative to ADP. I reviewed their site and found the sign up form to learn about a special offer.

I took the time to fill out the form, which included fields asking how many employees I have, and what I currently use for payroll, and within 30 seconds I received a call from the sales agent. Everything okay so far. But he made several mistakes that lost him the sale in the end:

Uncomfortable Silence

The sales agent seemed like he wanted me to start the conversation when he was the one who called me. After some ums, ahs, and stutters, he asked me what I wanted. He should have already known what I wanted since I filled out a form to learn about a special offer!

Making me repeat myself

The rep then asked how many employees I had and what I currently use for payroll. It wasn’t hard for me to repeat what I already typed in the form, but the point is that I already told them and he should have had that info in front of him already. It just made me start to lose confidence.

He then asked how I found the site and I told him it was through an affiliate site - which he already should have known since the URL and banner on the site showed the online affiliate!

Put me on hold

Finally, he asked me to hold and I waited on the line for about 1 minute hearing shuffling and muffled talking, before hearing music kick in. At that point I hung up. He called about a minute later but by that point I was busy and didn’t care any more.

You would think that these days any company would think of this stuff as common sense what-not-to-do, but amazingly this company is probably wondering why they are having trouble closing deals when the answer is right in front of them - an inefficient sales process and inexperienced sales agents.

I’m sure there are lessons here we all can learn from when it comes to selling for our own companies.

Projects : Spring Garden Area

2011-10-23T23:04:07+00:00

The mission of the Spring Garden Area Business Association is to serve as the voice of business in the area. Headspace teamed up with the association to lead the re-branding, website design and development, along with various print (business cards, banners, stationery) and advertising promotions (posters, magazine ads). The website included a member login area where businesses can manage their listings, upload photos and more. We created night and day themes that automatically switch depending on the time!