Cameesa - The Blog

I’m in the process of re-designing Cameesa as a lot has changed since the first few iteration of the site. A lot can be improved and there are some visual inconsistencies (Ex. we kind of strayed away from the initial grid system I devised). Anyhow, I found some excellent resources on using grid systems from Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton via The Grid System.

I also found some great inspiration from Typesites.

Congratulations to Aubyn Beth (the first Cameesa endorsed band) for winning the Battle of the Bands last night.  Thanks to their great performance, they will be opening for Lucky Boys Confusion on December 26th at the Metro (buy your tickets here).

Check out Aubyn Beth music on MySpace, or support their design, Aubyn Beth Guitar Bear, on Cameesa.

Congrats guys!!!

Chicago based Haha Press founded by Ian Law produces limited edition tees from a select group of artists. The Lion King caught my eye.

I’m asked by friends who wish to build their own web application or community site to provide a “design”. Typically they are developers who want to dig into the code immediately and to have a design applied once they are done programming. Often this scenario doesn’t produce the best results. It can also be costly in terms of resources. I tend to ask the following questions:

Entire books have been written on the subjects of Experience/Interaction/Interface Design and its value in the software development. A great example would be Alan Cooper’s About Face that outlines the building blocks of Interaction Design using their Goal Directed Methodology. These resources are informative and exhaustive. I find the information is better suited to larger scale projects/teams involving clients. Therefore, there is usually a need to have more planning and design deliverables due to the communication overhead. However, the core principles apply regardless of the situation.
What I will try to outline here is geared towards small teams who wish to build a web product (Built for an audience/market segment and not a client).

The first step is to define the problem. As described by 37 signals and mentioned by Kamil on numerous occasions. The problem the Cameesa team had was as follows:

Is there a better way of providing apparel that people really want while having everyone benefit in the process?

The solution was to create a crowdsourcing / crowdfunding platform that had the core features:

From there we began to sketch the idea out in the form of a prototype. I know user experience designers are probably asking, “What, no personas?” When solving your own problems and working with a small team there’s not really a strong need for user needs documentation as you and your team are going are part of the target demographic. A direct result of solving your own problems! Another important item to note is the distinction surrounding sketching and prototyping. Bill Buxton, in Sketching User Experiences states they are not the same. According to Bill there is usually a bigger investment in building a prototype than in creating a sketch that is more disposable. However, with web applications that have narrowly defined feature sets it is relatively quick and easy to develop a prototype. Not to mention the availability of tools that can speed the process up. An example is of such prototyping software is Axure. It’s fairly easy to build a clickable prototype and mimic interactions in a point and click fashion.

A sample screen is presented below:

I find it’s easier than creating a paper prototype because you can drag and drop elements and reuse elements. I find the same to be true of design tools such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. You can move elements around but it maybe hard to create and maintain an interactive prototype.

No matter what tools you use you should always attempt to sketch the idea out in the form of a prototype. This prototype will serve multiple purposes as it is a living document.

1. It will be a starting point for discussion in order to improve and define the application further through iteration.
2. You can begin soliciting feedback from others and conduct informal testing.
3. It will be the blueprint from which you will develop the application.

Some notes on the points mentioned above. You won’t be able to get what you want to build on the first try. You will immediately see gaps that you’ll need to improve upon. Your teammates will identify things you’ve missed. Most importantly it is a tangible expression of the idea. Anytime, I describe a new feature to Kamil his first response is: “I don’t understand what you’re saying. I have to see it.” The misunderstanding can happen for many reasons, including the fact that I am horrible at explaining things. I usually find that presenting the idea visually is always best as language is open to interpretation. This is why I feel functional specifications are troublesome if not accompanied by visuals. People can interpret the description in multiple ways. I find it’s much better to annotate the prototype itself then it is to write a specification.

Furthermore, you have something visual to bring others to collect feedback. The prototype should look rough, unfinished and appear like a work in progress. The reason? People are more likely to be liberal in critiquing something they are shown if it looks like a work in progress. If it looks “finished” people tend to hold back when critiquing. They reason a lot of time was spent and that it maybe hard to change based on their feedback.

If you were able to create a clickable prototype now you can do what Joel Spolsky calls Hallway Usability Testing. For some, formal usability testing may not be worthwhile in terms of cost as it would be by grabbing “the next person that walks by in the hallway”. More so in the time spent in recruiting and compensating participants. Put someone in front of your prototype and have them click through it. You will be able to uncover core problems by having only a few people review it. Tell people to be brutally honest. Don’t let the idea of formal usability testing, with test plans etc. get in the way of you soliciting feedback.

Then when you and your team feel you’ve gotten the prototype to a point where major flaws are eliminated and the idea is well articulated THEN you may start to code. The prototype is the blueprint to be followed to start structuring your code. Core screens and main interactions should be adhered to. It should be understood that you may not be able to copy every item exactly as is represented in the prototype. Technical constraints may arise and as a result minor items may need to be modified.

I find it is usually a big mistake to jump right into the code as significant time can be spent only to be re-done after you’ve decide how it should really work. Even though open source frameworks such as Ruby On Rails and Django have provided us with more agility, it is still quicker to create a prototype first. Once the application is live with the defined core then you may keep progressively iterate your application making marginal improvements. For major enhancements you should always go back to constructing a prototype of some kind.

This post elaborates a little further on Kamil’s post on “Writing Your First Application”. This would fall somewhere under Step 3 in terms of defining your application.

Black Rock Collective is a collaborative design team composed of illustrators and apparel designers who are successful on sites such as Threadless and Design By Humans. As I look through the list of team members some familiar names appear. Particularly Priscilla Wilson and Tom Burns. Probably from their work on Threadless. I did take a look a through some of the portfolios and there’s some awesome work there. One I portfolio I was impressed with was Aeiko’s (aka Pete Harrison). Very versatile!

I noticed that one Black Rock Collective member has registered on Cameesa, Luke Wisner. I can’t wait to see a submission.

BRC has an awesome submission over at Design By Humans, Altitude Sickness. It looks like they are creating some awesome work together. BRC is another great example of the power of teams.

vonmonkey about his initial impressions and thoughts about Cameesa.

Check it out here

What amazes me is how well vonmonkey was able to not only grasp the site, but his analysis of the underlying effects of using crowd funding. I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Cheers Jon! We look forward to seeing “Take Me to Your Reader” make it into print. At the current pace of Support, it should be there in no time!

One of our artists, stevebalistreri, recently submitted a real-life design, the Flabongo. (http://cameesa.com/support/design/28/flabongo-evolution)

In my 26 years of existence, I have done my fair share of partying, but I have never encountered a Flabongo; hence, my inquiry on Steve’s post asking “what the hell is a blongo?” (http://cameesa.com/forum/post/12/new-design-flabongo)

Even after Steve explained the Flabongo concept, I was still somewhat puzzled, and skeptical of the Flabongo.

So, this past Saturday night, I attended a Lincoln Park house-party at a friend’s place. As midnight struck, a mysterious creature entered Brendan’s home. It was pink, had no legs, and its insides were ripped open. Lo and behold, the Flabongo had entered my life for the first time ever. I was stupefied and amazed as to what I was seeing. Who would have ever thought that I would see a design on Cameesa.com - for the first time ever - and get a real-life taste of it, only days later.

I flew off the couch and greeted the gentleman who brought the Flabongo into my life. As I approached him, he quickly jumped back because he thought that I was going to kiss him (note: it’s atypical to kiss strangers in Chicago…although it has been accomplished before.) I told him the entire Flabongo/Cameesa.com story but he clearly did not understand my amazement of Flabongo.

The moral of the story is : “Cameesa.com brings people together, whether in designs or real life.” I want to deeply thank Brendan for a great party, Steve for the Flabongo design, and the gentleman, whose name will remain confidential, for bringing Flabongo into my life…..I miss you dearly.

I received Kevin Lyons’ new book “Pussy and Papers Poetry Power and Pistols” the other day from Amazon. It is a retrospective containing five hundred of his t-shirt designs. For those who don’t know Kevin Lyons is, he is a notable figure in the T-shirt design community whose freelance clients include Nike Basketball, Adidas, Jordan Brand, Stussy and Beams-T in Japan. A keen typographer, Lyon’s shirts display unique type treatments that convey concepts with impact. The hip-hop influence is clearly present in all of his work. I also find it extremely interesting when Lyons references modern art movements within the context of contemporary hip-hop culture. An example is displayed below for a shirt done for Commonwealth Stacks, a shout out to MC Shan with visual references from the Dutch De Stijl art movement.

The Behance Network is an excellent community for artists and designers. While admiring the work on Behance I came across some intersting t-shirts in the portfolios of Chris Gray, Jeff Finley of GoMedia and Jeff Hamada. I’ve posted some of the shirts below. They are linked to the full portfolios on Behance.

Fontsruct is a free online font-building tool that allows type sharing among the community. This is an interesting way to cultivate a design community. Provide a single online location not only to create new typefaces but to share and download others for free. It is also interesting to see flash used in an effective way. To build interfaces for online editing tools.