It is not enough to create strong calls to action on your website. If the user doesn’t understand the benefits of completing that call to action they will ignore it. Before you call a user to action, first clearly describe what they will receive in return. Take Skype for example. Skype has a very clear [...]

Did you know Headscape are still looking to recruit two web developers? Even if you aren’t a web developer yourself, read on as we are offering a £500 reward if you find us the perfect person. We have been looking for a while and despite loads of applicants, we are yet to find the perfect [...]

Whether or not there is a consumer tablet market at all, beyond the iPad, is still up for debate but in enterprise Microsoft is stil a powerhouse. With the decline of RIM and the inability of Android to gain any serious traction I have long been an advocate of the rise of Windows in the mobile space. [...]

Getting approval for a design concept can be difficult especially within larger organisations where there are multiple stakeholders. In this audioboo I share some of the techniques I have included in my upcoming book “Client Centric Design”. Ideas include: Avoiding personal opinion by asking for specific feedback. Focusing the stakeholder on user needs and business [...]

Responsive design creates some enormous challenges, not just in build but also in layout and wireframing.

I really like the look of this carefully thought out sketch pad: http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0064/4612/products/responsive-blueprint_grande.png?100729 I can imagine how this could benefit the design thinking process, helping designers to remember and consider that site design should be working at many widths. Want. Thanks for subscribing to Boagworld; a web design blog, forum and podcast run by Paul [...]

I love wireframing by hand especially when working collaboratively with the client. When you work on a computer only one person can wireframe at a time, but with pen and paper we can all wireframe together. The problem is that pen and paper wireframing takes a lot of redrawing. You find yourself constantly drawing and [...]

Last week I was invited by the web community at the European Commission to visit them in Brussels. As you can imagine working in an organisation the size of the European Commission has some unique challenges. With over 400 websites, tens of thousands of pages and 23 languages to accommodate, it is hard to get [...]

I find it fascinating to watch users interact with navigation on websites. In particular, I am always interested in how users react when they encounter a term they do not understand. Unclear labelling can lead to inaction and confusion. Lets imagine an 18 year old visiting a University website. In the navigation they encounter a [...]

Are you taking e-mail seriously? As people who work with the web all the time, I think we have a somewhat coloured view of e-mail. We consider it a necessary evil and the last thing we ever want is more of it. Our attitude towards e-mail gives many of us a negative perception of e-mail [...]

I have recently been working on my local churches website. However, this has now expanded to encompass all their online channels from Facebook to email. The reason for all this extra unpaid work? I cannot stand to see the user having an inconsistent experience. Its so important to present users with a consistently branded and [...]

One of the favourite parts of my job is speaking at conferences. Although I miss the family, I love meeting new people and sharing ideas. I also get to hear other great speakers and always learn a lot. That said I might have got a bit carried away over the next few months. This is [...]

Headscape is 10 years old today. It therefore feels like an appropriate time to look back and ask myself what I have learnt over the last 10 years.

It looks like Ryan Carson and the guys at Treehouse have been having some fun over the last week. They have taken a week off of normal work and thrown themselves into building a Web application in only 4 days. There is something incredibly useful about stepping back from everyday work and doing something completely [...]

At the end of each year I inevitably get asked to contribute to blog posts that either look back at the year just gone or ahead at what is to come. This year has been no exception, so I thought I would share with you what I had to say. Looking back at 2011 In [...]