Double happy

Compare Quotes

brent — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 19:19:37 +0000

Compare quotes provide you the tools to compare a wide range of banking and insurance products.
They are unique in the New Zealand market. With an established customer base they needed to provide a unique point of difference. Compare quotes aims to provide comparisons around ratings, reviews and other forms of social influence.

To convince potential suppliers of their value proposition they needed a highly visible prototype. The design had to demonstrate all of the interaction principles to support the business & user goals. IxD patterns include elements of social proof, rate features, watch listing, comparison and rating systems, quick & simple questions. Visual design followed their brand colours with the addition of complementary colours to create a more flexible palette. Large indented primary navigation adds strength.

Role › Visual & interaction design
Type › Prototype design
Project owner › Lushai

Whitireia Polytechnic

brent — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:16:56 +0000

Whitireia Polytechnic required an overall makeover of their whole website design & strategy.

Lushai, partnered with Inov8 to design a complete solution for students, faculty and key stakeholders. We worked through all facets of the User Experience and updated some key interactions including course finding and gallery exploration

My Role
Initial site content audit. Collaboration on IA(site templates). Detailed interaction designs ie Tabbed course finder, gallery browser.
Visual design workshops. All visual design. Development team liaison. All html and css templates prior to being integrated into SharePoint. SharePoint css fixes.
Whitireia also made use of the @fontface technique until the final revision where download overheads were considered too high for overseas visitors.

»View the Whitireia website

Role › Visual & interaction design
Type › Tertiary education website
Project owner › Lushai

Lushai experience design

brent — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:18:50 +0000

Lushai is a design consultancy for online services and products. Their expertise lies in User Experience Design where they focus on the goals and needs of the end user and translate these into real value for your business.
They needed a complete brand package including print and website design. As UX experts every part of their brand needs to revolve around the user experience. Everything needs to be simple, elegant, intuitive and invisible (it needs to be effortless).

My Role
I was responsible for all aspects of the visual & interaction design from branding, colour & typographic treatment, grid layouts, page templates and interaction specifications.

»Visit lushai.com

Role › Visual & interaction design
Type › Wordpress theme development
Project owner › Lushai

Journey planner blog

brent — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:44:04 +0000

The Greater Wellington Regional Council engaged me (as lead designer for Lushai) to create a Wordpress template for their new blog.
The aim; help them connect their Journey planner web site with other regional council health and fitness related events and initiatives.

My Role
Design and developed of a series of templates that met their business and user requirements to a tee. These included user engagement, brand cohesion and simple effective usability.
The blog is visually engaging with article thumbnails and large header images. Their core brand colours was used with additional colours used to create another member in their family. Similar traits but still an individual. Typography is large, spacious and simple.

Role › Design, Identity, Wordpress integration
Type › Blog
Project owner › Lushai

View the Journey planner blog

Journey Planner – help window

brent — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:15:28 +0000

After creation of the GWRC Journey planner website the regional council concluded from usability testing and analysis of their site analytics that some key functionality of the website was being overlooked by novice users.

We needed to design a solution that fitted in with their current site but only appeared for new users a set amount of times. It needed to highlighted key functions most users overlooked.

Our solution; a popup help window that works for the first three visits.
The design would be visually engaging & detailed. Interaction patterns used included diagrammatic instructions, videos and deluxe tool tips.

My role
Visual design and Interaction design specificallyaround right hand deluxe tooltips, video player and call to action buttons.
All html and css development.

Role › Visual & interaction design
Type › Web application help window
Project owner › Lushai

View the Journey planner website

Click local

brent — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:56:27 +0000

Click local is a prototype website designed for my major project at the end of my four year design degree.
The central propositions is “To create a better real world environment for individuals and the community at large, utilising a social networking environment that connects and inspires people in a way that fosters collaboration from local people and organisations.”

Background
People have become disconnected over the years with less involvement hence both our local and global environment has suffered. People are often unaware of environmental changes or overwhelmed by the burden and feel that as an individual they cannot effect any real change.
American sociologist Olsen Mancur, Jr. has studied how the leveraging of social networks can motivate citizens to take collective action. He says people will at times be enticed to participate in action for the public good even when there is no personal, economic gain to be had. People are often motivated by the opportunity to win prestige,respect or friendship (Mancur, 1965).
“The power of niche social sites isn’t just in connecting people, it’s in providing tools that allow people to do something better than they could before…”
Click the signin button for a shortcut through the enrollment process.
The maps don’t work as I have shifted the domain under which it was hosted.

My role
Everything! Concept, user research(local community members), usability testing, IA, Interaction design, visual design, html, css, php, mysql google maps application.

Role › Strategy, Visual & interaction design
Type › Prototype social network site
Project owner › Brent Dickens

View the Click local website

NZ Post lifestyle survey

brent — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 19:17:25 +0000

New Zealand Post created a direct marketing campaign where recipients were offered prizes for filling out detailed formersions on all aspects of their lives.
Lushai partnered with Project X to create the online version. The main issue was that the form would be generated on the fly and may change further into the project depending on the pre defined NZ Post cms. Rather than create individual bespoke pages Lushai designed templates that could accommodate any combination of form elements whilst still retaining an overall consistent design.

My role
Visual design, html & css

Role › Visual design, html & css
Type › Multi page online survey form
Project owner › Lushai

View the Whitireia website

NZ Post DMBX

brent — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 19:18:20 +0000

Visual design for an address based application.

Prediction marketing prototype

brent — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:00:13 +0000

Proof of concept design for a prediction marketing website based around sporting events.
The visual concept brought in aspects of live events, share trading, blogging and graphical analysis allowing to create a bold, ever changing trading environment for sports fans.