Inside IC Creative

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become perhaps the most important tool for companies across the globe to embed their brand image into the minds of their customers and potential customers. The breadth of SEM is almost infinite (on this planet anyway) and the rate of change in this area is staggering. Companies from start ups to international blue chips are developing new SEM strategies and often struggling with determining the best strategies to derive meaningful and measurable ROI  from their SEM activities.

That’s where IC Creative comes in. Our consultant John Baker specialises exclusively in SEM recruitment (SEM jobs, SEO jobs, PPC jobs). He delivers the most current skills to digital agencies and end clients, in the form of SEM / SEO / PPC professionals at the forefront of their profession.

John has an extensive pan-European database of contacts in the SEM community. Because he operates in this arena all day every day, John can authoritatively advice IC Creative’s clients on hiring strategy, resource requirements, etc.

Please contact IC Creative at any time to discuss the SEM market, whether you are seeking to implement or grow an SEM function, or whether you’re looking for a new career opportunity in this fast moving sector. (Contact john.baker@ic-creative.co.uk).

IC Creative to sponsor Cambridge Wireless Event

Cambridge Wireless is a leading industry forum and vibrant technology community with a specific interest in the mobile / wireless sector. One of its many Special Interest Groups (SIGs) is the User Experience SIG, which will be meeting in Cambridge on the 23rd May to discuss ‘Context Awareness as the Digital Sixth Sense: The User Experience Challenge’.

IC Creative, the UK’s leading UX recruitment company, is pleased to announce that it will sponsor this event alongside the host, Philips. Part of the remit is to sponsor the drinks reception, so we’ll be at the forefront of people’s minds (unless they have a few too many glasses, in which case we’ll be completely forgotten).

There is an "open presentation" for anyone who wants to bring along examples of great User Experience. The more the merrier, so bring along your best stuff and share it with a group of UX aficionados.

IC Creative has UX jobs throughout Europe for experienced UX professionals.

www.ic-creative.co.uk – now on mobile

Our new mobile website should run seamlessly alongside our current platform www.ic-creative.co.uk. 

The site provides a simple and easy user experience (as it should….) in terms of job search functionality and the ability to apply for UX jobs quickly and easily from all mobile devices.

If you spot any bugs please contact us.  Also any questions about a job, or the market in general, just email or call. 

Why You Need a Good Kick in the UX

Where Would Your Site Be Without Your User Experience Designer?

IC Creative is the industry leading recruitment consultancy for UX jobs. IC Creative asks: what is the point of a User Experience Designer?

So…what is UX? Isn’t it simply an effort to make a finished website look nice? Absolutely not! User experience should be viewed as equally important as any of the processes that go toward site construction. Too many companies believe that the UX designer provides a bit of “dressing-up” for the finished site, whereas they should be looking at user experience as a starting point.

According to Jared Spool, CEO of the world’s largest usability research company, User Interface Engineering (UIE), a lot of firms get it into their heads that “good experience design is an add-on, not a base requirement.”

The process of building a website should be about teamwork. Sharing an equal footing within that team should be the guy who writes the code, should be the copywriter creating the content and should be the UX designer.

It should be a consideration that the end user is a part of the team as well. UX is a constantly evolving process that has to be flexible. Learning what works best and then implementing it, constantly testing and experimenting; what works, what doesn’t, throw that away and move on?

UX isn’t a set discipline. What works for some sites will not be a good fit for others. It depends for what purpose your website is intended and what sort of audience you wish to attract and engage with. Always consider your demographic.

UX isn’t just about appearance; it’s also about interaction, accessibility, usability. It should be attractive, absorbing and fun. Look at it as a combination of logic and emotion: the user wishes to get a particular result from your site, wants to reach a particular page or item, so they want to follow a logical path; but let them enjoy getting there.

Where would a site be without UX? Probably nowhere. Users would be arriving there and not having enough to hold their attention would jump away to the next option. If they stayed because they believed they might find information they’re looking for, without a logical pathway and properly designed buttons, they may never find it. They could get lost in a maze and simply give up.

The problem is the average attention span is widely acknowledged to be dropping. This is especially true when visiting websites, with so much competition on the internet it is believed that the user spends less than one minute per site. It is the UX designer’s job to not only catch the users’ attention but to hold it. If you aren’t holding their attention, perhaps your competitor is.


UX Designers Quest for Clickability

The IC Creative Guide to Creating Buttons for Enhanced User Experience

IC Creative is the leading recruitment partner for the most recognisable names in the UX industry; they boast some of the most knowledgeable and experienced UX recruitment consultants available.

In the world of designing for user experience, one of the most important aspects and most easily overlooked is the design of buttons. It might seem obvious, but getting the button design right is a vital piece of the usability jigsaw.

What you will find below is not an exhaustive list, nor is it a technical manual; it is simply a few tips to keep in mind when designing buttons for a website. Apologies if some of what follows seems a bit obvious, but the best advice sometimes is.

Appearance is the key. Give the button a 3D appearance so it looks like it is an actual physical button that you could reach out and touch. Importantly, make sure the button has a hover state and an active state, using subtle changes in hue and shadow, to enhance its presence and make it seem more physical.  Here’s some advice on how to create a Slick CSS3 Button with box-shadow and rgba.
Giving it rounded corners helps differentiate it from a label. The rounded corners aspect has become a standard image and what the users expect to see.

The use of colour to make it stand out and get it noticed can be helpful, what’s the point of a white button on a white background? Consider, also, what the colour suggests to the user, for instance Red = warning, Black = uniformity, Pink = for girls (?) The use of colour and variations in size can give buttons importance; making them stand out more and making the user want to click them.

Wide, thin buttons are popular, with one to three words of text describing what the button does or where the user can expect to be taken upon clicking it. The shape is a lot less important than the appearance of clickability and what it represents.

Some sort of icon can be used with the text: an arrow to show that the user is heading for the next step or page; a magnifying glass for a search function etc. Just make sure that the icons are recognisable to avoid confusing the user.

The most important advice is: keep it consistent. The user doesn’t want to have to work out what is a button and what isn’t. Don’t go mad with button design, make it obvious what the function of each button is, and make sure they fit in flawlessly with the rest of the page design. They’ll be more attractive and won’t spoil the overall appearance of the site; which is, after all, the whole point of UX. 

Visit IC Creative for User Experience, UX jobs and recruitment services.

UX Final Showdown

Simplicity v Complexity in a Bitter Fight to the Finish

UX Design Professionals know that IC Creative is the best place to start in your search for your dream job in User Experience; IC Creative is renowned as the most experienced recruitment consultancy for UX jobs.

It is a UX design professional’s job to decide how simple or complex their creation is going to be for the end user. Make it too complex and not only can you put off many users, it will seem intimidating and it could be criticised for a lack of aesthetic beauty; UX designers very often tend to lean towards the simple, cleaner appearance. Yet is that always the best path to take?

Many people love the appearance of complexity; they believe it gives them an air of sophistication. Take, for example, the BMW M5: for performance it has few if any rivals in its class, a luxury sports saloon. It boasts phenomenal acceleration: 0-60 miles per hour quicker than you say “0-60 miles per hour,” yet to achieve the optimal performance you need to change so many settings, pressing buttons and turning knobs and making the correct selections and confirming those selections, that to get from 0-60 takes about 10 minutes; whereas a family saloon in which you get in, turn the key and drive away will get you to 60mph a lot quicker in real time. It’s the old “hare and tortoise” story. The BMW owner wants those complicated controls though because it’s part of the “ultimate driving machine.”

On the other hand, UX designers know that simplicity is something that users crave. How many older people have trouble with the remote controls for their television or DVD player? They want to push the ‘on‘ button and let it get on with its job, while the younger generation see more value in having more control over functions. Quite often it comes down to demographics; it is about knowing your target audience and giving them what they want.

Two examples of doing the same job but from different perspectives are Google and Yahoo. Google is a search engine, its homepage is clean and simple, its main component is the search box; this simplicity can mean more complexity because you are making your own way through to your end goal. Yahoo is a web directory, on its homepage there is a lot more clutter, more options, therefore more complexity; yet Yahoo’s complexity means more simplicity because the options for the user are laid out in front of them and they can choose what route they would like to follow.

These are two examples that demonstrate the difference between what Edward Tufte described as Adjacent in Space and Stacked in Time, two ways to present the visual layer of interface.

Think of Adjacent in Space as being like an aircraft cockpit: everything the pilot needs is laid out in front of them, making their job easier. This to the casual observer is an overwhelming amount of visual information, most of which is meaningless.

Stacked in Time on the other hand is splitting functionality into layers, functions and information are only presented when needed. This can present its own problems if the route to the users goal is overly long or complex, they could lose their way.

The UX designer should find a middle ground; enough information and simple functionality so the user can navigate successfully and complete their tasks quickly and easily, but without too much needless information and complexity immediately causing sensory overload. Designing for one’s audience is key.

UX, User Experience professionals - visit IC Creative for the very latest positions in this fascinating industry sector.