Insights

At our annual Quack Hack, the teams were challenged to create projects, inspired by the Internet of Things, in just 32 hours. The Cuckoo Quack was our winner, turning an antique clock into a web notification system.

This year I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about how we need to adapt our workflows for the multi-device landscape that we’re designing for, looking at how can we be better at embracing uncertainty and managing people’s expectations. Last week, I debuted a new presentation at Digital Shoreditch, about designing responsive experiences that go further than simply applying a few media queries and a fluid grid to make our designs look slick across different devices. Here’s a transcript of that talk.

At Cyber-Duck, we constantly seek new ways of creating innovative products for the benefit of our clients. Symble is another great example of that work ethic. A lean, intelligent CRM platform, Symble was built to cater for the specific needs of research analysts, investor relations, and professionals within the financial industry. The innovative, unique project won 'Best Tech' at the Wirehive 100 Awards.

Last month, Cyber-Duck were involved with Talk UX, a brand new conference exploring new user experience concepts and ideas: from accessibility and design, to the digital afterlife. I travelled to Manchester for the event and left feeling inspired. I’ve summarised the main themes within this article.

The Cyber-Duck team worked closely with Cambridge English, part of the University of Cambridge, to present ‘Shop and Drop’. Applying innovative gamification techniques, we launched a fun game that helps international children improve their English language skills through play.

The Application Developers Alliance is an international organisation that “supports developers as creators, innovators, and entrepreneurs”. In 2015, their App Strategy Workshop series will see 15 events across 7 countries in Europe, North America, and the Middle East. I was invited to host the Putting the U in UX panel on 26th March in London.

I recently gave two lectures at the University of Hertfordshire for a Professional Issues in Computing module. The objective of the sessions was to provide the students with real-life examples from industry.

Last weekend, seven eager children came to our Elstree studio to take part in our first Kano computer workshop. From motherboards to Minecraft, the day was an educational success.

Google has announced the expansion of their mobile-friendly ranking signal’s role in the search algorithm. From the 21st of April, Google will not only label ‘mobile-friendly’ sites, but also use this factor to influence how high pages should rank in search results.