Posted On
Mon 09 Aug 2010 at 11:25 AM
Posted By
Janneane Blevins
Over the past year and a half, KA+A has been in league with Indiana's leading minds in the local agriculture and culinary worlds to bring back a revitalized Taste of Indiana, Dig-IN. (Read more about our re-branding process here.)
Set to premiere this August 29th, Dig-IN will take place at the White River State Park, featuring a rockstar lineup of Chefs (Neal Brown, Chris Eley, Greg Hardesty, Regina Mehallick, Eli Anderson, Scott Wise and many more) who are paired up with local producers to masterfully create an all-local dish. In addition, there will be over 20 local wineries and breweries brought together for you by the Indiana Wine Grape Council and Brewers of Indiana Guild. All…
Posted On
Fri 09 Jul 2010 at 3:46 PM
Posted By
Nathan Sinsabaugh
Luke W's post on the
They Make Apps approach to CAPTCHA got me thinking, so I spent 30 minutes brainstorming other techniques that might work. Check out my sketches below.
Posted On
Wed 07 Jul 2010 at 4:19 PM
Posted By
Janneane Blevins
Dividing up elephantine-sized projects is something I totally dig, and it's always the result that is the most stunning. So when I stumble across a new company or platform that is bringing forward this type of solution through crowdsourcing, I get pretty excited, particularly when it benefits the non-profit sector (easily crushed by large tasks that they lack the resources to address). By divvying up a daunting task, responsibility, or problem into micro pieces, not only is the cost and workload distributed, but also the good effects. Here are a couple of cool companies that I'm following:
The Extraordinaries
The Extraordinaries, a micro-volunteer network offers a platform to connect non-profits with skilled professionals. Non-profits submit requests…
Posted On
Thu 01 Jul 2010 at 2:16 PM
Posted By
Nathan Sinsabaugh
I was recently introduced to
The Underwater Project, a photographic series depicting people, as you might guess, underwater. Most of the shots show people in the middle of, or directly underneath, a wave. As you can see above, the results are stunning, often times otherworldly.
This image series isn't just beautiful, it's representative of how changing your perspective and truly immersing yourself in something reveals that, often, things and situations aren't as you imagined. There's a lesson for designers and UX folks somewhere in there…
Posted On
Mon 07 Jun 2010 at 11:56 AM
Posted By
Kristian Andersen
I had the opportunity to be the final speaker at the
2010 Indianapolis Startup Weekend event on Sunday afternoon. For the uninitiated, I've included a bit of background from the Startup Weekend website below.
Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.
Founded in 2007 by
Posted On
Mon 24 May 2010 at 8:06 AM
Posted By
Nathan Sinsabaugh
For those of you who don't know, KA+A, in partnership with Gravity Labs, recently rolled out an early beta version of our first product,
TinderBox. TinderBox is a web-based application that lets individuals and teams create, manage, deliver, and track interactive proposals and other kinds of business communications.
Like all good web-based software, TinderBox will be regularly undergoing upgrades and enhancements, and I thought it would be fun to share some our design and development experiences on the KA+A blog. I'm going to kick off the series today, by explaining a bit about how assets, like proposals, content, and media, are organized in TinderBox.
One of the most important benefits TinderBox provides is the centralization of the content and assets used…
Posted On
Wed 19 May 2010 at 2:23 AM
Posted By
Kristian Andersen
An Open Letter To The Design Community
I'll admit it – I'm a recovering design process deliverables junkie. Historically, the generation of process maps, usability audits, wireframes, site diagrams, application flows, mental models, task-level scenarios, user stories, standards documentation, conceptual frameworks, content audits, navigation maps, and countless other examples of design ephemera, were so central to the work that we created for clients that we began to view them
as the work we were creating for our clients. In reality, as important as many of those deliverables may be, they are just means to an end. The end – is a finished product that customers want to purchase and use and a solution that meets or exceeds…
Posted On
Mon 17 May 2010 at 1:24 PM
Posted By
Janneane Blevins
For years now, KA+A has been using 37Signals’s Basecamp product to manage our projects and improve collaboration with our clients. On several occasions a colleague or client has even asked me to share how we’ve successfully implemented Basecamp, and how it might work for them. Which is why today, I want to share with you a great tool I've found to improve the way we use Basecamp.
With the advent of a particularly complex project, I began to have my doubts that Basecamp could handle it. The need for Gantt charts was especially desired, so that I could get a good handle on where each task was taking place in time and space. Fortunately Basecamp has a large following, so there’s a plethora of third party companies offering integrations…
Posted On
Thu 13 May 2010 at 7:52 PM
Posted By
Kristian Andersen
Todd Henry, the founder of
Accidental Creative, interviewed
Kristian for his regular podcast. The interview covered everything from staying inspired and dealing with clients to getting moving on what’s important.
You can listen to it here
Posted On
Tue 11 May 2010 at 2:54 PM
Posted By
Nathan Sinsabaugh
It amazes me that more organizations don't show pictures of their team/staff/employees on their website. In a world where we've come to loath giant, faceless corporations, proving that there are living, breathing, caring, people behind your organization would be a good thing. A great thing.
What's there to be afraid? Stalkers? Is the team really so ugly that their mugs can't appear on the site? Or is the team so transient that upkeep would be too much of a challenge?
If you really want to create two-way dialogue and meaningful relationships with your customers (i.e. join the conversation on the social web), then give your customers access to your people. We don't have relationships with abstract entities in the same way that we do with flesh and blood people. Not even if…
