We’re total UI geeks, and we had a seriously fun time designing the user experience, interface, and marketing website. One of the highlights was the opportunity to apply responsive design techniques to an app. The application of responsive techniques to marketing sites is becoming more of a common occurrence, but is still a relatively new phenomena when it comes to web-based software.

Whether your viewing a Quipol, building one, or visiting the website, you’ll have an experience catered to the device you’re using. Learn a little more about Quipols responsiveness here.

You can learn about the complete design process we went through with Quipol here.

From the “Coming Soon” page back, it’s crucial that the experience you create for your audience is well designed.

TweetDig has done a particularly nice job of this. The aesthetic is simple and pleasing, and they’ve added a nice interactive touch: When you enter your email address the beta spot counter increments. Not only is this bit of interactivity delightful, it also communicates the value—via scarcity—of a beta spot, and reassures visitors that their actions are not in vain—how many beta accounts or “sign up to stay informed” have you registered for only to never hear another word about it?

Once you’ve submitted your address, TweetDig sends a timely email confirmation. This email includes a unique URL that your friends can use to register for the beta. For every friend that uses your link to register, you move up a place in the beta list. It’s a cool incentive that costs TweetDig nothing, and doesn’t feel “scammy.”

From the “Coming Soon” page back, it’s crucial that the experience you create for your audience is well designed. For another good example of this, read about the Bank Simple sign up process.

You may have seen my recent post encouraging you to attend re:build, a web design and development conference taking place in Indy on July 29th. Since the moment I first stumbled upon the conference website I’ve been impressed with the the event and eager to attend. As a 5 (or is it 6?) year veteran of SXSW Interactive, I’m pretty sure there’s more to get out of this single day event than two weeks in Austin (sans great barbecue and crazy geek parties).

After a few months of wondering who the masterminds were behind the event, I was fortunate enough to run into one of its cofounders, Tony Dewan. Tony has graciously accepted my request to pry into the thinking and process that went into the event, and publish the details here.

Give us the re:build story. What inspired you to start it?

Well, I’d been thinking about putting together some kind of conference-like event for awhile but hadn’t pulled the trigger. In late December of 2010 I met with my friend Justin Harter, who runs the local Refresh meetup, and he mentioned that he wanted to put on a conference too. I had just resolved to pull more triggers in 2011, and this was a my first opportunity. I pulled.

Who’s on the re:build team?

The conference is a collaboration between myself and Justin Harter. We’ve had invaluable input from lots of people along the way, too.

What audience is the conference geared toward?

I’d like to think there’s something there for most web professionals, though the content is very design/dev focused. I think new designers and product managers could gain a good understanding of what’s possible with some cutting edge practices.

You’ve got a remarkable line-up of speakers, how did you select them, and how did you go about recruiting?

Thanks! The process was pretty simple. From the beginning we wanted to make a conference that we would want to attend. So, the potential speaker list was all the people we had always wanted to see but hadn’t, or people we’d seen videos of that were really good. The first place I looked was my Google Reader feeds. I also read blog posts about other conferences to see who people liked the most. Lanyrd was useful source of information too.

The process to sign the speakers was simple too. We didn’t know anyone who we wanted to speak, so we really only had one option: cold-calling (or cold-emailing, I guess). That was harder in some cases than others. An example: I had to guess the email address for one of our speakers. Luckily I was right! We experimented with many approaches to those emails, from short and apologetic to confident and overloaded with information. Though shorter emails tended to work better, it certainly wasn’t a guarantee of a response.  In the end, the response rate was actually higher than I would have expected, though we had plenty of what you’d expect: Some people never responded, some took months to respond, others were already booked, etc.

Is there any one speaker you’re particularly excited to hear from?

I am excited about every single one of the talks! Our speakers have some great topics.  I do think we’re especially lucky to see Ethan’s talk (The Responsive Web Designer’s Workflow). The talk he’s giving has been getting incredible reviews recently, and his book on the recent topic is fantastic. I think Jeffrey Veen said something like “it represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build web sites for the decade to come.”

Can you compare re:build to SXSW Interactive, FoWA, An Event Apart, etc? Is it the Midwest version of some of those, or is there something else that makes it different?

Compared to SXSW or FOWA, re:build is tiny and much more focused. It’s quite a bit cheaper too! We share the single track schedule with AEA, but we’ve got a bit wider focus and a different feel. Plus, lunch is provided by our favorite local food trucks!

My biggest inspiration for re:build was Brooklyn Beta 2010. I didn’t attend, but people raved about the experience. It was a short, intimate event with fantastic speakers.

What do you think re:build means to Indy and the designers and developers that live/work here.

I’m not sure. I hope it’s a signal that we can do cool stuff here.

What do you hope the take aways are for attendees? How do you want re:build to impact them?

Mostly, I hope everybody has a good time. We’ve got a great opportunity to meet and learn from some smart and influential people, so let’s make the best of it!

What impact do you want re:build to have on the scene and the city? What about the region?

I’d love to see more stuff like this. If someone comes and decides I did a terrible job or that they could do better, I hope they do. The more events we have like these, the better.

What’s your take on the web design and dev scene in Indy?

Interesting question. I’m not as plugged in to the design community,  but we’ve got a vibrant dev scene in Indy. The list of meetups at indyhackers.org could keep you busy all month. The ruby meetup in particular is huge compared to similar cities. And of course Verge is doing great things to foster the startup scene.

There was a recent Indy Star article about young professionals moving back to (or staying in!) Indy because you can have a greater impact compared to other cities. I can definitely attest to that! If I were in Chicago or LA, re:build wouldn’t have had nearly as much excitement from the local and regional scene, and it probably wouldn’t have happened at all because the needs have already been met there.

Will re:build be a recurring/annual event? Any plans in the works for 2012 yet?

I’ve had a great time putting this together, so I’d love to do it again.  As long as it goes well, I don’t see any reason for it not to happen next year. We might even do 2 in 2012!

Can you give us the Tony Dewan / Supermatter story.

I grew up in Indy, and went to IUPUI for CS/New Media. I’ve worked for ad agencies/marketing firms since I was in school, but got bored with building brochure-ware sites. In early 2010 James Welsh and I started Supermatter to focus on building large custom web applications, and to give us a venue for our own side projects. James has since moved to California to be closer to our clients (and better weather) and we’ve brought on a third person.

Tony, thanks so much for being willing to share more about re:build. As I’ve said before, if you work on the web and live in the region, you don’t want to miss it.

If you design or develop for the web, and live even remotely close to Indy, attending re:build is not optional.

Check out this list of speakers:

• Ethan Marcotte
• Yehuda Katz
• Neven Mrgan
• Jan Cavan
• Faruk Ateş
• Leah Culver
• Brad Colbow

What more do you need to know? See you there!

Following up Lauren’s summer reading list, I’d like to suggest that Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design is the one book web designers and developers can’t afford to miss this summer.

Last November I wrote this little rave about responsive web design. The general idea is to use media queries in tandem with fluid layouts and flexible width images/media to create websites that respond in real-time to the size of a visitor’s screen.

It’s pretty cool, and good for your visitors too.

If you just can’t get enough, check this out: Ethan Marcotte is speaking in Indy at re:build. It’s going to be a sweet conference, and if you build or design websites attendance is NOT optional.

It’s amazing how satisfying tactile feedback can be… each press conveying a real sense of accomplishment

• Spotify (music—not available in the U.S. yet)
• Rdio (music)
• SlideRocket (presentation tool)
• Pandora (music)
• Netflix (movies)
• TinderBox (proposal tool)
• Readability (bookmarking and distraction free reading)
• Instapaper (bookmarking and read later — technically you don’t have to pay for this, but if you did, I would)
• Typekit (web fonts)
• Onlive (gaming)
• iTunes in the Cloud (music and ?)

Nussbaum’s claims that Design Thinking failed when CEOs started implementing it as an ‘efficiency-based’ process, and Tim Brown, of IDEO fame, argues that design consultancies utilized it as a ‘process trick.’

Expecting design to be an efficient and linear process is a set up for a let down.

As I said here, intuition–going with your gut—is an intrinsic part of design. It’s is a creative process, and it always brings with it guesswork, feelings, emotion, and a degree of subjectivity. Those aren’t bad things. They free you up to make decisions, experiment, mess up, try again, and get it right.

Maybe Design Thinking has produced subpar results. Even so, the movement has helped designers achieve new levels of credibility and authority—effectively moving beyond the roll of decorator they’re often expected to play.

As Nussbaum attempts to convince us that it’s time to move on—apparently to Creative Intelligence/CQ—I thoroughly agree with one thing: it’s time to jettison the unneeded, process-heavy framework that design has been shoehorned into and except it as the organic, messy activity it is.

If you’ve got any thoughts on the Design Thinking, or design processes writ large, I’d love to hear about them.

Slingshot SEO is a leading provider–that’s stating it modestly–of search engine optimization consulting and marketing services. They serve an impressive list of clients and do an incredible job of, as the new tagline says, creating Digital Relevance for Deserving Brands.

We’ve still got some Slingshot SEO stuff cooking, but in the meantime, here’s a quick run-through of the new identity and website.

Visual Identity

The updated logo is more of a re-imagining than a redesign. The old logo had been used as an avatar across a handful of social sites and had built up a certain amount of recognition and brand value around it. To avoid throwing the baby out with the bath water, the general shape and color were carried over, but introduced some subtle touches that inject new life and meaning.

The mark–typography included–veers towards the scientific but achieves a bit of balance with organic curves and the abstracted ‘S’ pulled from the company name. It plays particularly well in digital spaces, e.g. as an icon, favicon, or avatar.

Website

The new website was fun to put together because it gave us a chance to use some of the new messaging we developed during the brand refresh. The design of content as well as the text itself demonstrate a much more conversational approach to our audience.

Home
The home screen forgoes the use of superfluous imagery and visuals in favor of bold, straight-forward headlines. The clear hierarchy of text allows visitors to easily wade into deeper levels of detail, or follow one of the high-level messages to another section of the site.

One of our priorities was to avoid overwhelming visitors with content and to make it easy for them to select from a small set of relevant, clear choices.

The Big Picture
The core of the new site is the ‘What We Do’ section, which outlines in broad strokes the services Slingshot SEO provides, and what a customer can expect when working with them. Again, visuals were avoided in favor of clear, brief textual statements.

About
The secondary sections of the site introduce a little more visual variety and playfulness. Here our goal was to inject a little more of Slingshot SEO’s youthful and smart personality. We achieved this by adding colorful, loosely rendered conceptual illustrations, and by adding miscellaneous elements like the company’s mission and vision.

The Slingshot SEO Team
One of the highlights of the new site is the team page. We’ve made the case for team pages here, and the Slingshot SEO site does a fantastic job of showcasing their smart, youthful team by including images of every team member. It’s a terrific way for customers to get a real sense of who they’re working with… real people.