A few things are needed it seems when mentoring:

• Try to look through the eyes of people new to the world I am used to
• Provide guidance instead of management, in a project situation
• Stop talking so much and listen carefully to the students
• Think about the best way to be useful in the short time I have with them

First session in the school

Very much a finding-our-feet session, this is the second time we have met and the first time we all get to talk about the project collectively with a bit more time.

The students have a sizable task on their hands; they have to plan, design, build and present an iPhone app within a 6 month window. They need to create the app for a local business community they have very little knowledge of (Hamilton House, Bristol) and they need to fit it around their daily school studies.

In my shoes I find the task exciting if fairly daunting. In their shoes I would feel clueless and a bit scared. Luckily (unless they hide it well) they seem to be calm, collective and ready. Between them they have technical, creative and leadership skills, which is a good sign.

The competition is in its first year and I think it’s aiming to achieve something big and brave. Giving students an opportunity like this will I think have a big effect on them. Providing they embrace it I think they will learn some really valuable skills for the work place and may end up with an app on the App Store that will give them a shiny diamond on their CV before they even turn 18 years old.

My fellow mentor (thankfully) has many years of mentoring experience. This gives me the confidence to dive straight in and after an initial presentation of visual ideas from the students, we start talking about Hamilton House, the app itself and how we all might work together.

We are joined by two teachers, who are very nice, have a lot of energy and seem really interested in the project. There is a good flow of conversation and I feel I am able to draw on my knowledge and skills to give the students some guidance.

Our next meeting will be at a masterclass, I will attend a session with 2 students that teaches the basics of AppFurnace (the software they will use to build the app) and the other group will attend a marketing masterclass.

I’ll be blogging about my experiences over the next 6 months, follow me at @olliefrancis for links to the blog articles and regular updates.

I’d agree with everything they advise – I use LinkedIn regularly and it’s been really useful for making connections, winning work, helping/advising others and receiving advice myself, amongst other things!

Kicking off we interviewed Bristol’s very own Simon Mosse, a web designer we happen to share our office with. Simon is not only a front-end designer and builder but also an illustrator and photographer. Slightly annoyingly, he’s great at all of them! Simon works on his own projects and also freelances for many of Bristol’s digital agencies.

Enjoy!

Tell us about you in 100 words or less

I’m currently loving freelancing as a graphic web-designer and squeeze in photography and illustration whenever I get the chance.  I’ve been working in the web industry for the last 7 or so years and in that time have just about figured out what I like to do, what I should do and what I need to be doing more of.  I’m still working on what to do next, but for now I’m developing my skills and looking forward to being a dad.

When did you start getting involved with web design and illustration, and what principles and skills helped you get to where you are now?

I’ve always been interested in drawing (as every kid is) and when I finished a very conceptual Art Degree, I decided that a more literal approach to art was my thing, so I’ve been doodling and taking photos ever since.

You are involved in the design and front-end development side of the web; which side interests you most?

With a gun against my head, I would probably say the design side of web development interests me most, but they overlap so heavily that I think if you aim for one it’s at the expense of the other. There are so many decisions involved in web design – quite often digging right down into the bowels of what is in effect a web application – that simply making a nice look and styling the calls-to-action and navigation isn’t quite enough.

When designing a website or web application what are the principles you follow? How much are you thinking about the user experience?

My process is usually quite fluid, so how I work will often depend on the client and how much trust they have in me before I even get to the design itself.  If I have complete trust and the ideal budget, then I would start from a user experience point of view (i.e. what the point of the site is and how the user is likely to interpret my design) and work backwards from there, with the personality of the client and their brand dictating how I think about the layout and structure of the site.  I believe in grids, complimentary colours, high impact calls-to-actions, carefully chosen typography etc etc. But often I will deliberately break a rule to keep designs interesting.

You have completed projects in WordPress and Shopify, how do these products impact your work and what do you think of them as content management systems?

I try to use CMSs in general as a tool, but I find they quite often dictate how I work as both WordPress and Shopify (although obviously completely different entities) have a few ‘ways of doing things’, that if you fight you end up making more work for yourself.  Honestly, I haven’t met a CMS that I wanted to spend any time with (somebody please pay me to build one), but Shopify’s Liquid theming/templating language makes the relationship a lot easier and strips out a lot of the ‘what if and why’ questions that come along with something like WordPress.

Vague enough answer? Well developed theming/templating languages or processes are the way forward for front-end designers/developers in my opinion as they force you to conform to their limitations, which is quite often where I feel most creative, as good design is often about solving problems. Being able to do anything is over-rated.

Do you have time to actively engage with the wider web community? Are there particular blogs/twitter accounts you follow?

I’m a big fan of Bristol’s very own underscore.  Yes there are a lot of opinions and individuals to contend with, but I find it quite often reveals something I didn’t even think about in the subtext of the geekyness, and always leaves me pondering.  I also keep an eye on the BUG (Bristol Usability Group) talks which I’ve been to a few of and of course the Christmas Freelancers meal which is well worth the money.

Without giving too much away, what are your plans for the next 12 months?

Becoming a Dad is probably my biggest challenge for the next 12 months, but hopefully I’ll get my fingers in a few more pies, contribute some themes to Shopify and photos to iStockphoto and see if I can’t get some more illustration under my belt. We shall see.

What are your favourite projects you’ve worked on?

I love all my clients equally and they’re all my favourites…but if I had to pick out a few I’ve recently worked on – being asked to draw a weapon-laden mouse, working on the latest MyDrinkaware interface and helping with the Cow Who Made Strawberry Milkshakes iPhone app were highlights.

Who inspires you the most in life and how does this effect your work?

I find this question really hard to answer as I try and see the merits in everyone in some way, meaning that I don’t allow people to stand out too much in my estimations at the expense of the others. Having said that, I would say probably one of my old bosses who quit his highly paid accounting job to head up a charity and moved to Romania with his family to do it would be one inspiring person in my life. And also a couple I know who live on very little, yet have a quality of life that I would love to emulate. In both cases I think these people inspire me to enjoy and make the most of the projects I do and to really appreciate where I am professionally right now.

What conferences are you attending over the next 12 months?

Next year’s WDC for certain and potentially some local meetups as and when they pop up

Thank you to Simon for doing the interview! Check out Simon’s work at http://www.themosse.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @themosse.

We’re proud to have been involved with such a great charity and it’s been a pleasure to develop a site for them that helps them raise their profile, communicate about their activities and achievements and engage their volunteers, clients and potential funding organisations.

Case study coming soon, where you can hear DHI’s feedback. But for now you can see the site here: http://www.dhi-online.org.uk/

I’ve signed up for something that is in equal measure frightening and exciting: I’ve volunteered to be a mentor for Bristol Young Student of the Year Awards.

BYSOTYA (as it’s affectionately known) is a new competition for post-16 students in the Bristol area. Taking place over the next six months, its aims are to develop young people’s employability skills; a current political hot potato and a very noble cause indeed. To make it exciting and engaging, the competition involves 15 teams from various schools creating iPhone apps for local organisations.

I was introduced to the competition several months ago and immediately loved the concept. Bristol is fast becoming the UK’s creative capital, with hundreds of new media and tech companies forming and thriving. The city has a very open and knowledgeable community, with the potential to inspire and educate young people, so the competition has come along at the right time.

I’ve been lucky enough to have some great mentors over the years, when I was starting out as a designer and more recently, in establishing Deckchair. These people passed on their experiences and knowledge, which were incredibly useful when facing the millions of challenges thrown at you in the workplace.

I went along to the introductory event held in the Bristol University on the 12^th of October. The organisers have put together a great programme and have attracted some of the city’s most capable business people as mentors. Having now found out more about the competition and met the team I will be working with (a very bright and capable group of people), I’m really excited to be involved.

Some great news is that the client my team will be working with is Hamilton House, a local community based on Stokes Croft that’s very close to my heart.

The software that the students will use to create the apps looks great, check out AppFurnace, created by local company Calvium.

I’ll be blogging about my experiences over the next 6 months, follow me at @olliefrancis for links to the blog articles and regular updates.

You’ll be sharing a floor and building with 3 other digital agencies (including us) and we’re looking to build up a community! We’d love to hear from people within the creative/tech/digital/media industry (desks are for professionals only)  - we’re really excited about filling the building with fellow designers, techies and so on – for both social and work purposes.

Click to view the full size images..

We’ve started doing ‘Tech Wednesdays’ (where we each bring something tech that we’ve discovered, to the table over lunch) and are talking about doing drinks on Fridays – so there’s lots going on.

What’s included in the desk space:

• wifi
• desks & chairs (or bring your own chair!)
• shared kitchen & chill-out area
• shared meeting space
• WC
• tea & coffee [fair usage policy ]

Rent is £200/month, with a 3-6 month commitment preferred.

10% discount for those committing to 3months and over.

Viewing is essential – we’re sure you’ll love it!

Call Ollie or Becky 0117 9299 150

Quite simply we love ExpressionEngine (EE) so much so that most of our clients’ websites are created and managed by EE. Why? Down to it’s fantastic plus points as a content management system.

Our clients love it’s user interface. It’s design, layout and structure is clean, simple, logical and easy to learn. Once you understand how to edit one type of content, you can easily grasp how to edit the rest of the site.

EE makes it simple to manage complex sites and complex content- it’s perfect for sites with multiple types of content and layers. One of it’s great features is it’s ability to give clients full control over what they add and edit, but refrain from boggling them with tons of styling capabilities where they could easily jeopardise the design and layout.

However, for the more technically minded, you can have full stylistic control if you wish. EE allows you to control the level of editing ability on a per member basis – so certain people can have limited control, whereas others can have the full kitchen sink of styling controls. There’s a variety of fantastic plugins we use, from Playa – which helps you easily manage relationships between content, to Structure which enables you to easily generate pages and navigation through a simple interface. Matrix is another, which gives you freedom over managing content, breaking free from simple static fields. Here’s an example of using Matrix to manage a slideshow on The Queen’s Foundation website:

EE is great for member management- whether you simply want different types of permissions and editors, or whether you want to have a members area- allowing users to create accounts to access private content, interact with your site and more.

Because it’s a commercial product, it’s very robust, secure and up-to-date and has full support. But it’s entirely affordable. They have 1000s of users with licences, including some very big entities such as Nike – so have a responsibility to ensure it’s always stable.

Another great feature of EE is it’s scalability. As your site grows older, the system is still capable- you don’t have to update it every few months. And when you do, it’s relatively straightforward. For larger entities, EE enables you to manage multiple sites- keeping all of their content in one place. You can even share and relate content, structure and styles between your different sites or applications.

If we had built a content management system, this would have been it!

“Our organisation had really outgrown its previous website and we looked poor when compared to our competitors. We had also received a number of complaints from our tenants that the website didn’t offer them much.

We chose to work with Deckchair as their website looked professional and had some nice case studies which included websites for voluntary sector organisations. 

The end result of the Deckchair-designed website was better than we had hoped for. We had asked a number of our tenants to look around other housing association websites and tell us the bits they liked about them so we could combine all the attributes into ours.  We feel we now have a website that is up there with the best in our sector and our tenants have responded very positively with an increase in usage of online repairs reporting and online bill payment.

Our customers’ satisfaction is the single most important benefit from working with Deckchair – we’ve received lots of positive comments and evidence of higher online interaction. This saves a lot of our tenants time having to come into the office – especially when they are working and are within easy reach of the internet.

Deckchair’s staff are very knowledgable about their specialism but are also skilled in dealing with customers who lack technical expertise – as we did. They were at all times efficient, supportive and professional. We feel they took time to help us formulate and focus the broad ideas we had for our website, helping us to reach a point where we felt confident with the decisions we had reached.

We also found Deckchair’s CMS training very valuable – it us took a while but we’re now confident in updating the website and uploading images etc.

We were very apprehensive about this project to begin with as there was a lot of pressure on us to come up with the goods. These fears subsided quickly after our first meeting with Deckchair as they seemed to get exactly what it was that we wanted. We’re really very satisfied with Deckchair and would recommend them to anyone.”

Visit the BCHF website

“Our old site was out of date and communicated incorrect messages about us. We needed to turn an internally-geared site into one that was far more user-friendly.

We’d seen Deckchair’s work on another theological college website, and liked the feel and smoothness of it. When meeting Becky and Ollie, we liked their ideas and ethos – there was a sense of common purpose. They helped us into areas we hadn’t used before – Google analytics, tag clouds and more. Most importantly, they helped us simplify the site and showed us that using visual images and focusing on key messages goes a long way.

We’re very happy with the site and the service we’ve received; applications from outsiders have increased this year, independent applications have tripled, our enquires have increased and being able to edit the site ourselves has saved us time.

We’d go with Deckchair if we were doing it all over again – they had a friendly, can-do and fun attitude and were always patient with us. We felt it was significant that we chose to work with Deckchair, rather than with two other potential, familiar partners. We’re glad we did.” Dave Allen, Director of Studies at The Queen’s Foundation.

Visit The Queen’s Foundation website.

With our sister company Appademic, we’re working closely with local schools to build online tools that help children learn better and succeed.

So far, we’ve created an online reflection tool with Gordano School in Portishead that helps students develop their core skills and prepare for course options, university and the workplace.

What problem was the school facing?

Gordano School found that whilst they had a lot of high-achieving students, when the students approached universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, their applications weren’t always successful because they couldn’t elaborate on their reasons for choosing a particular subject, university or direction. Essentially they weren’t reflective enough about the choices and decisions they’d made.

As adults more often than not this is a skill we’re capable of and use often in our work and personal lives to help us make decisions, but children need to learn this skill.

How did we help them?

By reflecting on what they’re learning students have a better understanding and become more articulate about what they have learnt. This has many advantages including:

• Clarity on options, higher education and work placement
• Students are more likely to be successful in university/work placement interviews
• Increased attendance of extended learning opportunities
• Self-assessment is at the heart of the Reflect tool, leading to students taking increasing responsibility for their own progress

With our online reflection tool (Reflect), students login outside of lesson time to create reflections about their work, other school activities and experiences they have had – essentially writing journals about what they did and learnt. For example, reflecting on a creative writing competition, the student would be prompted with questions matching the curriculum that help them realise and develop particular skills achieved from their experience.

The tool integrates social and peer-assessment elements as students can share reflections with other students, receive feedback and ratings – all of which create healthy competition, and increase engagement and output.

Gordano School have been using the tool for 12 months now and within the group of students using the Reflect tool there was a 50% increase in attendance of extended learning activities over the last year. This created such a buzz with other local schools that we decided to turn the software into a SaaS based product and market it to other schools.

Clevedon School have signed up for a licence of the tool for 2 years, and we’re really excited about talking to other schools and helping their students.