We are really excited to announce the launch of a new interactive portal for Coastal Carolina University’s Athletic Department to help promote football ticket sales. They shared with us this press release they sent out earlier this week about the site.

You can check out the site at www.CoastalTix.com.

CoastalTix.com Interactive Fan Site is Live

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets at www.CoastalTix.com.

The easiest and best way to purchase 2010 Coastal Carolina football tickets - as well as getting all of your relevant game-day information for the upcoming season - is now live at www.CoastalTix.com.

The site, a supplement to the main athletics site: www.GoCCUSports.com, will explain in detail and give pertinent information for fans to purchase season, and later, single-game football tickets. Also, www.CoastalTix.com will give fans all the information they will need to enjoy the full game-day atmosphere.

Also, the site will give details to a new feature for Coastal Carolina football, the Family Fun Zone. The designated area in the north endzone, next to the newly-built Adkins Field House, allows one adult and three youth or two adults and two youth season tickets for just $99.

Other advantages to the new interactive site include the ability to share the site on social networks and reach the ever-growing, technology-savvy customer.

CoastalTix.com is a collaborative effort between Chanticleer athletics and Centresource Interactive Agency in Nashville with Coastal Carolina being the first university to partner with Centresource in this medium.

“Our partnership with Centresource Interactive gives us the opportunity to not only be dynamic with our ticket sales, but also gives us a hub from which all of our online ticketing can branch out,” said Coastal Carolina athletics director Hunter Yurachek. “Seeing and feeling the game-day experience is an important part of why customers make their decisions. With the expansion of the stadium and the new Family Fun Zone season ticket, we felt it was important to find something that reaches younger families and computer-friendly audiences. This use of technology is the best medium to accomplish our goals.”

The idea of “progressive enhancement” is to get a site looking the way to want in all of the current browsers, then add some enhancements that most of those browsers can understand. It’s kind of like a bonus for the users of the more progressive browsers. Since they are savvy enough to know what browsers are on top, they can reap the rewards of the polish that CSS3 allows for a website.

Border Radius

Supported Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE9

Border-radius is probably the most useful of the CSS3 attributes. It allows you to add rounded corners to any box item. Using this new property saves a lot of time and divs from the old way of achieving rounded corners with background images. The great thing about border-radius is that it works in all of the major browsers (I’m not including Opera in this category) except IE8 and below. So, most likely, the majority of your site visitors will see your snazzy rounded corners.

You can also target specific corners.

Notice that we use the border-radius attribute (which will eventually be the standard, and which Chrome already understands), but we also include the proprietary attributes -moz-border-radius for Firefox and -webkit-border-radius for Safari.

Text Shadow

Supported Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari

By far my favorite method for adding that last little bit of polish to your site. It’s amazing how much better a heading or body text looks with a subtle text-shadow added to it. I think it adds a nice level of depth to the text.

It’s as simple as adding the following line to your CSS:

text-shadow:1px 1px #ddd;

RGBA

Supported Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE9

Another great example of a progressive enhancement that makes a site look great, but one that a user of an old browser won’t miss. RGBA just allows to you define a color with an opacity value (between 0.0 and 1.0) for any place you would normally use a regular RGB color (or hex color). It’s main uses are for making background or text colors semi-transparent.

Closing Thoughts

Using CSS3 to add subtle enhancements to your site is a great way to reward your forward-thinking users who are smart enough to run the latest web browsers.

This week, three members of our design team headed to 2010 HOW Design Conference in Denver, Colorado. Jason Jones, Jason O’Brien and Jared Scheel all turned in video reports to share their experience and some of the things that they’ve learned. Take a look!

HOW Video Blog - Jared Scheel

HOW Video Blog - Jason O’Brien

HOW Video Blog - Jason Jones

Sure, some will argue that there are a slew of cons to this approach: loading time, tricky navigation, having too much content in one small space, etc. When you create something so different from the standard design-style that users are comfortable with, will they get confused? What about IE6? (Shudder.) As with anything new and innovative, there will always be concerns or question marks. Our Rich Media Designer and Interactive Guru, Jared Scheel, will be following up this post later from a more practical approach. He’ll explore what one-page sites do to your SEO, how to get around loading issues, and other things in a technical language that will more than likely go over my head a bit. I’m just here to discuss the pretty… cut me a little slack.

Speaking of pretty, we can’t dive too deep into this subject without bragging a little about one of our own projects. When it came time to design an online identity for beer distributor BountyBev, our designer Jason O’Brien (fondly referred to around here as Shamus) took the chance to do something fresh. Their one-page site that we launched in March is generating plenty of online buzz and to further dote on Jason, we’ve opened with it as our first example of great one-page designs listed below. The site perfectly highlights some of the pros to working in this format: innovative design, centralized content, and an enjoyable user experience.

Our latest team member, and new Creative Lead Jason Jones, was quick to chime in with some of his personal experience with one page sites. He’s worked with tons of musicians and artists in refining and shaping their online identities, and he’s found that one page sites are often the way to go. (We’ve included several of his projects in our examples below because — all bias aside — they were awesome enough to make the cut.) Jason reasons that musicians most often need their sites to serve as landing pages — a way for their fans to connect with them and find them in other places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iTunes. Combine a great design with the artist’s blog, Twitter feed, music player and social media links and you have everything they need… in one place.

Here are some great examples of one-page sites we’re seeing around the web. Stay tuned for some blog goodness from Jared on how practical (or unpractical!) this approach is.

Most people would not be very excited to receive an e-mail that says “Payment Declined.” Did I forget to pay a bill? Is my credit card over the limit? Did my rent check get double posted? What on earth is going on? For me, this was actually welcome news. It means that I had found the only way to get past a critical flaw in a Web application.

In December of 2007, the (Nashville) Davidson County Elections Commission was burglarized. Thieves made off with two laptops that included thousands of people’s personal information, including birth dates, addresses and social security numbers. To make up for this security lapse, the city of Nashville paid for everyone to have a subscription to Debix, an identity theft service that protects users by altering their credit files to require a phone verification before allowing credit inquiries.

I have been a subscriber for well over a year, paying the annual fee and having my cell phone called every time I needed to have another company access my credit file. When renewing the subscription earlier this year, I accidentally selected “charge every month” rather than a single annual payment. Being one of those consumers that would rather not keep my credit card information on file, I wanted to change it back to an annual payment schedule.

The problem is, their Web-based tool does not let you change your billing schedule, only update the credit card on file. “Fine,” I thought, “I will just cancel the account and re-subscribe on the annual plan.” But Debix did not provide an option to do that — if you want to cancel your account, you have to call customer service at the 800 number.

Perhaps I am unreasonable in having the expectation that if a company provides an online portal for their customers, you should be able to do a certain number of things on it: upgrade or change your service, cancel your service and change billing information. Then again, I work for an interactive agency that specializes in building those kinds of platforms, so maybe my opinion is skewed.

Ignoring all of that, I called the listed 800 number (they are only available during regular business hours) and could not get through to a representative, instead being directed to a voice mail. I left a message. This pattern continued for a few days until I finally got a return phone call while I was in a meeting. No direct line, though — I would have to start the process over.

Frustrated by this point, I decided if I ever did get to speak with someone, I would just cancel my service. Again, there still was not a self-service way to do this, and their support e-mails all directed me back to the over-saturated phone lines. That was at the end of March. Then it occurred to me — I can cancel my service without having to wait on hold for eternity. Just change the expiration date on the credit card on file. They prevented me from deleting the card, but they would let me update it as long as it was a valid credit card. I set the expiration for 4/1/2010 (how appropriate), and just waited until the new month rolled around.

Last Thursday I received the news I had been waiting for — my account had been canceled because my payment method was no longer valid. So, what options are you offering your customers in terms of managing their account online? How long do you think they will stay on hold before taking a good look at your competitors?

Note: This is not a slam against Debix’s product, which I think is great. I just hope they get a chance to take a good hard look at their customer portal.

This past Friday, Yazoo Brewing Company held their grand opening for their new Taproom in Downtown Nashville. To coincide with the opening, we also launched their new Web site. The site gives the visitor an overview of the brewery and invites them to discover the many lines of beer that Yazoo has to offer. The visitor can also buy merchandise as well as find out the latest news from their blog and Twitter accounts.

Check out their site at www.yazoobrew.com.

We recently had the pleasure of working with HookUP Media to help produce the Web site for “March for California’s Future,” an online companion to an event going on right now in the Golden State. Organizers say that the 250 mile march, sponsored by the California Federation of Teachers and its diverse allies from labor, the faith community, and other civic supporters, is designed to draw attention to the underlying causes of the state’s woes as well as gather signatures for a majority budget initiative.

Visitors are invited to take action by signing the online petition, donating to the cause, and even joining the marchers as they travel from city to city across the state. A core team of marchers staff the roaming “Blogmobile,” and a Google Latitude map is updated throughout the day on a mobile phone.

Check out the site at http://www.fight4cafuture.com/.

Devastation. Tragedy. Hopeless. Those were the words used to describe the recent earthquakes that struck the island of Haiti on January 12 near Port-au-Prince. To a nation that that was already struggling with poverty and trying to meet the basic needs of its people, the earthquake magnified the crisis for the world to see. Like many companies in Nashville, CentreSource matched its employees’ donations to give $500 to the UNICEF organization to help with relief efforts.

Late last year, we were approached by Trinity/HOPE, a feeding program aimed at providing meals for school children and teachers so that they may be agents of positive change in their communities and help lift up a nation. Their existing Web site did not effectively tell of the mission trips, year-round campaigns and coordinated efforts of partnering organizations to sponsor schools across the island. The new site builds upon Trinity/HOPE’s reputation as a spirit-lead organization that makes a difference in the lives of Haiti’s children, one bowl of rice and beans at a time.

Visit their site at trinityhope.org.

Slide from Whoa! Creating Engaging User Experiences

What is Experience Design?

According to The New Everyday: Views on Ambient Intelligence, experience design (XP) is the practice of “designing products, processes, services, events, and environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions, with less emphasis placed on increasing and improving functionality of the design.”

The New Everyday: View on Ambient Intelligence

What Are the Components of Experience Design?

Experience design is made up of six key components:

• Psychology
• Market Research
• Brand Management
• Information Design
• Interaction Design
• Visual Design

As you can see, these components span a wide array of skills. Don’t make the mistake of assuming experience design is the sole responsibility of your designer, usability expert, strategist, dog trainer, mother-in-law, or significant other to handle. Experience design is an inclusive process that involves every person on your team. It is a collaborative process that needs buy-in from every person that touches your project. With that in mind, let’s break down these components.

Psychology

Seek to understand your audience. Who are they? How do they think? What influencing factors shape their decision-making? What types of things evoke emotions from them? Why do people do the things they do? These are all questions you should ask yourself when determining the direction of your experience design.

Market Research

Know your playing field. What are your competitors’ strengths? What are their weaknesses? What have they tried in the past? Identifying these things can save you time identifying potential pitfalls. More importantly, this market research will also help you shape a unique experience that sets you apart from the rest of the herd.

Brand Management

You must have a good grasp of your brand. In this age social media, it may seem like you are not in control, but don’t make the mistake of leaving your brand to chance. You have the ability to control your brand as well as the ability to shape the perception of that brand. I promise you, this is not going to be easy. There are countless books and blog posts written about this very subject, and I definitely do not have all the answers.

Customer service is one aspect of brand management that is easy to overlook when focusing on function instead of experience. Remember the last time you got off the phone with a company and were so mad you wanted to hit something? How do you feel about that company now? Manage your brand well, or you may end up on consumerist.com’s “Worst Company in America” tournament bracket.

Information Design

What information do you want to disseminate, and how will you organize it? Construct your information in a clear, easy to understand hierarchy. Don’t dilute your information with unnecessary fluff. Find the core of your message, and stick to it.

Interaction Design

How will users interact with your experience? This is your opportunity to be creative! I am extremely impressed with the influx of augmented reality on mobile devices. For example, if you have a compatible device, check out the Amazon Mobile application.

Amazon Remembers

I also consider usability design a part of interaction design. Without good usability design, your users cannot interact with your product or service and will ultimately leave with a bad impression of your brand.

Visual Design

What is the visible face of your product or service? What will it look like? Don’t assume that a good logo is all you need. Keeping a consistent, well designed visual look to your logo, print collateral, website, packaging, etc. will help consolidate and unite your brand’s image. Visual design can help shape the perception of your product or service. Take a look at the visual design of any investment firm or financial management institution. Generally speaking, the design will convey stability and order, because they want you to feel at ease when entrusting them with your money.

What’s The Point?

You may be asking yourself, “why do I have to be concerned with all of this? My product stands on it’s own.” This may be true — your product or service may be so revolutionary that it rises to the top of our collective consciousness purely on the power of it’s own awesomeness. For the rest if us, we are going to have to invest a lot of hard work, time, and energy in making it to the top. Case in point: there are 187 million websites in the world. That means, if your site is an “one in a million” experience, there’s 187 other sites that are just as unforgettable. If you hope to rise to the top and elicit tangible customer interaction, you must constantly focus on the design of your product or service’s experience.