You know that moment when you go to a website and can’t figure out how to navigate it, and then all of a sudden that business is dead to you?

Well, that’s a dramatized version of what happens when you encounter bad user experience (UX). Your attitude about the whole product or business in its entirety is shifted by a friction-filled, almost antagonizing website. No one wants that.

In order to avoid that worst case scenario, you need a plan in place to ensure a consistent, seamless, user experience across all of your platforms and products. This plan, or UX Strategy, is the conceptual roadmap for how and why your products and website are going to keep people coming back for more.

To create a UX strategy that is rock solid, you’re going to marry a throuple. It’s not as saucy as you might think, but it’s what our Boulder interactive design and development team does for each website we work on. This ‘throuple’ is the intersection of data, people on your team, and functionality success measurements. This sets the conceptual foundation for all your products, websites, and platforms that will motivate and unite different teams and projects. It’s your map.

Good UX Strategy defines all aspects of user experience before the design phase of your project. In the long run this will help you keep up with user behavior patterns and stay in touch with your customers.

Ultimately, having a great UX Strategy is going to help you have a successful website that people enjoy using. It will also provide you with a foundation to fall back on when you get stuck and a direction to aspire towards when you are in a groove. Who doesn’t want that?

If you don’t know where to start when coming up with a UX Strategy or want a refreshed plan, we’re the design firm for you. We work with clients from all around the country, but take note, we’re a Boulder creative agency through and through.

This is a meta blog post- we’re talking about the importance of maintaining a company blog as part of building your brand. You’re currently reading the proof that we practice what we preach.

Blogs serve multiple important functions in terms of brand building and growing your online presence. They are certainly a worthwhile investment in creating an organic audience and maximizing your SEO rankings.

(more…)

“Just Do It” 

“I’m lovin’ it.” 

“We bring good things to life.”

You hear these phrases and you just know to whom they belong before we even have to tell you. In case you didn’t, “Just Do It” is Nike’s tagline, “I’m lovin’ it” was coined by McDonald’s and “We bring good things to life.” is GE’s famous tagline. So why can we remember them in a split second?

(more…)

Picture this: you’re walking down the cereal aisle in a Target and you’re watching boxes of cereal fly by like you’re spinning the wheel on Wheel of Fortune. Suddenly, your eye stops wandering and it lands on a box that stands out against the rest. How did they do this? How can one creative packaging design stand out in a very competitive market? Well, we’ll give you a few pointers to help you through the design process.

(more…)

A decade ago, the biggest slap to the face to designers came in the form of the 5 dollar logo from Fiverr or 99Designs. Fiverr and 99Designs are online market places that offer various creative services online for very little money with quick turn arounds. Sounds like a good idea, right?

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

(more…)

We know we talk a lot about creative web design and how it’s part of the special recipe for attracting the right customer to a business. We’ve also gone into detail about UX and UI; but what we haven’t covered are a few psychology hacks for attracting and converting leads into customers. There’s a certain science to the art of design.

(more…)

We talk a lot about the importance of creative web design, and that’s because the Internet is such a key component to everyday living. The Internet of Things (IOT) refers to devices (“things”) with a unique login per user that are connected, accessed, configured and manipulated from other sources without human interaction- think Nest, ATMs, AppleHome, lightbulbs you can switch on from your phone, etc.

IoT isn’t going anywhere any time soon, and that’s really exciting.

But what does that have to do with web design?

(more…)

It’s the dawn of the roaring 20s again. And like the first time around, the 20s are stepping it up. This century’s 20s has user friendliness at the forefront of all graphic and digital design. A little bit different than 100 years ago. So, as we get deeper into the second month of the new decade, we thought it would be a good idea to share a few graphic and digital design trends that we think should be left in the 10s.  

(more…)

2019 was an experimental year for Oblique. The company traveled the world working remotely out of various co-working spaces (12 workspaces on 5 continents, to be exact). While fully immersed in the remote work lifestyle, they met many freelancers across the globe. That is not to say that digital nomadism is synonymous with freelancing. But, while traveling they noticed that freelance talent pools are growing quickly the world over and providing a flexible and viable business model for those who want a less traditional structure.   

(more…)

Apparently, in 2018 the average American spent about 4 hours online a day, at least according to Nielsen. So that’s at least 4 hours a day per person where you have the chance to woo your customers online. The quickest and most succinct way of doing so is via your creative website design which helps communicate your company branding. We’ve already highlighted ways to improve style, functionality and experience.

So next, we’d like to debunk 5 myths about website design:

(more…)