Over the past decade, an information revolution has been shaking the financial world. Just as numerous other industries are coping with how to communicate and operate in a digital environment, financial companies are grappling with how to engage a more proactive and educated client base.

Financial clients can access a range of data independently, making it possible to research even the most complex derivatives, technical trading strategies and emerging industries. The exchanges themselves are furthering this trend with big investments in online training as they try to broaden their own reach.

Read the full mmexecutive.com article here.

For many service professionals, their connection with cloud computing has been a way to transform internal business processes using tools such as salesforce.com and other cloud-based CRM systems. However, the cloud has far stronger potential to transform the end experience for customers and change the way products are designed, launched and serviced. For service professionals, this largely untapped potential of the cloud is powerful, though they need to work closely with product designers and marketers to ensure that products leveraging the cloud are designed for success.

Read the full article at www.destinationcrm.com.

Flash and the City was this past weekend, and I have to say, it’s great to have a Flash conference here in New York, you see so many different faces than at the usual conferences out on the West Coast. Thanks to Elad Elrom for organizing, and the event’s sponsors (including Roundarch!) for supporting the conference.

There were a lot of good speakers at the conference. Some of the highlights (other than Roundarch’s own Adam Flater and Jesse Freeman) included Seb Lee-Delisle, Joel Hooks, and Stacey Mulcahy. Peter Elst demoed the new features available in AIR 2.0 including the new HTML renderers that render HTML 5 in flash. Lee Brimelow gave a talk on the new MultiTouch support, and ran a demo in which he was able to detect up to 60 individual touch points.  Grant Skinner’s Quick as a Flash talk was also really informative and really useful for the large scale RIA’s we build here at Roundarch. I particularly appreciated that he followed up his Flash Player 9 benchmarking of uints, ints, and Numbers with benchmarking and Flash Player 10, and pleased to see that uints are behaving much more as expected.

Unfortunately, I had to choose between speakers at a few of the time slots. I missed Branden Hall’s demo of Hype, but I heard his talk was great, and the HYPE framework looks really promising. Branden has posted a demo of a HYPE project running on the Nexus One, and the performance is impressive, and I’d love to integrate it into an upcoming project.

One of the unique aspects of the Flash and the City conference was it’s ‘city track’, where rather than your normal presentations, conference attendees went to museums, went on city tours, or even went for dim sum, which were a lot of fun, and provided more networking opportunities than you’re average conference.

One of the highlights of the conference was the cruise and awards Saturday night. Even after living in NYC for the past 7 years, I hadn’t ever seen NYC from a boat, and it was beautiful. It was also another opportunity to meet other developers, some of which I’ve corresponded with for years online, but never actually met in person.

In all it was a fantastic conference, and I really look forward to next year.

Many organizations are looking to redesign their Web sites in 2010.  For a lot of these organizations, their sites have gone from supplementary to primary during the period since their last redesign.  Any redesign project, therefore, takes on more strategic importance than ever—with more visibility from the CEO on down. 

Read the full article at www.cmo.com.

Read the full Story here.

Working on my first iPad app has really forced me to think about design, usability, and user experience issues that creep up that are unlike any platform I have ever worked on. The iPad is not like a desktop app. Having only briefly worked on an iPhone app before, I think that it’s not all too dissimilar but there are even more issues to think about.

No it’s not a laptop! (in your best Arnold impersonation).
Because of the size, people might be inclined to think that this device is like a laptop or a netbook. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you are used to building rich desktop apps (like I am), you will be used to many conventions.

Come on puppy, Rollover
One convention is hover states or rollover states. The iPad being a touch device does not support the concept of hover or rollover states. You either touch a button or you don’t. You can not interact with a user interface (UI) control such as a button, a list, or textbox without activating or taking action on it.

I’m all thumbs.
Another convention of Web 2.0 app is to cram tons of functionality in the form of small buttons or icons. This doesn’t work all that well on a 10″ screen when your index finger is about half an inch in diameter. You just don’t have the accuracy that you get with a mouse pointer. Thus apps need to think about negative space and larger surface area for buttons and icons.

What’s Your Orientation?
For most people interacting with computers/laptops nowadays, it’s taken for granted that you have a widescreen monitor. Many web apps are still designed to fit 1024×768 resolution but more and more sites resize the content and layout dynamically to handle the extra real estate. Not much thought however is given to the orientation of the screen because it never changes. The situation is a bit different on the iPad since the screen size is a fixed 1024×768 which isn’t all that much nowadays. Well designed iPad apps commonly use a split view UI when presenting information in landscape mode and switch to a single detail view in portrait mode because of the smaller horizontal space. Which brings me to my next point.

No it’s not a giant iPhone.
Many people dismiss the iPad as a giant iPhone. While it certainly looks like a iPhone with a pituitary gland problem, it doesn’t have to act like one. The iPhone screen is cramped. 480×320 means you can really only show and thus focus on one task at a time. Most iPhone apps revolve around the concept of viewstacks. If you want to see a list, that’s a view. If you drill down into that list, you get to see the details of that list but you can no longer see the original list. For that you have to hit the back button. The simple reason is because there’s just not enough room. The iPad doesn’t have the same limitation. The extra space lets you display both the list items and the detail view at once.

Input Overload
Your webapp or RIA probably never had to worry about what happens when users click on multiple things simultaneously. A mouse is a single input device. You can only do one thing at a time with it be it opening a dialog, clicking on a listbox or pushing a button. A device like an iPad can handle multiple touch points at once. That also means your app could potentially get into a state you never anticipated. Take for instance this wonderful fish pond app Pocket Pond. Touching the water makes the surface ripple. Touching the water with 2 fingers makes the water ripple from two points. Now try it with 10 fingers, and really shake the water.

These are just some of the considerations when designing for the iPad which I’m sure will apply to other tablet devices.

For the past year, a team of 13 Roundarchers have worked to design, develop and launch StrataLogica™ which is a web-based learning application, built for our client NYSTROM Herff Jones Education Division, that delivers map and atlas content in an engaging 3D, interactive environment built on the Google Earth API.  As discussed in our recent blog post on the Google Code blog, we faced some interesting challenges during this project being one of the first enterprise scale applications to use the Google Earth Plug-in and its JavaScript API as its foundation.

Early on in the project, our team was able to solve the core challenges of being able to wrap Nystrom’s 2D map content on the 3D earth in a way that preserved the image quality of the their print products and developing a framework for managing editorial content required to be shown on the earth.  Here I will discuss the additional challenges we faced in creating a compelling and immersive educational experience while working within the framework required by the Google Earth API.

Our experience designers were faced with several challenges. Key among them were providing maximum space for the content, large targets for users of touch screen devices, and access to a set of tools to mark up the maps.  The graphics also needed to appeal to the diverse target market: K-12 students and their teachers.

The solution included opening a chromeless browser window and interface components that open over the map to access options and tools that close when not needed.

The user interface is written in JavaScript and the gap between user input and the earth is bridged by the Google Earth JavaScript API.  Developers were faced with the hurdles of being able to track and provide users control over the layers of Nystrom content, provide an interface to Google layers, and create tools the user could use to add content to the map that could be saved and restored.

Users can be licensed to use one or more map series. These include labeled and unlabeled base maps, additional thematic maps or related maps, views, hotspots, and place marks. We chose to dynamically generate a menu called the Map Chooser, the contents of which are supplied by a JavaScript object created by server-side Java code. The specific elements are based on the user’s access rights and available CMS content.  When the user selects a map series, the KMLs for the Superoverlays and other content are loaded into the plug-in using the Google Earth API. A reference to each layer loaded is retained so its visibility can be toggled or it can be unloaded.

At the bottom of the page is a tool bar that expands up when clicked to reveal a set of tool icons. One of these is ‘Settings’ which lists Google Layers that can be turned on or off. When the layer’s checkbox is changed, the event handler determines the state and layer to be changed and then passes that request to the Google Earth API. A JavaScript table of rules is used to preset the settings appropriately for the map being displayed.

The tool bar also has a selection of tools for marking the map, replicating and extending the experience with the traditional educational map materials. A special KML is loaded to hold user-created markings.  Users select a tool for the type of marks they want to make; for example, draw lines, place a map symbol, or add a place mark with a pop-up balloon. Mouse event handlers attached to plug-in components return the geo-location of mouse clicks to the JavaScript code where KML strings are composed and then loaded into the plug-in after running the KML string through the Google Earth API’s parseKML method.

The team has just launched a new version of StrataLogica which allows teachers and students to collaborate in real-time on assignments and group projects and create dynamic presentations which can be played back in a movie-like sequence.  Greg Knapowski and I are in San Francisco this week showing off the new release at the Google I/O Developers conference in the Sandbox with our clients from Nystrom.  Look for more blog posts when we return.

Roundarch’s Technical Architect Greg Knapowski and Sr. Front End Developer Lawrence O’Sullivan wrote a post for the Google code blog.  The post explains how the Google Earth API was used as a foundation for StrataLogica™ to make use of its sophisticated image rendering logic, satellite imagery and access to built-in tools and navigation controls.

StrataLogica will be featured at Google I/O May19-20 in San Francisco.

This week, I’ll be at Flash and the City (FATC) in downtown Manhattan, a conference where people are able to attend incredible sessions with industry experts—all while attending social events and exploring the Big Apple.

The conference will be held at the 3LD (3-Legged Dog) Art & Technology Center, a gallery for new media and experimental artwork. It’s here that I’ll be giving my talk entitled “Building RIAs with Style.”

Jeff Maling, President and Chief Experience Officer, and Geoffrey Cubitt, President and Chief Technology Officer, of Roundarch talk with Vidya Drego from Forrester for her Q&Agency blog series.

Welcome to Q&Agency! Each week, I get to talk to agencies small and large and get to hear (in their words) what differentiates them and the experiences they create. To help bring some of that information to you, I’m showcasing an ongoing series of interviews with small to mid-size interactive and design agencies. If you’d like to see your agency or an agency you work with here, let me know!

On May 5th, I talked with Jeff Maling the President and Chief Experience Officer and Geoffrey Cubitt the President and Chief Technology Officer of Roundarch. Edited excerpts from that conversation follow.

Forrester: Tell me a little bit about your agency?

Jeff: Roundarch was founded in 2000 by Deloitte and WPP. At that time, the idea was to bring together the technology and program management skills of Deloitte with the creative skills of WPP to tackle large web problems. Over the past year or more that has translated into large digital problems of many types including mobile, touch screen, etc. But for the most part, we’ve stayed true to the vision because we’re specialized in large-scale digital solutions for fortune 500 companies, the government, and large international organizations. We have about 220 full-time employees primarily in New York and Chicago, smaller offices in Denver and Boston, and a virtual office in DC (where we mostly work in secure locations). Like any good agency or consultancy, we also have a few nomads who refuse to move into one of our offices.

We create breakthrough experience design and build the technology associated with it. To do that, about 50% of our work is focused on strategy and design, and 50% is focused on technology. Our people divide out the same way. We check that math a few times a year, and it always breaks out like that and we strive to keep it at that balance. It’s our core belief that the interplay between design and technology is essential to digital.

Geoff: That’s something we’re religious about. On most engagements, we try to lead both sides of that, sometimes we work on one piece or the other, but we’re always involved in the interplay. It delivers better results. If it looks cool but doesn’t work, it doesn’t solve the business objective. If it’s a great technical solution but no one can use it, it’s not good for the business either. You need both of those things to work together.

Forrester: What is your elevator pitch?

Jeff: We design and develop digital solutions for the world’s largest organizations. That includes customer-facing web sites like we’ve created for our clients at Avis and HBO; complex B2B sites for global financial services firms focusing on wealth management, custodial, credit card services, trading apps, etc.; or an app that tracks assets for the Air Force. We also create mobile experiences for clients like, Avis, HBO and the band Wilco. We’ve made the transition to all things digital. We’re currently working on an executive dashboard surface experience for a client that will utilize a large touch screen.

Geoff: We’re also working with Tesla on their next-generation touch screen infotainment dashboard display that will be connected to the Internet. So we’re expanding beyond just the web to all digital tech interfaces but generally leveraging web or internet technologies.

Forrester: What are the three key things that differentiate you from your competitors?

Jeff: 1. We take a very strategic approach to problems. We have our own maturity model and strategy methodology that we use to create an entire multi-year strategy for clients. We don’t often work only on a campaign. 2. We have some of the deepest user experience capabilities in the field focused on complex applications. We deal with issues like taxonomies and metadata, using methods and principles like rigorous user testing and interaction design. 3. We work with strong enterprise-class technology. Most of our projects result in hardworking enterprise solutions where there’s a core interface that users and customers interact with that’s tied into complex back-end systems. In these instances things like security, scalability, and performance are all considerations when thinking about how to deliver best experience and value for the business. 4. If I can add a fourth…we’re built around complex relationship management – probably from the heritage from Deloitte and WPP. We work with really complex organizations like financial services companies and the Air Force. We are really good at managing in those environments. They can be frustrating, slow moving, and require a lot of consensus building, but we’re really able to get things done in large, complex, bureaucratic enterprises. We actually deliver on solutions where they’re normally challenged to deliver successful outcomes. They want someone not just to design cool stuff but to also have the knowledge to get it done in their environment.

Forrester: Why is your agency well suited to deliver a great customer experience for your clients (and their customers)?

Jeff: There are two reasons really. The first: We do mainly our own customer research – this is not dissimilar to the Forrester approach. We do our own interviews, inquiries, create personas, design scenarios, the whole bit. We follow all the typical market trends, but we do a lot of deep user research.

Geoff: It’s a very user-centered design process; one that really begins with a lot of user study.

Jeff: The second is that we’re passionate about concept design. We like to open the aperture really wide on a problem and think about a long-term solution that could solve the client’s problems for many years. Then we make it bulletproof by testing it, getting feedback, trying to break it, bringing in technology teams to make sure it’s buildable, scalable, etc. Finally we flesh it out in detail and scope it appropriately – usually in a multi-phased roadmap. Given budget and timing, we decide what the first release will look like and then how subsequent releases will allow us to achieve our vision while continually learning from what we release.

Geoff: We’re big on having an associate creative director, a customer experience lead, and a technical person at the table during concept design. The multidisciplinary approach leads to the best solution. It’s not just technically constrained design; it’s sometimes even technology-led because they know the capabilities of the technology best. Both technical and experience design teams push and constrain each other. That’s important. Our people are deep specialists but we collaborate often and create an appreciation for each others’ skills.

Forrester: What’s it like to work at Roundarch?

Jeff: We have a lot of people who’ve been here for a long time and a lot of boomerang employees that have returned to Roundarch. I think that speaks to the great culture we have here.

Geoff: That culture takes constant gardening. We’re always trying to empower people. We’ve got smart people that are passionate and work well together. They work for big name clients, do cool projects, and are fun to work with. We spend time nurturing all elements of that by getting feedback from employees, understanding what keeps them stimulated and trying to keep that as the core part of our culture.

Jeff: We give out Core Value Awards in four areas that represent our culture: respect, client satisfaction, focus, and results. Respect is a huge one for us. We don’t want to be an elitist firm that values only one type of skill set. We’re also very focused on clients. We don’t have office heads or hierarchy outside of client relationships to help keep the client at the center of our structure. Of course we want to remain focused on solving specific problems for clients. And finally, results – this is not just external results for clients but also results internally: are projects profitable, successful, etc. We’ve been giving the awards for a long time, and we find it helps set a tone for how people act in the organization because they know what we value.

See the entire post on Vidya Drego’s blog.