Articles -- Planet Argon Blog

Article | UX

14 Things I Learned at WebVisions - Day 1

23 May 2012

I visited sunny Portland, Oregon (I’ve lived here for 7 years but let’s pretend, shall we) to attend this year’s WebVisions conference. Did you know that Portland has over 400 days of sunshine per year? Don’t attempt to do the math- it’s complicated. To extrapolate from my WebVisions experience, I’ve determined that Portlandites predominantly use MacBooks, are all men, wear ill-fitting trousers, and smell kinda funny. Besides that, I’ve compiled a list of 14 THINGS I LEARNED AT WEBVISIONS, the first half of which are presented here in no particular order. Enjoy!

Convention Center hall

Article | Work

Creating Contiki's Mobile Site, Part 2: Making the Mobile Prototype

17 May 2012

In developing the Contiki mobile website, we thought it would be a good idea to provide them with a working prototype that they could actually click through on their mobile devices. Luckily, jQuery mobile was there to help make this a painless and useful process.

Contiki mobile prototype screens.

Article | Development

Tizen Developer Conference

11 May 2012

Tizen is a new mobile software platform that is part of the Linux Foundation and runs HTML5 based apps. They held a developer conference down in San Francisco. I flew down to find out more information about this new operating system.

Tizen Developer Conference Stage

Article | Work

Creating Contiki's Mobile Site, Part 1: Design Strategy

9 May 2012

Over 10% of Contiki’s traffic is coming from mobile devices, with over 58% being iOS, but the mobile bounce rate of 8.25% is more than the site average.

Why? Well…

Article | Studio

First Ever Planet Argon Foosball Tournament

4 May 2012

Today was our first Planet Argon Foosball Tournament. The competition was fierce.

Article | Work

Making a Virtual Meeting Spot

30 Apr 2012

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to meet the people you’re about to tour across a country with before you leave?

Article | UX

The Mobile Viewport, Short and Sweet

17 Apr 2012

Peter-Paul Koch, of quirksmode fame, recently gave an enlightening presentation about the mobile viewport which, quite fortunately for all of us, is available in video and slide form. “A pixel is not a pixel”, clocking in at just over an hour, is quite thorough and enjoyably dense, so watch it. But, if you don’t have an hour to spare, this is the gist of it:

Article | Work

Relating to the user - starting from the top

17 Apr 2012

When approached by one of Northwest’s icon, McMenamins, to help with their user experience, we knew we were in for something big. Something challenging, but rewarding. Learn how we took the first step towards better UXD by redesigning their navigation.

Article | Project Management

Creating and Implementing D^5: Dialogue

13 Apr 2012

D^5 was built on Agile concepts. It’s centered around individuals and interactions: It’s centered around working software: It’s centered around customer collaboration: And it’s centered around responding (not reacting) to change.

Article | Strategy

Transition to Mobile

12 Apr 2012

With all of the talk about mobile best practices, some are neglecting to factor in the reality of existing sites and existing budgets. Just because you don’t have the time or money to completely revamp your site for a mobile audience doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider a mobile strategy. A separate mobile-version of your website might be the perfect first step.