LBi London

London Guathon DDD Event

Posted by Bahareh Boostani August 18th, 2010

Last Friday I had the good fortune (as well as good friends who did the booking for me) to attend London Guathon DDD event. This was a free community event hosted by Microsoft to reveal their latest technology roadmaps and strategies. Within the geek community these event tickets are  as prized as the golden ones within Wonka  Bars with all 240 places being filled in less than 20min.

Despite being late due to the Runaway tube train  and the Northern line being closed I managed to get to the Odeon in Covent Garden just on time (OK, I was 15 minutes late, but the session started 15 minutes after I arrived).

ScottGu in London Guathon DDD

Scott Guthrie opened up the event with an introduction to the sessions of the day. These sessions spanned four different aspects of Microsoft’s new technologies:

1. VS 2010 and ASP.NET 4
2. ASP.NET MVC 2
3. Windows Phone 7 Development
4. Web Development Futures: ASP.NET MVC 3, SQL CE and IIS Express

What was cool?

First session had many tips and tricks from Scott ‘Gu’ including some which are guaranteed to make the geeks squeal with delight.
The second session was the real meat in the sandwich for those who care about content and the way it is presented. For the past 10 years, ASP.Net was a great platform in terms of development productivity and for building enterprise applications. But its weakness was in the poor quality front-end code it generated; something that LBi interface developers and SEO consultants constantly complained about. However, Microsoft’s new ASP.NET MVC will be a game changer in this part (there are useful packages in IIS 7 to help on the SEO side.)

And yes, Windows Phone 7 will be released around October in UK. Microsoft intends to send a strong statement of intent to the smart phones market. Mike Ormond’s slides on the day can be found here.

And finally, In the last session on Web futures Scott Gu announced new technologies including IIS Express, MVC3, code-first Entity Framework, Razor (the new view engine for ASP.NET) that is going to be released soon by Microsoft. Then he discussed the common themes of these new developments which are to keep the existing technologies working better and cleaner and to enable extensibility and customization.

Revolutionary… No, but Microsoft are moving in the right direction whilst correcting some of the legacy issues of .Net. Who knows one day we may be able to have more than one form again…

Microsoft continue to pick up many of the good ideas that have been implemented in other languages for a little while and we’re starting to see some real productivity improvements as a consequence. However Microsoft remains a big beast and how these developments relate to the Sharepoints and Silverlights of the world remains to be seen. Refinement rather than reinvention is definitely order of the day for Microsoft and for that they should be commended.

Tags: ASP.NET, IIS, Microsoft, mobile, mvc, Technology, UK, VS2010, Web design, WP7

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LBi wins HIVE award for BT Business site redesign

Posted by Imogen Thacker April 29th, 2010

LBi has won a globally-distinguished Hive Award for Best Information Architecture for the redesign of BT’s Business website, http://business.bt.com. Judged by an internationally-renowned panel of experts, LBi was recognised for the organisation and optimisation of the site’s content.

With LBi input, BT Business’ information architecture has seen a 25% increase in broadband sales, a 75% increase in calls and line sales, and a 105% increase in domain and hosting sales. Traffic from natural search has also increased by 77%.

BT Business offers the UK’s 4.8 million-plus* SMEs more than 130 different business IT and communications products online. Ranging from start-ups to firms with 1,000 employees and some significantly larger, the market is diverse.

LBi redesigned the company’s site in 2009, moving from an online catalogue to an ecommerce vehicle. Using a detailed customer segmentation model, LBi insight was to design the site for an individual user rather than a business. The result has been a fresh site targeted at people rather than job titles.

Sarah Morris, director of User Experience at LBi says “This is a great win for us, in a category that is actually quite hard an area to differentiate. Information architecture is usually driven by the content and business requirements, so it’s great that, by utilising insights and by thinking about the taxonomy differently, we’ve been recognised for the creativity whilst at the same time meeting customers’ needs”.

Anil Pillai, Managing Director of LBi UK says “It is refreshing to win an award for User Experience – this is an area that contributes hugely to every project we do and is often not recognised as much as it should be.  User Experience is the unsung hero of the industry.  This is a renowned award and we are proud to have received it”.
* 4.8m private enterprises in the UK per the beginning of 2008 http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/sme/smestats2008-ukspr.pdf

Tags: BT, client, LBi, LBi London, LBi UK, UK, Web design

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Dutch Railways chooses LBi Lost Boys again

Posted by Laura JB July 3rd, 2009

After a number of rigorous selection rounds, Dutch Railways (NS) whittled down 20 web design agencies in it’s European tendering procedure to three. The remaining agencies, including LBi Lost Boys, were asked to tackle NS’s long-term online strategy and develop a solution for a case study.

For LBi Lost Boys the challenge was even greater since they have been fulfilling this role for the NS since 2005.

“As you can imagine, such a procedure was not easy for us as the current partner. On the other hand, of course, this was the perfect opportunity to rethink how we look at the challenges confronting the NS. In doing so, we focused on our advantages: our active involvement with the NS brand and our passion for the online medium. A lot will be going on at the NS in regard to their online activities in coming years, and we think it’s fantastic that we can be part of this.” – Emmelien Kneppers, strategist at LBi

Of the three competitors, LBi Lost Boys emerged as the winner.

“We already knew that we were working with a top-notch agency. It was nice to see that this could also be demonstrated on the basis of objective criteria. We expect Lost Boys, with all their expertise and enthusiasm, to be supporting us in our online activities for years to come.” – Ingrid Thomassen, head of multichannel management at NS

Last year LBi Lost Boys’ redesign of NS.nl was launched. After a number of rigorous selection rounds, Dutch Railways (NS) whittled down 20 web design agencies in it’s European tendering procedure to three. The remaining agencies, including LBi Lost Boys, were asked to tackle the NS’ long-term online strategy and develop a solution for a case study. For LBi Lost Boys the challenge was even greater since they have been fulfilling this role for the NS since 2005.

Tags: Group, Lost Boys NL, Web design, wins

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Update: D&AD New Blood takes on a life of its own…

Posted by Laura JB May 21st, 2009

Looks like people are having fun with our New Blood campaign. The posters are popping up all over the place. Those of you who walk past Wieden + Kennedy in the mornings may have noticed one proudly displayed centre/front in their window. Apparently Dare, Mother, Poke and a whole bunch of others also have them up. Below are just a few examples of how our campaign has (umpromtedly – new word) taken a life of its own:

Tags: award-winning, campaign, charity, comms, event, Web design

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