Archive for the 'Design' Category

New features in CommunityOfSweden.com

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
February 25, 2008 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design and News. 0 Comments

I want to mention three updates on CommunityOfSweden.com.
You’ll already be aware of these updates if you are an active member.

Search

In january, two months after the launch, we finally added Search. You can now search amongst stories, members, forum posts and photos. The search automatically searches through all these types by default but you can also limit your search to just photos, for example, if you know that’s what you are interested in.
Discuss Search here in the forum.

screenshot search

Share

We recently added the feature “Share” which makes it possible for you to send the web adress(URL) of the current page you’re on to one or more email addresses to your friends.
The share button can be found on member pages, photos, stories and forum posts.
Discuss Share here in the forum.

screenshot share

Newsletter

We’re now conducting an online survey on CommunityOfSweden.com. It asks 10 questions about how the perfect community newsletter should be. If you want a CommunityOfSweden.com newsletter and you want to make yourself heard then here is your chance. Go to any My Page on CommunityOfSweden.com and the survey should start.
Discuss the Newsletter here in the forum.

Thanks!
See you around in CommunityOfSweden.com
–
Tommy Sollén, Community Manager

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VisitSweden redesigns it’s website visitsweden.com

Published by
Margareta Björnberg
on by
Margareta Björnberg
February 25, 2008 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, Redesign visitsweden.com 2008 and Tech. 0 Comments

2 months after its beta launch, Community of Sweden, surpassed 1000 members. Next step is how we let visitors from the official swedish website – visitsweden.com – get travel tips from our community members. And how to we trigger potential visitors to Sweden to share their travel tips on the Community.

That is one big issue in the development of visitsweden.com. Another important issue is how we take our Google Maps application one step further and let visitors make online bookings by navigating the map.
A third issue is how do we implement the new site based on Content Management System Epi Server 5.0, a .NET platform.

Let me also introduce myself: I, Margareta Björnberg, work as senior webmaster and project manager of the development and re-launch of visitsweden.com. You’ll soon hear more.

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“Top 100 highlights in Sweden” now on Google My Maps

Published by
Margareta Björnberg
on by
Margareta Björnberg
December 7, 2007 in Design, News, PR, Tech and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Do you like Google Maps. We do.
Since last May we use Google Maps on visitsweden.com to guide our visitors to Swedens greatest attractions.
On December 3, we launced a Mapplet in Google My Maps for these attractions. You need a Google account to view the Mapplet named “Top 100 highlights in Sweden. The Mapplet leads traffic back to our website. We hope of course that this Mapplet will attract many new visitors to Sweden.

Click here to check it out!

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The name is official: “Community of Sweden”

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
October 12, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News and PR. 0 Comments

It’s not easy naming something. Whatever it is that you’re naming has to live with this name for a very long time. It’s taken a while to come up with a name but we’ve finally got it and we’re very happy with it.
Let me tell you the story.

Selection process

We started to write all kinds of names on a whiteboard in Basecamp. Any suggestion was ok. Even a bad name can lead to a new good idea.
After we had a good long list and no more suggestions seemed forthcoming I started the selection process.
I first threw away some that I knew would never make it.
I then had a list of about 20 names. How to proceed?

Letting you guys vote

We wanted to publish this list here on the development blog to let our readers vote on which names they liked. This would be the ultimate way to pick a name for the community and we loved the idea!
As we were about to do it though, we changed our minds. What if somebody likes a name so much that they steal it? Register the domain for themselves. We would have to register all the domains on the list just in case. This whole idea suddenly seemed risky and ineffective.

Internal voting

So instead I emailed every single person in the company and let them pick three favourites. Everybody chipped in and I quickly got all the votes needed.
The winner: mysweden.com
Great name! We loved it! It makes you think of communities(myspace, hello?), user generated content, a personal touch, everything we wanted really. We even started to use it as a working name for the community.
Unfortunately it turned out that this domain was already taken and the owners were not willing to sell it.
We offered millions and still they refused! Ok, perhaps not millions…

So, back to the list.
It’s somewhere around here that “CommunityOfSweden.com” started to sound really good.

  • It is completely self explanatory. Not everybody has the queens english you know so an easy name is important.
  • It’s 100% search engine optimized. We like that. No, we love that.
  • It has a strong name with some extra familiarity to brands like “Tiger of Sweden” and others, I’m sure.
  • And let’s not forget our amazing embassy in Washington: “House of Sweden”.

I tested the name on everybody in the marketing and communications department and after sleeping on it everybody agreed on the name.

Phew… it’s been said that Swedes are slow to make decisions but when we do make them they are well anchored in the organization. I think this whole process proves it. :)

Go ahead and visit http://communityofsweden.com
It’s almost time for beta testing ;)

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Give Feedback on our Design

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
August 17, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News and web 2.0. 3 Comments

I’m happy to be able to show you a big glimpse of what the community will look like.

Below you can see the whole process.
And please, write a comment and say what you think :)

designprocess_1
Above: The wireframe that was the foundation for the design work.

designprocess_2

Above: The first design proposal by Oakwood based on the wireframe.

designprocess_3

Above: The final design proposal by Oakwood after VisitSweden’s feedback.

A few words on what you’re looking at above.
We liked the first proposal by Oakwood very much but we also felt that the community should be less power design and instead warmer, soft and more playful. Oakwood then came up with new proposals which finally resulted in the last design seen above.

I’m not going into details about the functionality seen in the designs but I can promise you that the Explore Sweden map will be something very special ;)

Notice something missing?
Yep… there’s no name for the community yet!

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Oakwood Creative and NetRelations of Scandinavia

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
August 16, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, Press Release and Tech. 0 Comments

After a tough and stressful July of inviting tenders for the online community design, we’ve finally selected who we want to work with.
Unfortunately, because of the cramped time table, we didn’t have time to show you all the designs and vote on them. I hope you will like the end result anyway.

Design created by Oakwood Creative

As I’m writing this they are working hard at creating a beautiful and user friendly design. The first prototype has now gone through a couple of iterations and we’re close on reaching the final design template to proceed.

Oakwood Creative is a small web design agency located in Gamla Stan / Old City, Stockholm.

Design implemented by Netrelations of Scandinavia

I’ve chosen the perhaps unusual approach of letting another company implement the design. I’ve continued our “dream team” approach to this project and NetRelations have a very good reputation especially when it comes to implementing web sites according to standards, usability and accessability.

NetRelations of Scandinavia is a consulting agency specialized in accessability and web standards located in Gothenburg.

In the next post I hope to show you how far we’ve come with the design! :)

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The design proposals are in!

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
August 1, 2007 in Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News and Planning. 0 Comments

We’ve now received a good selection of design proposals for the online community. I’ve started the process of going through them, evaluating the designs and the costs etc. It’s all very interesting and inspiring!

Stay tuned for more updates!

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Who will design our online community?

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
July 9, 2007 in About, Business, CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, PR and web 2.0. 1 Comment

Last week we invited tenders for the design of our online community. A couple of web design companies now have until the 25:th of July to submit their offers.

The invitation by email included a descriptive document, general design guidelines, company information and a few selected wireframes. We’ve asked for design prototypes on two of the wireframes, first page and member profile page, and a rough time and cost estimate.

We will choose a few of the best design prototypes that arrive and publish them here for your viewing and voting. You will have the chance to make yourself heard and say which design you prefer the most!

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Week of the Wireframes

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
July 6, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, Meetings, Tech and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Last week was the week of the wireframes, literally.
Me and Hans from Trive worked hard on getting the community wireframes as finished as possible before he would leave for his summer vacation. It was essential for the project to make the best of the time we had so there were a couple of late working nights and many long meetings last week.

All is well that ends well they say and it’s true also in this case. We were almost done with the wireframes when the friday came. We got to celebrate with some gourmet food and drink (read: pizza and sweet cider…).
I’m very happy with the work we did last week. Hans did a great job!

Since then I’ve done the finishing touches and the wireframes are now finished - as finished as a working document can ever be, that is. I’ve done two presentations with the wireframes in house, both very successful. It’s great to see and hear how others now can visualize what I’ve had in my head for so long.

I will explain more about wireframes and how we’ve used them in a future post soon. For now I’ll leave you with this photo taken last monday during a brainstorming session that laid the groundwork for the wireframe.

Tommy Sollén and Hans Leijström

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Google + Sweden

Published by
Tommy Sollén
on by
Tommy Sollén
June 12, 2007 in CommunityOfSweden.com, Design, News, PR, Planning and web 2.0. 1 Comment

The popular blog about Google Maps - googlemapsmania.blogspot.com has written a post about our new map service.

“They have now implemented many points-of-interest, in an easy clickable way to use. This is how all Tourist Agencies should use their website to allow visitors to quickly see, what all can be done in a country. “

Wonderful!
Read the entire post here!

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post we will be implementing Google Maps in the online community as well. But perhaps not in the way you think… ;)

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