AIAIO: Our Blog

Last week Practical Ecommerce featured Ai’s Schwinn site as one of the top ten most innovative e-commerce websites.

As the article says, “Schwinn’s site uses its home page to promote content marketing, which is the idea of offering shoppers more than just products, but also entertaining and engaging content.”

Ai congratulates its partner, Schwinn, for this recognition. The full article is available here on Practical Ecommerce’s site.

Today marked our first day in the brand new Ai office. We’re still holding down 149 Fifth Avenue, but now we are making the best websites around in our awesome new digs spanning the entire eighth floor.

We doubled our floor space, tripled up the number of meeting rooms and paired our trusty foosball table with the svelte felt of our new pool table.

Everyone is loving the open floor plan and extra desk space. You can check out more pictures of the new Ai HQ below:

Collaboration:

Scrum Dens:

Pool Table:

East Side:

Dining Area:

One of these computers designs websites:

Lamb Chops:

Our very own President and Co-Founder Alex Schmelkin spoke this week at the Internet Retailer Web Design & Usability Conference in Orlando. Joined by David Kersting, Director of eCommerce Technology for Cycling Sports Group (CSG), he led a session entitled “For Designers: How to Get Your IT Department to Support Your User Experience Initiatives.”

Anyone who has agency experience understands how designers and IT professionals tend to differ in their way of thinking, communicating and their overall approach to a project (not to mention their opinion of who was the best James Bond). In their presentation Alex and David spoke on how to bridge those differences to get your design and technology teams working in unison.

Using examples from projects CSG and Ai have worked on together, including SchwinnBikes.com and Sugoi.com, the pair showed specific instances of how our designers and developers worked hand-in-hand to create a customer-focused online shopping experience.

You can view a PDF of the entire presentation here.

As a junior designer the thought of “creativity” and “organization” even being in the same sentence seems counterintuitive. But I learned early on that you cannot be an unorganized designer at Ai.

If you don’t organize your work, your designs will suffer. You can’t afford to lose things or forget tasks or client requests. Every missing document or lost bug assignment is time lost. This sometimes can be a difficult task when you have four project managers approaching you at the same time.

Prioritize 

One thing I’ve learned at Ai is how to prioritize. There is never a task too small, but some are more urgent then others. At the beginning of the day I take a moment to gather myself, prioritize my tasks and let all the project managers know where my priorities are and when they should expect their tasks to be completed. It’s always better to let a PM know they might not get their design change till the afternoon than to leave them hanging. (Their jobs are hard enough.)

Make a List

Once my projects are prioritized, I make a to-do list. Now don’t get me wrong; I love the internet and all it has to offer (just look at where I work) but I love the simple joy of Post-It notes. Call me old-fashioned, but there is nothing better than a good old pen and paper for making a to-do list (and the satisfaction of crossing things off).

It doesn’t matter what you use for your list as long as it works for you. Besides Post-Its, I personally find the Action Pads really helpful. If you find it easier to organize your to-do list on the computer, there are lots of programs. A favorite of the Ai design crew is Teux Deux, a free minimalist web-based to-do list.

Name Consistently

Now my workload is assessed, my day is prioritized, and my handy Post-Its are in sight – a to-do list is useless if it falls beneath the pile of papers on your desk. The same applies for your digital organization.

When working on tasks, you should have a consistent way of naming files and folders. I use concise but descriptive names that can easily be found via search. Always use a numbering system so you can track which file is the most recent. This has been especially essential recently in our work with retailers whose products are changing constantly with the season.

Save, Save, Save!

Last (but certainly not least) the Golden Rule: “Save your files. Constantly.” Make ‘Command+S’ your friend. You can have the most organized file system and the best naming method, but none of that will matter when your system crashes and you’ve forgotten to save your last hour (or day) of work. I’m having a flashback of losing hundreds of resized images in a single computer crash.

Don’t let my nonchalance fool you. As a junior designer, I’ve had to learn some of these lessons the hard way. Organization is difficult work, but the more you work at it the easier it gets.

Tracking your tasks, prioritizing, keeping your workspace organized and constantly saving progress will give you peace of mind and save you precious time, allowing you to be more creative. While some new designers may think of the two as mutually exclusive, organization and creativity go hand-in-hand.

We’re more than halfway through the 2012 Paleo Challenge, and we’ve got a three-way tie on the leaderboard. At the midway mark Nick, Tim and I are in a neck and neck with Seth and Jess Dale trailing right behind waiting for a nice crisp soda or a neglected slice of cake to throw us off course.

With three weeks (but fewer pounds) under our belts, we’ve all gotten more comfortable in the kitchen by sharing more than a dozen Paleo recipes. My library of Paleo resources has grown. I’ve learned about ingredients that I never knew existed and have saved a heck of a lot of money.

While some of us were skeptical about certain dishes before we tasted them, everyone has been in love with the food. It has been refreshing to have a new homemade dish each day. There have actually been no repeated meals brought in for the entire challenge so far.

Across the board, everyone’s favorite part of the challenge has been cooking for each other. We’re even talking about continuing that tradition after the challenge. As Jess Dale put it, “It’s amazing, cost-effective and healthy to boot.” Well, to be completely honest, cooking has been everyone but Tim’s favorite part.

Tim’s favorite thing about the challenge?  Bacon.

We’ve each struggled with a few cheats here and there. Some things have been harder to give up than others – Seth is shouting “Diet Coke!” over my shoulder right now. And each of us have had to resist the delectable treats that always seem to make their way around the office.

Taking pictures of every meal and having a group of friends who we see every day has been a great way to keep us accountable. It’s brought us closer as a group and we’re all looking forward to seeing who comes out on top at the end.

While we look forward to the celebratory cheat meal late next week, the Paleo lifestyle is something that a few of us are going to maintain, with the 80/20 rule in full effect, beyond the challenge.  Eating clean feels good, so why stop?