Bullseye Creative Blog » Travis K

How To Add Multiple Profiles in Bump

Travis K — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:39:45 +0000

I’m trying to remember the year…it must have been about 2000 and I got my hands on a Casio Cassiopeia. I thought the feature that allowed you to beam your contact info or virtual business card to other PDAs was one of the coolest. While it was a cool feature in never really became mainstream.

Fast forward to 2011, smart phones and hand held computing devices have definitely matured. One of the apps I’m most impresses with is bump. This technology takes the “beam my contact info” to a whole new level. Its now possible to beam or bump as I will now refer to it all types of different content between devices.

Within bump I was struggling with how to setup two different contacts for myself, I wanted one for business info and one for personnel info. I checked the bump web site, tuned to google and still couldn’t find the answer so I emailed bump. When I download a free app I don’t have an expectation of getting good customer service, matter of fact I don’t expect the free app comes with any customer service. To my (pleasant) surprise bump replied to my email in less than 12 hours. After providing bump with the platform I was using they quickly emailed me back the instructions to accomplish what I was looking to do. Here are the steps that Sadie from Bump Technologies, Inc. sent me:

How to create multiple profiles in bump (iOS)

Start by filling out your contact card to include all of your information. Work and personal alike. Select save profile as something like “all info” or something you’ll recognize later.
Once you have finished that open up the ‘Contacts’ tab. You should see all of your information laid out. Then all you need to do is tap on all of your work information so that there is a check mark next to each line, and your personal information will be dimmed.
Scroll down and hit “save as a profile..” and type in a name to indicate that profile will be used strictly for professional networking.
Then do the same but for your personal information, make sure each line has a check next to it and each of your professional info is dimmed. Hit “save as a profile..” and name it.

These directions were easy to follow and accomplished what I was looking to do. Bump also offered to walk me through the process over the phone if I was still having issues.

Bump is an innovative and useful product with excellent customer service!

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Bullseye Creative and Showtime’s Weeds

Travis K — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 18:27:25 +0000

No this post does not have anything to do with Bullseye Creative implementing pre-employment drug testing. It does however have to do with some of our design work making it into the hit show Weeds (season 6, episode 2). This episode features the Botwin’s deciding its time to invent new identities, in doing so they find themselves in the bedroom of the moody teenage fake ID peddler “The Chinaman”. While in the Chinaman’s bedroom there’s a poster on his wall from the Emerald City Comicon with the logo and other designs by Bullseye Creative.

Overall we’ve been proud of the work we did for the Emerald City Comicon, it’s creative, within an industry we’re passionate about and the work helped make the 2010 show be the highest attended in the history of the event. Seeing the poster in the background of a Weeds episode is just icing on the cake.

Below are some additional samples of work Bullseye Creative designed and produced for the Emerald City Comicon:

Emerald City Comicon Logo

Emerald City Comicon Pass

Inall the work Bullseye Creative executed for this event included brand development, campaign creative, poster design, event program design, signage, Internet banner ads, print ads, bus ads, as well as TV and radio creative. Currently Bullseye is getting busy on the 2011 Emerald City Comicon design work, we’ve got a few new ideas up our selves…stay tuned.

Portfolio; MRJ Constructors

Travis K — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:37:44 +0000

MRJ Constructors had outgrown its original web site, the technology and design were outdated. The core objective of MRJ Constructors’ new web site was to demonstrate their capabilities for large commercial construction projects. Secondary objectives included streamlining updates to the web site through a content management system and featuring photography throughout the site.

Bullseye Creative designed a new web site for MRJ Constructors that featured full screen background images of large commercial construction projects. Without reading a word of the text, the web site imagery defines the capabilities. The content management system needed to be developed with special features such as photo resizing and cropping to effectively handle the portfolio photo galleries. Organization of projects and project types was also an important feature of the content management system and future web site growth. In over a year now, MRJ Constructors has been able to make all the required web site updates through the content management system.

MRJ Constructors' Homepage

MRJ Constructors' Project Portfolio

MRJ Constructors' Photo Gallery

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Interactive Web Site; Insight Rocks

Travis K — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:12:41 +0000

To encourage students of the on-line educational program Insight Schools to check in with the platform regularly, Bullseye Creative worked with partner, Team Soapbox, to develop and deliver a frequency participation program. The campaign awarded students for logging into their schooling system on a daily basis. Bullseye designed and developed a custom “Build a Band” Flash game where students would be able to interact with a progressively expanding collection of musicians, instruments, backgrounds, special effects, and more. In the end, an accumulating point total also rewarded the students with fun gifts and prizes. The “Insight Rocks” campaign was a smashing success with the students as the participation was high and the post-campaign feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

Bullseye Creative developed a mini version of the overall game to be used as a demo. Elements of the game have been changed to make a quick demo possible, visit http://buildabandgame.bullseyeclient.net for a sample of the game interaction.

Screenshot From the Build a Band Game

Interactive online games continue to grow, Facebook has effectively leveraged this phenomenon. In Aug of 2009 Facebook had over 11 million daily users of Farmville (Source mashable.com). Last week Myspace announced they think (hope) gaming can save its platform.

Online interactive games can have objectives that range from advertising (advergaming info), pay-to-play models or even education. One thing’s for sure, consumers spend a lot of time interacting with online games, that could be time spent interacting with your company’s brand.

Bullseye Creative and Showtime’s Weeds

Seattle Laundry Service

Travis K — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:51:56 +0000

With a quick run through the posts here on our blog its obvious we cover a wide…WIDE range of topics. I think that’s actually one of the things I like most about blogs, the opportunity for flexibility that is sometimes missing in traditional web sites. This blog post is really going to go outside the lines & cover the review of a Seattle laundry service.

The back-story, for the first time in my 35+ years I have an apartment without a washer or dryer in the unit. Its true…I have to walk outside, down two short flights of stairs to an on site coin operated machine. All the other pro’s for the apartment made up for this one con. As it turns out doing laundry has been a bigger thorn in my side than I expected. In the past I had tried taking my laundry to a dry cleaner to be done by the pound. It was kind of a hassle to drop-off/pickup & was way too expensive (close to $90).

Back in December I ran across a review on Yelp for a laundry service called Laundry Shark. The reviews were pretty consistent that the service was topnotch, reasonably priced & very fast. The only negative I came across was the confusing online ordering interface.

This week I figured enough was enough & Mt. Laundry needed to be tackled. First thing I did was spend some quality time on the web site trying to figure out the ordering protocol. Once I thought I had it figured out I emailed the info address got a quick reply (on a Sunday) that it sounded like I was correct with my order.

You have control over every step of your clothes getting cleaned, water temp, detergent, fabric softener, bleach & even drying temperature. You also indicate the pickup and drop-off windows of time you want. I placed the order on Monday, scheduled pickup for Tuesday morning & drop-off on Tuesday evening.

Overall the cost for 6 large loads was $20. Normally the same about of laundry would require $12-$15 in quarters and a few hours of up and down the stairs as well as folding (not to mention the cost of detergent). Now on one hand I want it to be known that its a great value but on the other I don’t want their rates to go up…

Pickup and delivery was flawless, I added a note in my order that I would prefer they use the back door for convenience. Just as scheduled a gentlemen in a suit, tie & while gloves (think butler not surgeon with the gloves) showed up to pickup the dirty & deliver the clean clothes. I even tried to tip the delivery person and he wouldn’t accept it.

Other than a random load here or there I won’t tackle a pile of laundry as long as the Laundry Shark is around.

Next blog post topic from Travis K. LED Screen Quality & Calibration

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Madmen Fix

Travis K — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:13:01 +0000

I love AMC’s series Madmen. It goes back to a golden yet seedy time in the history of advertising. Overall it may be accurate to say it goes back to a golden yet seedy time in American culture. Having worked in Advertising & at a creative firm for a number of years relating to the show is fun however I get funny looks when I light up in my office or hit the scotch at 10 am. The only thing I dislike about the show is how short the season is. It seems like its over far too quickly.

Thanks to NETFLIX I got a great Madmen fix by watching Lover Come Back (1961). It starred Rock Hudson, Doris Day & Tony Randal. The movie included all the great elements of Madmen as well as a ton of the seedy ones…

Top ten highlights (or low lights) of working in the advertising/creative business during the 1960’s as witnessed on Madmen and Lover Come Back:

1. Desk drawers could be counted on having a change of clothes

2. It was years before the impact of alcohol on the liver was fully understood

3. Strippers with Confederate flag bikinis were legitimate business tools

4. Print advertising worked

5. With Lucky Strike as a client you didn’t ever have to pay for cigarettes

6. Heart attacks got you more than a week off work

7. Typewriters made such a soothing sound

8. All creative was story-boarded

9. There didn’t seem to be a casual Friday

10. You had to actually answer the phone to know who’s calling (well your Secretary had to)

If you need a Madmen fix be sure to check out Lover Come Back…

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iPhone Dragon Dictation Review

Travis K — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:14:09 +0000

Disclaimer: I received this app free of charge. However everyone can do the same, the app currently retails for free. (Possibly only for a limited time)

When I downloaded the Dragon dictation app I didn’t have very high expectations but the price was right…FREE. At best I was hoping for about a 75% accuracy and I figured I’d play around with it a bit then delete it. The user interface is clean and simple, the app doesn’t try to do too much.

With my first try I spoke 12 words and it got 11 out of 12 correct. The word that was dictated wrong was easy to correct with a drop down menu or opening the keyboard. My next test was to include some, well how should I put this…adult language. Dragon handled it like a champ and got 100% accuracy while included one “*” in each word. These tests were done in my (somewhat quiet) office, I figured the real test was while driving home. I was impressed that in a noisier environment the dictation was surprisingly accurate missing only 1 out of 10 words.

The limit in length is 30 seconds but for a txt message or email sent from a phone I think that’s plenty.

Once the dictation is complete you’re given the option to open email, txt message or send to clipboard.

An app that I figured would quickly get deleted is going to actually moving closer to my home screen if not actually on the home screen.

Screen Shots:

Dragon Dictation Screen Shot

Link to yahoo article on the updated privacy statement.

Dragon/Nuance web site.

iPhone Task Management App Review

Travis K — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 17:10:49 +0000

Disclaimer: I’m a pretty big fan of Apple and the iPhone. That being said I was letdown when the iPhone launched without a way to sync tasks to & from iCal. When third-party apps were added to the iPhone OS there were some options available to fill this void however they were lacking in the notification department. Finally the introduction of “push” technology addressed the lacking notification issue.

For the past few months I was (happily) using Todo developed by Appigo. The user-interface is good, the synchronization between the app and iCal was effective & push notifications worked most of the time. A couple of times I contacted Appigo customer service and got prompt/helpful feedback. Todo retails for $9.99 and has a four star average rating.

After using Todo for awhile I didn’t really think I was in the market for a similar app, especially for another paid app but then came 2Do…

I read a couple of reviews of 2Do and saw some screen shots, the user-interface looked quite polished & the feature list was impressive. After some though and a sale price I broke down and purchased 2Do. Saying the UI is polished is an understatement, 2Do has taken iPhone UI to a new level. The design is extremely useful/intuitive, the UI is customizable & the features are really well thought out. Syncing with iCal seamless & so far Push notifications have worked great. 2Do retails for $5.99 and also has a four star average rating.

Wrapping it all up…I was happy with Todo but 2Do has taken UI & features to a new level that all iPhone apps should shoot for. Now back to knocking things off the 2Do list.

iPhone Dragon Dictation Review

Customer Persona Development

Travis K — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:42:36 +0000

Persona (Per-so-na) -n

A fictional character created to represent a particular market segment

Inspiring designers or developers to create new products and services can be challenging. Frequently I find “new ideas” are really just reinventing existing ones. An example of this is I routinely meet with clients that think they have the next “Facebook”, in actuality they just have “Facebook” with a minor twist or spin. Who whats to be a member of Facepage?!?!

Most companies have in-depth demographic & physcographic information on their target customers. This information is useful but has the opportunity to be a much more effective tool for inspiring new products or services. Developing personas that show the day in the life of target customers can be instrumental in hatching new ideas.

Charts, graphs, PowerPoint presentations & spreadsheets are a difficult way to really promote forward thinking. Imagine how bringing the content found in the previous mentioned mediums to life through video or an interactive web site interface can be. Those charts, graphs, PowerPoint presentations & spreadsheets can become a living breathing inspirational tool for your designers & developers. Through these living breathing personas you’ll see real opportunities to fill needs.

Of course if you don’t yet have good research and data on your target customers there are great resources such as SonicRim out of Columbus OH & San Francisco, CA or Hartman Group out of Seattle, WA.

Bullseye Creative has taken mountains of research and demographic data to created engaging, entertaining & truly effective personas for your company to better understand its target consumers. Mediums for this work has included video, web & print.

Five Keys to Success:

1. Focus on relevant data

2. Don’t just utilize the persona in product or service development…also use it as a foundation for the marketing

3. Focus on the facts found in the data not what your think you’ve always know about your target customer (You may be surprised how limiting your pre-existing thoughts are)

4. Include scenarios in the research & persona development

5. Make personas believable but also entertaining

Additional Resource:

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_%28marketing%29

Note: Due to the private nature of personas, Bullseye Creative is not providing specific examples.

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