This is our own project, rather than a client project, but there are some great insights here that we’re excited to share.

First of all, we learned that it isn’t all that daunting to launch a new product into a seemingly saturated market. When you have another take on how to serve the market, provided every touch point tells this story, you can find success.

Kipu is a great example of how the experience of a product isn’t covered by just the design and function of the app itself. We spent a great deal of time considering how we were going to break into an underserved market which had learned to loathe the kind of product we were offering them

.We addressed this across every touch point of the product, from the tone of the content to the style of the app to the marketing material, and certainly how we were going to present and seed ourselves to the market.

The result was thousands of prelaunch email signups and a rabid base of users who couldn’t wait to have the chance to work with Kipu. Yes, the product was carefully designed to serve the market, but it’s not enough to have a great product if you can’t reach an engaged user base.

The post NEW WORK: Kipu, taking the pain out of time tracking. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Peer review is the cornerstone of scientific research, but it’s not glamorous work. Research to ensure studies are non-biased, valid, and replicable is a vital aspect of scientific research that is often overlooked.

As reported by The Economist:

“Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research.”

Curate Science aims to increase exposure for replication studies based off published research, promising to become the go-to source for journalists and researchers alike to find verifiable scientific knowledge.

Our work with Curate Science covers the gamut of discovering scientific research, detailing published findings, methods, and replications, as well as supporting community feedback and verification across the entirety of this trove of scientific knowledge.

The post NEW WORK: Curate Science, the best in peer-reviewed science appeared first on Say Yeah!.

When discussing our expertise, we like to talk about transactional flows, large amounts of information, and, more recently, how to support users across multiple devices.

With our new site design, we included these items on every page of the site, because they’re a vital lens to finding the right projects, helping folks better understand the work we do, and how we can help them.

Here’s the detailed list of the problem solving we do best:

1. You need to improve the transactional flow within a product, such as signups, checkouts, or other calls to action.
2. You would like to provide users with access to complex data sets and large amounts of information in an intuitive, rewarding way.
3. You’d like to improve engagement across multiple screens, including defining experiences for users with multiple devices, such as a desktop, tablet, phone, and more.
4. You want to measure product releases over time to help ensure design and engineering efforts are meeting business and user goals.
5. You’re looking to bring a new product to market.

If you’ve got a product you’re working on that could benefit from just this kind of problem solving, get in touch with us.

The post Our problem solving expertise, from transaction flows, to rich information, to multi-device experiences. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

We worked with Unata to help them refine and execute their go-to-market plan, including identity, app, and marketing portal design.

Here’s what Chris Bryson, CEO, has to say about our efforts:

Say Yeah was instrumental in capturing the essence of Unata’s vision, and translating that both into a corporate identity and initial visual concepts that helped us to land our first major client.

Unata is leading the charge in providing personalized experiences to retail customers, and we couldn’t be more excited to share with you the work that launched the company.

Have a look!

We’ll be adding new work on a regular basis over the coming months. If you’d like to be the first to know about these updates, please sign up to our mailing list.

The post NEW WORK: Unata, defining the data-driven retail experience. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

All new OSX Mavericks is now available for free.

All new productivity apps Pages, Keynote, and Numbers are now free for desktop and iOS 7, including the real-time collaboration tools at icloud.com.

It’s a pretty good day for getting things done!

The post For Productivity Enthusiasts: all new OSX Mavericks is now available appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Design and implementation of a cross-platform consumer mobile app for Tourism Toronto.

The post Tourism Toronto, a mobile case study appeared first on Say Yeah!.

Things are happening at Say Yeah that are making the business development and creative director’s heads spin.

So much on the go, so many projects with so many emails to sift through, blog articles to write, and people to connect with.

If you’re the kind of person who has a passion for design and loves playing with apps, while slightly OCD about being organized, we want to hear from you.

Tasks we’d love for you to be keen to tackle:

1. Help keep project deadlines organized.
2. Help manage the flow of email for the biz dev dude.
3. Help stay on top of local events and other goings on.
4. Help stay in touch with new contacts, moving from business cards to connections.
5. Help define and execute a regular blog publishing schedule.

A few notes on responsibilities:

1. Great writing makes us giddy. If you have the chops, we’ll want to throw some topics and article outlines at you so you can help keep our corporate blog fresh.
2. We have lots of receipts floating around. We may ask you to input these into the dreaded Quickbooks accounting software. If we find this makes sense, it still won’t be more than a half day a week at most.
3. We’ll also walk you through some of our beta apps so you can help us make sure they’re working the way they should. This means you get to try great new apps before they’re released and help shape their design and function.

A few notes on experience and pay:

1. We’re looking for the right person, not a specific degree. If you feel you have what it takes to tackle some or all of the above, get in touch at team@yousayyeah.com.
2. Whether you’re an intern or someone more seasoned, we’ll be talking short term contract before we segue into a salary commensurate with experience. That way we all get to see how well we work together and see if we can find the right set of responsibilities.

How to apply:

Please send an email to team@yousayyeah.com with a list of your accomplishments, portfolio if you’re keen to show off your writing chops, design interests, twitter and a link to your personal blog if you’ve got one. We’ll be in touch from there.

Our office:

We share space with a few other vibrant startups in a wonderful downtown studio at Spadina and Richmond in Toronto. Some highlights of the neighbourhood: everything you’d ever need to do in Toronto is within walking distance. This includes tennis courts, basketball, stellar foodstuffs, shopping, the Blue Jays, a dog park, and much, much more. I suppose the beach is too far, but that’s about it.

There’s beer and sparkling water in the fridge (though it’s a little warm in there right now, but I’m pretty sure that’ll be fixed soon) along with a kitchenette and private washroom within our space.

We’re looking for someone to occupy the desk pictured above, but if you feel there’s a fit for you at Say Yeah from afar, let us know.

And hey, if you’re an interactive designer (Web or mobile), we’re always looking for great designers to join our team, so feel free to send your resume and portfolio too.

The post We’re hiring! We’re looking for a hyper organized marketing and project support person. appeared first on Say Yeah!.

A great customer is gold. You enjoying working with them. They enjoy working with you. Man, could you ask for anything more? We’re so thankful for our great clients. And I wonder, what’s in their DNA that makes them so magical?

Time and again, this comes down to respect. And it isn’t just about a service provider relationship (our relationship). Their approach is the same with their employees, their customers, and often stems from their personal lives as well. It’s the old adage that you can tell if someone’s a quality person by how they treat wait staff. If they’re short, rude, or snappy with someone waiting on them, they’re probably putting on an act for you, while great clients are great with everyone.

Now, I’ve worked with some real jokers over the years. Customers who don’t pay their bills, ever. Or ones who complain when you won’t do twice as much work for half the price. (And most of those ones call on us again after we say no thanks, because they inevitably get crap work from the next person/company they try to pinch. But that doesn’t mean they respect you. It just means they’re desperate. But I digress.)

Great clients don’t play these games because they know that a reliable service provider (or employee) won’t be reliable for long if they aren’t treated well, which can mean as little as providing them with the resources they require to do their job properly.

There’s a great story on this subject that Scott Bedbury relayed in his book New Brand World. Following a disastrous ad pitch delivered to Nike by Wieden and Kennedy in the mid-80s, with his butt on the line as Advertising Director of Nike, when asked by Phil Knight how he was going to fix the problem Scott responded by saying they need to pay Wieden and Kennedy more. It may seem borderline ridiculous to reward someone for failure, but that wasn’t the point; Scott understood what was required of Wieden and Kennedy, and knew they could deliver if they had the resources to do so. And that’s a sure sign of respect.

So, how do we know our customers are driven by this culture of respect? Not one, but two of our customers have been recognized as Worldblu’s Most Democratic Workplaces, a sure sign of respect for their employees. So a hearty congratulations to Brainpark and CommunityLend for this auspicious acknowledgement.

And thanks for being so magical.

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Microsoft Home Magazine is a blog formatted magazine, focused on showing visitors how to get the most out of consumer based Microsoft products. Each day, the editors of the magazine add new articles, videos, or tips for their users.

The challenge presented with the original site design went beyond aesthetics. Understanding the different profit centres within Microsoft and the need to drive traffic to these areas of Microsoft.com, organization of content, including site navigations, content categories and page layouts, needed to support the dual roll of engaging the consumer with valuable content while driving sales. This meant guiding content development to ensure that marketing prompts throughout the pages of the site were relevant to the article the customer was reading, all while creating a consistent view and easy access to profit centres through the targeted Downloads and Products sections on each page.

We also worked to increase customer interaction with Microsoft with a new Show & Tell section (now renamed to I’m a PC), the addition of article commenting, and encouraging feedback throughout the site.

The landing page shown below highlights the latest additions to the site, allows users to browse directly to articles, explore other sections of the magazine, download MS Office templates, and search or navigate to other areas of the site.

Most articles on the site contain a variety of media, including template downloads, videos, and more. Users can share each article with their friends using a variety of methods, including connecting to social networking sites. Users may also contribute comments within each article, or share their own related stories and templates.

Article view:

What we worked on:

• Content and user engagement strategy.
• Site structure and navigation.
• Site and article design.

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