Chap Ambrose

A user-centered designer/developer trying to start a business.

Archive for May 2008

Good Design is Good Customer Service

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Every interaction you present tells your users how you feel about them.

Are you telling people you’re a disinterested, minimum-wage employee who’d rather be texting classmates than wasting time with you.

Or are you a fresh-pressed concierge with an authentic smile; pointing guests to the best italian joint in the neighborhood before they can ask the question.

Maybe you’re just an overworked cashier; holding-on till lunch break.

In this world of 1-800-Flowers.com’s your website is your business. If you skimp here you might as well hang up the “Going Out of Business Sale” banner now.

There’s also a direct connection between thoughtless design and an all-you-can-eat buffet of support calls.

Written by Chap

May 28, 2008 at 10:12 pm

Posted in Work

Backdrop Pro in beta

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Today was a big day for Backdrop Pro.

The original version of Backdrop I wrote with Josh a couple of months ago. It was built primarily in 1 weekend. It was ugly (inline css styles yikes!) inflexible (no support for multiple photographers, doh!) but it served it’s purpose well.

Josh tooled around with it for a couple months and had some great feedback on how to improve it. So I decided to just scrap the whole thing as a prototype and start over.

I’m still working on incorporating some of the features from the first version (like choosing selects and drag and drop sorting) and a few new ones (stricter security for photographers who want to make particular clients and projects private).

If you promise to be an active (daily) user and provide us with frequent feedback (daily) I might be obliged to throw a couple free beta accounts to the masses. Get in contact with me if you’re interested.

P.S. Our team has doubled in size with addition of the Daniel Nadeau. He’ll be helping out with user experience (I’m too far in the code now) and is spearheading some of the business stuff.

Written by Chap

May 8, 2008 at 8:37 pm

Posted in Backdrop Pro

New office

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I told you I only needed 16 square feet.

Written by Chap

May 8, 2008 at 2:12 am

Posted in Inspiration

Tastes like summer

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Written by Chap

May 2, 2008 at 11:39 am

Posted in Life