Some publicity

There was a story about us and Slush in the Helsingin Sanomat (the biggest daily in Finland). Click here to read to story (in Finnish).

Getting busier

Hello again. It seems to get busier: we are doing more, but noticing even more things that have to be done.

The interface and layout design has been an interesting process.  It is challenging to think what kind of ideas and thoughts different colors, shapes and layouts can convey. But so far I think we have found some pretty nice solutions with visual smoothness and usability. There is still lot to work on, but we will post some pictures here when we get some parts ready.

This week we met with our Slush advisors and got many nice tips on our business development. We also got interviewed for a story about start-ups in a newspaper Ylioppilaslehti. We'll send you the link when the story is published.

We know what we are doing!

No updates for a while, no real update now. Just that as we are moving deeper and deeper into the design, I am getting a feeling that we know what we are doing.

Technology wise we are in a nice place. A lot to do (not that much actually) but there's no old code dictating bad decisions. I think I'll give jQuery a shot on the UI.

EDIT: And we have a company now!

Why the year has to change right after Christmas?

Today we signed the company papers. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Monday we will do the rest of the paperwork. A lot of things learned, a lot of things yet to learn, in the middle of all the shopping and family meetings.

The hazzle is now, because the number 2008 is changing to 2009 in many bureaucratic machines. It is the darkest and most stressful time of the year and everyone is having the cold. Why do we need to have the year changing thing this month?

I disagree with it. People probably die because of all the stress. We must implement stress monitoring in our service, to collect information to have some other, any other month as the year changing host.

BTW, Merry Christmas!

Logo, another logo and more logos

My job as designer began by getting to know the project. After that, it was time to work on interface and logo design. After doodling my logo ideas on paper and choosing the best ones for further development I sent the guys, Wesa and Markus, my first logo ideas. And then, I sent more ideas. And more and more again. A funny thing is that now we think that maybe the very first idea is the best one. Well, you'll see later on which version we have actually decided to keep :)

Tasting the cold

I am slowly getting over the cold, or propably two colds in a row. Instead of the usual suffering, I did a bit of user experience research. I tried to analyze the symptoms, find the small details our users may encounter.

I had temperature twice, but they felt different. First time I was tired, second time my head hurt. I also found two types of coughs and sore throats. Do the cold viruses have different symptoms or is it just me? What about a group of people, do the different colds create unique symptom statistics? Interesting findings yet to make!

Wheter the small details in symptoms make any difference or not, tasting the cold is something to try out. In fact, cold-tasting should be regarded high culture like wine-tasting, with unique vocabulary!

Designing the brand and how the whole thing will work

We have spent the last days brainstorming our name ('illme' has got some critical feedback and to be honest, we came up with the original name in bit of a haste).  We have decided our new final name now and will reveal it when the graphics are ready.

We have been also having some productive sessions designing the brand, the user interface and the whole concept. It's been all been fun and interesting and I think we have found some pretty unique solutions to some pretty unique problems.  We also got a new member in our team: graphics genius Hanne Zenjuga will work on our visual and interface design. She might share some of her thoughts on the blog too. 

We are also negotiating with some first sponsors and have had the possibility to discuss all kinds of interesting collaboration schemes. We'll tell more details when we get the deals done.