Nugget, on many level is probably my favourite project I’ve done during my time at SapientNitro. Although the time and budget was as tight as any other project, I had a chance to work with a great team. The project ranged from creating a brand identity from scratch to delivering all singing, all dancing super slick product end-to-end. Most of all the young and visionary client, whom we built very good relationship with from past projects, understood the design language and were in sync with the team through out the project. I could sense that the stars were aligned for this project.

Nugget is a personal finance manager powered by Confused.com. You connect your bank accounts to Nugget and it will give you a report on your financial data helping you to realise where you’ve been spending, how much to spend and of course, how to save money.

Nugget is designed based on the idea that with any transactions on the web, customer security and trust is the biggest issue that determines success or the failure of the business. With its simple, spacious and well organised grid customers are instantly made to feel reassured of the security of the website. Colourful, tactile and friendly affordance points throughout gives the website a personality – a rewarding experience for customers who engage proactively with the page and hence earning their trust over time.

When it comes to readability and efficiency, no other data visualisation comes close to the good old bar chart. Many visualisation methods were tried and tested from hardcore Tufte to the latest HTML scripts. We could have gone with a bit more fancier looking charts but that would be lying to ourselves – and that is NOT Nugget way.

Check out that tooltip box. It’s not a box like all the other tooltips. It’s in the shape of a speech bubble! I would check all the tips on the website just see it that speech bubble.

…and the 404 error page. Truffle pig is constantly at work to snuff out the page you’re looking for.

Ice cream makes people happy, and now this innovative vending machine is making Unilever’s consumers even happier – by dispensing ice cream in response to a smile. The industry-leading vending machines are part of Unilever’s ice cream mission: encouraging people everywhere to share moments of happiness.

Thanks to cutting-edge ‘smile recognition’ technology, when consumers approach the vending machine, their image appears on a monitor and their on-screen alter ego is playfully immersed in a virtual reality world. They’re then prompted to give their biggest smiile – measured by a smile-o-meter – before their photo is taken and, with their permission, uploaded to Facebook. Finally, their efforts are rewarded by being invited to choose a Wall’s ice cream from a touchscreen menu.

It was quite a logistics challenge designing, developing, assembling and shipping the vending machine between London, Atlanta and Cannes. It’s always exciting receiving first pictures of your product being made but this time, it was a little more than usual as I never saw any of it in real life during the process. It was only at Heathrow airport, weeks later, that I saw the vending machine in real life next to its predecessors. Proud.

Yes, somebody WAS actually paid to come up with this.

Lebara is a telecommunications company which operates services in many European countries using the mobile virtual network operator business model. The primary target customer base are the ethnic and immigrant populations of the countries in which they operate. The mobile product is a basic talk and text service, but with low cost calling to international destinations.

The direction came from the customer insight that people yearn to tell/hear stories when they are away from home on an adventure. Make Lebara a brand people trust and seek out for. A service people will go to tell their stories.

As part of SapientNitro’s AfterDark brief we were asked to design an iPad app for Qatar Airways. The concept was to use iPad to replace current in-flight entertainment system including travel and shopping magazines. Available from the airline’s lounge, premium customers can check and schedule the entire flight experience, pre-boarding.

Premium customers can chat to each other using the app. Imagine meeting a key investor through the app and striking a business deal right off a flight to your holiday. Good times.

Qatar Farseer is an augmented reality app which allows customers to see beyond limits of airplane windows. With this app customers can check out landmarks, restaurants, hotels and entertainment of places they are flying over. They can also book them there and then for future travels.

Sadly, customers will have to return the iPad at the end of their journey. However, personal preference settings including conversation details will be stored to the member’s account and on the other side of the airport a taxi will be waiting to take customers to that hotel booked mid-air.

Design entry for The Web Excellence Challenge by Microsoft and The Webby Awards. The brief was to design a mock-up for the home page, one for the product detail page, and another one for the mobiles’ category page.

On top of that we were told also to consider:

“…The website should come across as a credible destination, that offers both high-quality products at competitive rates, as well as exclusive super-value deals. It should be a light and fast-loading website. Ease of use and affability are very key ingredients. Should encourage convenience-based and impulse-driven purchases for new users. Furthermore, multiple ways of merchandising offerings can create additional traction on the site. Spaces need to be clearly set aside for promotions (banner ads, special-offers, etc) and also for driving sign-ups/ subscription to our offers newsletter/ loyalty programs/ etc…”

Frankly, I think we ticked all the boxes and then some with customer points + membership service to further increase the return value over other similar websites – we came runner-up.

I had a chance to work on Singapore Airlines – the 5 star airline with its iconic Singapore girl and the batik dress they wear. The strategy for singaporeair.com was to immerse people in the world’s best travel experience while they are still choosing who to fly with.

When people fly Singapore Airlines they experience the full power of the brand and understand why it’s a great way to fly. Our task was to extend the in-flight experience to the online channel, creating a digital brand experience that is the closest thing on earth to being on the plane.

When people meet a Singapore Girl they experience a way of living that is inspirational. We can use the expressive power of the digital medium to drive emotional engagement with the values of the Singapore Girl.

These illustrations were created as a treat for the executives at a Johnson & Johnson chemistry meeting. It did the trick and we got our name on their roster. Win!

Self-service check-in kiosk concept for Virgin Atlantic. Using RFID wristband, the airline customers can check-in by simply swiping their wristband in front of the screen. On top of checking-in, customers can also change seat, choose drinks during the flight or even book a hotel for the travel.

Autotrader.co.uk is the UK’s busiest automotive web site which attracts some 10.3 million unique users per month. Because of the sheer size of the website and content, the design process took much longer than the other ones I’ve faced before.

Inform and entertain: Information displayed in simple rows not column. Entertain user with touchy-feely design delighters. Most of all, DFS – Don’t F**k-up Search.

Navigation as bread-crumbs: One unique challenge AutoTrader had was that it had many tiers of pages for users to drill down way beyond typical tertiary navigation. For that, we came up with a navigation that can also double as a bread-crumb trail which, build up as users explore further in to the website.

ComHem of Sweden, supplies triple play services that include cable tv, digital television, broadband, telephone and HDTV. Together with Stockholm office, a few members from London office went over to the land of meatballs and IKEA to redesign the website. I certainly did enjoy months of living in hotel and the Diamond Elite membership status that I accumulated during the stay. However, it was quite a puzzling experience trying to understand the subtle cultural differences and nail the design Swedes would be proud of.

Channel browser:

Toolbars with all the necessities to keep track of your account.

Iconography played a big part in the design direction. We’ve made so many icons and illustrations, we even made ComHem pattern out of it.

We made some pretty cool moodboards for each route – Entertain Me and Guide Me.

This is one of the earlier concept, and if you ask me… it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if the design direction stayed with this one – not that I’m complaining about how it turned out in the end :p