Blog

  • Chris Scott

    Measuring user experience design

    How successful is my website, app, feature, or design change? It’s a simple question to ask, but more challenging to answer.

  • Chris Scott

    Upgrading from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8: stroll in the park or mountain trek?

    You’ve got a Drupal 7 website. You’re aware that support for Drupal 7 will end in November 2021. So, what do you need to plan for? Flip-flops or a pair of sturdy walking boots?

  • Chris Scott

    Measuring thought leadership content

    It’s generally accepted wisdom that thought leadership content marketing works. Especially for professional services businesses such as law and consulting firms. But is there any good evidence? And, crucially, how can you measure it?

  • Marcus Lillington

    Humans like alphabetically ordered lists

    Well, humans that use a latin-based alphabet do. But this can present challenges for the presentation of certain types of content.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Be careful with animation

    Due to our work in the legal sector, we tend to keep an eye out for new site launches when they happen. One recent example caught our attention possibly for the wrong reasons.

  • When to use a custom search solution

    Website search can often be a thorny subject. Expectations of search capabilities have been set very high by search engines. The default search offered by content management systems (CMSs) is often a bit basic by comparison. For example, the results are often not the most relevant to the search term used because the CMS is only offering a simple “does this page contain this word” method.

  • Dan Sheerman

    Initial thoughts on using Gutenberg

    Dan talks about his experience of developing the new Headscape site, with a focus on working with the Gutenberg editor.

  • Chatbots, always available customer support or know nothings?

    After reading Build Chatbots with PHP by Christoph Rumpel I started making some simple chatbots and quite quickly moved on to more complex interactions. It didn’t take long to get something basic up and running, which in turn, got me really excited about the possibilities.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Can’t get any user input?

    We all – rightly – point at user research as the foundation of any good web project. Thorough user research equals focused and usable products, right? But what should we do if we can’t get to those users?

  • Chris Scott

    Design for user empowerment: helping people with health conditions

    You know you have a health condition, but do you need to see a doctor? You are being treated for a medical condition, but should you be getting additional investigations or treatment?

  • Chris Scott

    Interview with Michael Laffan of the British Lung Foundation

    Michael has been digital and marketing manager at the UK’s lung health charity, the British Lung Foundation, for four years. With 12 years’ experience in previous digital roles, Michael was recruited to transform BLF’s use of digital.

  • Chris Scott

    Building commitment to digital transformation

    The University of Edinburgh shows what it takes to build momentum and commitment for lasting transformation.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Are carousels that bad really?

    I want to challenge current web industry thinking concerning carousels/sliders/galleries (which is – in a nutshell – they’re bad) with what, seemingly, most of the world thinks of them.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Readability apps and why they annoy me

    Readability apps like Hemingway have bugged me for a while and I haven’t been able to put my finger on why. So, I thought I’d lay out my ideas here to see if I can get to the bottom of it.

  • Chris Scott

    Three practical ways Google Site Search offers a superior experience

    Your content management system’s native search will do a good job for standalone websites. But what if you’ve got a more complex situation? Google Site Search might be the right solution.

  • Dan Sheerman

    How to choose the right technology for your project

    Sometimes we have technologies foisted upon us. Sometimes that’s bad. Sometimes it’s good. This post examines approaches we can all learn from when selecting technologies.

  • Chris Scott

    Searching for the ideal search solution

    Over recent years we’ve used either native Drupal search or SOLR in our web projects. Neither has been ideal. Recently though we’ve been deploying Google Site Search and we like it a lot.

  • My first DrupalCon

    2016 was the year for my first DrupalCon. I am now back fresh from Dublin and feel positively enthused about the direction Drupal is heading in and the progress being made with Drupal 8 (D8).

  • Chris Scott

    Six factors for digital prototyping success

    In a previous article I looked at making the case for prototyping in digital projects.

  • Chris Scott

    Eight good reasons for digital prototyping

    Prototyping is a great approach for getting started with any new digital development and for making rapid progress. We all know it makes sense. But if you need to make the case for prototyping, have you thought of all the possible reasons?

  • Dan Sheerman

    Are companies sharing your personal email address?

    As a follow up to a recent post from Marcus about good and bad user experiences, I thought I’d share a handy tip I use (and you can) to keep track of where your email address ends up after you’ve given it to a company.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Super shiny perfect customer service or you’re dead!

    I know I’m guilty of coming up with the odd blog title that could be described as link bait, and it would appear that this one is no exception, but no… I genuinely mean it from a business sense.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Open Source isn’t really what clients want

    Headscape used to offer its own content management system (CMS) to would be clients. It was first developed back in the early noughties when CMSs were ridiculously expensive and awful to use.

  • Chris Scott

    Lovely data

    We’ve been working with lots of data recently in several projects and it’s been a lot of fun. Trying to figure out how best to present the data has made us think about user interfaces and user engagement in ways that we hadn’t really had to do much before.

  • Marcus Lillington

    The homepage is dead. Long live the homepage.

    Or, more precisely, the homepage is not as popular as it once was. But, it’s still quite important, at least for now. Not such a pithy or, er, linkbait-y title though is it.

  • Chris Scott

    British Medical Association Award for COPD app

    Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a disease of the lungs that affects around 1 million people in the UK.

  • Chris Scott

    Who should I bring to the kick-off meeting?

    Recently, a new client asked me who should participate in the kick-off meeting for a project to design a website that would communicate the outcomes of a large research study.

  • Sorry, your site is not responsive

    Responsive sites are here and have been for a while now. I think they’re great but I cannot help feeling that a lot of people are missing an important point.

  • Enjoying getting it wrong

    During my teens and twenties I spent a lot of time skateboarding. It’s quite a unique sport in the way it influences your life as a whole. For example, you begin to look at architecture in a new creative way. You also fall over, a lot.

  • Ed Merritt

    Creating useful pattern libraries

    Pattern libraries are great, but designing them (well) is difficult.

  • Differentiating the wants and needs of a project team

    Being a project manager involves far more than being a manager of projects.

  • Dan Sheerman

    The life/work imbalance

    Working 24/7 doesn’t make you any better or worse at your job, it will just burn you out. I’ve been there, and I’m not going back.

  • Marcus Lillington

    Does Agile methodology lead to poor interface design?

    There has been a lot of finger pointing at frameworks such as Bootstrap for an apparent depreciation in design standards lately. But, I think that Agile methodologies have something to answer for as well.

  • Chris Scott

    Stakeholder interviews: essential insights for successful projects

    Good stakeholder interviews can give you a real sense of what’s at the heart of an organisation.

  • Leigh Howells

    Does your site have charisma?

    Over the last couple of years I’ve heard many people bemoan the fact that a lot of websites “are all starting to look the same”. There’s a certain amount of truth in this.

  • The dangers of over promising

    Don’t over promise to your boss or client just to keep them happy. Instead manage expectations and then exceed them.

  • Digital project managers need community too

    Sometimes being a digital project manager can feel like training for a marathon on a cold, wet day. But like a marathon, when you all come together the experience is amazing.

  • Learning from unsung heroes like Ed Merritt

    As part of a new series on the Headscape team, I would like to introduce you to Ed Merritt. I am sure he will inspire you as much as he does me.