Next Wednesday I’m doing my final workshop of 2008 on Rapid Prototyping in Flash (no experience with Flash necessary). In addition to the hands-on work, I also show a lot of different prototypes that I’ve built over the years, including several from the very early days of Xero and a few new ones. As I’ve said in the past, rapid prototyping is essential to how we do things at Xero.
The next workshop is happening Wednesday 26 November in Wellington. Here’s a brief summary of the what the workshop provides:
Hands-on lessons for building prototypes in Flash (no experience in Flash necessary)
Insights into the process of design iterations
Insights into working with developers, investors and other stakeholders
Receive a video tutorial plus design templates with a library of design elements
I’ve been doing these workshops for the past few months and there’s always a great mix of designers, developers and biz dev people attending. Be sure to register ASAP, because it sells out every time and registration is limited to 10 people to make sure everyone has quality hands-on time.
There’s a hot new store in downtown Wellington called The Bay - it’s a Premium Apple Reseller shop, which is the next best thing to an official Apple Store. It’s caused quite a stir, everytime we walk by it’s packed with people.
The store looks amazing, just like you’d expect from Apple. They’ve got all the latest greatest Apple gear with experts on hand to show you what’s what .
As proof of their immaculate taste and good business sense they’ve chosen to sell and promote Xero exclusively as their accounting solution.
Posted by Philip Fierlinger in Design, Marketing on August 26, 2008
You may have noticed we’ve just updated our web site. The main reason for the new design is to accommodate features we’ll be adding over time. We also used the opportunity to make some visual enhancements, to keep things fresh and easy on the eyes.
One of the changes you might notice is we’ve added Australia to our country selector. The Australian version of Xero is moving towards the launch pad, so we want our friends over in the “West Island of New Zealand” to sign up and try Xero for free right now. That way you’ll be notified the instant the Australian version becomes available.
P.S. A note to the web standards watchdogs (I’m looking at you Adam), we still have some optimising to do to make the new site conform to our high design and development standards - so watch this space.
I’ll be over in Sydney in September running my rapid prototyping workshop as part of the Oz-IA conference. For people in the online business, the full conference program features a fantastic line up of topics and people covering design and usability issues. The other workshops look pretty choice, too.
As I’ve mentioned before, in my workshop I show several prototypes from the very early days of Xero and a few more recent ones. Rapid prototyping in Flash is essential to how we do things at Xero.
We received exciting news today that Jakob Nielsen “the king of usability” released his list of the 10 Best Application UIs of 2008 and Xero is on the list. We love the priceless comments like:
“…[Xero] puts users at ease and projects a sense of playfulness.”
“Come on, making accounting fun? That’s an award-winning design.”
We found out about the announcement from one of our customers who wrote to us saying, “He’s 1000% accurate. We use it. We love it. Who’d seriously have thought that an accounting tool could be so gloriously smooth and even fun to use.”
Getting industry recognition is nice, but hearing it from people who use it everyday is what really matters to us.
Posted by Philip Fierlinger in Design, Development on August 11, 2008
Next week I’m doing a workshop on Rapid Prototyping in Flash (no experience with Flash necessary). In addition to the hands-on work, I also show a lot of different prototypes that I’ve built over the years, including several from the very early days of Xero and a few more recent ones. As I’ve said in the past, rapid prototyping is essential to how we do things at Xero.
The next workshop is happening Wednesday 20 August. Here’s a brief summary of the what the workshop provides:
Hands-on lessons for building prototypes in Flash (no experience in Flash necessary)
Insights into the process of design iterations
Insights into working with developers, investors and other stakeholders
Receive a design template with a library of design elements
When I did this workshop last month there was a great mix of designers, developers and biz dev people who all stuck around for an extra hour! Be sure to register ASAP, because it sold out last time and registration is limited to 10 people to make sure everyone has quality hands-on time.
Desktop accounting systems are generally locked away in the back office with either a hard working bookkeeper or yourself punching in all the invoices, expense claims…everything.
We think that’s crazy!
This week we’ve added a new way for your employees to use Xero. Simply invite them in using the Employee role. Now employees can do all your data entry in Xero, giving you more time to focus on the big picture.
This is a limited-access role. People with the employee role cannot access your bank accounts, cannot see your financial data, and cannot invite in other users.
Employees can submit invoices for your approval, they can also submit expense claims, plus they can manage contacts.
This saves business owners lots of time and hassle, while your frontline employees help the business run better.
For complete details regarding today’s release please have a read of our release notes.
We launched the new look of Xero’s expo kit at the Small Business Expo held in Christchurch last week. The team down there received fabulous feedback from the punters about the stand and the product – perhaps they were just buttering us up to get their hands on the free Champagne.
Xero CEO Rod Drury spoke in the National Bank Seminar Series about SaaS, small business and the Xero story.
After the presentation Rod was asked by Ben Kepes to be interviewed for DiversityTV. In the interview, Ben asks Rod two things: Why accounting? And why SaaS? You can watch the first part of the video below.
Fresh from the Xero labs, we’re very pleased to announce a customised version of Xero for iPhone (and iPod Touch). It’s never been easier to have your accounts on hand.
Xero for iPhone gives you an overview of the accounts for every organisation you manage. See all your bank balances, recent transactions and who owes you money. You can even call any contact with a single tap.
Posted by Philip Fierlinger in Design, Events_ on September 7, 2007
Last month I was invited to speak about the Xero interaction design process atUPA in Wellington and Auckland, plus the Web On The Piste conference in Queenstown. True to the iterative design process, I revised and refined my presentation after each event.
Admittedly, Queenstown was a highlight. No real surprise there, considering the location. The Piste event brought together a really interesting mix of people, including quite a few folks from Australia, the States and the UK. Kudos to Grant Straker for making it happen.
In Auckland, I insisted that people challenge me with hard questions. The evening went from a 1 hour presentation into a lively 2 hour discussion. I think everyone found it really interesting and insightful, especially me. Thanks for indulging me!
I’ve been inundated with emails asking for copies of my slides. So, as promised, here they are:
