Chicago is a booming city with a robust pool of developers—web developers, software developers, application developers. We’ve got them all. (Chicago even hosted DrupalCon this year.) So we are pleased to see our government agencies taking notice and utilizing the city’s developer resources by challenging them to “build apps that solve problems and improve services in Metro Chicago” with the Apps for Metro Chicago Illinois Competition.

While our Chicago web design firm focuses on user-centered design, we’d like to give kudos to the City of Chicago, the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, Cook County, and the State of Illinois for taking a user-centered approach to government and working to build useful tools for Metro Chicago. Bravo!

Now, while we’re pleased to see Chicago building useful apps, there are some pros and cons to the competition method, also known as crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing has become very popular, even as a tool to leverage as part of a marketing strategy. But even with the possibility of benefiting from the talent that fills Chicago, in the end, there is just less creative control of the end product. Instead of choosing one dedicated team that builds a relationship with you, learns your business needs, and provides a customized solution to your problem, you end up hoping someone in the crowd finds the right idea.

But what if none of the entries solves your problem? During the two month entry period, how do you feel about sitting in the dark, unable to truly guide the direction your solutions are headed? And what do you say to all the unselected artists and programmers who put in dozens of hours creating an app for you and get nothing in return for their hard work? However risky their methods, we are still very excited to see Chicago focusing on technology!

At Sandstorm we do custom quality work, gathering requirements to make certain that the end product meets the clients’ specific needs. Let us know what your needs are!

Last Saturday, June 11, 2011, our User Experience Architect Alma Meshes joined more than 6,000 volunteers in the Chicago Cares Serve-a-thon. They came together to spruce up schools for over 18,000 Chicago students by painting classrooms, creating murals, planting flowers, organizing libraries, painting playgrounds and more!

During last year’s Serve-a-thon, Alma and her husband Nick Meshes painted a mural at Mark Sheridan Math & Science Academy (That’s Nick with the mural in the photo above). This year they painted a classroom at the same school. Now painting isn’t exactly user experience design, but Alma is multi-talented!

We’re so proud of Alma for her volunteer efforts to give back to the Chicago community!

Some people like to put their brand identity on business cards and letterhead, others prefer choppers. That’s right—choppers. One of our partners, Aaron Equipment, got a custom branded bike from Orange County Choppers and appeared on their TLC show American Choppers.

The bike now sits proudly at their Bensenville headquarters. Of course, after visiting their office and seeing the bike, we had to take pictures. And who wouldn’t? This is really a great example of creative marketing—getting your brand out there by connecting with your audience on their interests.

Now that summer is in full swing in Chicago and the festivals have taken over the weekends, it’s a perfect time to get creative with your marketing. And “creative” could be anything from a custom chopper to a clever sidewalk chalk stencil. If you need a little help brainstorming some creative marketing ideas, let Sandstorm Design give you hand!