After months of collaboration, health care education, Medicare explanation, web application development, voice over talent selection and a bit of instructional design, we are proud to announce the launch of Ask Blue Medicare, an interactive health care web application to help users understand Medicare health care coverage options from Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. After going through the application, I feel confident I can help my parents through the Medicare process and explain the difference between A, B, D, gap and advantage. If you can’t, and you know someone who is around 65 years old, you should send them to check it out. (There’s closed captioning as well as the ability to increase the type, too.)

Today they started the demo in the space next door that we are taking over! They are doing a really great job as it’s not too loud nor disruptive. Thanks Hugh and Joe Hayes! We’ve decided to add a larger lunchroom and kitchen area, along with two huddle rooms for brainstorming, conference calls, quiet meetings, private phone calls and some more work space as we continue to grow – all to enhance our user’s experience (which in this case, our users are our staff).

It’s a really fun and exciting time here at Sandstorm as we continue to grow with our user centered design methodology, creative facebook applications, and strategic interactive tools. We are all looking forward to a busy and exciting 2010.

This past weekend was our 3rd annual “Sandstorm Guac-off!” and our guacamole contest results are in.

Congratulations to… ME! (OMG – this is my official first time winning and my staff now thinks I cheated). And here’s why. It’s all about my super secret ingredient where they think I swayed the judges and the user experience. My super secret ingredient I talked about for weeks, and tested up in Lake Geneva about a month ago with friends and family to perfect my recipe. My super secret ingredient that no one was worried about because last year it was dill and I lost miserably. My super secret ingredient was… tequila. (he he he).

The most fun thing about guacamole is that is really does taste so different depending on what you decide to put in. This year’s samples included mayo and sour cream to apples and jalepenos. Zak even brought a dessert guacamole which was my personal favorite (I didn’t vote for myself as I don’t personally like tequila) – he added raspberries and raspberry jam to be eaten with cinnamon crisps. Yum! And Zachary made guacamole for the first time ever.

So for the next year I get to be the “Guacamole Queen at Sandstorm”. A title I am most proud of considering I can’t cook very well to start off with. Not sure what my super secret ingredient will be next year. Better watch out Zak.

I made blue and silver cupcakes for my staff today. To get that Sandstorm blue, I had to bust out the food coloring and mix up both the cyan and the magenta to get that silvery blue that makes up our logo. I also put the chocolate cupcakes in silver trays so the cakes look like they are silver and blue.

However, the blue is a little smurf-life as Janna said. And so far no one has eaten a cupcake but me. Hmm… Now I’m not a bad baker (I’m actually decent) as I’ve brought cupcakes before and they are usually gone by noon – so it got me thinking what was different about these Sandstorm cupcakes and I think it’s the blue frosting? Could the blue frosting impact their desire to eat the cupcake, therefore creating a more negative user experience?

This got me thinking about our company color blue, and how blue is a color associated with a positive user experience from a web site and corporate perspective. But when it comes to food, I can’t think of a restaurant or fast food restaurant that uses blue except White Castle and that alone proves my point. Color can make a big impact on the user experience. The big question now is if hunger will take over and will the cupcakes be gone this afternoon?

At Sandstorm Design, we had an incredible time designing and building the Broadway in Montgomery web site this summer! Our creative team explored a very visual, experiential design concept to draw the user into the essense of theatre – taking cues from Broadway. Adding to the theatrical drama are subtle hints of interactivity from the rotating home page show display to the interactive season ticket package selections.

Aligned with our mission, we had a great time challenging ourselves and our client to create a memorable and intuitive online user experience! Plus as an added bonus, we got the opportunity to take this brand and execute in print including ads, posters and brochures.

Think of a user experience team (like us at Sandstorm) as a group advocating for web site surfers… basically your web site users whoever they may be. It’s easy to get caught up in business requirements while trying to build a web site/ interactive application/ online experience, but the goal of user centered design is to actually have your users drive some of your requirements.

We’ve been in more meetings that we can count where we’ll spend an hour or two discussing what we “think” the user wants, what we “think” the user needs for education and content, what we “think” the user will do when we build our site – and we “think” how much easier it would be if we just picked up the phone and asked a few. So we do, and more often than ever before, user research is driving more and more of our web design decisions – ultimately enhancing a user’s experience.