Back in July M Cubed started offering design services. This was meant to be an alternate revenue source to our software that we could rely on. Unfortunately this didn't turn out to be the case. While technically M Cubed is a 2 man operation, it is in reality a 1.5 man operation as Fabio has a separate day job.

Having a day job and then coming home and working nights and weekends leads to a person being worn out very quickly. A lot of our design work was being delayed due to Fabio not having the time or energy to do work and this was also filtering down into design for our products. Minim 2.0 was originally planned for a late november release, but delays in design related stuff meant it kept being pushed back.

The delays meant that the money coming in from design wasn't really worth the effort, and I was unable to help as I'm not exactly icon designer material. This has meant we have had to make the decision to stop offering graphic design services. While we were able to deliver what we hope was high quality products, circumstances meant we weren't able to offer high quality service. It is better to not do a job at all than do a bad job.

While we are stopping our graphic design services, we are introducing two new design services where we can offer a high quality of service as they are areas of design I am able to handle myself: Usability and Accessibility.

There are many services available to Mac and iPhone developers for graphic design. A quick google search will bring up pages of people offering icon or UI design services. But there are very few services that focus purely on usability and none that I have seen that focus on accessibility.

So what will our usability and accessibility design services entail?

Usability

Well in a nutshell, you give us your app and we will pick through the user interface and point out any areas where usability could be improved. We will explain why things are in need of improvement and what items are urgent.

Of course, there are different degrees of usability. You can make any user interface usable, in the sense of doing what the user expects, by following a series of rules. But usability can also be about how a user feels when using your application. Is it just functional or is it enjoyable? Our usability reviews will provide suggestions for areas where your user interface can be re-thought to make it highly enjoyable as well as functional, turning a user who is merely happy with their purchase into one who raves about your app to their friends and co-workers.

Accessibility

Our accessibility reviews will work in much the same way. We will go through your application and highlight areas where accessibility is lacking and give you details on how to fix them. But we are also going to do something a bit crazy. We will also show you how to find and detect the majority of accessibility problems yourself.

"But surely that is what we're paying you for? What is the point of us coming to you if you're just going to tell us how to do this work for free?". Very good questions. The fact is that 90% of all accessibility work is trivial. While I certainly am not opposed to you giving us your money, I believe that it is ultimately a waste of your money and of our time to keep coming to us for help with trivial matters.

What you may need help designing is the non trivial matters. How do you make a custom control accessible and what should the interaction model be for disabled users? What is the flow of my application like for disabled users? In a way, if our usability design is aimed at abled users of your software, our accessibility design is the exact same thing but for disabled users.

Getting an estimate

So how do you procure our services? Send us an email with details of your needs to design@mcubedsw.com and we will get back to you with an estimate of how long we think it will take. We charge an hourly rate so this will give you a good idea of how much you can expect to pay. So get in touch and start getting feedback on the accessibility and usability of your apps today!

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