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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Well, it's exactly 1 year since the last time I posted the M Cubed birthday retrospective, so I guess that means I need to do another one today. The past year has been quite an eventful one, at least behind the scenes.

Finishing University

The bulk of the last year was taken up with finishing my degree. This is the primary reason that you haven't seen much activity from M Cubed the past 12 months. Exams, assignments and my dissertation all took up the majority of the free time I had.

Unfortunately both getting a degree and running a software company require a lot of mental input and it's hard to do both at once. Effectively M Cubed was shut down for several months while I focused on my degree.

In mid June I had my last exam, all my assignments and my dissertation were handed in and I was finally free of full time education. In July I went back to pick up my degree at my graduation ceremony and now I the £20,000 piece of paper that says I am a Computer Science BSc. So with all of that out of the way I could finally focus all my energy on M Cubed.

Going full time

Last year I said that I hoped to be working full time from M Cubed. This year I can say that I am now a full time indie developer. Granted this is helped in part by the fact that I've been able to move back home with my parents and that I'm able to keep my expenses down. Many people wouldn't be able to live off what I'm earning, but it is enough for me to dedicate all my energy to it.

The biggest benefit of going full time has actually been having free time. Previously I would fill my free time with M Cubed work, but when combined with school/university work this would lead to me getting burnt out pretty quickly. Being able to focus most of my attention on M Cubed, I can now use my free time for things that are actually relaxing. I'm no longer having to stay up until 2am coding, I can get offline at 10pm and spend the rest of the night relaxing. I can't emphasises enough how much doing this has increased my productivity.

2 > 1

Going full time wasn't the only major thing that happened with M Cubed this year. As was announced in July, M Cubed's employee list doubled. Fabio joined to help with design and coding. The result is the website design you see now, plus many graphic improvements to our applications that you don't see yet. In fact you'll see the first fruits of our labour next week when we release Minim 2.0

Minim 2.0

Minim 2.0 is going to be the first release from M Cubed since I went full time. Minim has long suffered from a lack of focus and development time. The last release was 18 months ago and only fixed 1 small bug. The last major release was over 2 years ago.

Version 2.0 changes all of that. It has been completely re-designed and re-coded from the ground up. It is practically an entirely new application, the name and the core purpose of the software being the only things shared with 1.x. Whereas Minim 1.x was only the second real application I had written, Minim 2.0 builds on 5 years of experience, meaning I can say with confidence that it will be the best application we've ever shipped.

It really is a shining example of what the changes this year hold for the future. Every release I've done in the past has been limited by the amount of time I've had and has had me as the primary designer. Minim 2.0 has had several people working on the design and we've been able to put a lot of time and effort into polishing it. Whereas before the question was, "how can this feature be added in the shorted amount of time?", the question is now, "how can we best implement this feature?"

Accessibility

The other thing that Minim 2.0 will showcase is accessibility. Earlier this year I made a pledge: "By the end of 2009, every application I produce will be fully accessible". Unfortunately I won't be able to fulfil that pledge by the end of 2009. However, the next major version of each application will fulfil the pledge of making every application I produce fully accessible.

Minim 2.0 does fulfil that pledge by being the first M Cubed app to be fully accessible. We've put a lot of effort into achieving this and we hope it will help in providing a first class experience for disabled users.

Code Collector Pro is mostly accessible but needs the most work and this will be fixed in version 1.4 which we hope to have out early next year. Lighthouse Keeper only has some minor accessibility issues but these will be fixed in version 1.2.

To further highlight our emphasis on accessibility, we are setting up a new email address where you can contact us about any accessibility related issues with our software. If you have any questions about our the accessibility of any of our products then send us an email at accessibility@mcubedsw.com

The year ahead

Well the next year will see a lot more activity from us. As I've already pointed out, our next 3 releases will be Minim 2.0, Code Collector 1.4 and Lighthouse Keeper 1.2. We also have plans for a major revamp of codecollector.net, which has been feeling a bit neglected. We'll also be looking into dipping our toes into the pool of iPhone development. And to top all of this off we have a number of open source projects we will be working on. All in all, the next year will probably be the most productive one in M Cubed's history. Hopefully the post a year from now will tell you about all these great projects as M Cubed celebrates a half-decade of existence.

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In case you hadn't quite noticed yet, Mac OS X 10.6 was released today. All M Cubed apps have been tested and work fine on Snow Leopard in their current versions so you'll be able to feel safe upgrading.

However, if you do find bugs you will be able to tell us about them in our brand new support centre. You can still email us if you wish, but we also offer discussion forums that allow you to start public or private discussions that will allow you to get help from both us and other users of our software.

On top of this our new system has an integrated knowledge base. We currently have only migrated the CCP and LHK manuals over, but we will put up all sorts of useful tips and tricks in due course, so head over to support.mcubedsw.com to check it out.

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Today is the start of a new era for M Cubed. There are 3 exciting things happening and the first is the most obvious: a new website design. We’ve gone through the whole site and redesigned everything from the bottom up.

The biggest change to the site is the new store, which allows you to buy multiple applications at the same time, as well as our new 5 user licences which offer a discount over the cost of single user licences if you need to buy in bulk

M Cubed times 2

For a long time M Cubed has been a single person operation, with me handling everything from programming to application design to the website to support. Well I’m pleased to announced that I am no longer working alone. May I introduce my new partner in crime: Fabio Basile.

Fabio is joining M Cubed to work on design and also some programming. This will help us get updates out faster, while making them look much better.

Design & Conquer

But Fabio isn’t only going to be designing and coding stuff for M Cubed. If you look at the navigation links at the top of the page you’ll notice there is now a “Design” link. Click on this and you’ll be taken to a wonderful world where you can get your design done by M Cubed.

Yes, no longer content with just producing amazing software, we are also going to offer amazing design services. We will be offering icon design, website design, user interface design and also Django server-side programming. If you’re interested then head over to our Design section to find out more!

M Cubed has gone through quite a few significant changes recently, but they will all help us produce much better software for you much more quickly than before. Watch this space as there are exciting things coming soon.

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