TravisBead Work | Winter 2013/14

Be | winter 2013/14

Following our sabbatical in 2013 when John and Roze both

took a break from TravisBead to work on other projects,

we’ve been delighted with the workload since returning in

early October.

Fortunately most of pre-2013 clients were happy to know

we are back and we’ve enjoyed working with them again over

the last few months. In that time we have also started

working with some new clients whose work is featured in the

following pages.

We are keen to grow our client list in 2014, so take a look at the things we do and let us

know if you have a project that you need help with.

Get in touch on 01908 231401 or email info@travisbead.com

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

DEALING WITH DESIGNERS

Are you responsive? The rise and rise of smartphones and tablets has meant that many more of us

consume the web on our mobile devices and you are sure to have noticed that

lots of web sites are responding to the size of your screen. No longer do they look

the same on your desktop, tablet and mobile. And this is causing much debate,

headaches and chin rubbing from business owners, designers, developers and just

about everyone that uses the web. So what is responsive design?

Responsive Web Design is a web site is made using fluid proportion-based grids,

to adapt the layout and image content to the viewing environment. As a result,

users across a broad range of devices and browsers will have access to a single

source of content, laid out so as to be easy to read and navigate with a minimum

of resizing, panning, and scrolling. Sounds good doesn’t it? But there are divided

opinions on this and most revolve around the rush to do it has led to lots of bad

design and implementation.

The mobile web user is having to learn a whole load of new conventions when it

comes to mobile surfing. The traditional layout: navigation at the top, two, three

or four columned layout and the general overview of a company’s wares that you

get with a “large view” is lost in responsive mobile. So, you may have even less time

to attract the users attention on a mobile. The argument against responsive goes

that all mobile devices have “pinch and zoom” facilities which make traditional

website accessible anyway, maintaining the users expectation of the interface.

There are cost implications as all this clever design and coding takes longer

to achieve.

But, and it is a big one, Google loves responsive. It will return responsive sites

higher up it’s search rankings when you are “Googling” on a mobile device. So that

is potentially the big one for the business owners out there.

Personally we feel that it is down to design, planning, development and then user

testing. There are some good adaptive sites out there, the BBC does a pretty

good job and as we use our devices more and more the quality of mobile site

design will inevitably improve or sites will lose their users and have to respond!

Geddes Consulting Telecoms ConsultantTravisBead have been working with Phase Marketing on the implementation of the Geddes Consulting brand since October. From White papers, Powerpoint presentations, art direction and devising a series of diagrams to illustrate complex topics.

Be | winter 2013/14

©2013 M

artin Geddes Consulting Ltd | DECEMBER 2013

11

How to make the right trades

and put things in the right location

where to locate data stores and com

puting, and

how to make the trades, is a solved problem

in

the domain of supercom

puting. here are some

questions that we suggest would make an

excellent opening for a conversation between

any Cio and their cloud platform supplier.

1. Technology: Do you understand and know

how to apply the core techniques from

supercom

puting to cloud architecture and

operation? are you aware of the existence and

nature of the trades, and in particular pay

attention to the perform

ance hazards that exist?

2. Organisation: who is the Perform

ance & Risk

Tsar responsible for overall system

and business

outcom

es? what new organisational capabilities

does cloud com

puting require? how do you get

visibility of the trades being m

ade, which are

often im

plicit? who m

akes the calculation of

the right trades? Do you have the skills required

to pick the right locations for storage and

com

putation? which technical staff have

experience in supercom

puting, parallel

processing or safety-critical system

s design?

3. Data modelling: how can we perform

the

critical path analysis to understand which data

is Slow Data vs Quick Data? how can we

separate the 80% Slow Data from

the 20%

Quick Data to create perform

ance

m

anagement processes appropriate to their

different needs? how can their changing

needs be accom

modated? Do i have an

architecture that perm

its me to m

igrate Quick

Data to Slow Data, and vice versa?

4. Operational process: what is the best way to

‘M

easure it; model it; m

itigate it’? what are

the appropriate system

performance

m

easurements and m

etrics? what m

anagement

controls are needed to review and revise the

location of each data and com

pute function?

5. Design for performance: Should you put your

Quick Data in low

-latency co-located hosting,

close to other clouds? is data in the right

location as m

ore complex industry supply

chains form

? when does “best connected”

beat “lowest price”? w

hen should you

m

easure by the cost of milliseconds, not that

of m

icroprocessors?

6. Design for efficiency: when should you locate

Slow Data in distributed or lower-cost

environm

ents (e.g. amazon or Google)?

w

hen is it best to co-locate Slow Data with

Quick Data for econom

ies of scale and

perform

ance flexibility? how can you hedge

your risks of Slow Data becom

ing Quick Data?

Figure 3. TRaDE-off

©2013 Martin Geddes Consulting Ltd | DECEMBER 2013

06

The diverse demands placed by the different

types of data and business process create a

requirement for an equal diversity in supply.

Regrettably, this is often overlooked. There

are six specific problems that result.

PRoBLEM #1 – BaD ExPERiEnCES

BECoME MoRE CoMMon

Business processes fail due to outliers of

transaction time. These bad experiences drive

customer frustration and then churn. That means

you have to make bad experiences sufficiently

rare, rather than simply making good experiences

relatively common.Going to the cloud changes the distribution of

transaction times and tends to increase the size of

the ‘tail of failure’. Quick Data that used to arrive

‘just in time’ now becomes ‘just too late’.

however, business process management may

not be measuring the ‘tail’ at all, but merely

measuring average transaction time. Even if

transaction latency is measured, there may not

be means to manage and mitigate performance

problems in the ‘tail’.

Quick Data and Slow Data

have differing architectural needs

Going to the cloud changes the

distribution of transaction times and

tends to increase the size of the ‘tail

of failure’. Quick Data that used to

arrive ‘just in time’ now becomes

‘just too late’.

©2013 Martin Geddes Consulting Ltd | DECEMBER 2013

03

SLow DaTa anD QuiCk DaTa

as a result of this critical path effect, Big Data

assumes two distinct forms: Slow Data and Quick

Data. Slow Data is off the critical path; Quick Data

lies on it. furthermore, the need for timely action

is constantly nudging the boundary between

these. The need to create a strategic business

advantage or respond to competition means that

Slow Data can become Quick Data. Meanwhile,

formerly Quick Data can become Slow Data as

automation shifts critical paths. Quick Data is

most sensitive to latency; Slow Data is most

sensitive to processing cost.inCREaSinG LEvELS of viRTuaLiSaTion The growing volume and diversity of demand for

data processing, coupled with a drive to reduce

cost, is prompting a qualitative change in the

technical infrastructure used to process this data.

Enterprises have already largely moved away

from applications having their own dedicated

servers. They instead use virtualised applications

running on shared (but still private) on-premises

enterprise infrastructure. This increases resource

usage efficiency, whilst applications remain

accessible over a local area network (Lan).

The next step, and one that many are taking,

is moving to a centralised and shared private

virtualised infrastructure, or to public cloud

platforms. in this case, applications are accessed

over a wide area network (wan).

Quick Data is most sensitive to latency;

Slow Data is most sensitive to processing cost.

Fresh thinking

Slow Data VERSUS

Quick DataA WHITE PAPER

Be | winter 2013/14

FFEI Software Imaging Systems

TravisBead worked with FFEI to develop a concept for a new product to be launched at the

UK’s largest packaging show.

The idea of transformation was born out of the products

ability to transform the workflow of the packaging design by keeping them in native Adobe applications

whilst doing their packaging pre-press.

In an industry dominated by screenshots this was a refreshing departure that

went down well at the show and has been used across the

product suite.

With infographics being a popular way to interpret information with the rise of social media sharing. Here are a couple we’ve done recently.

XPS Facilities ManagementXPS do a lot of thing, so the infographic was the obvious choice to demonstrate them, beats a long bulleted list!

FFEI Software Imaging SystemsHighlighting the many benefits of the Graphium digital printer in bright, colourful, well ordered graphics.

Be | winter 2013/14

Choice MagazinePublishingChoice Magazine is a general interest magazine for the over 50’s. Their strapline “Get the most out of life’ effectively sums up the magazines style and the website had to mirror this. We used the printed magazine as a starting point

Be | winter 2013/14

for the design we developed a complimentary style, even replicating the fonts using webfont replacement. In a text heavy site the ordering and signposting was a priority. So we have endeavoured to keep it clean and well laid out, with each section having a key colour from the complimentary palette. The backend of the site was coded using a PHP framework that allows Choice to add new stories on a monthly basis.

©2014 TravisBead

TravisBead

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Central Milton Keynes

MK9 3DE

01908 231401

info@travisbead.com

www.travisbead.com

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ThanksSee you again soon.