It’s been a while. Apologies for that! But its been really hectic here at Border Crossing Media. In fact, that’s an understatement we’ve been swamped! From exciting new projects to last-minute presentations, we’ve been up to a really strange mix of things over the past few months. So, here’s a brief overview of what we’ve been working on.
User experience consultancy
- The Scottish Government asked us to design a series of workshops for some of the World’s leading experts on innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.
- The Business Gateway Edinburgh asked us to help them start a continuous improvement process focused on the ever-increasing number of micro-business.
- A funded start-up looking to makes waves in the bespoke gift market engaged us to assist with the design, development and launch of their ecommerce platform.
- An experienced publishing team engaged us to develop and test a slate of concepts for their first digital magazine.
- An industry-leading financial services company engaged us to scope and prototype their new client portal.
- An award-winning (an MBE no less!) exporter asked us to assist with the redesign of a highly successful ecommerce website.
- A personal training company engaged us to reposition their business. One year on this has resulted in 300% increase in the volume of inbound leads generated.
- A niche consultancy company engaged us to help them maximise the impact of a prestigious speaking engagement at a leading industry conference.
- An author looking to publish the second volume of their self-published book engaged us to review and optimise his existing offline marketing and digital points of conversion.
- A start-up that wants to revolutionise the world of market research asked us to develop their concept and prototype a number of different approaches to consider.
- A local brand asked us to help them develop a story that would resonate with investors looking to back their ambitious plans for international expansion.
- And last but certainly not least, we’ve been engaged by one of the UK’s top 5 food bloggers to overhaul the information architecture of their existing blog – no small job when you consider the volume of content and categorisation options available.
- We’ve also continued to provide user experience support to a growing number of Creative/Branding, Digital Marketing and Technical Development agencies. Even though this is currently done in a white-label capacity, we should have some exciting announcements to share in 2016.
In-house projects
Developing a concept that focused on addressing the long-term health care challenges facing the UK with the amazing team at CultivateHQ.
Talks, Presentations & Conferences
But we’ve not only been doing client-work, we’ve also been asked to give several talks and presentations too:
Districts of Creativity – Reverse Mission 2015
The Districts of Creativity (DC) Network unites 13 of the most creative and innovative regions around the world. The network was formed to foster the exchange of best practices and experiences of stimulating creativity and innovation in business, culture and education.
We designed and facilitated a reflective session for the 47 delegates who arrived for a 3-day tour of Scotland. So, we developed a series of workshops in collaboration with:
- Nathan Fulwood from Tayburn
- Janine Matheson from Creative Edinburgh
- Fares Moussa from Ammoun Voyages
That would help stimulate connections and perhaps more importantly the sharing of resources following the completion of the Reverse Mission.
Judging by the reaction of the delegates the reflective session was an overwhelming success. We’re currently developing the outputs into an actionable resource we can’t wait to finalise and share.
Content for Everyone
Esther was asked to present an Essential Communications training seminar aimed at public service organisations and NGOs for Holyrood Events. Esther’s presentation was titled: Content for Everyone and provided delegates with an overview of how to generate content for nation-wide audience.
The feedback on Twitter was top-notch so this is looking like the first of many seminars we’ll be presenting for Holyrood Events.
Check out the slides on SlideShare.
FinTech Scotland 2015
Run by Scot-Tech Engagement this conference explored technological innovation across the financial services sector. Given what we do we had to support and contribute. So, we did – and we’re not just talking about the badges, sketchbooks and brownies! Having a stand at the conference gave us the opportunity to meet some really interesting people too.
All in all, this was a great event for us. It’s certainly led to some interesting conversations. We’re also looking forward to supporting the upcoming Big Data Scotland 2015 conference, so do let us know if you’ll be attending too.
Gateway to Investment
The Business Gateway Edinburgh runs a Gateway to Investment programme that is focused on helping train and equip those seeking investment with the skills and knowledge they need to secure it.
We continued to contribute to the programme by delivering two presentations on how user experience strategy and user centred design can help entrepreneurs develop a compelling case for investment. We’ve also provided follow-up support to several participants since our presentations and look forward to doing more in the future.
Rounding-up
As you can probably imagine the past few months have been both incredibly rewarding and tiring. There’s no let-up in sight but that’s the price of growth.
In truth we’re looking to get through what’s on our plates over the coming months. As 2016 is likely to see us making some exciting announcements in terms of new partners, exciting client-work (we can actually showcase) and perhaps most importantly how we plan to grow over the coming 12 months.
