Design & development, web & mobile | Milo Creative

Milo is a design and development studio based in Shoreditch, London. We create apps, websites and games that educate, entertain and delight people of all ages.

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Connor's work experience at Milo

Budding app developer Connor joined us during his half term break from school to get a feel for what it is like working in an app development studio. We set him to task designing and developing his very own app in just three days.

Day 1: Connor came up with a great app idea called Health + and investigated the market place and business potential of the app. He wrote an iTunes description for the app and sketched some initial screenshots to clearly and succinctly communicate the essence of the idea to rest of the team at milo.  

Day 2: He started to develop a prototype of the app using codiqa. Codiqa is a powerful drag-and-drop builder for creating cross-platform HTML5 mobile apps and it lets you output real, usable code. 

Day 3: Connor continued to refine his prototype in preparation for a client presentation of his idea in the afternoon. 

I'm sure we'll be hearing a great deal more from Connor and look forward to seeing his first app appear in the App Store any day soon. 

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Justin Fletcher & Henri take No1 & No2 slots in Education

A first for us that we've just kicked our very own Henri Le Worm app off the number 1 slot with JigSongs - the third app in the Justin's World series of apps that we are making with Justin Fletcher. We now have 4 top 25 apps in the education category... Woohoo!

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Henri Le Worm climbs to number 1 slot

Henri Le Worm climbs to the No 1 slot in Education after being featured by Apple in it's New & Noteworthy section. Magnifique!

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Making 'Henri Le Worm'

Charlotte Salt & Olivier Blanc got in touch with us to discuss a story idea that they had been developing for a while. After some initial brainstorming sessions we began working together to develop Henri Le Worm, Oli & Charlottes first venture into the world of apps.

Planning & Concept Development

We started with a process of user interaction design, storyboarding and defining the look & feel of the app. This involved sketching scenes, user interaction design, paper prototyping, visual mood boards and planning the approach to both character & scene animation. 

Artwork & Prototyping

We worked closely with illustrator Nick Stoney to develop the app's artwork. We began by creating visuals for some of the key scenes, props, branding & of course the characters. We loosely sketched ideas before moving into creating full colour vector artwork in Photoshop. This meant that ideas could be shared between the team quickly & artwork could be shared with children to ascertain its appeal with the target audience.

We created a prototype of the user interaction and tested the app with children of differing age ranges. This helped us refine the user experience, the flow of the story and develop an effective approach to animation.

Production Workflow

As well as informing the user experience the prototype helped set the requirements for the production workflow. To aid development we created some custom animation software that converted the highly elaborate animations created by our Adobe Flash animators to a custom binary format & high performing spritesheets that were fed to our Cocos2d application. This enabled us to minimise memory usage and allowed us to reach 60 fps animation on both iPhone and iPad.

Production 

The app was developed in scenes and tested iteratively with children as the project life cycle progressed. As the app reached a good state of maturity we recorded the voice over with Simon Pegg and layered music and SFX across the app. 

Testing, Release & Launch

The app was exhaustively tested across a suite devices, then 'Hey Presto, Voila!' the app was ready to submit to Apple for approval. Less than a week after it's submission the app was available to download from the AppStore. 

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Apple selects Justin's World as one of it's all time favourite apps!

We're made up that our 'Justin's World - Goldilocks and the Three Bears' app has been selected as one of Apples 'All Time Favourite' apps.

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We had lots of fun at the launch of the Henri Le Worm app over at Brasserie Blanc in Covent Garden today where we joined Olivier Blanc, Charlotte Salt, Raymond Blanc, Natalia Traxel and Simon Pegg for a celebratory breakfast and kids party.

The best part was an interactive cooking demonstration with Raymond Blanc. Lola absolutely loved cooking the Chocolate Mousse and Mayonnaise Mouse. She is now an even bigger fan of cooking & of course Henri Le Worm.

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Meet the Creator

Olivier Blanc from 'Henri Le Worm' gave us his thoughts on making his first app, the impact that apps are having on children's education and what it's like working with Milo Creative. 

Tell us about your first app Henri Le Worm?

It was created by Charlotte Salt and myself and is essentially an app where we want to encourage kids to engage with food and nature in a positive way. There is no preaching, rather it is delivered within a fantastic story and 8 hilarious characters.

How did you come up with the idea for Henri Le Worm?

I came up with the idea when I saw someone mocked up in a newspaper with  the face of a celebrity on the body of a worm and the wheels began to turn .... That yolked with my love of kids & nature, sprinkle a bit of imagination and hey presto voila!

What impact do you think Apps are having on children's education?

I would imagine quite a lot.  I know some state schools are using iPads and the numbers are increasing. Learning should always be fun and I think the tablet can offer a fun, learning experience that conventional means sometimes can't deliver.

Why did you choose to work with milo and what was it like working with us?

They cost me an arm and a leg, Charlotte has sold all her jewellery and I now live in a box. Apart from those little details, we came across Milo through doing some research on developers, we met them and liked their track record and their energy as people.  Once you have a strong idea it's about getting other people to share and believe in it, we felt Milo did that for us.

What are your future plans for Henri Le Worm?

If all goes to plan we aim to produce four apps a year, each one falling into a particular season, with the occasional spin off. We would also like to see Henri and his friends in paperback, cartoons and much much more. But one step at a time....

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Entertain your kids this summer holidays

We're thrilled to have two apps that we created - Me Books and Justin's World - featured in Apple's 'Entertain Your Kids: Apps for the Summer Holidays' section of the AppStore. 

Two out of nine isn't bad. Lets see if our new app 'Henri Le Worm' narrated by Simon Pegg can make it three. Henri Le Worm has been submitted to Apple for review and should be in the AppStore very soon. 

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Justin's World App is Editors Choice in the AppStore

One week from launch of our first app for CBeebies star Justin Fletcher, Golidlocks & The Three Bears has been picked as editors choice by Apple to coincide with the kickstart of half term for many children across the UK. 

The impact of this on downloads has been tremendous and the app has shot to the number 1 slot in education, top 4 paid and top 27 grossing on iPad.   

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Discover how the UK Parliament works

If you would like to know more about how the UK Parliament works, or just need a refresher course, then Parliament Revealed is a great website for you.

Parliament Revealed provides a video guide to the oldest parliamentary democracy in the world, by speaking directly to the MPs, Peers and Staff who serve there. To start with why not watch this film to get yourself up to speed.

The website is aimed primarily at parliamentarians and civil society in emerging democracies, however it is open to anyone keen to understand how the UK Parliament works.

The website and films were made in collaboration with Hansard Society and Lord Waverley. 

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Visit Stratford app on BBC News

The BBC featured our app Visit Stratford twice this week! Last night on BBC London News (from 19:21) and on Sunday on BBC Breakfast (from 21:10) as a must have app for anyone visiting Stratford this summer.

SRP and the Newham Council have been working hard at promoting it, through the printed Stratford guide, maps and other collateral. They are going to distribute thousands of leaflets for the app in the coming days, when millions of visitors will flock to Stratford for the Olympic Games.

Visit Stratford has also been featured in the Guardian’s New and notable apps, Mobile Marketing Magazine, Android News, Newham Recorder and the Visit London blog, amongst others.

If you haven’t yet downloaded it, please do so at www.stratfordlondonapp.com (updated iPhone and Android versions available).

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A new home for milo...

... and a new view from milo towers. We managed to move into our new office on Friday in just one day, we're mostly unpacked, connected and open for business as usual. Looking forward to investigating Brick Lane for new lunch time experiences and having our first meeting in Rough Trade. 

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We're moving!

We're very excited to be moving offices this week to the super hip Old Truman Brewery located on Brick Lane, Shoreditch. As many of you will be aware The Old Truman Brewery is right in the centre of East London's revolutionary arts and media quarter, and is home to a hive of creative businesses as well as exclusively independent shops, galleries, markets, bars and restaurants. 

The finely tuned mix of business, arts and leisure has created an environment unique in London and we're excited at the new opportunities that moving to such a vibrant community will bring. 

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Final days shoot on Parliament Revealed

The sun shone for the final filming day on Parliament Revealed. We were filming Lord Waverley for a thirty minute documentary that we are making with Hansard Society. The film will be part of a website that enables politicians from Central Asia and South Caucasus (CASC) countries to learn more about how the UK’s Parliamentary system works.

The website will host footage of Parliament at work and filmed interviews with MPs and Peers that explore and explain the fundamental principles and workings of the UK Parliamentary system.

Parliament Revealed stems from Lord Waverley’s activities in developing the cooperation agreements and observation of the desire amongst politicians from Central Asia and South Caucasus (CASC) countries and elsewhere for accessible information about the UK’s Parliamentary system.

This initiative is timely as it is applicable to global events, with many in the Arab world for example wishing to have it explained how and why the Westminster arena operates in the way that it does.

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We're looking for an experienced CodeIgniter developer

We are seeking an experienced CodeIgniter developer to join our team and be part of the development of a web application. At its core, it will be a collaborative project management application (think Basecamp) with a focus on long-term business strategies. The front-end layer will be built on Backbone MVC architecture and will communicate with the back-end using a RESTful API.

Your main responsibility will be to build the back-end layer using CodeIgniter, and you will also be involved in strategic decisions, such as advising on the most suitable solution for a scalable product (PHP cloud-hosting and alternatives) and for the integration with external services such as Vimeo.

You will work with a multi-disciplinary team of designers and developers, and be involved in all aspects of product development, from consulting on UI/UX and planning information architecture to the obvious: implementing quality code. 

Experience with CodeIgniter is essential, as well as a track record of building, maintaining and monitoring applications on the LAMP stack. Experience with similar PHP frameworks like CakePHP or Zend would also be helpful. Knowledge of best practices in building scalable applications is highly desirable.

Responsibilities:

Involvement in product planning from initiation to implementation

Back-end architectural planning and implementation

3rd party API integration

Technical documentation and peer code-review

Communicating amongst a small development team

Skills and requirements:

CodeIgniter, object-oriented, MVC architecture

MySQL (advanced knowledge of non-ORM SQL)

git

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We're on the buses!

We're very happy to to launch the Visit Stratford app on iPhone and Android this week after an intense but rewarding development process to create a cross platform promotional app for Stratford ahead of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London this summer.

What's particularly exciting for us now is seeing the kickstart of an innovative marketing campaign by the project sponsors - SRP, Newham London Borough Council, and London & Partners - to promote the app. 

The marketing campaign involves both traditional marketing and social media campaigns across twitter and Facebook. We're particularly excited by bus adverts featuring the app that are heading there way across london for the next month or so. Teams of volunteers will also be heading to Westfield with HTC handsets to showcase the app to shoppers. It's a first for us and we'll be studying the impact that these marketing techniques have on downloads in the coming weeks. 

Please take a look at a great app that we're working on. No doubt many of you will make the trip to London's Stratford City in the next couple of months and this FREE app will give you all the information you need.

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Draw something

Despite being one of the apps of the year (50+ million downloads and 14 million daily users in April) I only came across Draw Something a few days ago while reading an interview with Simon Oliver on the Guardian. We had the pleasure of collaborating with Simon on several projects, and indeed the app immediately reminded me of one of them: Magic Paintbox.

However, this is not (just) a self-promotional post. Draw Something is a joy to play, and I think it is also a great playground for designers and communicators, or anyone who wants to convey ideas through images. There are a few things that we can learn from Draw Something and its gameplay:

* It's storytelling, not just drawing. When you're guessing a word, you see the drawing being played back as it was drawn by the other player. So when your turn comes, you're not simply drawing a picture, you are setting a scene, introducing characters, guiding your fellow player to the a-ha moment.

* You don't need millions of colours and plenty of brushes to get your idea across. Most of the time two will be enough.

* Given the scarcity of means, you can use colour to draw the attention to what really matters in your composition.