Suppliers of non-digital toolkits that empower and

This site is a destination for Digital, Tech and Startups to purchase physical toolkits that will both empower and aid collaboration including Planning Poker Cards

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4 new arrivals but only 3 you can buy...

What an exciting month November has proved to be and even more so for bringing new products to the market, this is despite during our last quarter update saying we weren't on the look out for new any new products.

But we love a good product curation at StudioAlt and once again we've been hunting to source some really exciting toolkits for the UK Digital community. 

  The Design Deck Imagine having a Design Textbook or Manual but presented in beautifully crafted playing cards. Learn Graphic Design while playing cards with these useful tools for graphic designers and for non-designers wanting to learn the essentials of graphic design.

   View The Product Here

Code:Deck We are delighted to launch the Code:Deck playing cards. That's right, right playing cards, not so much toolkits but more a standard playing card deck that features a code excerpt describing the code in one of may programming languages. The cards offer a wide selection of programming languages, from C# to Java.

  View The Product Here 

Pixel Ruler The ultimate tool for responsive screen size sketching. Heavy-duty gauge stainless steel ruler with pixel increments. Markers for mobile, tablet and widescreen laptop sizing. 

  View The Product Here

Poppy We did say you could only buy three of our new arrivals and that's because the fourth arrival is our new daughter Poppy. Poppy was born on 18th November and is settling into her new environment just nicely. The one challenge that we've got is to fit Poppy's initials into the business as the ALT of StudioAlt comes from the initials of our family - Ashleigh, Lilly and Tony. All suggestions welcome...

    The first three will make perfect gifts for Christmas to your friends and colleagues, or even tools to help with Design. As for Poppy, she is our little gift to ourselves.

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StudioAlt's complete guide to UI Stencils & Sketchpads

This month we are re-visiting some of our biggest and most popular blog posts and making sure you have access to these blogs in an easy, single place of access. We did something similar with our Planning Poker Guide and now here is our UI Stencils & Sketchpads mammoth blog...

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StudioAlt's complete Agile Planning Poker guide

Over the past few months we've pulled together some mammoth blog posts on Planning Poker. Here they all are, in an easy, single place of access:

Card tricks with Planning Poker

The first area I wanted to improve using Agile was how we approached estimating.  This is widely considered the most challenging aspect of software project management, to determine how long the work will take to complete.  Armed with my pack of Planning Poker Cards we went about estimating our user stories.   

How to use Planning Poker Cards

In our previous blog post we talked about the introduction of Planning Poker Cards into our working environment and how it was promptly received.  

This video post demonstrates how to use Planning Poker Cards and steps you through the different permutations.  

What do the Planning Poker numbers represent?

A common question I get asked is why are the cards not 1 to 10, why do we have to confuse matters by utilising this  Fibonacci  sequence?  There are a number of different views to why  Fibonacci  has been deployed, however, Mike Cohn, the man responsible for making Planning Poker Cards readily available, chose these numbers after many experiments because they appeared to work best in long period of time for various teams. 

Planning Poker Cards with remote teams

When running Agile one of the challenges we are faced with is the ability to conduct Agile Planning Poker sessions with distributed teams.  With the increase of remote teams, freelancers or home working, it’s often not practical to use the traditional Planning Poker Cards.  

StudioAlt have explored, tried and summarised some alternative approaches to help you overcome the challenge of using Planning Poker with remote teams

  5 hacks to maximise your Planning Poker session

Over the last month we’ve gone into detail on how to implement  Agile Planning Poker  within the workplace and deep-dived into the  number sequence  and using planning cards with  remote teams .  In this blog post we give you five hacks to help you get the most of your sessions

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User Experience UK Awards 2014

This October will see the the second UXUK Awards held in Microsoft, Cardinal Place - London. The awards recognise excellence in user-focused digital and exist to celebration great and innovative UX offerings.  We caught up with the team at UXUK to get a taste of what to expect from the Awards....

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The results from the third quarter

This is starting to become a regular thing, writing about our latest quarter performance. The posts are regularly topping our list of most popular content, we receive encouraging feedback and hope it helps build trust with our Customers. From the beginning our business reputation has been built to offer transparency, and we personally love doing them and hope that our insights can help others starting out in Business.

  Last quarters review focused on our second product range, UI Stencils, along with the launch of our German and Canadian store. We're delighted with the uptake of the Stencils and Sketchpads which have helped us increase our quarterly sales to just over 550 sales. This is an encouraging increase from the 392 we sold within Quarter Two.

  Quarter Three

  However, we've not had the same success with our German store which we shut down within weeks of opening. Why? Our translation and interpretation of the adverts which drive Customers to our site was completely wrong. We were hemorrhaging money and energy on chasing sales with a language we knew little about, so we made the decision to focus on other, more lucrative, areas of the business. We aren't getting hung-up on this, to run a lean business you must recognise when something isn't working then quickly stop and move on. We are still selling to Germany via Amazon Marketplace which accounted for 109 sales, an increase from last quarter of only 29 sales. Talking of Europe, we have also welcomed other sales from far-away including Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia and Romania. 

    Hello Google, Apple and Amazon

  You can imagine our delight when you see three of the biggest Tech companies buying from our store. We were super stoked this quarter when we saw the orders coming in from Google, Apple then Amazon. It is comforting to know that we’re considered by three of the biggest companies, not just in Technology but across all sectors, to supply toolkits that will empower them to do their jobs.

  New Products

  We signed off Quarter Two with the aim of stocking a 3rd product to compliment the Planning Poker Cards and UI Stencils. We've done that and then some with the addition of two new products, UX Cards andLeuchtturm Whiteline notebooks. 

  With these two products it demonstrates a pivot from our original aim of being a website stocking Agile Planning Poker Cards to now positioning ourselves as a supplier of Stationery to Digital Agencies. We do consider ourselves different to stationery suppliers such as Staples, Ryman and Viking by being a supplier that understands and gets Digital. 

  Numbers

    What Next

  To sign-off we should also share with you our 4th Quarters target which is a realistic 600 sales, only a slight, yet positive increase from this quarter. We are comfortable with the four product sets we have and have no plans to source any more this quarter. Instead we want to be the best amongst our competitors and we can only do that by maintaining our ethos of providing remarkable and meaningful content. 

Its going to be an exciting end of year as well as planning to celebrate our 1st Birthday in December. 

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Post-It Plus App - It's going to be Huge!

Go to the iOS App store and you'll see a familiar logo within the Best New App category; Post-It. Released on Thursday, the Post-It Plus app takes the momentum from collaboration sessions and keeps it rolling into the digital arena. The app allows you to capture your post-it notes, organise and share...

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Super-Rapid Prototyping - Using UI Stencils and Sketchpads to Complete Rapid Prototyping

  Rapid prototyping, the process of creating a quick mock up of a design before it is validated further by designers and developers, has just got even quicker. A vital part of development, whether it be for an app or a website, a rapid prototype is a first look at...

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Here's our Notebook range, and guess what, they aren't Moleskines!

Ever since we started in December 2013 we've been focused on supplying more than just Agile Planning Poker Cards and have been vocal about our desire to stock different products including UI Stencils and Notebooks. We've since brought in additional products, including the UI Stencils, and now believe it’s the...

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Using UI Stencils and Sketchpads for User Testing

So you created a fantastic user interface design, now for the next step; user testing. Testing tells you that everything is where it should be for the best effect, that all the necessary options are clear and available and that the entire concept is user friendly. There are various ways in which this process can be implemented, but we prefer the quickest, easiest and most cost effective method.

This method is simple; once you have used your UI tools for rapid prototyping and honed that down to the finished product using the Responsive Sketch Pad and appropriate stencils the next step is to test the user flow using the same tools.

The fact that your design is completely to-scale and is effectively a 2D model gives you a much clearer idea of user flow than simple pen and paper sketches.

  Why Use UI Sketchpads and Stencils for User Testing?

Let’s say, for example, you used the Browser Sketch Pad and Website Stencil Kit to create your design. The pages of the sketchpad can easily be removed and placed on a screen to get a clear idea of how the finished product will look and perform. Since these tools are 100% to-scale to your chosen browser, you can see exactly how your design will look to a user. This enables you to make those tiny tweaks at the planning stage rather than waiting until the design has been built to see what needs work.

These UI stencils and sketch pads are changing the way designers and developers work. They empower designers because they enable them produce to-scale sketches of the user interfaces and test their ideas. All this can now be done before any coding has begun which saves time and a great deal of money.

Relieve the Stress of Designing

Designing a new app or website is exciting but it can also be extremely stressful. The digital world is saturated, so your website or app must have mass appeal and it must stand out from the crowd. It needs that extra special something to capture the attention and encourage users to come back time and time again.

By using the precision cut UI stencils and sketchpad designed specifically for your platform, the guesswork is eliminated completely.

Even purist designers who have always used regular pen and paper are now trading in these tools for a mechanical pencil, precision cut UI stencils and UI sketchpads. And even at the early rapid prototyping stage the effect of using such stencils and sketchpads is much more professional and aesthetically pleasing.

When you consider the costs of these tools then it is little wonder we are confident that the future of user interface design lies with UI stencils and sketchpads.

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Introducing UX Kits

This Summer we have been engaged with a leading New York Digital Agency on making sure our UK customers are once again well place when it comes to getting access to the leading Digital Toolkits.   UX Kits are the brainchild of Eric Miller Designer, a digital agency established in...

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Using UI Stencils and Sketch Pads for a Collaborative Design Process

There are times when you will work alone and times when you will have to work with others. Some of us are team players and at our most creative when bouncing ideas off other people, some of us work better alone in a quiet room, it’s as simple as that. 

Two artistic brains working together on a new user interface design can be a recipe for disaster. Especially if you both have very different ideas about how it should look. Working in harmony is possible of course; you just need the right tools. 

If this sounds too good to be true then prepare to be pleasantly surprised. Designers the length and breadth of the country are working together with equal input and fewer fiery arguments. Imagine how it used to work; heads bent over a desk, pencils flying across paper as a team of designers create ideas they hope will meld together to produce a final design everyone is happy with. What happens today is very different.

Whether working in a pair or as part of a larger team, when all participants are armed with UI stencils and a sketchpad, coming up with cohesive ideas could not be easier. Everyone works from the same page, quite literally, and the designs unfold before your eyes. Of course, praise and constructive criticism continues to be a valuable part of the process. 

Working together with Website Stencil Kits and Responsive Sketch Pads makes the entire experience more enjoyable and much more productive. It is also a great way of expanding your horizons by seeing what your peers bring to the table. 

Using the stencils and sketchpads in a collaborative scenario allows you to swap ideas and try different concepts, together. No one designer is left out of the process, everyone’s ideas are valid. And if you’re the strong silent type, you can just let your designs do the talking.

There is a stencil and sketchpad for every device and every platform. And for those designing a PC based user interface, the Browser Sketch Pad is an absolute Godsend.

Forget good old pen and paper because as far as user interface design is concerned everybody should be using UI stencils and sketchpads. Considering how simple yet ingenious they are the prices will come as a shock. 

If you intend to collaborate with another designer on a project, you owe it to yourself to make use of the latest tools available and ensure the process is as stress free as possible. There is everything to love about UI stencils and sketchpads. If you haven't already got yours it's time to buy as this trend is set to revolutionise the way we design user interfaces forever.

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Using UI Stencils and Sketch Pads to Work with the Client to Define User Requirements

A web designer’s work usually falls into two categories; they are either developing their own ideas or working on a remit from a client. The latter is infinitely more stressful and has a much lower margin for error. If the client doesn't like the design you’ll have wasted your time and effort and chances are you won't get paid. So what can you do to make the process easier? New inventions come and go in the world of design but it’s usually the simplest ideas that shine.   

Working with the client directly to produce a finished article that everyone is satisfied with has its pros and cons. One particular con is indecisive clients who frequently change their mind and keep you running back to the drawing board. Thankfully, things have got easier in this area thanks to a couple of simple tools that are revolutionising web design. These tools are UI Stencils and Sketch Pads. With these in your corner it couldn’t be easier to work with your client to define their user requirements.

The Benefits of UI Stencils and Sketchpads when Working with Clients

Web design vision can be lost in translation as the words of one person can create a completely different idea for another. This is where UI Stencils and Sketchpads come into their own. If, for example, a client has commissioned a UI for an Android handset, you can say goodbye to all the to-ing and fro-ing of submitting endless designs and waiting for a response. The Android Handset Sketch Pad has numerous to-scale replications so you can submit several designs at the same time. This makes your life easier and gives the client the luxury of choosing the one closest to their requirements.

You can also impress your clients by the very fact that you use only the finest cutting edge technology. No client will be disappointed when they see their visions come to life thanks to the Android Stencil Kit oriPhone Stencil Kit. And if you have a client looking for a UI designed website rather than an app theWebsite Starter Kit includes everything you need to create a stunning design.  

    Ultimately, if you are working to a client’s specifications, it’s important to remember they are always right. Even if you disagree! You should absolutely give advice and provide input but it is your job to work with your client rather than against them. This will ensure their user requirements are in place at the end of the project and they walk away satisfied. Stencils and Sketchpads have made it a joy to recreate the exact UI design your client is looking for. In addition, investing in the best tools will bring your more work as well as earn you a reputation for being helpful and cooperative rather than difficult. 

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How UI Stencils and Sketchpads Can Assist With UI Design

User Interface (UI) stencils and sketchpads are the latest buzzwords in all areas of web and app development. The aim of user interface design is to make a website, app or piece of software as easy to use as possible. This is why you’ll often hear it described as user friendly.

Even in today's ultra high-tech world designers and developers will start projects by creating preliminary sketches of the finished product in use. This is where tools like UI stencils and responsive sketchpads are exceptionally useful.

The gung ho approach of jumping in at the deep end and developing as you go is fast disappearing; that process of trial and error just doesn’t cut it anymore. So how exactly can the entire design process be improved and how can UI stencils and sketchpads assist? Read on to discover how using these tools can save time and money whilst creating an enjoyable, interactive experience for clients. 

Finished Product

Using precision cut stencils will deliver a much better idea of how the finished user interface will look. As we all know, many websites do not translate well from PC to mobile device. However, by using this specialist equipment you can immediately see how the design will look across a variety of screen sizes. As 40% of all web traffic is now estimated to come from mobile devices, getting the design right first time is imperative.

All Major Platforms

Whether you’re working on a design for Android or iPhone, there is a stencil for every platform. In addition, the sketchpad supports every platform to-scale making the entire process much less time consuming.

Being able to mock up the design to-scale is a massive benefit of UI design as it does away with the need for scaling designs manually to fit certain parameters. Each stencil is also equipped with an interaction technique table which helps guide you in the right direction, making user interface design easier than ever. As you can imagine the iPhone stencil is hugely popular and it has been enabling designers to get their ideas into practice faster than ever.

Time and Cost Effective

UI stencils and sketchpads are extremely cost-effective. These simple tools give designers everything they need to get the job right the first time and cuts down on the time usually spent during the design process.

Whether you’re a designer yourself or have hired others to build something for you, using UI stencils and sketchpads is a far more productive approach. In the cut-throat digital world designers must do what they can to get their work out there in the shortest possible time, and these tools allow you to do just that. For those new to the web design game, there are even website starter kits available which provide you with everything you need to start the process.

  No Need to Work from Memory

Stencils will help ensure nothing is overlooked in your haste to complete the design. They include all the most widely used interactive features including calls to action, user icons, camera icons and social media icons. In using such tools you leave nothing to chance (or memory) and this will serve to revolutionise your UI design process.

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Hello Google, Hello Apple, thanks for your custom, please do call back soon!

It’s always interesting to see the names of the companies buying from us at StudioAlt. You can imagine how super stoked we were this week when, not one, but two tech giants bought from our website and marketplaces.

Google were the first, the search engine giant checked out with, how fitting, a batch of Android Stencils for their UK based Shoreditch campus.

Our week was complete when Apple visited our store to purchase Website Stencils whilst also to take advantage of the free Website Browser Sketchpad download.

    It is comforting and some what encouraging to know that we’re considered by two of the biggest companies, not just in Technology but across all sectors, to supply UI Stencils and non digital toolkits that will empower them to do their jobs.

Who knows, these purchases could end up as a feature in the next operating systems for both Google and Apple.

Here's to hoping that both companies will be available for a testimonial or quote...

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Leigh White is co-founder of Agile_NE, a monthly meetup that talk all things Agile Development Methodologies for people involved in software development in the North East. Leigh will be guest blogging on a regular basis to summarise the recent meetup sessions.  After a week or two of rework, last week...

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Agile Software Development in Medical Health

This week’s guest post comes from Stuart Maitland, Medical Student at Newcastle University and award-winning director of mHealthful, a company dedicated to improving m-healthcare. His company are also advocates of Agile Software Development and today shares with us their use of Agile development and how it's aiding mhealth. 

  mHealthful develops medical apps for patients and healthcare professionals. The name comes from mHealth, or ‘Mobile Health’, which we believe holds huge potential to significantly improve the quality of healthcare across the world.

  In this blog post I’ll talk through the development of our first product, Mediwikis, which is a collaborative learning website and app for medical students.

    The problem was clear: students were sharing notes with each other through closed social media groups in the form of Word documents, but the notes were far from 100% accurate, and there was no way to fix any mistakes. The notes were also lost to the next year’s medical cohort, so there was no real transfer of information.

The open-source Mediawiki application lent itself extremely well to this problem, and this was quickly implemented, and information added. At this point, although the information the students were seeking was largely there, the site was extremely ‘rough around the edges’, but with a minimum of development time was a minimum viable product that supported using analytics to measure the activity on the site, and perform experiments to improve meeting of goals.

In addition to using analytics, we ran a number of focus groups with users, finding out not just how they used the site, but why, and to what purpose. We found that while a lot of information was available on desktop sites, not a great deal was available on smartphones, and this frustrated the users, who wanted to be able to find out information on the wards, or on the bus on the way to working in hospital.

This breakthrough led us to develop mobile apps and a responsive website which allowed students to view the site on the go, wherever they were. We also realised just how useful having users involved at an early stage could be, and organised further focus groups to further probe their needs and unmet outcomes.

Although it was hard work, the other great thing was that the users then loved the app so much, they were telling all their friends about it, which meant that the majority of medical students at Newcastle downloaded the app in the first few weeks after launch.

We’re now using this agile process in all of our developments, reaching out to users at an extremely early stage of development to find their unmet needs, and meeting them ourselves to create the app they would want to use. I personally believe agile development should be applied further in healthcare, and work should be performed to make it compatible with the research and validation process of those technologies.

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Pentel Graphgear 1000 Review

Following our recent launch of UX toolkits, we want to understand from the experts about their choice of tools. This week’s guest post comes from Eddy Hope, a freelance web designer, creator of the Calendex and passionate about all things Journals and Mechanical Pencils.  

  I have been using Mechanical pencils for a little while now and have discovered that finding the perfect one is rather difficult. In order to be in contention a mech pencil has to meet certain criteria as it’s what I use for my bullet journalling and drawings/sketches. Will the popular pentel graphgear 1000 pass the test?

  I came across this particular pencil just from browsing the web, as you do, and came across the Pentel Graphgear 1000 on a number of blog posts featuring ‘My Top Ten Mechanical Pencils’ themed posts. This pencil stood out to me more than the others because of its looks. It’s gorgeous! I looked into it further by watching youtube reviews of this particular item and my desire to own this pencil grew. So I went to amazon and bought one relatively cheaply in comparison to other sites selling the same thing. (I’d post a link but it’s not there for that price anymore)

  I had a delivery at work and I knew what it was as I’d been eagerly anticipating this pencil and ripped of the packaging straight away. The pencil looks better than it does online. Aesthetically this is one of the best looking pencils I’ve came across.

      The next thing that I noticed is the size and weight of the pentel graphgear 1000. It’s a very heavy and very long pencil. I practised writing with it and it writes very well but the weight, dear me, causes some serious fatigue of the hand after a while. And I’m no weakling but writing or drawing with this pencil for long periods of time gets very uncomfortable. As the pencil is so long and with the unique clip (more on this below) coupled with the whole metal body makes it very top heavy.

  It also has a retractable nib, this is a big thing for me. Call me weird but I don’t appreciate being stabbed in the leg or torso by a very sharp point. The nib is excellent, I loved it. You expose the nib simply by pressing down on the graphite release on the top and out pops the nib along with a small amount of the graphite so it’s ready to go in one click. When you’re done with the pencil you press the back-end of the clip which releases the nib mechanism with a very satisfying firm thud back inside the pencil. Despite other reviews I never experienced any ‘give’ in the point or nib, it is a very solid and sturdy point with no movement.

  The one thing I didn’t like about the nib is once it’s out to begin writing, the distance from grip to the paper is quite considerable. Personally I like to have my hand quite far down a pencil and I can’t do that with this one. That’s just me though, a lot of people have no issues.

  The clip, is beautiful, definitely the most eye-catching feature on the pencil. It is solid and grips to pretty much anything you attach it to. Also as stated above it doubles up as the ‘retractable’ portion of the nib mechanism.

  It comes with a rubber which is just standard on most mech pencils, I very rarely use rubbers so mine remained very much unused but performed well when tested. Removing the rubber is also the way you add more graphite.

  The Grip, looks great but I didn’t like it. It has little rubber bubbles above the point to aid grip but I found it slippery. Maybe I just have sweaty hands :-s but it’s just not usable for long periods. For me.

  The Pentel Graghgear 1000 comes in a variety of sizes: 0.3mm, 0.5mm, 0.7mm and 0.9mm leads. I use 0.5mm so the leads are still thin enough to do very fine details but aren’t thin enough to snap when pressure is applied.

  Price, this pencil is ridiculously priced on some websites I’ve came across coming in at almost £50 on some. But you can get this pencil for between £10-£20. This is way more than I’m comfortable with spending on a pencil when there’s much cheaper, very capable alternatives. You can get it here from Cult Pens for around £12.

  To conclude, the Pentel Graphgear 1000 is a brilliant, solid, well made pencil that will suit many people, just not me unfortunately. I wanted so much to love this pencil but it just wasn’t meant to be.