Client brief

In early 2007 Brent Hoberman (founder of lastminute.com) was planning the launch of his new venture - mydeco. The goal was to revolutionise the way that people shop for their home.

The site brings together some of the UK's best known furniture retailers. That combined with powerful search, community features and an online magazine with articles from top designers creates a one stop shop for budding designers.

We were briefed to create a next generation room planner that would impress, and empower users while remaining very easy to use.

Our approach

We went through an extensive user research phase. Surveys were carried out, representative users interviewed and existing products tested. We also worked very closely with stakeholders to get to the bottom of the proposition.

Using these insights and adding a few Specialmoves we came up with a feature set and implementation plan to make the project a reality.

There were big challenges to overcome. mydeco had created a number of back-end features for searching products, dealing with user accounts and rendering 3D images. All this needed to be presented with an interface simple enough for complete beginners.

After lots of prototyping we decided to build the application on Adobe's Flex platform. This allowed us to quickly develop core technical functionality independently of visual and interaction design.

We constantly refined the user experience and visual design throughout the development process adapting the application to better hit the project goals.

The result

A unique, easy to use and powerful online application that has been extremely well received by users, and garnered several accolades including an FWA award, the E-consultancy Innovation Award 2008 in User Experience, plus IMA and BIMA nominations.