(this job ad is also placed in our jobs section)

What you’ll be doing

Develop advanced frontend Flash solutions for an international set of clients. The projects will differ from large campaigns to modules or containers intended for CMS-supported web applications. This is currently a project-based position with the possibility of full-time employment in the future.

Requirements

• Proven experience with developing in Flash (ActionScript 3.0)
• Independent problem solving skills
• Confident spoken and written English
• Experience of working in teams, using version control and collaborating online

Bonuses

• A computer science background
• Know-how with Flex
• Experience with Subversion and Basecamp
• Knowledge of PHP or interface design
• Involvement in the blogging/twittering/open source scene

Where

This is initially a project-based position, so location is unimportant. However, you may choose to work on-site in either our Copenhagen or Zurich offices, if desired.

Your application

Please send your application, CV and example projects to Frederik Cordes (frederik@spoiledmilk.dk). If you have any questions about this position, then please contact Frederik on +45 29 63 99 63.

As internet connections and servers get faster, we’re seeing more and more sites using autocomplete to assist their visitors in making complex searches in a snap. Unfortunately, a lot of these sites are styling their autocomplete results in a less-than-optimal fashion. Here’s three guidelines for how to style autocomplete results:

 

Google is a poster child for designing autocomplete results.

1) Highlight the differences, not the commonalities

You should always highlight the differences in your autocomplete results since your visitor will already be aware of what he has searched for. Also, when given a list of results with commonalities, it’s the differences in the results that are meaningful, not the elements that are being repeated (typically the search term).

Unfortunately, many sites highlight the search term – the commonality – as opposed to the differences. The popular jQuery autocomplete plugin even has this as its default styling, which could be the reason why so many people highlight their results this way. (Whenever you use open source plugins, take a second to think about the default styling and see if it actually makes sense.)

Guideline #1: highlight the differences in your results (preferably by making it bold).

2) Avoid visual clutter if results are simple

Unless your typical search result is going to extend over multiple lines, you should keep your results as clean as possible. Just highlight the differences (see the above guideline) and the active row.

Many sites use all sorts of different visual clues to separate even simple results, alternating row colors and horizontal lines being the two worst sinners. This is unnecessary clutter, which makes it difficult for your visitors to quickly scan the results you’re presenting them.

Guideline #2: don’t use alternating row colors and horizontal lines, unless your typical result is very lengthy (longer than a single line).

3) Only show a few results at a time

Don’t show anymore than 10 results, you can show more results on your actual search page, and if your your typical result is more than a single line you should probably show even less results in the autocomplete.

Autocomplete results are for quickly making a complex search query or selecting a specific item from a list of possible options. It shouldn’t be considered a replacement for an actual search page. Also, a visitor looking for very specific results will have no trouble finding them since she can quickly filter out everything that’s irrelevant by typing in a few extra characters.

Guideline #3: only show 10 or less results at a time (use a dedicated search page if you need to display more).

Show me the meaning

All of the above guidelines are about emphasizing the meaningful data. You want to put that in the spotlight and have everything else fade into the background (or not appear at all).

When getting back a list of suggestions for better search queries, it’s the differences in those results that are meaningful. When reading a list of search results or suggestions, it’s the text of each result that’s meaningful. And of course, when searching a huge database, it’s only the 10 most relevant results that are meaningful.

Good design is about emphasizing the meaningful data. This goes for styling autocomplete results too.

Last week, the new Creative Intern, Michael Jensen, started in Spoiled Milk’s Copenhagen office.

Michael is currently studying at KEA (Copenhagen School of Design & Technology) as a multimediadesigner (old-school term for webdesigner). He already has the mandatory Spoiled Milk beard and despite being Danish, he finds the weather especially cruel in Copenhagen this winter.

Michael will be working with us until end of April and will engage primarily in the creative side of both our external and internal work. We’re indeed looking forward to working with him for this period.

Isabel, one of our interns last year, is starting up an independently published, non-profit publication named “Selfmade Magazine”. She is looking for contributions, so hope some of you out there want to participate. We’ve included a full description from Isabel about the project.

—

“The first issue of “Selfmade Magazine” is standing in the starting blocks. In order to make it as many-sided and comprehensive as possible, I need your help! Participate with your photos, illustrations and texts!

The theme of this edition is “Man as ruler”. It is about the examination of the human species and an analysis of its actions. These may be topics such as environment, politics, war, but also abstract and banal everyday-life-situations. Let your imagination run free and be critical!

The format of the magazine is A4, holds about 60 pages and is printed in b/w. The cover will most likely be produced by screen-printing. In order to sell small editions, the issue will be send to book- and magazine-stores, like “Motto” or “pro qm” in Berlin, later on.

As you can see, the subject is quite open. Please send your ideas, concepts and submissions until March 20th, 2010 to hello@hirnkraut.com. It doesn’t matter if your submission has already been published as long as it fits in. Visuals naturally have to work in black and white.

If you have any questions and/or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I am looking forward to your contributions!

Best regards, Isabel.”

—

You can also check out Isabel’s portfolio on her website, www.hirnkraut.com

100 new Facebook fans every day. Stress is a popular Swiss rapper. Surely. But he also received premium Spoiled Milk support.

A while ago, Spoiled Milk released the Stress website (showcase) for the Swiss rapper originally named Andres Andrekson.

During the first months of the website, the general readership was low, the number of Facebook fans only grew by a small margin and stayed in the early thousands. To change the course and enhance the interaction, Spoiled Milk sat down with Stress and agreed to focus intensively on 1) Content and 2) Integration.

The first part, content, was up to Stress himself. He was going to invest himself more into the medium, open his voice more intimately to the thousands of potential fans and thereby secure their experience of authenticity.

The second part, integration, was our responsibility. We set up a Facebook module next to his blog, which pulls in his latest Facebook updates and shows an excerpt of his fans. We also enabled automatic feeds, so Stress can focus on producing content for the blog, which then automatically feeds both Facebook and Twitter. Smaller notifications can still be fed directly to the social media services.

And the result of the renewed direction? Today, Stress has more than 34,000 Facebook fans, growing by 100 new fans every day and usually overseeing 300 interactions on the page every week. The website viewings have risen considerably. The YouTube channel we set up has streamed 2,25 million views.

We’re pleased, Stress is thriving and his fans are happy.

The majority of applications available in the iTunes App Store is displaying information from the Internet, and those applications need a way of refreshing their data.

There are three widely used interface design approaches:

1. The simple and effective refresh button
   «TweetDeck for iPhone» has the simple and very effective refresh button in the tab bar. Other applications like the «New York Times» have the refresh button in the application top bar.
   Such a refresh button is very easy to spot, but of course takes space from these two bars which could be used for other controls.
    
   

 

2. The hidden, clickable item in a scrollable view
   As seen for example in the Facebook application, there is a hidden, clickable item in a scrollable view where the user has to scroll to the top and then tap on the item to invoke a refresh.
   This solution is hard to find when using it for the first time, but once found, it’s a very neat way to save some space for content or other buttons.
    
   

 

3. The hidden item in a scrollable view without tapping
   The guys behind Gowalla took Facebook’s solution a step further and just cut out the tapping part. The user only has to scroll to the very top and a bit further to activate a refresh.
   The problem that this functionality is hard to spot still exists, but once used, it is in my point of view the most intuitive and therefore most preferred solution.
    
   

We love what we do.

To be creative and work with interesting people in a spectacular team is what drives and motivates us. Facing new tasks by the hour, during the week, throughout the year – in collaboration with people that have different backgrounds across multiple locations – and all striving for quality.

We interact both in person and through virtual spaces. Optimizing daily and learning as we grow. We seek to balance creativity and emotion with professionalism and financial responsibility. In close relationships with clients, partners, distributors and artists lies the beauty in our work.

Like in all relationships, thorough communication and profound respect is the key. We face challenges knowing that within the right partnership and clear determination any set goal can be achieved.

The beautiful thing is that there are new surprises again and again. Seeing how our project grows and becomes powerful and strong. Reminding each other that we need to respect the ideals, which we have preached from the beginning.

That’s Spoiled Milk: Inspiration, creativity, friendship and business in harmony.

The largest media house in Denmark, JP/Politikens Hus A/S, had a challenge lined up for Spoiled Milk: Come up with a formula for distributing Denmark’s most popular travel book series – Turen Går Til – on the mobile platform. And we proudly present the result.

CHALLENGE

JP/Politikens Hus A/S – the largest media corporation in Denmark – sought to digitise their large amounts of rich information and thereby capitalise on new media platforms.

A relevant part of their enterprise is the travel books section named ‘Turen Går Til’ (translates to ‘the trip goes to’). Here, travellers should benefit from travel guides that could be downloaded and used “on the go” with add-on mobile-specific features.

As the editor-in-chief Søren Sattrup remarks: “Turen Går Til is the favourite travel books series for Danes. We should naturally also be on the mobile”.

On choosing to go with Apple’s model, Søren Sattrup adds: ”iPhone is a telephone with broad appeal. The Turen Går Til series has during the last three years undergone a significant development, and we believe the new Turen Går Til series suits the iPhone well”.

Spoiled Milk was engaged in the project for overall consultancy, concept, design and development.

 
SOLUTION

The Turen Går Til iPhone apps succeed in merging the famed distinct usability of the printed books with the characteristic feel of the iPhone devices.

Attractions can be filtered by area, purpose or even browsed on a map view. Quality images are seamlessly integrated into articles. Search can be conducted on the fully extracted A-Z list.

When viewing a specific article, you can mark it as a favourite, enter it via Google Maps, view related YouTube videos, directly dial the facility or jump on to the transportation map.

In this first round, 6 books have been made available for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Barcelona, Berlin, Copenhagen, London, Paris and Rome. All apps are in Danish, except for Copenhagen, which is launched in English.

As an introductory offer, Copenhagen can be downloaded for free.

• View all six apps in App Store
• Head directly to the Copenhagen app for a free download
• Visit the related microsite mobilguidebog.dk
• Read some of the Danish press: “Drop guidebogen“

The in-house developed content management beauty does it again: Casein CMS proves her multifaceted worth with the launch of two mirrored Flash websites for Schweitzer Project and Interstore.

Schweitzer Project produces furniture and installs shops with tailored and rollout solutions. Interstore offers consultancy, design and planning – also in relation to the establishment of shops. The two companies are closely linked and so are their completely new web profiles.

All concept and design was completed by the recognised design agency Feurer Network, which focuses on business corporate aesthetics and provides strong cross-media solutions.

Spoiled Milk steered the entire development and implementation phase, including the consultancy on functionality issues. The front-end is based on AS3 and the mirrored back-end (supporting both Schweitzer and Interstore) rests on our in-house darling, Casein CMS.

• Schweitzer Project
• Interstore