Making it functional and visually pleasing go hand in hand.

Most screen based interfaces in libraries aren’t really that attractive and it will take a lot of hammering and shimmying to get them to be as aesthetically pleasing on the eye as well designed commercial interfaces. Although people get used to how something looks visually, a lack of visual sophistication doesn’t go unnoticed especially when something nicer looking comes along. Today you can bet a lot of your users are using amazingly slick interfaces on a daily basis so the barrier is set very high!

One of Lemontree’s unique draws from when we started was how it could offer a very visual interface. The very first presentations we did focussed on this. While explaining what the concept was we were showing glimpses of what could be. People tend to gravitate towards well designed interfaces and we think this was key to Lemontree’s adoption by Huddersfield, we’d like to think it wasn’t just the concept.

It’s a no brainer that people expect things that they interact with enjoyably to look beautiful, subsequently, we think the more time we expend on this aspect while keeping functionality well catered for is time well spent. Generally you can improve on functionality by paying attention to the way something looks and visual sophistication will be rewarded by users coming back to your interface again and again.

Visuals in Lemontree can be broken down into the following components

• The visual interface layout and styling of all pages
  (incorp. typography, motion)
• Branding of Lemontree 
• Reward graphics
• Co-branding of institution

..of the above we’re in the last stages of refining all but the last one.