It was this time last year that I sat down to work for the first time at toggle. It is amazing how quickly an entire year can pass and at the same time feel so long ago.

Our first toggle project was to build this very web site and as we completed it the enquiries for work began, as the year moved on our work load grew and unfortunately that led to fewer blog posts. New years resolution #1: Write more.

Our first year has been a success, we have had ups and downs but on the whole we go into 2009 on a positive note. We have projects to start, pitches to attend and a few 2008 projects to finish. The most important thing to come of this year has been the knowledge we have acquired about running a business and in particular how to work with our clients. They are all different, with different wants and expectations… in short: one size does not fit all.

Rather than write a post that looks back on the year that has passed I want to focus on looking ahead, what will be important to toggle in 2009?

Simplicity

I have always been a fan of simple: Less is more and more is often unnecessary. Having just read “The Laws of Simplicity” by John Maeda I am convinced that businesses and consumers need to start focusing on simple. Its no secret that the world has hit a tiny bit of economic difficulty and while the media will have you believe that this is a bad thing I can personally see a number of benefits to it. With less money it becomes more important to streamline and simplify. This means cutting out the unnecessary and focusing on simpler solutions that are easy to use and implement. For example we recently stopped our Basecamp subscription in favour of using email and Remember the Milk, this not only saved money but was easier for our clients (who are not all technically minded) to use.

We are also in the process of switching our business banking, its not an easy thing to do once a company is in motion but once we have done it our banking setup will become much simpler to manage: two bank cards becomes one, one online account becomes many and a number of our bank charges will disappear.

Simplicity is hopelessly subtle, and many of its defining characteristics are implicit… Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. – John Maeda

Design

We built three CMS systems (Pixie, a toggle CMS and a property management system) and delivered numerous technical specification documents in 2008. It would seem that most clients are after “features” and that leads to conversations on development, not design. While we cannot get away from technology it is necessary to focus on the people that use it and not the technology itself. Design will solve problems that technology creates.

We aim to spend more of our time researching target markets, usability testing and researching our clients’ competitors. Letting design lead the development process will result in great experiences and better brands/websites. With current economic challenges it will be an attention to design to makes your product, service, brand or website stand out against those around you.

As part of this focus towards design, we will be heading to the Future of web design conference in April. 2009 is all about design…

Open Source

The idealism of the Internet manifests itself in Open Source. Open source proves that people from all over the planet can come together to make something greater than what is possible alone. I find Open Source to be inspiring and fascinating at the same time. On May 1st 2008 we launched Pixie as our first Open Source project, it has been downloaded over 8500 times and is in use all over the world. The people who use it are free to take our work and improve upon it and put back into the project anything they feel is missing. Pixie has improved over the course of the year and as a result everyone has benefited.

The WordPress team have proven that Open Source can be extremely successful and it is one the projects we watch closely with eager eyes. The new WordPress interface for version 2.7 has been thoroughly researched, tested and community driven. For the first time I feel I could give a copy of WordPress to a client and be confident in them using it and with that in mind we will be developing our first WordPress plug-ins in 2009. Beyond WordPress we would love to see how design can play a major part in the future of other Open Source projects, more designers should be giving time to projects in the hope that we can create greater software, that is simpler and easy to use.

The Internet is driven by people who donate time to projects such as PHP, MySQL and jQuery. Its time that everyone plays a part in giving back to the projects we use daily. If you feel the need to donate money in 2009 I would recommend you send a few pounds to a project you cannot do without.

We are already running two Linux servers and over the course of the year we will start testing both design and development applications that are Open Source. By 2010 I have a secret desire to be using nothing but open technology (web applications with at least an API or considerations for data portability and Open Source software)… is this possible? I intend to find out.

Thanks

So its 364 days until 2010 and I’m pretty sure we should all be wearing space suits and driving flying cars by then, we certainly have a lot of work to do! We are hoping to grow toggle beyond our comfort zone this year: A new office? New staff?… New clients! and of course continuing to work with those who have supported us so far. Bring on 2009!