Diabetes UK’s single biggest mission is to make those people who are at risk of Type 2 diabetes (estimated at over 1 million people in the UK) fully aware of their risk. To that end, they’d developed a paper-based test for qualified people to use to help people measure their risk. Now, DUK needed an online version of their Risk Score, which had to sensitively encourage people to work out their own risk, capture their data, and deliver health advice in a way that wasn’t intimidating.

The Solution

We were awarded this project following a 3 way pitch, in collaboration with our friends at White October. Our creative thinking set us apart, as we used the simple insight that people are less nervous about doing something that they know others like them have done. We featured 9 real people (recruited via a page on the DUK site) in our interactive Risk Score test, using photos and quotes – and some very clear and simple user experience design – to guide people through the 7 questions.

This project delivered more than an interactive test. The application sends those at high risk a PDF letter to show their GP, and gives everyone the opportunity to share the test with their friends and family, who may also be at risk. The creative process also provided a wealth of great photos for Diabetes UK to use across their site, and we’d like to thank the team for their enthusiastic support – many of whom have expressed an interest in continuing to help Diabetes UK by blogging their experiences.

Have a look at the test!

The Result

Over 28,000 people have taken the test so far (with no media budget to promote it) and about 5% of people are leaving their contact details. The Diabetes Risk score has also had some great industry press coverage too.

Watch this space for further improvements and possibly a mobile version!

WYGU.com (pronounced ‘wigoo’) is a brand spanking new website that helps people find the career they’ve always wanted. I won’t explain any more than that for now… because that’s exactly what the brief was! As a new entrant to the world of online careers services, and with a number of competition-killing features to shout about, the WYGU guys needed a short video that explains to new users what they were all about.

The Solution

WYGU stands for When You Grow Up – the idea being that the site helps people get the kind of career they longed for as kids… namely one that is based around their passions. We took this central thought and created a stop-frame animation using the medium of kids’ birthday cakes!

We hope you’ll agree the result is a really charming little video (and a great debut for our new Head of Video Production, Mr Will Savage). The team are still buzzing from eating nothing but icing for 3 days straight…

Like the sound of WYGU? Sign up NOW!

The Result

We like making clients happy. And we love it when they let us print their ridiculously happy quotes verbatim. Over to Matt, from WYGU:

To quote the great Devin Townsend… “Oh, My, Fu-King GOD!!!”
Hell yes this is awesome. Sooo happy with the result!
Well done guys this exceeded my expectations.
Group hug.
Matt

N.B. This is Devin Townsend. We had no idea who he was either. Matt, we salute you!

Three charities, one goal: help people understand the dangers of excess belly fat. Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and Diabetes UK took the rare step of clubbing together for this campaign. The original brief to us was that they’d like an animation which explained the science behind how your belly fat doesn’t just sir there doing nothing, but instead kicks out chemicals which can lead to Cancer, Heart Disease and Diabetes… and they wanted it to be entertaining enough to keep people watching ’til the end!

The Solution

We knew we had a long of story to tell, and that the target audience (C1, C2, D and over 35) were not particularly interested in scientific health messaging, to say the least! So, we created an evil lead character called “Active Fat” – a despicable belly fat cell bent on wreaking havoc on your bodily organs. We created a series of 3 short animated episodes, for use on the individual charity websites, each one explaining in an entertaining, bite-sized way just how dangerous belly fat can be. Kudos to Adam Smith for his awesome animation work (much of it done in Azerbaijan!)

Where we really went above and beyond was diverting a significant proportion of the budget to creating and seeding a shirt teaser animation – showing highlights of Active Fat’s dastardly deeds – across entertainment sites matching our audience profile. This drove people to a dedicated microsite, which contained share tools for social media, and information for the press… as well as links to the longer episodes, of course.

The Result

22,000 views in the first two weeks before the seeding kicked off, with great referral rates to the charity websites. ReTweeted on Twitter over 100 times in the same timescale. It also won the ‘Third Sector ‘Digital Campaign of the Week’

For us, the biggest success has to be delivering a complicated health story in a genuinely engaging way – a fact borne out by the YouTube stats, which show people are watching all the way ’til the end.

Another great achievement was the collaborative element of the project. This was the first time these 3 charities had worked together, and while it did present some challenges along the way, it was great to be part of a really positive collaboration – something we’d love to see more brands doing!

We envisage they’ll have some experience coding for a digital comms agency stashed in their utility belt – however they’ll have grown bored of trotting out the same old website, and will be dreaming of a more worthy opponent. (However, we may be wrong – mundane experience is not essential!)

Our target will also perhaps control a secret digital lair (well, blog / website) harbouring examples of how they’ve chopped together various personal projects with Samurai precision, putting in the hours to earn black belts in the arts of API and Mash-Ups and gaining a mastery of the likes of JQUERY, PYTHON, RAILS, and other such weapons.

They’ll also display a supreme level of flexibility. For example, after they’ve drop-kicked the head off a quickfire Drupal install, they’ll hastily disembowel the Twitter API and ram the entrails down the throat of a Flash designer’s concoction, before stealthily annihilating a swarm of PHP page amends and MySQL database tweaks.

(That said, if there’s a better way to execute these tasks, we’d expect them to pipe up. We’re looking for a problem solver who can take our ideas and find the best “weapons” and “special moves” to cut them down to size.)

Oh yeah, and it’d be nice if they enjoyed frequenting a variety of Soho eateries on Friday lunch times and perhaps a bit of overly-competitive Wii action on a Friday evening…

Specifics:

• Must display supreme dedication and passion for all things digital.
• Must find HTML, CSS (and ideally JS) as easy as gliding undetected through airport security.
• Should laugh in the face of PHP.
• Must be able to handle MySQL databases without hemorrhaging.
• Bowstaff and sweet Nun-chuck skills optional.

Interested individuals should contact us in an appropriately Ninjarriffic way explaining why they would be a valuable addition to the Nonsense clan.

The directors of Nonsense have been spending most of their free time in a garage, developing a service for recreational team sports… and before you ask, no we’re not re-purposing a Delorean for seamless travel to random sports events. So here’s the 30 second elevator pitch:
“Schport is an online and mobile service that will revolutionise team sport. It will allow leagues, clubs, teams, and players to organise all essential activity and to seamlessly communicate with each other. The aim is to provide a platform for the Sporting community to get organised, get connected and get playing!”

That’s a bold statement. But, at the very least, it will make the Nonsense team’s multiple sporting commitments a million times easier to organise and run! Here’s an introductory tour:

Schport is currently in Beta, and you can read about all of the latest developments on the brand spanking new Schport blog.

It was an awesome weekend, with developers and designers mixing with people who work in the youth justice system, as well as plenty of young people and people who had been through the system themselves.

We worked on an idea called FLIP, which basically uses Facebook to give people who have just been released a confidence boost and a kick-start to their CV as they start looking for a job. Based on the insight that unemployment is by far the biggest factor in youths re-offending.

I’ll embed a Slideshare of our final presentation here later. In the meantime, check out the Jailbrake blog, and keep up-to-date with all the photos and after-chat via the #jailbrake tag.

In all, there were 6 ideas and some awesome work done to take them forward. Plenty of interest from potential funders and partners in taking the ideas forward too. The FLIP team look to be organising themselves nicely with a Google group already and talking to some cool people at Care Matters about a possible trial.

More news here soon…

My good friend, and super duper dance teacher extraordinaire, Claira Vaughan will be hosting a private lesson of her unique and fantastic Napoleon Dynamite class exclusively for the Nonsense Team! For 1 hour, we’ll be taught the moves from Napoleon’s dance finale on the film!

I’m sure you are all familiar with it, but here it is once again just in case you’ve somehow forgotten about it:

It was a total no-brainer to use Schport to arrange this properly, Nonsense team, you should be receiving your invites shortly!

It’s just a bit of fun! We’re not looking for the next Michael Jackson here, so no pulling out please people!

Those of you who’ve visited Nonsense HQ, will have already seen some of the superb work created by Anna Hutton hanging on our walls, following an exhibition back in February 2009.

Anna’s next show is at the amazing Metropolis Studios in Chiswick. The exhibition will run for 3 months and include 4 large new pieces and 2 installations.

Metropolis isn’t open to the general public however on Thursday 18th March they will be holding a private view which we would like to extend to whoever fancies a peek!

There is a reasonably priced bar, a great DJ, free pool and even some table tennis tables so it should be a lot of fun as well as a great opportunity to see Anna’s unique works of art displayed around this amazing space.

To be added to the guest list, simply email your name and the names of any friends you’d like to bring to rsvp@annahutton.co.uk. Alternatively, mark yourself as ‘Attending’ on the Facebook Event here.

Essential links:
Visit Anna’s website

Anna’s exhibitions

Join Anna’s Facebook Group

Following on from our previous post (see below), we are now able to announce the winners of the first Nonsense “That’s Darts” Darts Tournament – Mr Robbie Greatrex.

Needless to say, the night had it’s moments. The highlight was definitely a fairly ‘tipsy’ Will Savage losing every game putting him in the fight for 5th place against Nick and Ben, then somehow getting through the numbers (round-the-clock) and on to the bulls-eye. He then proceeded to take his final dart without looking, and of course, it went straight in leaving Ben in 6th place and Nick dead-last!

As for the top 4 players, they went on to play a series of games of round-the-clock for the trophy.

It was intense, however Robbie came through with the winning dart in the end (picture below) and will have the honour of holding the “That’s Darts” trophy until the next tournament as well as being allowed to use the yellow flights on his darts.

Oh, and Ben found the original theme tune from the old TV show Bullseye! Click here to listen to it!

ORIGINAL BLOG POST: Friday 19th Feb 2010:

When Robbie asked his Mum for a dart board for Christmas, no one could have ever predicted the sheer impact that that would have on the lives of everyone here at Nonsense HQ.

In the space of 3 weeks (since installation), it is safe to say that almost everyone at Nonsense HQ is officially hooked. What started as a few casual games of ’round-the-clock’ after hours, has turned into a competitive 1 hour (minimum) game most evenings.

This new addition to the office has resulted in people buying their own fancy 90% tungsten steel tipped pro darts, and (as expected when a bunch of creatives are given the chance to customise anything) we have now all ‘pimped them up’ with custom dimplex flights, re-grooved aluminium stems or colourful plastic shafts.

The fact that 4 of us grew up in the same small town of Deeping St James, home to current World darts champ Martin ‘Wolfie’ Adams just inspires us further.

Organised via brand new sport organisation website Schport, tonight sees 8 men fight it out for the Nonsense “That’s Darts” trophy in the 1st Nonsense “That’s Darts” Darts Tournament!

Will Robbie win with his fancy 25 Gram Phil Taylor signature Unicorn’s, will Nick win with his 27 gram Harrows ‘Assassins’, will it be Ben who takes the trophy home with his 24 gram Harrows ‘Graflites’, will Rob’s Manchester United flights fly him to victory or will one of the underdogs come through with the bargain basement ‘Crafty Cockneys’?! Only time will tell.

Watch this space!

Hello like-minded people!

We have some uber-radical desks available to rent here at Nonsense HQ. So if you’re suitably awesome, and fancy freelancing/running your small business out of a vibrant, creative office based in the heart of Soho, please drop us a line and arrange a time to pop by for a nose about. One of the team will be happy to show you around.

Here’s what you get:
- A badass desk (or 2 or 3!). Complete with a wheelie good chair.
- Storage shelves, for your nun-chucks.
- 10mb broadband (and wireless for guests and clients)
- Shared network printer (lasers lasers lasers!)
- Communal meeting room with 42 inch LCD TV, complete with Nintendo Wii, Mario Kart, and lots of worthy opponents.
- Kitchenette (big fridge, microwave, kettle, toaster etc)
- Unlimited use of 2x toilets! (Male/Female)
- 24 hour access, via a key-door ensemble
- Optional land line number and phone
- You also get to play darts with Pierluigi; the coolest 75 year old solar panel salesman in our office. (We’re not making this up.)

Here’s a couple more pics:

Hot desk

Meeting Room / Table Tennis Table / Pool Table. Big TV + Wii!

Kitchen

Kitchen table, with world's largest chopping board.

Nonsense's corner of the office!

Gaffer tape based art installation by Anna Hutton. (Whoever moved the white box from the bottom shelf, please put it back!)

In case of emergencies!

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