Headspace Design
Surround yourself with good people and you’re bound to be successful. That’s the philosophy behind Headspace Design, a web design and internet marketing firm made up of talented people who truly like working together.
The company started when principal and business development manager Kevin Springer met Kyle Racki, a young web designer with an eye for design and a strategic approach to web development. The two worked well together and both had entrepreneurial ambitions.
“I knew Kyle was an extremely talented web developer and designer, and I saw the chance to support him in his own venture. We started the company with just two of us, but we needed specialists to be able to offer the range of services our clients wanted. We built a team of contractors that would enable us to scale up or down as the economy shifted,” explains Springer.
Racki is also a principal and design director of the company, overseeing a core team of two highly-specialized and talented internal team members, and a network of contractors that include copywriters, social media marketing experts, designers and web developers.
Headspace Design operates from a modest studio in Dartmouth, but Springer says members of the team spend about two to three days a week in the office, working from home and client sites the rest of the time.
“We have a loose schedule. We keep an office because we need a place to collaborate as a team and have the occasional client meeting. But we also believe in flexible work schedules that enable people to balance their lives at home with their careers. People perform better when they have flexibility to work their own hours.”
Springer and Racki bring complementary abilities and skills to the table. A native of Maine, Springer is an entrepreneur by nature, having started several companies of his own, and worked for start-ups in the entertainment and web sectors. He has a head for strategic business and client relations, and leads business development efforts for Headspace.
Racki has been creative since he was a child. When he was young he always used to draw caricatures of people he knew, and at age 18 he attended Nova Scotia Community College to study graphic design.
He spent time working at several Halifax marketing agencies before he awakened to the synergies between graphic design and the online world.
“I learned about web standards and got interested in how they could be used. I saw the potential and opportunities to use the web in ways that hadn’t yet been explored, at least locally,” Racki explains.
He says Headspace Design focuses on creating a unique user experience, not just translating the client’s marketing program into the online format. The key is to build a web presence that enables the user to interact and acquire information.
“Great web design is not just easy to use, it’s actually enjoyable. Great web content is not just informative, it’s interesting. Great web applications don’t just function, they perform,” Racki adds.
Headspace takes the approach that an effective user interface is about understanding how people engage with your website.
“While a lot of companies just do design, we get sign off on the business strategy and we track whether it’s working,” explains Springer. “It’s also a question of what’s under the hood. A site can look great, but is it accessible, effective and useful? We make sure our sites look appealing and work with the image of the company, but we focus on building the most effective technology to back it up.”
And Headspace doesn’t believe in re-inventing the wheel. The company uses existing open source solutions for its clients whenever possible, and customizes the application to the client’s requirements and audiences.
“We find clients the best tool for their needs, whether we develop the application, or we customize existing technology, we can build whatever the client needs,” Racki adds.
Headspace Design prides itself on building web tools of all kinds, including iPhone applications. The company is in the process of developing an iPhone app for a Florida-based heart perfusion organization. The application will enable perfusionists and physicians to plug in some basic information about their patient to obtain key health information such as a reading on how much blood should be in that individual’s cardiac muscle at rest, during exercise and during open heart surgery.
“It’s exciting to be breaking new ground by producing useful applications that will actually help a doctor do his or her job more effectively,” says Springer.
In addition to iPhone App Development, Headspace is taking a lead in navigating and interpreting social media content and conversations. Springer says he counsels clients to listen first before publishing social media content.
“It’s important to know what people are saying about you and how best to communicate with them before you randomly start creating and pushing out content. Social media involves a two-way exchange.” Headspace is partnering with local company Media Badger to help develop and market the company’s Media 360 tool, technology that will enable organizations to set up their own account to monitor social media conversations across the web, and even to assess the tone of those conversations.
The team has been working with Dalhousie University to develop the artificial intelligence that can assess sentiment from the language used in the exchange.
“This is cutting-edge social media monitoring technology and it goes well beyond other social media monitoring software in its capabilities,” explains Springer, adding the US Department of Defense and the Pearson Peace Keeping Institute are interested in the technology to track social media conversations happening in war torn regions such as Afghanistan.
Springer and Racki agree that their company has built a strong client base in the tourism sector, ranging from PEI Tourism to Signature Attractions of Atlantic Canada, to the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg. Headspace encourages its clients to convey the true tourism experience available in their regions.
“It’s about conveying the authenticity of the experience, versus promoting packaged marketing materials. We try to bring tourism destinations and sites to life and showcase individual experiences,” explains Racki.
For example, Headspace Design developed a site to promote the eastern coastal drive in Prince Edward Island. It automatically pulls from a central database of tourism operators, and updates on the website. This way, PEI can have a whole family of websites promoting everything from golf, to locally grown vegetables, to the five coastal drives, and if a bed and breakfast changes its phone number, all the websites update simultaneously.
Also each attraction, be it a beach, a golf course or a cottage, is shown on a map so the user can compare it geographically to other places in the area, The map highlights suggested nearby experiences, which helps up-sell the area.
“It’s that kind of application that creates an enjoyable, real user experience. We work with our clients to come up with the most effective online experience possible, using the most appropriate technology and the most engaging design,” Racki says.
Headspace Design has also ventured into the world of online training, working with a video production company that creates training content. Headspace created a web application that enables employees to log in, watch the video and then complete a quiz about the video content at the end - and all of the employee statistics and results are tracked and can be viewed by the company.
“At the end of the day, we’re a design company. Design is not just visual, like a logo or a page layout. Architecting an application requires design. Strategizing on a marketing initiative is design. And everything we design has to be beautiful and functional, like all good design is.” Racki adds.
Both Springer and Racki could live anywhere in the world, but they choose Nova Scotia because of its beauty and balance, as well as the potential for success.
“People think of this place as small, but it’s that size that enables us to succeed. You’re not surrounded by competition like you are in a bigger market. The cost of doing business is low and the talent pool is deep because of all the universities and colleges. That’s what makes us competitive on the world market.”
