anti-design
Is this the most egregious site you have ever seen? Some people certainly seem to think so, with some very sniffy comments about how they will hold this up as a shining example of how not to do it.
Lingscars.com homepage
Just look at it. MS Paint graffiti on the menu, flashing text, floating frames – it’s web design by Homer Simpson.
And yet, when you get into the detail of the site, and actually look for a car, you find that the site is pretty effective at achieving the key goals you might have, e.g. finding pricing, comparing models, taking the next step. Ling’s personality also shines through – and in this factor lies the brilliance of the design approach. How many car sales websites do you really remember? Would you like to deal with Ling? I would. Making a clean site design that looks professional is (fairly) simple, but communicating personality is much more difficult. Ling’s site has it in spades. She also sells a lot of cars, which says it all really.
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BIMA!
Found out that www.opengolf.com won a BIMA award this year! I was responsible for the user experience planning and design for the site for over 5 years, including this 2008 redesign. It was a great project to work on, and I’ll always have good memories of our trips to St. Andrews to see our client, The R&A. Well done to everyone involved, both at IMG Media, and at The R&A.
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This talk by Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired magazine) at TED is fascinating. To think that the web is only 5000 days old – what’s going to happen in the next 5000 days.
Some things that resonated with me:
The web currently uses 5% of global electricity consumption. I don’t know how he got to this figure, but it’s an immense amount of power. Obviously, we are both using power to write and read this blog, but where are the green initiatives addressing this? I can’t recall seeing any computer manufacturer touting low power consumption as being a differentiator for their product.
Will write more on this later.
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PSFK are running a series of panel sessions around the launch of their new book Good Ideas in 2009 – the session on 2009 trends in mobile was interesting and well worth the time (you could just listen, not much to see):
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Some very interesting stuff said. Some of the things that got me thinking:
- Steve Roberts (Shoptext): stop thinking about advertising in the mobile space as being little banner ads on your phone. the key is to have personal information stored on the phone, and to send this to advertisers, e.g. by texting to a shortcode allows the advertiser to receive your details without you having to do anything other than a simple one word reply. He talked about an interesting case study with V Fusion, where they did something similar, offering a voucher for a free bottle of the product. After texting, the user got a personalised voucher in the post. Much higher response rates than offering a mail-in redemption offer, and the agency can track the respondents much better. Critically, it’s also an easy process for the consumer.
- How phones are changing banking – although phone companies don’t necessarily want to become banks (i.e. process large volumes of purchases through your phone bill), the ease of purchasing through this channel makes it something consumers want, in some markets. In particular, youth demographics like the convenience on mobile banking, and (a really interesting one!) consumers in developing countries don’t necessarily have access to financial services because they don’t have a reliable and secure postal service – whilst mobile offers a direct secure channel. So, mobile financial services can potentially leapfrog other channels in these cases.
- Companies build mobile applications, but consumers don’t really care about ‘applications’, they just see the relevance of the services within context of something else that they are doing, e.g. communicating with their friends, shopping, finding the best route to where they are going. Someone made an interesting distinction between ‘where you are’ services and ‘what you are doing’ services.
- There’s lots of data being created bottom up by consumers – harnessing this data can allow us to create cool new stuff that wasn’t previously possible.
- GPS data was very tricky to get hold of and use previously – because the phone companies didn’t want to share it. Now that handset manufacturers (OK, Apple) have pushed this forward, there are loads of new possibilities.
We are starting to see user-generated content being overlaid on web content, e.g. running routes on Google Maps, through various sites, but what about if we could track people who are cycling home via passive monitoring of their GPS data (assuming you wanted to share the data of course)? If most cyclists avoid a certain route for whatever reason – even though it’s the quickest, you could benefit from that when planning your own route through town. The new data and functionality on offer through mass adoption of GPS-enabled devices seem to me one of the most exciting things to happen this year.
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Tags: GPS, iphone, mobile, planning, user experience
I’ve been reading more and more about account planning in advertising, which turned 40 this year. I’m in no way claiming to be an expert on account planning, but what I’ve read about it has resonated with me as a user experience architect.
Stephen King (arguably one of the founders of account planning as a discipline) says in his 1971 essay What is a Brand? (published in A Master Class in Brand Planning: The Timeless Works of Stephen King
Any and all ways in which a customer experiences a brand, either functionally or emotionally, must be designed (planned) as a coherent whole. This is as true for user experience design as it is for advertising. Ultimately, both these disciplines are looking to achieve the same results – to create a connection with the user/customer, and to influence their thinking and behaviour. However, they talk about their goals in slightly different ways.
User experience design tends to focus on defining stakeholder requirements (stakeholders being the client / brand as well as the customers), designing technology, and then testing and iterating it until the requirements are met. The focus is very much on doing things efficiently and effectively.
Advertising, on the other hand, seems more concerned with building and maintaining an emotional connection – a personal relationship between the brand and the consumer. Jon Steel, an account planning veteran at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, puts in his book Truth, Lies, and Advertising: The Art of Account Planning
Later in the book, Steel talks about Jeff Goodby’s approach to advertising: “For him, advertising is merely a means to a desired end – a person thinking or behaving differently. Jeff believes that everything an agency does should be geared toward getting into people’s heads to figure out what they currently think and understand how best to influence them.” Of course, the effectiveness of this influence is often then measured in functional terms, e.g. product sales etc.
It seems to me that there is a lot of overlap between user experience practice and advertising, in terms of understanding people’s needs and wants, and ultimately influencing people’s beliefs and behaviour.
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Tags: planning, user experience, user experience planning, UX, UX planning, UXD
Post about post-its
Ranking features in an Agile design session
Post-its are a wonderful thing. even though we have amazing programs to design things with, I still find myself using them for all sorts of design activities. Using them with marker pens and whiteboards, or even the whole wall, seems to help everyone get involved in the creative process much more easily.
Anyway, this workshop on becoming a sticky note ninja by Kate Rutter of Adaptive Path, at UX Week 2008 is a brilliantly-crafted presentation, which gives some great tips on how to use them well. Have a look at the slides
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Tags: agile, post its, stickies, techniques
The Asics experience
I needed to get a new pair of running shoes, so, being a bit of an Asics fanboy, I went to their London store on Argyll Street. The draw was getting some expert advice on which sort of shoes to get. In order to find out, I used their footscan and running analysis – which was a great experience. You put each foot into a 3D scanner, and their team analyse your foot shape and recommend a style of shoe for you. Here’s the scan:
diagram showing the contours of my feet
You then go for a quick run on a treadmill, and they analyse a video of your running style. I’m a pronator, apparently – the red line on the heel angle at the bottom right of the scan should be vertical ideally, and they sold me the shoes that sort this out (Kayano 15’s). The scan was £20, redeemable against a purchase.
So far, so brilliant. I like the brand, they gave me a great experience, and I have some nice shoes that fit me properly. The bit that left me feeling as if there was a missed opportunity was that there was no way to take that personalised service further – to feel part of a club (beyond of course just wearing the shoes).
Of course, when a brand is so successful, do they need to do more? According to their recent advert (which is worth a look, it’s done with animated origami) half the runners of the New York Marathon last year wore Asics, and they have been on the podium at The Olympics every year. And, of course, I’d bought their product now, so what’s left for them to do?
Well, being able to offer personalised advice on other running gear would be a good way to continue the relationship, and increase sales. Offering a membership card, that gave me something back for continuing to shop in their store would be good, and running-related tools online, combined with product recommendations. Why not leverage the desire to belong to their club, and in so doing, increase my loyalty not only to their brand, but to them as a retailer? Nike’s amazing marketing around their Nike+ system continues to link itself with my running experiences, it seems like Asics could learn a fair bit from that.
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Tags: retail, running, shopping
Steve Cummaford 