we are: London

Last week, the World Bank announced that it was to free up 2,000 financial, business, health, economic and human development statistics that had mostly been available only to paying subscribers.

“It’s important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank available to everyone,” World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said. “Statistics tell the story of people in developing and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to overcome poverty.”

This presents massive opportunities for developing countries, whose researchers will have access to useful and meaningful information that could well be integral to their future economic development. In the midst of the global financial crisis (yes, it’s still going on), access to this data has the scope to fit in well with the data ‘mash-up’ market that has grown since a number of governments’ recent initiatives (including the UK’s www.data.gov.uk) to free up data to the general public.

On a level closer-to-home, it’s exciting to have access to this level of detailed statistical information, as the ease with which it can be tracked, monitored and updated makes repurposing it not only more reliable in terms of reporting but also demonstrates that numbers and figures (when illustrated in an engaging way) have the ability to tell a story just as well as pictures and words.

Blog, Community, internet research, usability research data, Internet, research, world bank

Ever since Jakob Nielsen wrote his alert box column about the virtues of mega drop-down menus there has been a buzz around the web. I have put together a collection of interesting examples.

Action envelope:

Some of the best examples of mega drop-downs can be found on the action envelope site. They utilise them to their full potential using them to section or chunk options, including graphics and also using them to contain functionality such as login forms.

The options given to the user are clearly divided with bold headings. The use of graphics helps to engage the users.

The use of large graphics provides engaging content for the user.

The mega drop-down menus allow users access to functionality such as the account sign-in form. This reduces clutter on the screen however it must be clear to the user that this functionality is located here.

Samsung

Samsung have a large quantity of information contained within their site. They have used mega drop-down menus to display all options to the user. Doing this allows them to link directly to the information they require without drilling down several layers of navigation.

Gateway

Gateway makes good use of graphics. By providing graphics in their menu it not only makes the content more engaging but helps users to identify their desired product. This also helps to visually group the elements. The links at the foot of the menu provide access to options that may be useful to users at that point in their journey.

EA

The EA site utilises their menu space very well. They provide two clear categories for users to navigate the games section by while also providing related links relevant to a user looking at this section. The featured game promotion uses a sectioned area and image to catch a users’ attention and drive traffic to information on a particular game.

Blog, information architecture, usability design, usability research, user centred design Internet, navigation

We are:London has been lucky enough to have recently been involved in some exciting form design and research. From our recently conducted research some interesting design considerations have come to light. One of the main areas is user handholding.

User handholding is a double edged sword. A fine balance must be struck between useful support and wrapping the user up in cotton wool. Our recent testing revealed some interesting user attitudes towards the support of both inline validation and automatic inline help. Providing the user with inline validation gave the user a sense of achievement. It helped them feel they were walking the correct path, reassuring them.

When creating a password for a Google account the user is provided with reassurance of its security level.

Automatic inline help however had an adverse affect. While on first appearances help of this nature supports the user, holds their hand and aids the smooth completion of the form the user’s impressions however were not of this nature. The user felt this patronised them, that providing automatic help for every field treated them as if they were incompetent and unable to complete the form.

Do users of the British Gas site need prompting to enter their first name in the ‘First name’ field?

These attitudes develop into interesting design challenges. A form must provide a supportive environment for the user. It must help them when they need help and reassure them that they are on the right path. A form must also not patronise the user. It must not try to support when support is not needed. Inline validation helps to reassure the user while trusting the user that they are intelligent and aware enough to complete the form fields without support. Automatic inline help can be used sparingly but overuse makes the user feel they are being patronised. Users do not need help on how to fill out their name. Offering user activated help allows users easy access to support when needed but allows them to choose when they require it.

Blog, information architecture, usability research, user interface Internet, research, usability

 I don’t ordinarily consider gossip-blogger Perez Hilton a source of social marketing insight but on this occasion he twittered a report by Sysomos - a US based organisation specialising in media monitoring - and its actually quite interesting.

 

Sysomos analysed more than 11.5 million Twitter accounts, indexing user profiles and looking at the frequency of status updates and behaviours over a period of time. There is plenty of data to mine through but some key findings of note include:

 

• 21% of all registered users have never even posted a Tweet;
• More than 50% of all updates are publishing using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com;
• 65% of Twitter users are under the age of 25 ; and
• Just 5% of users - or Power-Tweeters as we shall call them - account for a massive 75% of all activity.

Twitter has experienced explosive growth in recent months and this report is essential reading in helping to understand why.

 

Read the report here

 

Blog, Community, customer insight, e-commerce, internet research, market research insight, research, social networking, Twitter

After: Drink Coke. Any questions?

Before: typographic mayhem.

We are:london are keen observers of the nuances of design and love a good design debate. ‘Helvetica’ – a documentary on the classic typeface from Gary Huswit provides both. The main theme of the documentary is that the ubiquity of the typeface may be its downfall.

The documentary presents a history of the typeface, creators, context and dissenters. Most interesting is the debate of Helvetica as the typeface of modernism and a backlash postmodernist movement who explore typography for artistic expression or just to say more than the words.

In the documentary, graphic designer Michael Bierut contrasts the directness of Helvetica in a coke advert - “Drink Coke. Period! Any questions? No!” with the ideologyless no-man’s lands of postwar advertising. David Carson displays his 4AD album sleeves and a Bryan Ferry interview set in webdings, a non-alphabetic character set and basically unreadable.

It’s an indulgently narrow subject matter. Watch the film and then marvel at how often you see Helvetica in use.

Gary Huswits new film ‘Objectified’ is a documentary about “our complex relationship with manufactured objects” shows at the Barbican from the 22rd May.

Blog, Uncategorized, interface design Design, typography

we are:london attended a Design Council event yesterday evening. Dr. Alex King, project leader at the government’s Horizon Scanning Centre gave a fascinating talk about supporting Governmental policy making through the use of scenarios. An ambition of the Horizon Scanning Centre was to consider what would happen to the effectiveness of policies should “assumptions about the future turn out to be false”. Policies are designed to work in specific conditions – Dr. King looked at what would happen if those conditions changed.

Four future scenarios were presented that represented possible societies following a major global economic disaster. Each varied along 2 axes; an open vs. closed society, and a society built around individuality vs. collectivism.

The scenarios described variations in societal characteristics such as job security, innovation, centralised and decentralised control, globalism etc. All were recognizable and plausible, some less desirable than others. Dr. King introduced the scenarios and then described how 5 real government policies stacked up against them. The result was revealing. Some polices would fail terribly should society veer towards an ‘individual-closed’ scenario. Policies faired better if a society veered towards ‘open-collective’ scenario.

A comment from the audience was insightful – we can’t predict the future, therefore the most effective approach to design is to build-in flexibility and adaptability. This didn’t make the scenarios redundant but highlighted their true value. In the context of policy-making they might not change the way we design but we’re thankful that someone has at least thought through possible variations in the context of use.

Scenarios are design tools – central to the User-Centred Design process. I call them ‘models of the things end-users want to do’ (to go with personas – models of the user and prototypes – models of the experience). Scenarios do something important – they ensure decisions are explicit rather than tacit. Informed design supports the creation of products that are better matched to end-user needs.

The future society scenarios presented yesterday were higher-level than those we use in our design projects but support the same goal – to encourage informed decision-making.

Blog, user centred design Design, future, scenarios

How much can Twitter really do for a business? Should companies be looking at it as a commercial channel? Can you make money from Tweeting?

The answer is yes to all and I know because we tried it out recently through an experiment during Red Nose Day, @wearelondon.

Pay for punters

Our origianl idea was to raise money by donating for every Tweet we were sent instead of an email; email free Friday.

Some clients, Kevin, Christy, et al from NationalExpress were great at it, but others were a little slower. So I put out a message saying we would donate 10p for every Tweet.

This was re-Tweeted by a load of people, including Dave Gorman www.twitter.com/dave_gorman and off we went, loads of Tweets, lots of funnies as we asked for jokes.

Follow me and we’ll donate

Quickly word spread and hundreds of people were Tweeting us, so I raised the offer to donate 20p for everyone who followed us. Jemima Kiss kindly gave us a shout and we quickly went from 40 followers to 270.

In the end we donated over £500 to Red Nose Day and traffic to our site went up 1,000% which is a pretty good PPC investment for an even better cause.

So why didn’t more big companies do something similar? It’s was so quick and easy to do I can’t believe others did not do the same, but I guess it comes down to the same old thing. No matter how quick and easy the enabler it (Twitter) the process of a big business are way behind.

Skittles are there doing it now, not sure if it will work, but hey at least they are trying.

Want to know more, then call or email and we can give you the inside track on taking free and making it pay.

Blog, Community e-commerce, Internet, Twitter