we are: London

Love him or hate him.

It all comes down to one single, tangible factor, which marks out the good from the bad; soul.

The reason for the Clarkson tribute on the left is this weeks Sunday Times Motoring article on an Aston Martin which sees Clarkson pitting it against design perfection in the shape of an Audi R8 V10.

And to save you the read, the Audi is just too perfect, where as the Aston has soul, something that can’t be created by following set rules, but comes from the heart of those involved and is a direct result of the creator’s passion.

All of which brings us nicely to the argument that has raged on since the start of website design; who is best placed to create the perfect site?

The Good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s go back to basics and look at who the usual suspects are, in the red corner we have “visual designers” (brand and marketing) and in the blue corner we have “interaction designers” (user centred).

Whilst visual designers have a wealth of ability and passion, it is often focused to heavily on making something look good and the risk of making the same, beautiful creation completely unusable.

Now wheel in the interaction designers, who’s passions lie in the creation of the perfect experience, through usability testing, prototyping and more testing. However, there is a strong argument against all of this testing and refining as it can just blunt a sharp, creative idea, making the end result more function than form.

Experience is all, or read Experiential

For years I thought experiential was about experiencing a design, but it’s not it’s about experience, and this where soul comes from.

An experienced designer is passionate about the look and the effectiveness of a design and ensures their soul is applied to everything they do.

An excellent example of what not to do is a site we reviewed a while back that seemingly missed both design and ease of use steps during it’s development and almost certainly skipped public testing.

Help me help you

If you want to avoid the common pitfalls of digital procurement, ensuring your acgency has suol, then follow these easy steps:

• Check potential agencies have a proven user centred design methodology as well as a creative portfolio
• Ask for CVs of key staff and make sure they are guaranteed to be on the project
• Meet the team and chat to them about what they think is good and bad
• Don’t ever feel that it’s not your right to ask questions
• Ask for clarification on every point until it’s clear
• Remember you’re the client and paying the bills

If you would like to know more then give me a call or drop me a note and we’ll take you through our experiences and see how we can help.

global usability testing, information architecture, interface design, internet research, market research, usability design, user centred design, user interface Design, e-commerce, Internet, Mobile, research, usability

How reliable are the views of six customers who fit a brief when it comes to feedback from a usability lab? The answer lies in the competence of the interviewer or moderator and the team who are implementing the research findings.

But six views are always going to be limited and, usually, geographically similar. Add to this the travel stress of getting to the lab, unfamiliar surroundings and someone else’s computer, only the best moderators can achieve good results from this audience.

Remote research, which follows the same one to one interview technique with moderator and panellist, allows a much wider reach in terms of audience location and numbers. The cost of lab hire can be used to recruit more panellists, typically twelve to eighteen.

These customers are now in familiar surroundings, using the same computer that they use to go online everyday and have much lower stress levels the only effort made is putting on the kettle.

When is a lab not a lab?

At this point we should state that lab based research does have a place and a need, and to be most effective can be run with remote research.

Lab research allows us to see how the customer is reacting visually, their change of posture, use of mouse and keyboard and facial expression which remote testing does not. It is also a great environment to use mixed media such as paper prototypes, card sorts, printed stimulus and multiple interactive models. And it’s a controlled environment where we know everything will work and a client can also watch the customer’s body language.

Results in days

The nature of remote research means that it is much quicker for us to recruit and run sessions as there is minimal effort required form the customers perspective. Even session lengths are shorter as there is no need for the panellists to take in new surroundings, familiars themselves with a new computer and get to grips with different screen sizes and browser settings.

Typically a project can be briefed on Monday, recruited Tuesday, run Wednesday and Thursday and reported on Friday. However, the more complex the audience, task or number of models the longer the recruitment, set up and facilitation takes.

We have run a lot of very successful remote research sessions during information architecture projects that we have been involved in, the most recent being a two day turn around on a travel portal prototype that we had been developing.

Client participation

Most importantly is the fact that the sessions are equal as accessible to the client and other stakeholders that are involved. Each one to one session is scheduled in advance, an email sent out and all that is needed is for observers to download a small plug-in, which takes seconds, and voila you can now see what we can see, which is the panellist computer monitor.

Two way conversation, in real time, between the panellist and the moderator is available through a conference call facility that everyone can dial into and direct chat with the moderator is enabled through the observation software. This features allows you, the client, to direct each session and get the most from it.

Finally, everything that is done on screen and said during each session is digitally recorded and can the video can be hosted in full, transferred to DVD or edited into highlight clips.

Ultimately, every method of research has a place and the agency pitching for your work should justify not only the methodology but also identify the best solution for you, often this may seem more complex but ultimately it will lead to far better results.

global usability testing, market research, usability research usability

Last night I took a cab in the snow across London and my cabbie was about to head off on a cruise for 10 days. Once he knew I worked with the interweb he took it upon himself to blame me for every rubbish website out there.

His view was that no one website was designed with him in mind, and they all tried to do things differently, which ends up just becoming confusing.

So I started to find out what he wanted and quickly realised that he had some amazing insight into improving website usability, especially as his wife is French and she has a totally different view of what is important and not on a travel website.

Having undertaken a wide range of research across travel websites over the past few years, the more we do, the more I realise that asking people like Dave the cabbie their views, wants and needs is increasingly more important in ensuring what you are doing online is right.

It’s still too easy to forget about the end user in the rush to launch new sites, but it does not have to cost much or take long to run a round remote testing on a quick prototype or implement multivariate research on your existing site.

National Express are doing all of the above and more to ensure that the solutions that we are developing work as well as they can and constantly evolve to meet changing customer needs.

So if you want to unravel your travel then remember to ask Dave.

customer insight, global usability testing, usability research e-commerce, Internet, usability

The recent on going developments to Deloitte’s UK Career website, provided by CADinteractive has help secure a No.1 position in this years Potential Park “Top Career Website”.
This is a great achievement for The Global Careers team, who were hoping to build on last years results and are over the moon with a win.

CADinteractive undertook a global research project for Deloitte in 2006/07 that lead to a complete redesign of the site and further on going improvements.

Find out more about CADinteractive’s award winning research and design services.

global usability testing, usability research, user centred design