we are: London

Nexusness

“Wake up, time to die.”

Bladerunner is possibly one of the best films ever made and all of the companies whose neon signs float in the sky during the film have gone bust, or be taken over. Not a good omen for a phone named after one of the main characters.

Is it any good?

And what’s it really like to use one in anger every day? Well I’ve handed over my iPhone to the wife after loving the Apple for 3 years. For the record I usually struggle to keep a phone for more than 6 months.

And the answer is yes, it’s good, in fact it’s really very good.

I had high hopes for other HTC phones and desperately wanted the Palm thingy to be good, but they were all pants compared to the Apple.

What’s hot!

The screen is sharp and clear and the phone is easy to navigate. Setting up email is easy, the app store is much better than I expected; forget Unix geek, think Apple chic.

Email works offline for reading and deleting, unlike the iPhone. Email, address book and social media stuff rocks. I love the widgets for news, twitter and facebook that live on the home screen.

The voice dial and dictate email is not bad either, a long way to go but it’s tempting to start everything by speaking and not navigating.

Oh and it lets you play Spotify in the background which is now the only source of music I have .

What’s not!

The only real hardware bug is the use of the back, menu, home and search  buttons printed on the bottom of the screen. Why bother? you click them by mistake and it’s a real pain.

Software bugs are wider, but with time they will get sorted and remember that Apple have had 3 years to sort out the iPhone.

1. Why does the calendar not sync with MS Exchange when mail and contacts do?

2. The screen redraw speed is slow compared to Apple, but not bad.

3. Cut & paste is not anywhere near as neat or intuitive.

Should I buy one?

Yes - not sure why but yes get one.

Time will tell.

Now that I have committed to use it for work and home life I have no choice but to get on with it, warts and all, and I guess learn to fix the issues and watch as new software updates bring all of my life, blogs, tweets, photos, music, friends, work and life together.

Or I might buy the Apple tablet, nick my iPhone back and delete this post.

Mobile, interface design, user interface Design, future, Mobile, usability

Would you buy one?

It’s been a mad year and next year is set to be even more crazy.

2009 has seen luxury good sales boom, e-commerce sites explode and the final mass adoption of digital video and e-ink.

Mobile internet has taken off thanks to Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone. Social has started to be more powerful than most could have hoped and TV has gone down hill so fast it’s breathtaking.

2009 retrospective

Early this year we predicted a few things that have happened, some clever and some obvious. BBC iPlayer has seen an amazing take up across the country and handled 70 million requests in October,  which is about 7 Petabytes of data or 12.5 Gigabytes per second.

Top 10 key changes in 2010

1. The end of free. Well at least as we know it owing to a drop in ad revenue and cold feet amongst media owners.
2. A new media monster. As the old guard struggle to reorganise, one or two new, media goliaths will take over, buying paid content from the old order and giving it out for free to meet the needs of us consumers.
3. Mobile web will overtake fixed line. For key content mobiles will become the only way to access key info, buy stuff and keep in touch.
4. Visualisation goes mainstream. With the increase in e-commerce traffic the only way to get your head around the numbers is to change your view. Being able to represent numbers in new, visual ways will be coming to a vendor near you soon.
5. The customer will become king. Crowds are causing even more trouble for corporates, as I type, Eurostar is suffering huge PR issues; surely it’s time to wake up to what your customers want?
6. Content strategy is the new usability. Too much emphasis has been placed on cool tech recently such as augmented reality, but these are just shiny bows on a box of rubbish. Clients and customers will wake up to the power of well organised content.
7. Data will kill UK networks. As the iPlayer shows, and to some extent the iPhone, when people get going, they really get going. Streaming video and large file transfers are going to carry on causing the biggest customer satisfaction issues as networks fail over the sheer volume of traffic.
8. No one will beat Apple. When it comes to technology that has completely changed the world, the iPhone is an amazing example, and no matter how hard people try (Palm) no one can get close.
9. e-ink will become the norm. We all love our Kindles, those who have them that is, and finally there is some competition, which means cheaper, better ebooks for all. Migrate newspapers from print to digital and you have a new outlet for old media. Shame about the latency of stories though.
10. Measure your customer’s empathy. Stats, conversion and marketing data standalone to offer a crutch, but only when you bring these together can you really measure how successful your business is. 2010 will see customer empathy ratings used as the standard metric for success.

We will have a review in the summer of 2010 and see what’s on, what’s not and what needs to be added.

customer insight, e-commerce, information architecture, market research, usability design future, Our news

Last night I had the pleasure to mix the elite of the global mobile industry at the 2009 Meffy awards in London.

The great and the good were there from O2, Vodafone, CommScore and many more. I had the honour of presenting the award for “Quality of Experience”, which in our view was the most deserved as it was picked by the public. The short list of entries were:

• Dolby Laboratories for ‘Dolby Mobile’
• Skyfire for ‘Skyfire Mobile Browser’
• Telenor Pakistan for ‘Telenor PhotoExpress’
• Thumbplay for ‘Thumbplay OPEN’
• Telefonica for the‘O2 mobile internet portal’

And the winner is…

The winner was Dolby Laboratories for “Dolby Mobile”, and although no official runner up was presented, O2 mobile portal was a definite second and much loved by the panel, but the new experience of Dolby surround sound on your mobile was just too good an entry for O2 to beat.

How the winner was chosen

We have been working with MEF for the past couple of years, setting up a panel, who are members of the public who review each of the entries and vote on their favourite experience. Their scores are complied and a winner is picked.

We have undertaken a wide range of mobile usability research along side web and interactive TV and have our own panel of participants in and around London, numbering over 7,000. We also have a large number of UK and global research panellists too as well as a proven network of recruitment agencies.

To find out more about our research services contact us here, or call Chris on +44 207 1991 321.

usability research future, insight, Mobile, navigation, Our news, social networking, usability

In January I made a few predictions about what the year had in store for the digital world. One that I did not put in but have talked about for ages is the end of free online services.

Basically as ad spend decreases and take up of online services increases, something has to give. A recent story on the BBC website shows BT’s new aggressive stance on asking iPlayer to pay for bandwidth.

More of the same will come as people watch more video, save more photos and re-post more content via social networks. Add to this the cut throat pricing of broadband, reduced advertising revenues and suddenly you are looking at an unsustainable business model.

So, a quick review of my predictions from January:

1. Video on Demand finally gets in to peoples homes for real (iPlayer) √
   
2. Video on Demand gets a new name (iPlayer) √
3. Interactive TV advertising (Sky green button) √
4. BT Vision moves from Microsoft to open platforms (Or Sky goes onto xbox 360) √
5. DRM free VOD (can’t win them all!) x
6. Mobile web (go go iPhone, Nokia and Andriod) √
7. Nokia Tube turns out not to be an iPhone beater (yep I own one, it’s pants) √
8. iPhone Nano (By Autumn, I promise) x
   
9. Mac tablet (See above) x
   
10. No one buys Twitter (still) √

So 7 out of ten is not bad considering we are only at the start of June. And whilst you may or may not agree with all of these it’s pretty interesting to see how fast things change.

Another foot note from January was my prediction that Apple would start to slip form wonder kid to main stream business and given the recent launch of new iPhone, this seems to be happening.

Although I would hate to see Apple done anything than succeed as I love how Steve has turned a business round by giving customers what they want! And that’s where we are, helping you give your customers what they want, although I am no Steve Jobs, I know we can help you make a big difference.

Let’s see where we are in another 6 months:

1. Windows 7 is just as rubbish as Vista?

customer insight Design, future, Interactive TV, Microsoft, Mobile, Predictive, Twitter

Can Microsoft challenge Google?

Crosby

Having just watched the video for Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, I am rather impressed. Bing seems to cover off many of the actions that a normal punter would make after clicking on a number of links.

For example, search for a flight to London from Hamburg and not only will it find you the cheapest flights but also show when the best time to buy them is, guaranteeing the lowest fare.

Left navigation, back with a vengeance

The next trick in bings box of magic is a left navigation that makes moving around different content quick and easy. So searching for a digital camera, say a Nikon D90, Bing brings back popular searches along with links to reviews, shops, pictures and even manuals, all arranged in a neat left nav.

It’s got a real time suggestion engine so a nice list of drop down choices appear as you type, similar to Google. Maps, images, video and other non-text content seem to fit within the search window nicely too, so searching becomes a lot more visual.

Snake oil or Google beater?

Our vote is still our here are we are:london, mainly due to the fact that until it’s launched for real, it would be foolhardy to judge. But Google’s killer USP was it’s speed and size, as a tech colleague of mine pointed out seven or eight years ago, “it’s (Google) got millions of web pages saved already that you can search through”.

What’s important about this statement is that Google were solving a problem that most had never realised was actually a problem. So will Microsoft’s attempt at improving the search experience be enough to topple Google and will they have a simple and effective paid search service that can be used by massive firms or individuals to the same ends?

Time will tell, but in a lot of ways I hope it is as good as the hype, mainly due to the fact that we have been working on a travel search system that is very similar and will therefore hopefully see the average web customer happy to search in a whole new way.

Uncategorized future, Microsoft, Search, usability

Older users get connected on Facebook

Facebook for silver surfers

For a long time a large number of people have been disagreeing with me on the future of Facebook.

Normally one for predicting the demise of such sites, I have felt for a long time that Facebook would become a destination for more than just the youth audience, after all how many over 60’s have mastered iPods and Skype?

The answer is of course loads. Just because they are not the current target market, does not mean they won’t adopt a great piece of technology if it meets their needs.

US research findings

In some recent research data released by Neilsen and reported on Net Imperative Facebook users aged between 50-64 year old increased by +8.3m compared with under 18 year old visitors  who only grew by 1.7m in 1998.

These figures make some compelling reading and highlight the fact that older users are switching on to new ways of keeping in touch and are not shying away from new technology as many people think.

UK growth market

The UK should learn from this growth and prepare to welcome an ever growing population of older customers onto channels that young, naive digital thinkers write off of non-starters. In a country where there are more over 60s than under 18s, who can afford to ignore such trends?

Want to know more?

If you are interested in finding out more on how the older generation interact online and what impact other social media channels can have on this market just call Chris, Kelsey or Laura on 0207 1991 321.

customer insight, market research Facebook, future, over 60

The missing link in the connected home!

02 Joggler touch screen

Never to do things by half, we are the proud owners of two O2 Jogglers. Three days in and I am loving them and actually using them all the time! You can follow life in detail on Twitter.com/02JogglerAddict

Part of the new  O2 family pack, Joggler replaces post-it notes and calendars at home, or as O2 like to say, “it’s your new fridge door”; really?

Is it worth it?

Well, if a decent wifi digital picture frame costs £100+, and O2 will not be happy with the comparison I am sure, then £150 to get a device that organises your life, is a networked home media player and looks so good is a bargain. Add to this the 1Gb of internal memory, USB connection for external drives and a never ending line up of applications to download in the future, and you would be mad not to get one.

Set up

The box and presentation are very Apple, simple, no wrapping, just a shiny new Joggler sitting there ready for use.

• Plug in to power and it switches itself on, say hi, plays a cute tune, and then takes you through a simple set up process.
• You’ll need to know your wifi password, etc, or you can plug it straight in to your router.
• Once online, it will automatically download and install a software update, restart and you’re off.

Features

• The main selling point is the shared calendar that you can add lots of people to and sync with the online calendar on O2.
• The calendar will send SMS alerts to O2 phones if you set a reminder on an calendar entry.
• Screen wise this is better than my top of the range Sony digital picture frame and plays back movies and photos in loads of formats amazingly well.
• Audio playback is not bad, you can stream AV from your PC too over the network, and once the digital radio is switched on, you’ll have a great little home media player in your kitchen.
• There are neat little news, weather, sport and traffic feeds, although I am not sure what the traffic one is telling me.

Other nice features are coming such as the ability to send and receive text and picture messages, turning this, already amazing device, into an electronic post-it note.

What’s missing?

Key features missing are web browsing, YouTube playback, Twitter client, ability to basically edit photos such as rotate and crop and an app store.

I really think that this device could the piece of tech that finally connects the digital home.  Can you imagine how cool it would be to browse recipes on it whilst watching demo videos of how to cook and even being able to order your shopping by clicking on pictures and ordering direct.

Watch the O2 Family advert

interface design, usability design, user interface future, Mobile

Chris Averill, managing director of we are:london will be presenting as a keynote speaker at the Vignette Middle East Web Convention in Dubai on Monday 27 April.

Chris will be presenting the latest findings from their Middle East research consortium study, that will present the latest view of the Internet landscape

Social networking and it’s potential impact on Middle Eastern culture and business will also be covered as Chris demystifies what the West think they know and what Arabic and Muslim cultures actually want.

Further details can be found at Vignette’s website

arabic research, customer insight future, Internet, Twitter

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