we are: London

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.

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The Deloitte Technology Fast 50 celebrates the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK based on  revenue growth. The awards began over a decade ago and this year we are:london are in a fantastic 18^th place (7^th in London)!

Our stable growth has set us apart from many companies during the economic downturn. We are constantly flourishing and proving ourselves as one of the most capable and competitive companies in the market.

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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.

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We are pleased to announce the appointment of Kelsey Smith as Strategy Director.

Kelsey brings 15 years of front-line digital experience in user experience research, design and strategy. Kelsey joins we are after 6 years at Flow Interactive.

In his words: “I jumped at the opportunity to join we are:london. I’m impressed by the quality of their services, their professionalism and progressive attitude…and they’re a fine bunch of people to work with.”

Kelsey’s background is design. He studied product design alongside MD Chris Averill before gaining an MA at the RCA. Kelsey then turned his hand to digital design - creating web products for News International, Bertelsmann Media and The Independent.

Following an MSc in Human Computer interaction he joined Flow, helping them to grow from a 9 to 40+ person organization.

Kelsey brings diverse research and design experience and wide private and public sector domain knowledge.

Feel free to pop in and say hello.

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