This month I attended ‘Adventures in mobile’ when the Brand Perfect Tour landed in London.

Internet banking security is a hot topic and a primary concern for both the financial industry and consumer alike.

We’ve done a lot of user research recently and found that fears centre around potential loss of funds, the personal intrusion and the inconvenience of having to deal with the problem.

A notable trend this year on the conference circuit is service design.  Experiences that go beyond a single site or app that work to not only help us get to where we want to go but started preparing for our arrival before we’ve even left.

Another useful presentation about the bigger picture of user experience or interaction, influencing behavioural and organisational change. From the end-of-session questions and the comments at our stand it’s clear practitioners are a little unsure about the messages presented both by Robert Fabricant and Oliver King and how we can fit and influence the big organisations.

Original post by former Foolproofer Matt Theuma

Given that we are currently working on a project creating personas for a large UK retailer, Kim Goodwin’s talk was one that we were really looking forward to. Kim described personas as a scalpel, a really useful tool that is hard to master but also like prescription drugs, often over prescribed which reduce their effectiveness.

A large component of what we do at Foolproof is to understand the context of a site. There are two slants to context. The psychological context, i.e. the assumptions, expectations and needs a user has before arriving at a site. And the environmental context i.e. physically where the site will be used. 

It gets to a point when regular emails from organisations on today’s/this week’s/this month’s special offer/featured product/service/specially selected partner, outnumber the business and personal email and it’s time to take action before my PC falls over trying to load my mail service.

It seems to be the month for Foolproof student activities and not to be left out I went back to one of my old haunts, Gaydon, and the heritage motor museum, to give a short presentation to IEHF students about where a career in Ergonomics and Human Factors can take you (or at least has taken me), and what Foolproof and a career in the digital space can offer.

I’ve been lucky enough to go out to Sao Paulo, Brazil to conclude our global research on attitudes and expectations to mobile banking and to test a prototype. What a fascinating place.

I’m not talking about a new fad sweeping the countryside that would have the RSPCA taking up arms but a Firefox add-on built by a guy in the US to demonstrate the weakness of unsecured wireless networks.