Foolproof blog

I’m always surprised at how poor the fitting rooms are in clothing stores. Retailers have clearly spent a significant amount of time on every detail in the main part of shops to ensure that the way clothes are presented entices you to buy and reflects their brand, yet when you go to try on clothes you’re interested in, the experience can be the complete opposite.

Fitting rooms are where customers make their decision whether or not to buy clothes, yet the space in which this happens often seems like an afterthought. So many are cramped cubicles made from substandard materials, with few places to hang up clothes or leave other items you might have with you. Customers want to feel confident about their purchase, and a poor fitting room experience undermines this decision.

Our new study, Going Mobile, reveals the extent to which the quality of mobile interactions are driving the overall brand perceptions of today’s consumer. The in-depth quantitative and ethnographic research programme also highlights how a poor mobile experience can often deter customers from any further engagement with a brand.

In our research we often find that users are frustrated by overly large flashing images and videos. Banner blindness is a very commonly understood phenomenon where too much, inappropriate advertising becomes invisible. However, there are circumstances where advertising is a valuable part of the user experience.

We recently completed a study involving brides-to-be where timely and relevant adverts contributed to, rather than hindered, the user experience. We found that the shopping model used by brides-to-be actively seeks out glossy ad content and that excitement was generated when seeking inspiration and ideas from advertisements in magazines, at wedding fairs and importantly, online.

Designing an event
The London 2012 Olympics is just around the corner, bringing more than 900,000 visitors to the Olympic and Paralympic games. All these visitors will require access to huge quantities of information, products and services from the tourist sector, such as food and drink, travel, accommodation, entertainment, fashion and telecommunications, to name a few. We’ve already helped a number of leading brands get ready for the games, but the majority of businesses have been slow to react.
 

Last week I attended Patrick Jordon’s lecture at City University on ‘Improving the user experience – creativity, innovation and quality of life’.

In this presentation he looked at what quality of life is and the role that user experience can play in improving it; the role that online and mobile services and media can play in enhancing quality of life and how creativity and innovation can be used to optimise the design of these.

In an entertaining and thought-provoking talk at the London School of Economics on Monday night, writer and former England cricketer Ed Smith made a compelling case for embracing luck in our lives.

The title of the talk – one of a series of public events at LSE – was ‘Luck: what it means and why it matters – in sport and life’. Admittedly, I attended this lecture primarily as a cricket lover, yet I found myself musing on the lessons for user experience (UX) researchers to be found in Ed’s stories about the evermore strenuous – and ultimately futile – attempts of sports coaches to eliminate chance from sport.

Most people (apart from me) find the EU Privacy Directive a little dull… but there’s no denying it is an important issue for all our clients. We’ve been helping some of our clients walk the fine line between compliance and commercial reality.

Co-authored with former Foolproofer Patrick Goffin

Top-of-mind for UX professionals at last month’s UX Hong Kong 2012 (UXHK2012) was ‘breaking down organisational silos’, which in fact related heavily to a round-table session we were running during the event.

The fact that so many speakers were focused on organisational silos and how they could be broken down to drive effective change, suggests that UX professionals from all types of organisations around the world have arrived at a shared view, that UX has matured as a discipline and earned the right to play a leading role in supporting business strategy and change. This common view point shows how far the UX industry has come in the last 10 years.

Does data have a place in the design process? There is a very strong constituency in the design community that thinks not. ‘Design is magic’ the story goes. Analytical thinking stifles creativity, and constrains thinking. Data closes things down rather opening them up.

Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar ‘Understanding & Winning the Mobile consumer’. As promised I’ve answered the questions we didn’t manage to get to within the session here. If you missed the webinar you can view the recording in our new Insight section.