In recent months we’ve been working with several corporations to develop compliant solutions to the new EU Privacy Directive ahead of its enforcement in May next year. Our research suggests that the Directive and associated advice is a blunt instrument, which could make the web less accessible for all, unless the ICO introduce more flexibility.

In short, the Directive requires online services – which make use of cookies or similar technologies – to gain informed consent from consumers before they can use them on their website (visit ICO guidance for more information and my previous blog EU Cookie Directive and your users). This poses a huge challenge for many businesses, especially those with hundreds of cookies across multiple domains.
 

Tuesday night we ran a round-table session to unpack experience design and how it’s viewed within our client’s organisations.  We had perspectives from diverse sectors like financial services, gaming, and energy.  Despite this sector mix, as well as a B2B and B2C split, a common issue emerged:

How do you convince C-suites (CEO, CTO, CFO etc) that putting customers at the heart of your brand experience will improve shareholder value?

I recently saw Mike Lynch, CEO of the UK software giant Autonomy, speak about his experiences of building his company from four people and a broom cupboard (which had its own part to play in their early successes) to the company that today HP values at $10billion.

He spoke about three ‘catch phrases’ that have become cornerstones to the success of Autonomy, all of which I felt had messages for anyone in business today.

We’re delighted to have welcomed Leslie Fountain to the Foolproof Group as Experience Design Director. She joins us from System Concepts, a usability and accessibility consultancy, where she was joint Managing Director.

We attended econsultancy’s Future of Digital Marketing event and asked brands about their UX design challenges. Here’s a flavour of the questions asked and our answers.

As web designer Scott Jehl recently tweeted “Progressive enhancement doesn’t mean settling for poor UX”. When I asked who would say that he replied: “I commonly sees PE labeled as a practice for those happy settling for less-than-stellar design.”

I think that whoever thinks this is misguided and out of touch with how modern websites are designed and built. Progressive enhancement is core to creating a good user experience, not something that is in conflict with it.

Back in January, I put in a speculative submission to the 2011 IA summit organisers to talk about the value of thinking time in experience design, including a preposterous proposition for prediction and protection of that pensive period.

I was kind of using it as a way to determine how to submit next time, after they rejected me. However, they accepted my submission (hopeless jokes included), which kicked off a chain of events, culminating in my Saturday morning session: “I’m not just making this up: The value of thinking time in experience design”.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived; applications for tickets to the London 2012 Olympics is now open and we’ve spent the day reviewing the application process.

Our verdict? 75% good for 75% of users. It withstood the initial barrage of applications with only minor availability issues but fell short of creating a real ‘Olympic’ experience.

The ballot system for application is a really good idea. It creates a six week window for thinking, planning and applying. But what the site doesn’t provide is rich information resources to allow you to make the most of this. Also, the messages on the site don’t draw attention to the fact that you’ve got the ability to chop and change your application right up until the 26th April.

Read the full review: ’2012 Ticketing: The Good the Bad and the Ugly‘ (opens in new window)

Published in New Media Age 03/03/2011

The recent merger between Foolproof and Flow Interactive says something interesting about the outlook and ambitions of some companies in the user experience space. When we started Foolproof, much of our work was tactical – briefs were focused on fixing digital customer experiences that didn’t work. But over the decade since, the emphasis has changed.

Jeff Gothelf, Director of UX at TheLadders.com, has a great proposition for what he is calling ‘Lean UX’, which reminds us what’s great about user experience design and how, potentially, we’ve over-specified it.

His central proposition is that it’s about time we got back to looking at experiences, rather than deliverables. Deliverables help us build commodities and describe solutions and actually, they can be pretty handy to work backwards from when we’re selling into a client.