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.

So another year arrives, but this time with some big news for both Foolproof and Flow Interactive. We’re bringing the two businesses together to make Europe’s largest specialist UX and experience design practice.

We’ve joined forces with Flow Interactive creating Europe’s largest specialist UX agency, with 70 staff and initial turnover in excess of £5.5m per annum. This places the combined business within the top 50* UK digital agencies, based on the recent 2010 New Media Age league table.

As web editor for the Foolproof website, this post from Boagworld ‘So who is actually going to do the work’ really struck a chord with me. In this article the author, Paul Boag, discusses who is responsible for creating content ready for a new website and then who will maintain it once it is live.

If you’ve ever estimated the length of a piece of string, you’ve been through a similar process to estimating thinking time in an experience design project. There isn’t really a right answer. However, if your answer is ‘we don’t estimate for thinking time’, that’s definitely the wrong answer.

As a business development person, I’m often involved in the first conversations between Foolproof and prospective new clients. So, it’s not surprising that I come across familiar arguments as to why the client is nervous about making an investment in user experience (UX).

I’m looking at the Usability Professionals’ Association ‘designing the user experience’ poster on the wall above Rhodri’s head. You might be looking at one too. If I could actually read the text on the poster from where I’m sitting, I’m sure it would explain the user experience design steps eloquently, in a cheeky little tone of voice in reference to the snakes and ladders theme they’ve used for the visual representation of the process path.

(Reproduced from the ‘User Experience Directory 2009′ produced by New Media Age)

Each day, it seems more brands are trying to convince us that their services and interactions are designed around our needs as customers. But how many companies can demonstrate that they are truly customer-orientated?