We have started the year as we mean to ... Read more about 'What’s happening at Webcredible']]> January has gone by very quickly for us at Webcredible. I can’t believe we are already into the second month of 2012 with winter finally hitting us in London with a really cold snap and a mentions of snow! A Webcredible snowman building competition would be amazing.

We have started the year as we mean to go on and have all been really busy at Webcredible with a huge variety of customer experience strategy workshops, user research and UX design projects underway with some great clients. We have also been extremely busy with new business pitches, so it’s looking like another exciting year for the digital industry!

We have been out and about this month too, and our senior UX consultant Alex did an amazing presentation at London IA last month called ‘I love side projects’, check out his presentation, it’s pretty inspiring.

We are very excited to announce an update our own website is live (well the first phase anyway!) We are aligning our business to the needs of our customers (yes, we are delivering what we preach and teach about customer experience!) and have started by changing the content on the website. Mostly in the ‘what we do’ section, we are making it more about your goals and what you need to deliver to your organisations. Let us know what you think, your feedback is really important to us!

Finally, we have launched a brand new e-learning training service!

If you need to get your organisation and staff up to date with their web writing skills then we have the answer. We have just launched our e-learning portal, and our first course is web writing! We deliver excellent classroom training in user experience, web development, digital marketing and online copywriting but we felt there was a real need to help larger organisations to empower more of their employees to write great digital content! If you are interested then drop us an email to training@webcredible.co.uk

Even when you’ve ... Read more about 'Before you start sketching']]> How many times did you end up sketching the “perfect idea” for a website page or feature, only to realise later on that you’ve missed something important, and adding it means you have to rethink your concept from scratch? Or, when you’ve got a few alternative sketches, you don’t know where to start?

Even when you’ve done extensive user research that should help you avoid the above problems, it’s often difficult to remember all the relevant research findings in the heat of the designing moment.

That’s why you should make a point of trying to document the goals of your design before you start. Here’s a template to help you write this mini-”design brief” so in 1 sentence:

This (page/element) will be used by (user type/persona) looking to do (goals) and should include the following (information/actions).

For example, imagine you’re designing an ecommerce website and need to sketch a page for customers to track their orders. There’s probably a few ways to organise such a page, but the brief is the same:

• find out when their order will be delivered
• cancel their order
• find out how to return an item

and should include the following:

• list of all orders placed in the last 3 months
• link to access earlier orders
• summary of items for each order, order number and when order was placed
• link to parcel tracking information (if available)
• link to order cancellation form
• link to returns form

To help you using this technique while sketching, we’ve produced a free downloadable PDF template to help you write your design briefs. Just print of a stack of these, keep them in your project area, and remember to fill one in before you start sketching a new page or feature.

Keeping in ... Read more about 'What’s the worst area of customer experience in e-commerce?']]> In our recent Retail multichannel customer experience report, we found that nearly all of the brands we researched performed poorly in their communications with the customer after a purchase has been made and the product has been delivered. It was the lowest scoring guideline in the report with an average of 1.5 points out of 5.

Keeping in contact following a sale is a really important and useful tool for retention, repeat purchases and customer loyalty. Customers are more likely to buy with the company again provided they’re satisfied with their purchase and the level of service (i.e. the ordering experience and delivery.)

Most companies evaluated in the report just offered blanket, un-targeted offer emails or repeated requests to review the purchased item. Customers will only place product reviews on a website if they’re sufficiently motivated by a positive or negative experience, not because they’re sent reminder emails. This represents a lost opportunity to really engage with customers, to build a personal rapport with them.

There’s a lot more companies could be doing that would be beneficial to them and improve the brand experience for their customers:

• To suggest other items which are complementary e.g. these shirts to go with trousers recently purchased
• To show the purchased product in context with other products i.e. to showcase a particular look in a room or outfit worn by a model
• To offer alternative products if customers have returned items
• Other customers also bought these products
• Other books by the same author, products by the same designer
• Content that reaffirms customer taste having bought a certain product e.g. bright pinks are this season’s colour
• Chances to buy accessories
• Offers and discounts that can be used with your next purchase

These aren’t new ideas. We’ve done lots of research at Webcredible that demonstrates that customers prefer targeted recommendations. The technology exists and yet the follow-up communication appears not to have moved on from shot-in-the-dark newsletters.

If you’re a retailer we would be really interested to know what you are doing and how you go about your after sales communications! Has anyone got some good examples of best practice after-delivery communications?

OmniGraffle is one ... Read more about 'iPads in the UX community']]> Since the iPad was launched, I’ve been curious how this device would be adopted as a working tool by the UX community. Apart from the many project management, mind mapping and sketching apps, there are also a few diagramming apps available for the iPad that could help with creating wireframes and flow charts.

OmniGraffle is one of the most popular diagramming tools for Mac, and it’s therefore natural that the OmniGraffle iPad app has received some attention among UX professionals. However with a price tag of £34.99 (as of November 2011), it’s one of the most expensive iPad apps and far more expensive than alternatives such as the popular iMockups app.

How does OmniGraffle for iPad work as a tool for creating UX focused deliverables such as wireframes and flow diagrams?

1. Getting started

The welcome page is an actual diagram document and works as a tutorial explaining how to perform common tasks.The user is asked to touch, hold and drag objects, draw a line etc. to familiarise with some of the key features(see image 1). This is helpful because the app really has many features.

The app comes with a few ready-made diagram examples. These examples showcase what can be produced using the app; from detailed to freehand drawn wireframes, as well as various organisation and flow charts.

2. Interface design

When opening a new canvas, the interface looks simple with only six buttons at the top of the screen. Initially, the simple design inconvenient when designing for a tablet touch screen device since the real estate is limited and buttons must have a minimum size so that they’re easy to tap.

The icons used on some of the buttons aren’t particularly descriptive about what lies behind them but it’s relatively easy to learn the key options of the application. If you’re familiar with other types of diagramming software, it won’t take you long to familiarise with the navigation and locate the most common features.

3. Creating diagrams

Using the drawing canvas is easy. Diagrams are created either from ready-made objects in the stencil library or via freehand drawing and it’s very convenient having the option to combine the two methods. Whereas freehand drawing makes it easy to capture initial ideas, UI objects from the stencil library help illustrate the details, which can be difficult to draw by hand.

The app also has a useful ‘connectors mode’ for creating flow charts. The mode makes it easy to connect boxes with a ‘snap to object’ function, and with a bit of practice you can make some detailed and professional-looking flow diagrams.

It’s also easy to select multiple objects and move or group them. Here, OmniGraffle does better than other diagramming apps that I’ve tried on the iPad, where manipulating objects can be quite clunky.

Like with the ‘connectors mode’, the app has a ‘snap to grid’ feature making it easy to align objects. If it’s still difficult to place a single object in the right position, it can be moved pixel by pixel via arrow keys from the formatting palette.

4. Using the stencil library

The app has a stencil library with a huge selection of objects, making it possible to create detailed diagrams. The library contains the most common UI objects for web navigation, forms, buttons, social networking features and icons. However, it contains so many objects users will have to spend a lot of time scrolling through the lists. It’s lso sometimes difficult to identify some objects because the thumbnails are too small. Often, you may have to drag an object to the canvas just to see what it is (see image 2).

After using the app a few times, I became familiar with the stencil library and I found myself using only a small amount of the objects available. I would prefer a smaller selection of objects and less scrolling. After all, this is an app for sketching and capturing ideas – if I wanted to do detailed wireframes, I would use my computer.

5. Loading time

Another problem with the stencil library is the loading time. In particular, the ‘Konigi wireframes’ library loads very slowly (more than 10 seconds on an iPad1), and since this library contains most of the UI objects it really has negative impact on the user experience.

I’ve never experienced such delay in any app on the iPad before. Whereas the problems with the number of options in the library probably decrease (or can be avoided) over time when familiarising with the app, the loading time is a significant problem interrupting the user flow, especially when you want to sketch some ideas ‘on-the-go’.

6. Formatting tools and features

Similar to the vast selection of objects, the app has an enormous amount of features. Objects can be manipulated in any way you can imagine. The app has most of the formatting options I would expect of a full size desktop application, but it delivers much more than what I would expect of an iPad app. With the OmniGraffle app, I can create diagrams that look much better than with any other diagramming app for the iPad I’ve tried.

However, since all the features and formatting options are hidden away in menus and toolbars, it takes a lot of tapping to get to them and is prone to errors. The complexity slows down the drawing process and makes the app less suitable for quick sketching.

An additional problem with all the menus is that their positions are fixed and they overlap parts of the canvas. If the selected object is located under a menu, you can no longer preview how your formatting changes the object. A formatting palette e.g. located in the right column would have been preferred, perhaps with a show/hide function so it doesn’t take too much real estate.

So, is OmniGraffle going to kick up a storm in the UX community?

The OmniGraffle app for the iPad is a good tool for creating freehand sketching and makes it possible to create more detailed and better looking diagrams than other iPad apps that I have tried. After using OmniGraffle for this review, I went back to iMockups, which used to be my preferred tool for wireframing and I found myself missing the features for creating masters, managing layers and the easy multi-selection options. The diagrams just look more professional with the OmniGraffle app!

But the many features does have a negative impact on the usability of the app, and it really slows down the drawing process. Also the significant delays when loading the stencils libraries are problematic for an app made for creating quick diagrams and capturing ideas ‘on the go’.

Therefore, the question is whether it’s worth spending the extra money and time having all the features. If you use OmniGraffle on a Mac, it can be useful because you can export the diagrams you’ve done ‘on the go’ to your Mac and continue working from there. Unfortunately, the only other format available for exporting is PDF, so users of other diagramming tools are limited to using OmniGraffle for iPad as a sketching tool. For this purpose, iMockups and other diagramming apps, which cost much less of the OmniGraffle app can do the job.

What do you think? Have you used any other apps in a UX capacity? Let us know in the comments below!

Last week ICANN started taking applications from businesses to gain their own gLTD and ushered in the expansion of the restricted 22 ... Read more about 'Will we see .apple or .iCloud?']]> The door is now ajar for another new step forward for the world of the internet, and it comes from ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in the form of personalised gLTDs (generic top-level domains).

Last week ICANN started taking applications from businesses to gain their own gLTD and ushered in the expansion of the restricted 22 gTLDs we have had to date (such as .com, .co.uk, .gov) to allow essentially any name to be used.

ICANN see this to be a great step in the expansion of the internet, but with an application fee of £120,000 the opportunity to take advantage of this is only really open for larger businesses at this point. The race is undoubtedly now on to secure them and to start to take advantage of the brand awareness and potential that comes with it.

Who will be the first to adopt their own gTLDs? What will they choose to use? And, what will the impact be on businesses and customers?

Let us know in the comments below!

The economic outlook could hardly be more bleak at ... Read more about 'The revolution will be user-centred']]> I’ve been doing some thinking lately and I have come to the conclusion that the revolution that saves our economy will be a user-centred one. Not sure? It seems an unusual thing to say but have a read and let me know what you think.

The current scenario

The economic outlook could hardly be more bleak at the moment:

• UK growth estimates revised to an anaemic 0.7% for 2012
• £111 billion more government borrowing over the next 5 years
• high youth unemployment, ongoing pensions disputes between public sector unions and the government
• all this against the backdrop of struggling US and European economy

And there appears to be no solutions to this situation. The UK government is committed to austerity measures that the opposition argues will reduce growth and employment even further. That in turn will cause additional borrowing required for benefits, and casting the nation into a vicious spiral of hardship that will hit the poorest in society.

With capitalism in such a woeful state for Western economies, and in the wake of the credit crunch and banking crisis, it’s not hard to understand the grievances of the Occupy movement.

What’s the problem?

• The main trouble, though, with the anti-capitalist protest movements is that despite communicating their anger effectively, they don’t offer an alternative.
• Capitalism is so all-pervasive that removing it isn’t credible.
• Virtually every person on the planet is locked into a global system that dictates their standard of living.
• Most people, even in relatively wealthy G7 nations, are too busy making ends meet to do anything other than look on at protest camps in bemusement. This isn’t apathy. Even if they were sympathetic to the cause, they can’t simply step outside of the capitalist system.
• Effort aimed at producing a fairer capitalism by bringing banks and global corporations to book hasn’t worked in the past and won’t work now because it requires short-termist, self-interested world governments to take coordinated action.

The futility of raging against the machine is perhaps summed up by UK infrastructure improvement plans. After decades of under-investment in ports, rail and roads, the UK economy is poorly equipped to deal with changes in global trade. For example, our current ports cannot handle the vast container ships being built to leverage economies of scale in the transport of goods flowing from manufacturing powerhouses in the east. The London Gateway is a new deep-sea port being built with Middle-Eastern money in the Thames Estuary to attract trade. It’s just one of a string of infrastructure projects funded by the cash-rich economies of Asia and the Arab World aimed at getting Britain’s economy moving again.

It seems the only way to patch up ailing capitalist systems is to use the tools of capitalism – to spend and invest our way out of a hole. Unfortunately for those who protest against it, flawed as it is, capitalism is the only game in town.

But of course, global capitalism is ultimately unsustainable. As the population increases, the demand for resources will outstrip the planet’s ability to supply. So, what’s the answer?

Step 1. Decentralisation of information

I believe the greatest challenge to the capitalist status-quo will be the emergence of decentralisation – the handing of control to individual consumers. It has already happened to a certain extent with information. The vast quantity of instantly available content on the web makes it very difficult to monetise that content, as analysed in our report ‘The future of online content‘. Information will eventually become free as the cost of connection and equipment becomes lower and lower. Revolutions of this nature are rarely intended.

• When Apple executives re-invented the way we consume music with the iPod and iTunes, they could not have foreseen the dramatic collapse of the existing business model used in the music industry. They expected the first iTunes store to sell a million songs in six months, but it sold a million songs in six days.
• This spelled the end of music as a product, and the beginning of music as a service. The result is that music is widely available through so many different channels either at low prices or free that its monetisation is becomingly increasingly difficult.
• Once the conditions were in place for music’s traditional business model to be turned on its head, once the barriers to change were removed and the prospect of music as a service resonated with enough people, nothing could stop it. Not legislation, not government intervention, not business.

Of course, there are a few spectacular winners in the current race to make money out of the properties of the Internet – Facebook, Google, Apple. How is that a challenge to capitalism? Because in the process of becoming wildly successful, these global giants have armed legions of people with cheap, accessible information and the means to share it. These companies have unleashed the start of a trend that will inevitably include not just information, but material and energy.

Step 2. Decentralisation of material

Karl Marx famously urged the people to take control of the means of production. Communism failed because it removed the incentive to work, and the means of production was owned not by the people but by the state. But we are perhaps witnessing the humble beginnings of a technological shift that will truly move the means of production into the hands of people. What’s needed is a technology that involves the decentralisation of production, for example 3D printers.

• On an industrial scale, the use of 3D printers is already revolutionising additive manufacturing technologies because it is now as cheap to produce single items as it is to produce thousands. The technology has advanced to the point where different materials can be used to print parts and assemblies in one build process.
• 3D printers are available for domestic use, although we’re perhaps at the same enthusiast era we were at in the 1980s with home computing when people used to assemble their own ZX81 machines with minuscule processing power and 1KB of memory.
• As 3D printers increase in capability and reduce in cost, people will for the first time be able to produce things according to their design or designs made available as open-source.

But will this even appeal to people? It’s hard to envisage now, when all our material goods are churned out for us on an industrial scale. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the utility of 3D printing just because our material world is mass-produced. In 1977, Ken Olson, the chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp said, ‘There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.’ The home computing revolution that immediately followed was the start of the most spectacular decentralisation in history – from isolated mainframes to home computers and it ushered in the Internet age.

What will make 3D printing attractive is combining it with downloadable product design.

• You can’t buy the chair below. You can only buy and download the blueprint to make it yourself from cheap locally-sourced shipping pallets.
• The idea champions sustainability and emphasises the design of something rather than the object itself. It is an open source design, one that anyone can use to make their copy of a product.

On its own the idea of open source product design is interesting but niche – only attractive to someone with the required craft skills and inclination. Most people would ask, ‘Why would you bother to make something when you could just buy it?’

Well, with access to a 3D printer you wouldn’t strictly speaking be making it.

• You would be downloading a design, filling up a 3D printer with raw material and pressing the ‘Print’ button.
• Logistical transport of finished goods will become obsolete.
• Production will become trivial and static.
• The only part of the process that will have any currency and dynamism is the bit that truly matters – the design.

Once people are freed of the need to actually make something, there will no longer be any barriers to their creativity being realised.

Witness the explosion of user-generated content online now the means of production and publication have been made readily available – blogs, music, art, novels, wiki collaboration and so on. It’s meaningless to point out that some of this user-generated stuff isn’t any good. It’s out there and people can choose to consume it or not as an alternative to buying the mass-produced variety. Clay Shirky once thought people wouldn’t bother to create their own web pages because the poor quality of the end result would put them off. In his book Cognitive Surplus he freely admits to being wrong about that – people are motivated by the challenge of doing it for themselves and by the control that comes from self expression.

At the moment, manufacturing companies are the sole gatekeepers of design, in the same way that publishers used to be the sole gatekeepers of written content. With the advent of 3D printers, design will no longer be the exclusive preserve of professional designers. Of course, there will still be amateur and professional, free and monetised, good and bad, but design will be freed from the shackles of commercialisation and economies of scale. It can truly become open source and customisable.

We are a long way from the moment when all the possessions we own and use are printed to our own specification in our own homes. It’s more likely that production would first condense into local micro-factories that compete favourably with more traditional mass production techniques. But the shift has begun. And once it takes hold it will be self-perpetuating – the demand for better quality, more versatile end-products will drive improvements in the speed and sophistication of the printers.

The consequences for capitalism

This all sounds great as a true believer in the power of design and self expression, but what will that mean for capitalism and the economy?

It’s possible to envisage a situation where the cost of 3D printed products will tend to zero, reducing the value of consumer trade perhaps to the point where money is rendered obsolete. Raw materials will always be needed but the technology is a natural fit for recycling. It raises the prospect of each person having a finite amount of material stuff that just gets converted into new products when the old products wear out. Maybe in the long term 3D printing will just change capitalism, rather than eradicate it altogether. But it will perhaps offer the prospect of a lifestyle choice that simply doesn’t exist today in any practical way – to opt out of mass-produced consumer culture.

Critics will argue that we are locked into global capitalism – that 3D printers can only address the things we can buy, not food and land and services and energy. But once information and products are decentralised it only makes it more likely that the rest will follow. If you could cheaply print out solar panels, instead of paying ever higher prices for fossil-fuel energy across a centralised grid why wouldn’t you? Certainly as resources become scarce with increases in global population, paradigm shifts away from capitalism will have a greater chance of success, because something will have to give.

There are only two reasons why any product or service survives in a form that ignores the needs and desires of its users:

• because those users have no alternative
• or because those users are unaware of a better alternative

Increasingly, users do have choices – choices that have been made transparent by the decentralisation of information. And they are voting with their wallets in their droves. Capitalism is driven by consumer needs. The irony is that this very fact is what may ultimately end up mutating capitalism into something else.

If I were an anti-capitalist protester, I wouldn’t be camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral preaching to the converted. I’d be doing everything I could to foster the decentralisation of things and instigating a revolution through the back door.

What do you think? Could it work? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

This marks a turning point in the world of web development as designers and developers no longer need to dread seeing “Support for IE6″ in their design briefs.

Microsoft has stated that IE6 users from Australia and Brazil will be the ... Read more about 'End of IE6 - Web developers around the world rejoice!']]> From January 1st 2012, Microsoft started to phase out Internet Explorer 6 with forced automatic upgrades.

This marks a turning point in the world of web development as designers and developers no longer need to dread seeing “Support for IE6″ in their design briefs.

Microsoft has stated that IE6 users from Australia and Brazil will be the first to receive upgrades to the latest version of IE that their OS supports - for Windows XP that will be Internet Explorer 8 and for Windows Vista and Windows7  it’s Internet Explorer 9.

Stats recording current usage of IE6 worldwide are up on the IE6 countdown site. Don’t worry if you still need to test websites in IE6 for now, you can use a program called IE Tester instead!

What will this mean for you and your company? Will you be trying to convince them to ditch Windows XP altogether in favour of Windows 7?

2011 was a great year for us at Webcredible and I think we’re all just about recovered from the office Christmas party, which yet again saw the ruin of many a great song ... Read more about 'What’s happening at Webcredible?']]> Happy New Year from all of the team here at Webcredible, we hope you all had a nice rest over the holiday season!

2011 was a great year for us at Webcredible and I think we’re all just about recovered from the office Christmas party, which yet again saw the ruin of many a great song in the karaoke booth. You can check out the evidence of festive cheer on our flickr stream. The office is buzzing again with customer experience strategy work going up on the white boards and user testing already under way. There’s no quiet, easy start to the year for our consultants!

So, what can we expect from 2012?

Apart from being the year of the London Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, there are a few trends that we think will be really important this year in the area of customer experience and brand strategy.

1. Let’s play: brands will increasingly use gamification and lift the mood with playful interactions to improve brand loyalty.
2. How can I help you?: all consumer segments will have an increasing expectation of  high levels of customer and after sales service, and will expect more personalised digital interactions.
3. All together now: the integration of digital platforms with each other and with the non-digital world will be essential for true 360 degree brand penetration and optimised customer experience.

The prospect of just these few key areas is very exciting, and it’s going to be a great year with loads to do and a lot to look forward to. What are your predictions for the coming year? We’d love to hear them just leave a comment below!

For us at Webcredible the year has started off on a great foot, our team is growing with the addition of a new Sales Manager and Senior User Experience Consultant, and we are well settled into our fantastic new offices on Southwark Street. Alongside some really interesting client work in the schedule, our website redesign is in full flow with the test site gaining new content and information architecture as we speak, and a whole new look and feel is being designed - all very exciting and we hope you will all like it too!