User experience blog

What’s happening at Webcredible

By Trenton Moss on 1 September 2011

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It has been an up and down kind of month with the shock and sadness of the riots followed by celebration at Notting Hill Carnival. But after months of anticipation I can finally say that I’m writing this blog post from our new office!

A long bank holiday weekend for some was a long weekend of moving boxes and wiring for others. There are still a few things to be done, like choosing coffee machines, decorating our massive floor to ceiling windows (post-its maybe?), and getting rid of the packing boxes but we can safely say that our working space is now a great place to be for our consultants and our clients, and now represents who we are and where we are going as a business. We are still settling in but have already conducted user testing in our test suites and are looking forward to training courses starting in their new home next week.

We hope to welcome you to our new office environment soon, but I have included a quick preview photo of our training facilities to give you an idea of the space!

Also this month we have made a few changes to our newsletter, adding some new features that we hope are useful to you - we would really like to know what you think so leave us a comment below if you have any feedback! If you aren’t subscribed yet then you can subscribe to our newsletter on our homepage for a monthly dose of user & customer experience knowledge sharing, our new Industry Insider feature (this month is Financial Services, and next month is Retail!) as well as book of the month, top links and loads more!

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HP TouchPad Pricing – Marketing Win?

By Gemma Maidment on 30 August 2011

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As I am sure most of you are already aware HP have decided to sell off or spin off the hardware part of their business.

After the announcement last week, HP cut the price of their TouchPad to approx £90, which took the technology consumer world by storm. Social forums were formed helping the hundreds and thousands of people searching for stock. Although many people were excitedly announcing their ’steal purchase’ of a TouchPad, others were frustrated when several websites showed malfunctions at checkouts and allowed people to buy and reserve stock that didn’t exist.

The key question though is what really led to this price-cutting or loss leader approach to marketing? And did it give HP the results they were looking for? There has been some debate already about the potential for a copy-cat strategy with Amazon’s upcoming tablet and projections are already being made about the damage that might have been done to Apple’s iPad2 sales.

Many believe it was a marketing strategy based on diverting spend away from advertising to subsidise a price drop and undercutting the tablet market. Some think it was just a straight forward admission that they couldn’t compete in the market place. What do you think? I guess we may never know what inspired this move and if it worked with a view to spinning off the business, but perhaps time will tell.

By the way, did anyone get their hands on the HP TouchPad? How does it compare to its rivals in the market?

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Is there a formula to foster innovation?

By Gemma Maidment on 25 August 2011

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With the departure of Steve Jobs as CEO from Apple, it really got me thinking - is one great, influential and visionary mind at the helm of an organisation what it comes down to for a company to really foster innovation? Are these people 1 in a million or is it a skill that can be learnt? How can you replicate the level of creativity, brand identity and forward thinking required on your own scale and in your own situations?

Well as a lover of strategy & innovation (which I gained at university and yes it’s a bit sad to admit to it) I’ve collected a few ideas over the years of what is needed to create a structure, in the loosest of terms that would foster innovation. It’s all down to a melting-pot of culture, balance of personalities, and the physical set-up of a business and its processes that help or hinder innovation. Other factors such as remembering that great ideas can come from anywhere is also really important.

I would continue but I stumbled across a fantastic interview with Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation, which really says it all so here are a few of the best to get your juices flowing but I really do suggest you read the full interview when you get the chance!

  1. Herd your black sheep (in other words, gather together all those disruptive or unsettled employees into one place, they are probably frustrated because they see things differently - perfect for innovation!)
  2. Perfect is the enemy (because you need room for experimenting and not worrying about it being 100% perfect all the time)
  3. Interaction = Innovation (so get your employees interacting on a day to day basis by any means possible)
  4. Encourage inter-disciplinary learning (we have skill swap days, expand the mind and encourage different thoughts)

What do you think? Does your company have any great initiatives for fostering innovation? Let us know! I am currently working on a strategy for this in line with our new business and offices so any success or failure stories would be really appreciated.

Picture of Pixar’s Feature Film Ratatouille (photo credit: IMDb) created by the Academy Award Winning Brad Bird reminds us that a great chef could come from anywhere, and so can innovation.

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Are QR codes living up to their potential?

By Gemma Maidment on 19 August 2011

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Over the weekend I introduced my grandfather to QR codes, perhaps a little ambitious and I have to admit that although he loved the concept, I don’t think he will ever have the technology to really use it. It really got me thinking though. I know how amazing QR codes could be, they could facilitate great interactive and cross-channel customer and brand experiences, and performance is easily measurable (brilliant!) but I can’t help but be a bit sceptical. Who actually gets their phone out and scans these codes?

A quick bit of crowdsourced research on social media showed that other people have had the same thought. As marketers we love the QR code, but the consumer is still a bit ‘take-it or leave-it’ about them, and don’t naturally interact with QR codes yet. So, should you be rushing out and putting QR codes on as many marketing platforms as possible? Maybe, but I think there are a few things to really think about first.

There are 2 areas in particular that I want to think through before I jump on the QR code bandwagon.

1.    Is it right for the target audience?

If you are targeting tech savvy, early adopters then get QR codes in your marketing tactics quick – you are probably behind the curve. If your target audience is unlikely to have a smartphone then I suggest you leave QR codes in the corner and think of something else for the time being. But what if your audience is somewhere in between? For this audience group then a layer of QR code education and facilitation needs to be added to your marketing plan to help people to get up to speed on what they have to do to ‘use’ the code. Even a quick sentence ‘scan this with your smartphone’ would be a good start.

2.    What is the purpose or objective of the QR code? More importantly, what is in it for the customer?

A QR code is really just a call to action. We would never advise our clients to design their websites or any other interfaces with the ‘buy me now’ button hidden in a corner like a bar code on packaging so why are QR codes positioned that way? To encourage use it might also be a good idea to provide the customer with something extra, some sort of promotion or special if they scan it, not just a link to your website. This should motivate people to go the extra step to download an app and get scanning. If you want the customer to access information immediately using a URL QR code remember they will need wifi or 3G.

Most of all I think QR codes just need a bit of good PR. I’d like to see more creative uses for QR codes to keep the buzz going, and the more novel and useful places QR codes are used the more consumers will get excited about them and pick them up as a daily tool for their own benefits. It is rumoured that the iPhone 5 will have a QR code scanner built in, that will definitely help the QR code cause!

Have you seen any great uses or epic QR code fails? Have you implemented them to great success, or been using or considering them and had other worries on your mind? Thoughts, advice, questions all welcome in the comments below!

QR code: Scan me with your smartphone to get to the Webcredible homepage!

Picture: Tesco reinvents grocery shopping with QR-code ’stores’ in Korea via geek.com

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What about the 55+ mobile phone market?

By Kerstin Exner on 8 August 2011

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There was an interesting article in The Telegraph technology blog last week titled “Businesses still don’t ‘get’ social media – and its 40-year-old marketing directors that are to blame”. This provocative title led to interesting levels of reaction most of which debated the fact that the cut off was at 40, or in fact that an age was stated in the first place.

As a User Experience consultant I thought this was fascinating, we conduct testing projects that span from websites to mobile phones and games, and from young adults through to the retired, and we do sometimes see a difference in results depending on the age of the participant and we recruit them purposefully within age groups. But is there really a significant older generation segment in-between the age of 40 and past retirement when it comes to different types of technologies? And are there different design needs and requirements that need to be considered for this group?

I am particularly interested in all of this, specifically the user experience of mobile phones, because as well as my work with Webcredible I am also working towards a Masters project at City University, which aims to improve usability and usefulness of mobile phones and mobile apps for the over 55’s.  To do this I need to do some user research – so if you are over 55 and own a mobile phone then please can you help me with this independant study and fill in a quick mobile users survey!

Do you have any thoughts or experience about mobile phone usability or user experience for the over 55’s? Please leave a comment below I would be really interested to find out…

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