customer experience is everywhere

When at a shin-dig just the other week about 7 people, other than myself, were talking the talk about the importance of designing good customer experiences.

Admittedly, approximately 99% of the people at the party were in the creative industry in one way or another but I was still quite surprised to hear these golden words on so many lips.  I have been an advocate of designing customer experiences for over 8 years and I have not encountered a similar scenario - is customer experience becoming the buzz word?

I take some heart in this as it makes my quest easier if customer experience design becomes main stream - take The Yard Creative for instance, a young and fun commercial interior design agency - their USP is all about designing with customers in mind. A great way to make your business stand out from the rest.

Blending desktop and online

Loving the way that some interactions and widgets are coming into the mainstream making the everyday use of the web much more similar to the desktop experience.

Take a look at www.macwarehouse.co.uk this site manages to provide a good experience whilst making a play upon quite a lot of features that you would expect to find on a Mac computer.

Widgets are widely available but I quite like the Yahoo library.

Every tiny detail counts

"The devil is in the detail" is one rule that I always abide by - dark? Perhaps....

I think it is incredibly important to make sure that every tiny detail is considered when designing a solution, else you could end up with a solution that looks lovely but when you get down to using has silly idiosyncrasies that have just been overlooked.

Now put your user hat on: you are a busy business person and you have lots of important tasks that need your attention.  One of your many tasks for the next hour is to enter you company details in to a service directory.  There are 25 people in your company.  See how long and hard you have to think before you can choose the correct company size from the drop down (see image below)?

Nice 'New' feature

LOVEfilm really let me down the first time I attempted to register, however persevering reigned and the result - quite a nice site that makes it easy to manage your personal film preferences. 

I think the 'New' feature works well and is in a great location.  I also feel that the priority list is simple and effective.

Well done LOVEfilm, next thing to sort out is the page refresh when adding a film to your personal list and also the search / browse facilities.

Registration by stealth

Where it suits the business model and objectives of the site, I will often encourage clients to opt for registration by stealth.

The main idea behind registration by stealth is that, simply put, registration can often become a blocker to users using a site.  Registration by stealth looks to remove the formal 'registration' call to action and instead focuses on gathering the important bits of information (that the business requires) as the customer is using the parts of the site that they feel are important.

The result is a site that allows the user to move quite freely around the site and then provides them with a very quick and simple form that effectively registers them.  An example is www.justgiving.com where you can sponsor without registering then right at the end of the payment process the user is presented with a cleverly designed box that ask 'Save this card  for future use?', if the user then chooses to enter their password and verify their password - voila! the user is registered without any fuss.

what is Contagious?

what is Contagious?

...a website that is definitely worth a visit if you are interested in ideas, trends and innovations in marketing.

Contagious is a multi-channel publication that focuses on how technology can revolutionise brands.

does a rose still smell as sweet....

I have to admit it, I have an embarrassing habit of mixing well known phrases and to create a new phrase which still has the original meaning.

Odd? I agree.

But somehow my mind makes sense of what I want to say, takes what it can and pastes together a bizarre assortment of words to communicate the message... thought it would be good to keep a record of my strange mental model so here goes:

- its a vicious catch 22

- the moon and her daughters

- raw end of the stick

- brightest tool in the box

- gidits and gazmos

Drop us a bell

is it really that easy?

I've always wanted to have the time to play around with the tools that sites say are 'easy to embed' or 'share with your friends'. The only site that I feel get this right is Facebook, but then they can control the angles.

So here goes, can i embed this video from DailyMotion... will it be HTML death or surprising success?

Harvest Digital Showreel '08
Uploaded by HarvestDigital

Is bigger better?

This giant size suite of living room furniture is a big hit on London's South Bank.

Passers by stopping to clamber and explore, while others watch from the side lines.

Perhaps sometimes bigger is better... if not more fun.

I don't care how it works!!

Ok, so not a title that reflects my passion for interaction design but I thought I'd open up with a thought that I have been harbouring for a while now.

Have you ever seen the early Mercedes Gullwing? The entire car is gorgeous and the dashboard is so beautifully crafted that it's no wonder that you just want to touch it. I have a sneaking suspicion, that if you're ever lucky enough to get to sit in one of these cars that the first thing you will do is drool and the second is reach out and touch one of the many tempting dials, switches or buttons!




Why? Well I can't scientifically explain it but there is definitley a correlation between stuff that looks beautiful and tactile and stuff that you just want to touch...

So how does this relate to online? I believe that websites can be analysed to the n'th degree to optimise traffic and user journeys but there will always be a degree of animal attraction. Perhaps if the site is beautifully crafted users may enjoy discovering the functionality over having an interface with everything explained.

Photo from sherlock77 on Flickr