Xavier Klingenfus

Xavier's bio

Xavier Klingenfus graduated in Human Computer Interaction and holds an undergraduate diploma in computer sciences. He brings to the Foviance team strong analytical skills, and is competent in cognitive psychology. Specialising in data visualisation techniques and mobile applications, he has worked on cutting edge projects for some of the leading brands including Dell, Nokia, Barclays and Epson. He has also become an expert in coordinating international studies, which has taken him to France and India.

"Foviance is simply brilliant: you get to work in great facilities, you work on exciting projects and you're surrounded by great colleagues who know exactly how to balance fun with seriousness. Moreover, the company is dynamic and ambitious, and it just makes you proud of being part of it"

“Number 1 app in UK, France and Germany…”. Those who regularly browse the Apple AppStore hunting for applications (apps) will undoubtedly be familiar with this type of catch phrase.  It’s generally what users first read when they land on app description pages (as if they were all number one!). Developers and designers use this type of technique to lure candid users to download the app by making them believe it’s the best of its kind on the market. This also illustrates how the success of an app is often assumed: the higher in the ranking, the more successful it is. But as you may probably know already, this approach is entirely flawed.

First of all, one can wonder how these rankings are built. As it is rarely clearly stated, we can only suppose that the number of downloads of an app governs its position in the table. But again, over what period of time? Number of downloads in the last month, quarter, year? This brings in the process a lot of vagueness and can surely not be used as a success measurement tool. Moreover, as Jakob Nielsen suggests in his column about iPhone App (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-apps-initial-use.html), users download more app than they actually need and use, which corroborates the idea that the number of downloads is not representative of the usage and can be resorted to as success criterion.

Then comes the question of the popularity of an app. App owners can write comments on the app description pages of the AppStore and rate them on a scale from 1 (negative) to 5 (positive). As a user experience professional, I strive to get the voice of the customer heard by my clients but I don’t consider it to be a viable success measurement method. Personal opinions are very subjective and tend to be only expressed when something goes wrong or incredibly well. Moreover, most of the app ratings derive from the ‘rating prompt’ that pops up on the iPhone when a user decides to delete an app. This biases the results in a negative way.

So how should the success of your app be measured? From a business perspective, the response is simple: the success of an app should be measured just like the success of a website, i.e. by defining and tracking KPI. Most of the apps provide a web-based service, which implies a digital connection between phones and web servers, just like there is a connection between PC and web servers. This allows data to be captured, such as number of information requests, conversion rates, app usage duration, app usage frequency, etc. In terms of web analytics tools, the capture of mobile phone applications usage is only at an embryonic stage but the trend is on the up and some of the current tools on the market are already capable of monitoring app usage.

Boasting about an app being the most used rather than the most downloaded would surely be more credible to end users!

If you are one of the world’s 450 million mobile internet users, you’ll already know that are two primary methods of accessing online content from your mobile phone, smartphone or other wireless device – mobile websites and mobile applications. Read more…

When searching for the best Top 5 applications (apps) for the iPhone, I often found reviews based on the personal preferences of their author and how well the apps were addressing particular user needs. This made me want to have a different perspective by creating my own Top Apps list based on how well apps use the iPhone capabilities to meet user requirements. For example, which app best used the new digital compass feature of the iPhone. Read more…

After weeks of researching laptops, I finally bought one off a manufacturer’s website. Buying a laptop makes me feel like an impatient child at Christmas; I couldn’t prevent myself from checking the daily progress of the order to get an idea of when it would be delivered. However, even if order tracking stems as one of the most desirable ecommerce features to have, it doesn’t always address the users expectation. With this story, the paradox is not that the order tracking facility did not do the job; on the contrary it did it too well. Read more…

According to the Metro, Natwest has recently released an iPhone application.

At first glance and without having tested it myself (as I don’t bank with Natwest), it looks destined for success. The first point to stress is that the app is free, which comes as a pleasant surprise as it is a new service offered by the bank. iPhone users won’t question whether the app is good value for money as they can easily try it out at no cost and discard it if not satisfied. In terms of the functionality, the app gives users access to a light version of their online banking. Read more…

A need arose for me to purchase a new laptop recently and working in the computer industry, I roughly knew what criteria to look for. Read more…

A few weeks ago, Foviance was commissioned by a major UK retail bank to conduct user testing sessions on online application processes. The main objective of the research was to compare the newly designed process with the current one. And from there, stemmed a finding that challenges one of the most profound customer experience beliefs: the simplest way is not always the best. Read more…

Does emotional attachment to a brand prevail over the online customer experience for Internet-based companies? Read more…