Why you should judge a book by its colour
A month ago I stepped into a second hand bookshop and noticed that they arranged books not by genre, title or author but by colour. James Andrews, previously of Foviance, told me that arranging content by colour is not a new idea. Chris Cobb started organising books by colour in his Adobe installation in 2004.
World Usability Day Webinar – Nov 12, 2009
Marty Carroll will be presenting live by our Foviance website, news and insight around usability and customer experience, in conjunction with World Usability Day. Further details to follow.
Sign up to the webinar at info@foviance.com
The simplest way is not always the best
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…
Customer experience still matters
Last night’s Panorama has been described as both an exposé and ‘hatchet job’ on Ryanair. Xavier Klingenfus blogged about Amazon and Ryanair, saying that both websites aren’t designed in the smartest way and that the cheap look of Ryanair “is often mischievous in terms of pricing as the final price of a flight ticket rarely matches what’s advertised on the homepage”.
Similarly in Panorama, website usability specialist, Claire Mitchell described Ryanair’s confusing website, and the lack of it explaining what questions you had to answer. Read more…
Mobile Internet variety doesn’t match skill
It has been 14 years since I first surfed the web using a PC, so it is no surprise that it is increasingly rare for us to observe novice users of the Internet (yes, while they do exist, they are becoming fewer in number, and are less likely to volunteer to take part in research involving Internet use than more experienced Internet users). However, the same cannot be said for mobile Internet users. Read more…
Maximising customer experience technology
We recently met up with David, head of customer experience and security at Barclays, to chat about his job and customer experience at Barclays.
So David, head of customer experience and security, what exactly are the responsibilities of your role?
In simple terms it’s all about making sure that everything that the team here does is customer centric, and that we are involved at the design stage of any changes that are made. We are there to ensure that that the customer viewpoint is always taken into account, and we do that by maintaining a regular dialogue with our customers and our helpdesks. We also conduct usability sessions, double-checking that what we’re doing is truly fit for purpose. One thing I enjoy doing is sitting in with our online banking helpdesk, which can be very revealing. When our customers are in difficulty, they phone us, so I sit down with our advisors once a month and try to understand their issues. As you probably know we record these calls. Using this information and a number of other feedback mechanisms, we work to identify bottlenecks, champion changes, and drive out the real issues. The ‘security’ part of my job title involves mitigating the risks for online banking. Our team has been instrumental in leading the development of things like ‘PINsentry’. We then communicate these changes and instruments to our customers. It’s perhaps an unusual blend of responsibilities, but for me it works very well. By wearing both hats I get to witness the extremes of both security and usability, so that I can genuinely understand what customers will use and how secure they feel.
Where smaller might be better
Nanopayments (the idea of making a profit by getting a large number of people to pay a small amount) have been talked about for a while now, and although not in their current form, the idea of nanopayments is not a new one.
For example, it is the way that mobile operators make a profit off text messaging, and remember the Million Dollar Homepage? A student from Wiltshire sold a million pixels’ worth of 100-pixel blocks, which companies could purchase and advertise on at $1 per pixel. However, the deployment of this type of payment to general consumers within the online sphere is relatively new. At the moment, for example it is used on social networking sites to buy items such as virtual gifts or in games to buy extra levels. Read more…
3D Secure or not?
To 3D Secure or not to, that is often the question. We did some work for one of our clients and 3D Secure was part of the study. In summary:. Read more…