This beats clunk click

Sometimes you see an advert and you think wow. This is one of those. An advert that communicates its message 100% at an emotional level. It just connects.

UCD Deja Vu

I sat in a presentation last week on User Centred Design. It’s not a new subject. But it is where I started my career more than 20 years ago.

It was a bit of a “home coming” and I was amazed at how passionate I was even though I haven’t worked in the area for the last 5-6 years.

A number of thoughts struck me listening to the presentation: 

•  The UCD proposition hasn’t really changed much in the last couple of decades. We are still talking about usability, reduction of errors, more fit for purpose etc. The companies and the faces have changed, but the fundamental issues are still the same;
•  I am now a senior manager in a Global SI/Outsourcer. The one thing that was going through my mind during the presentation was “Who designs the user interfaces for our systems?” We deliver £100M’s of software each year and I have no idea where the user interfaces come from. I must make an effort to find out!
• As we move to Software as a Service, UCD is likely to get a new lease of life. In the future, organisations will purchase their software as a Service. If it doesn’t live up to expectations, then the customer will move to another Service that does provide want they want. Since the customer doesn’t have technology installed on-site, there is none of the inertia involved in moving to a new system. Don’t like what you see? Is it too difficult to use? Move to another Service that fits your needs better.

Any one for a Swedish TV license? No, well watch this instead.

When someone sent me this video it made be "jump" when it got to the reveal.  Yep, it is designed to pay your TV license in Sweden.  And yes, it is definitely viral. 

Here's my version.....
http://en.tackfilm.se/?id=1272225365762RA11

Don't "Contact us" pages

Why is it so difficult to contact a website owner?  The bigger the website, the more difficult it is to contact them. 

Ever tried emailing Amazon?  It is nearly impossible! You get directed to endless lists of FAQs and useless information pages.  It is often said that if you can't get to the page that you are looking for after 7 seconds, most users will give up.  These websites seem to be using this to their advantage - make it really hard to find the "Contact us" page and then users will give up.  Result - it reduces the number of emails that they need to reply to and this saves money. 

You have to wonder about these companies.

So today I got some spam that looked like the regular "spam" that I get from Amazon as a loyal customer (thanks Amazon by the way).  It got passed my Norton software and appeared in my inbox.  It looked like a regular page, but there was something not quite right.  Well, all the images were from Amazon.com, but the links were to mefall.com.  A quick lookup shows that the website is registered where? Yep, you guessed it, China.

Thought I would be helpful and alert Amazon to this, but after a few minutes I gave up.  Thought it would be more useful to expend my energy (and frustration) on a blog entry instead.

Innovation takes perseverance

Innovation comes from perserverance and if you aren't convinced here's an interesting article from Information age.  Just like Edison's light bulb, these modern innovations took time to catch on (even once they start to work!).

http://www.information-age.com/blog/1249253/brits-that-pursued-bad-ideas-tipped-for-techs-top-accolade.thtml