It's a matter of balance

There are lessons to be learnt everyday! One of the big struggles that experience design folks have is ensuring to balance the needs of the business with the needs of the customer. To do this we look at both the business and the customer goals and expose the conflicts early so that we can create a balanced solution. When we don't take time to do this it results in a biased solution that favours either the customer or the business.

It's my mum's birthday in two days. My goal is to send her a birthday card. I have the card all written and I head to the post office on my way to work. I thought they opened at 8am (it's the run up to Christmas after all) but i find that they only open at 9am. But never fear a stamp vending machine is near! The post office has a stamp vending machine at the entrance, so I can buy stamps. Hurrah! I now have a card that is written, addressed and stamped. I look around but alas! There is no post box any where in sight! So the post office accomplished their goal of making money but is the customer happy? No! My goal is incomplete and I've either got to go out of my way to complete my goal and be late for work or else the card will not be delivered on time! Surely a post box at a post office isn't too much to ask?  

Poor cross-channel retail experience

Sorry if I seem to be picking on retail experiences recently - but big brands are all around us telling us how wonderful they are yet the actual customer experience tells a different story. Only today I had to use the internet on my iPhone to help a retail sales assistant who almost failed to make a sale because of the lack of consistency and synchronicity between the web-channel and the internal point-of-sale system in the retail channel.

• I went onto argos.com and reserved a couple of products for collection at my local store
• I arrive in store and queue at the till
• I give them my reservation number and they call up my reserved order on their system and I confirm those are the items I want. So far, so good.
• The sales assistant tells me the total amount and asks me for payment, at which point I make a query as the total  is £10 more than the internet had told me.
• We locate the problem product which is a pair of headphones. They were advertised on the web as a special promotion but the promotion didn't show on the in store point-of-sale system.
• The  sales assistant goes to on another terminal (presumably because she didn't want to have to close down the point-of-sale instance she was looking at) to pull up the Argos website. It fails to load. Instead there was an Internet Explorer error saying 'out of memory'
• She goes back to the POS system and checks the details again and tells me there was a promotion on the product but it ended 2 weeks ago.
• I told her that the price was current less than thirty minutes prior when I was on their website
• She goes back to the terminal where she was trying to access the internet and gets the same error
• "I'm sorry" she apologies "I'm having a problem with our systems and I can't verify the price for you."
• She calls for a manager. Given I am short of time in the time I wait for a manager to appear I manage to pull out my iPhone and launch the Argos site and show her the product at the correct price. Using the same phone, I show her the email that Argos sent to me to confirm my reserved items and corresponding offer price...
• She apologised and overrode the price on the POS system and promptly went on a break      

When your business model is built on direct sales and you are actively supporting both a retail and a digital channel it’s essential that the two are synchronised, or if you choose to make them independent make it clear to the customers and manage their expectations.

Goals Versus Features and the Minimum Desirable Product

I was debating with a technical colleague yesterday about the best way to divide up the design and development effort for a website. It’s a guy I trust, like and respect and up until this point we’ve been fairly well aligned in our thinking and approach. Something was niggling me about the debate. I was sure that we were talking about same thing. but it was in the language that described our separate points of view where we seemed to differ. I jumped across the table (literally) to get to the white board to draw a picture and there was a moment of epiphany when we realised that we were talking about the same thing but using different words to describe it. It emphasised a few things for me:
Visual thinking is essential method of communicating. It’s only of the only ways to get a shared understanding across teams of difficult concepts. You need a thousand words to describe a picture, but a quick stick figure or shapes and we solved the problem in a tenth of the time that we had spent wrangling with words.

The need for common language when working on a team. Visual communication can facilitate shared understanding and once you have this it’s the next essential step is to establish a common language so that we know when we have the discussion in the future that we are talking about the same thing. This doesn’t need to be anything more robust that having a sheet of flip-chart paper which lists frequently confused terms or domain-specific language and calling out the definition. It will save a lot of people from feeling dumb or ignorant, especially those who don’t like to assume but don’t want to ask.
So in this instance the terms that were causing the confusion was Epics, Goals and Features. Each of these can be described as the high level units of business or user value that can comprise of lots of lower level detail (aka user stories/requirements). What we were violently agreeing about was that design is difficult at the micro level without first considering the macro level and the context of use.  However he was talking about features and I was talking about goals (and goal-driven design and development). They did boil down to the same abstract concept but the difference lies in the perceived value that each delivers and therefore the ability to prioritise what gets delivered in what order. The business could probably prioritise ‘features’ based on the level of return on their investment multiplied by time and effort to develop. However we need to ask what value do users attach to features because there’s little point in building features that are not going to be used by the end customer no matter how much the business thinks it might be used. There’s a statistic which came from a report produced by the Standish group which says ‘45% of features built are never used’ – which is an awful lot of time and effort wasted. So we want to make sure that we are building the right thing for the right people.
The way we solve this is not by thinking about features per se, but by thinking about goals. A mobile phone has features: it has a camera feature, a text feature, a web connectivity feature etc.

Customers/users however have goals that they want to achieve using the device or application. Customers want to take a picture to capture the moment and share it with family and friends. If we focus purely on the feature we can get hung up on making that feature great and foget the context of use, we can also limit our design thinking. Do we really need infinite mega pixels, a Carl Zeiss lens and photo-retouching that compares with industry heavyweight applications like Adobe Photoshop when actually we’re on a phone contract with a limited data package and we’re sending the image to Great Aunty Beris who has the most basic handset with a small and poor resolution display? Probably not.
By focussing on the goals that the user wants to achieve we can feel much more confident that we are building the right thing. It also means that we are in a much better position to consider the ‘minimum viable product’ and get it out quickly to market. To do this we take the user goal and ask ‘what is the minimum that we could deliver in the shortest period that would allow the user to achieve their goal?’ Granted not everyone is a fan of the minimum viable product but once we have this as a baseline we can then ask, is this enough to engage and delight our customers? If it is, great! We can get down to the business of development and get it out there quickly. If however the minimum viable product is not quite enough then we simply ask ‘what is the minimum that we could deliver in the shortest period that would allow the user to achieve their goal and engage and delight them?’ and we build delight into our minimum viable product.

24/7 web

Weird, i've had some interesting experiences lately when trying to go about my usual internet business. Finding that I can't get on sites that i would expect to be available 24/7...

This is from my supermarket, Tesco. I wanted to do my shopping online but they were a bit too busy, so instead shut the door in my face with this completely off-brand message. I did wait for it to be less busy, but i might think twice if it happened again.

A least Twitter was slightly more polite and on-brand about not being able to let me in and offers a live status view.

I would have thought that mega-brands like these would be able to flexibly scale for capacity?

Thinking of changing banks

HSBC have brought out these new security online security devices. It generates a random number which you use to log in and verify transactions. It makes everything a lot harder. A lot harder. But hey, it’s protecting everyone so I thought I could put up with it. So while there is truth in the fact that customers will put up with a certain amount of pain in exchange for some perception of value, when there is more pain than necessary it’s time to move on.
I needed to reimburse a a friend.

1. Go to internet banking and click logon
2. Enter Internet Banking number (12 characters/numbers allocated by the bank that I cannot remember and have to write down)
3. Enter answer to security question
4. Turn on secure key
5. Enter secure key PIN
6. Generate secure number
7. Enter secure number on screen
8. Go to main banking page
9. Select account
10. Click on pay a friend
11. Enter payee details (name, sort code, account number, payment amount, payment description, transaction date)
12. Turn on secure key
13. Enter secure key PIN
14. Press yellow button on secure key to get a dash
15. Enter last 4 digits of payees account number
16. Press yellow button on secure key to generate transaction number
17.  Enter transaction number on webform
18. Click continue
19. Go to new page and get error message because I put an apostrophe in payment description field
20. Go back to transaction form
21. Remove apostrophe
22. Turn on secure key
23. Enter secure key PIN
24. Press yellow button on secure key to get a dash
25. Enter last 4 digits of payees account number
26. Press yellow button on secure key to generate transaction number
27.  Enter transaction number on webform
28. Click continue
29. Confirm payment
30. Payment confirmed

Seriously? It would have been quicker and more satisfying to jump in the car and go to my friend’s house and pay her the £11!

Apart from the fact that the process is too damn long, what was really painful was the error experience. NOWHERE on that form did it say that you could not use special characters, not even in the pop-up help. That would have been the polite thing to do. The other helpful thing to do would have been some client-side validation that checked for special characters BEFORE I submitted the form. How hard can it be?
Off to find a new bank.

A Tale of Two Experiences...

Experience 1:
I approach my destination and am greeted by a concierge at the door, who politely asks for my name and checks my reservation details. I am directed to my seat. After an acceptable amount of time in which to arrange my belongings and get comfortable I am greeted by a service assistance who offers me a choice of beverages. It’s that time of day, and it’s been a big day, so I justify a glass of wine.

“Would madam prefer white or red? White madam, no problem. Would you prefer dry, medium or sweet? Dry, we have a very nice sauvignon blanc. Would that be ok for you?”

I sit and coif my wine. Before not to long the service assistant returns to inform me they will shortly be serving food and he presents me with a printed card and talks me through the options including the lite bit or the main course.

My meal arrives, served on white china. Small but sufficient and well presented. I’m given a small pack of personal condiments, including a linen napkin and toothpick. After finishing my main course I’m offered a choice of desert, followed by tea or coffee with a chocolate.

Within an acceptable amount of time my table is cleared and I am thanked for my custom.

Where am I?


Experience 2:
I approach my destination and find my own way to a seat. There are remnants from the last guests meal on the table and on the seat. I clean the seat with my hand, as there is no napkin on the table.

After a few minutes someone rushes by brandishing a pot in hand and asks ‘Any tea?

Sometime later that same person comes back and says ‘would you like anything to eat?’

I feel a little bit intimidated and am almost inclined to say no, but I brave it and ask,
‘What are my options?’ as I have no idea.
“Well we have crisps, fruit and sandwiches.”
I smile imploringly but am forced to ask,
“What sandwiches do you have?”
He hands me a piece of paper with a hand-scrawled description of two sandwiches. One chicken and cheese the other ham. I ask if either are on brown bread and he looks at the sandwiches to check. The chicken and cheese is on brown so I opt for that. He hands me a pre-packed sandwich and a paper serviette.

I discard the packaging. The sandwich is soggy on one side where it has been stood too long on one side, or else pushed up against the back of the fridge. I have hardly taken three bites out of the sandwich, trying to negotiate around the soggy side and he’s walking back to collect rubbish. He sees the empty sandwich packet and asks, 

“Are you done with that?”

“Errm no.” I say apologetically. I don’t want to turn over the empty packaging to the rubbish collector because I am using it as a plate. The empty package (and soggy bit of sandwich) remain on my table for some while after.

Where am I?


Have you guessed yet? If you thought experience one was in a mid to upper end restaurant and experience two was in a greasy spoon-type café, you’d be very wrong. 
Experience one was in ‘Premium Economy’ on the EuroStar between London and Paris.
Experience two was in ‘First Class’ on Virgin Rail between London and Manchester.

Given that both journeys take a similar amount of time (I think the Manchester train is slightly longer) the killer question which did I pay more for? Yes, you guessed it, experience two – First Class on Virgin Trains.

So the analysts tell me we are in the ‘Experience Economy’ where customer experience is the strategic differentiator. There is almost viral adoption of the metric system known as ‘Net Promoter Score’ which asks the ‘ultimate question’ “would you recommend this product/service to a friend or colleague?”

I would highly recommend EuroStar premium economy. The service experience far exceeded my expectations. Would I recommend Virgin First Class? I was left wanting by this service and would only recommend it if you need to get some work done and you get a discount deal. Do not pay full price expecting first class service, because you will be sorely disappointed. 

So I thought I’d check. The Virgin corporate machine claims:

“Virgin stands for value for money, quality, innovation, fun and a sense of competitive challenge. We deliver a quality service by empowering our employees and we facilitate and monitor customer feedback to continually improve the customer's experience through innovation.”

This is an open invitation to Virgin Trains, I’m happy to work with you and give you feedback to improve your customer service. (Actually while we're here talking about Virgin and customer service I'd like to extend that invitation to Virgin Media too, oh and maybe even Virgin Atlantic...)

Redesigning Design

Check out my article on 'redesigning design'

How poor system design impacts customer experience and compromises brand reputation…

Wired Magazine, established in 1993, has built it’s reputation on it’s ‘in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology and how they are shaping business, entertainment, communications, science, politics’. It has a circulation of 50,000 in the UK alone. Where ever there is commentary to be said on technology or technologists, Wired is there. 

Having recently rekindled my relationship with Wired I decided to subscribe to ensure I didn’t miss a thing and that’s when I almost changed my mind. I went from the glossy, well-produced physical magazine (there’s still something about paper for me…) to the equally shiny wesite, to marketing driven yet uninspiring signup screen to hideous confirmation message.

Seriously? Wired magazine is built on a technological infrastructure that takes a week to update it’s customer database? You have to be kidding me? It made me wonder momentarily how I could trust anything they had to say! Sort it out guys, that’s embarrassing!

Continuous Design

Design was a discipline ruled by deadlines. Those hard and fast deadlines help to spur the mind. The deadline is the difference between the intangible and the tangible. It is the point when ideas, drafts, blueprints and prototypes are printed or manufactured. The designer used the time before the deadline to flex his creative muscles and to create and finesse the artifact to be produced, but once the deadline has past, the designer is done. Of course many designers berate the fact that there is never enough time, but secretly they will be relieved that their creative thoughts have taken on form and they can brush themselves down and say “Job done! (now lets head to the pub…)”.

In this world if we learn something new about the audience or the market for our product we start a new project, undertake the exercise from scratch and produce the next generation or a completely new version of the product. This all takes time but at the end of the new project the job is done. You can move on again.

This model was born in the Industrial era where large machines and production lines and production schedules were needed to produce these tangible artifacts. Why then do we try to apply the same working model to digital products in the digital era? It doesn’t make any sense at all.

One certainty in life, is change. Change is constant. Technology changes at the speed of light. Technology responds to human need. Human needs change with developments in technology and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Add into the mix social, environmental, political influences and the cycle of change is an indomitable force.

As ‘digital engineers’ we need to embrace change as the lifeblood of a digital existence. We need to stop fearing change, accept it and work it into everything we do. Now I might be sounding all a bit William Gibson here, (circa neuromancer) but as designers we need to jump on board. Technology is leading the charge for change and we are being left behind to choke on the dust.

What we need to do is open up the discipline of digital design. In this lightening paced world we can’t apply the traditional models of learn, design and test. We can never learn enough before change occurs; we can never design enough before change occurs… ad infinitum. We need to find a new way of working.

Here’s a suggested starting point:

·      Do ‘just enough’ learning to know who our (current) audience is, rather than months of in-depth research on an ever shifting target.

·      Utilize design patterns and tweak to fit, rather than reinventing the wheel every time.

·      Design no longer belongs to the designers. Collaborate on the designs with business, technology and customers to ensure feasibility, desirability and feasibility from the outset.

·      Focus on the ‘minimal desirable product’ and get that out to market as quickly as possible.

·      Refine and iterate the product through a continuous cycle of ‘test and learn’

·      Accept that design is never ‘done’ and embrace the notion of ‘Continuous Design’

More on this topic to follow…