The project followed a classic UCD approach, test then design, test then design. One of the key challenges was to reduce ping-pong beahviour – that is the user clicking on a more info link for each product to get more details. But for us to add more details to each card listing how do you limit information overload? At the same time we wanted to move away from the standard, slightly dull, table listing.

We tested a number of alternative approaches and the eventual design direction was for mini tabs on each listing.

User testing showed we needed to make the tabs more tactile, more attractive to click. The purple hover was introduced. User testing results were really positive. Users liked the interaction and playfulness.

Post launch we got some great feedback from the design community:

Go see the results for yourself, moneysupermarket.com’s new credit card site. Let me know your thoughts.

Reference:

• Comparing Google Credit Cards to Moneysupermarket.com

Old computers not necessarily used by old people

Over the last few months I’ve conducted an awful lot of user tests with the over 60s. At last count it was over 50 users. So it was great to attend Bristol Usability Group last night where Andrew Arch from the W3C’s Ageing Education and Harmonisation project was talking about Designing for Older People.

Many of the recommendations we’d made to our clients in designing for the age group were backed up by the W3C guidelines.

Here are a few of the recommendations talked about:

• Browser accessibility functionality has a stigma attached as so is not often used by this age group.
• Including an in-page font-size control is perhaps the most useful and most common thing a designer can do
• This age group struggle with small hyperlinks and other small areas where they need to click – e.g. radio buttons with no direct html label tag.
• There is a danger of patronising this age group with ‘big’ and ‘blue’ text.  They still appreciate design.
• In designing for this age group there is an increase in usability for all user groups (Rather like the Usability Bonus the now defunct Disability Rights Commission discussed)
• Older people may not be familiar with using a mouse having only ever owned a laptop
• This age group is very wise so often have plenty to say in a user test meaning a typical hour’s test won’t cover as much as the same amount of time with a younger person

Thanks to Dave Ellender for organising and hosting the evening.  Great chatting all things accessibility afterward with Ann McMeekin and the BUG glitterati.

Update: Ann McMeekin has done a much more indepth write-up of Andrew’s talk

UK Digital Mission Stand at SXSW in 2009

For those of you who not come across SXSW it’s a huge festival in Austin, Texas for music, film and interaction. Eight months before the festival the voting process gets underway to pick who will speak. Here’s my recommendations of who to vote for and hopefully if they get chosen who to go see next March in Texas.

First up my boss, fellow cxpartner and very clever guy Giles Colborne:

• Delight (very excited about this one)
• Making the Mobile User Experience Simpler

Overall smart dude and mr web typography Jon Tan:

• Web Typography: Get Your Glyph On 2 (follow-up to the great panel from last year)

Local Bath & Bristol people:

Alan Colville (ex cx’er and nice guy)

• Is Your Website Heading for a Car-Wreck?

Dan Dixon (clever UWE dude)

• The Aesthetics of Pervasive Gaming

.net magazine editor and nice guy Oliver Lindberg

• Design Perfect Site Navigation

Wathershed and iShed’s Clare Reddington:

• Pervasive Games and Playful Experiences: Rendering the Real World
• Seeing Round Corners: Artists as Innovators in the Corporate World

Mike Bennett from E3:

• How Networks Will Make Your Business Fly
• From The Kitchen Table To $Million Business

And all round clever people:

Elliott Jay Stocks

• Is WordPress Killing Web Design (interesting one)
• Web Typography: Get Your Glyph On 2

Matthew ‘Squaredeye’ Smith and friends:

• Designing For Content : Art Direction On The Web

Update!  Mr Chris Shiflett, very smart PHP security guru:

• Social Web Security: From Psychology to Programming
• Travelog With Maps: When 1000 Photos Aren’t Enough

And last but not least the full UK contingent for this year (great work Sam at Chinwag for putting the list together)

• Over 60 UK panels at SXSW

So what are you waiting for? Register and vote at SXSW

Over the years I’ve developed a number of ways to help deal with the worries – ways to limit my worrying to 9 – 5.

They work for me and maybe they might just work for you. Now let me get this out of the way first, I’m not talking productivity here, I’m not talking ninja super skills to get more stuff done. What I am talking about is just not worrying about getting stuff done. The doing of it, well that’s up to you.

Reviewing all the loose ends

At work I probably have upwards of 10 projects on the go at any one time and probably twice that number of future projects I’m hoping to do. That’s an awful lot of things to worry about. What I try and do is limit my ‘oh my god I’ve go so many things to do’ time to just before I get into the office and just before I leave, oh, and one big worry session on a Friday morning.

To focus my thoughts on projects I have 5 lists, I know what you are saying now, bet the words ‘anal’ ‘loser’ and ‘obsessive’ are going through your head. Five lists to help me stop worrying, I’m no loser. Anyway, the five lists. I have a daily ‘Open’ list, a daily ‘Close’ list, a ‘Projects’ list, an ‘Everything else I need to do’ list and a ‘Weekly review’ list.

Ending the day right

I find if I can tie up all my loose ends at the end of the day my mind doesn’t feel like it needs to worry, I put the worry off until the next day when I’m paid to worry.
So before I leave for the day, I used to do this on the train home, but lucky me, I have no commute anymore, I review the following, my ‘Close’ list: .

1. Today’s actions (noting those annoying things I haven’t managed to get done
2. Tomorrow’s actions (I keep a tally of things to do each day)
3. Today’s meeting notes and think about people I’ve met today to capture actions
4. Glance at ‘Projects list’
5. Glance at ‘Everything else to do list’
6. Tomorrow’s calendar
7. The day after tomorrow’s calendar

From that list I write down all the things I need to do tomorrow. Anything that doesn’t need doing tomorrow goes on my ‘Everything else to do’ list. Any new projects, they go on my ‘Projects list.’ Easy. Worrying differed until tomorrow, no loose ends.

All my actions for the next day, ready for when I come in the next morning

Starting the next day

The ‘Open’ list I normally look over at breakfast (when in Bristol I love Lashings to do this over tea and toast with Marmite). Here’s the contents of my list:

1. Today’s actions (all carefully listed last night)
2. Today’s calendar
3. Tomorrow’s calendar
4. Glance at ‘Projects list’
5. Glance at ‘Everything else to do list’

From this I update my list of todos for the day. This really only takes me a couple of minutes.

Weekly cleanse

Every week I spend a good hour or so going through the loose ends in my head. I have list to help jog my memory, my ‘Weekly review’ list. It includes all possible places where the stuff I need to do might be located. From texts in my phone to twitter DMs to who knows what. Using this list I put together stuff I need to do for next week against each day and all the other stuff on to my ‘Everything else to do list’

Here’s my Weekly review checklist to give you an idea where stuff lands in my world.

So there we have it, 5 lists to stop worrying. It works for me, hopefully it will for you too.

Do you have any tips to stop the worry and keep on top of stuff?

This simple data visualisation for various popular coffees shows what parts make a proper coffee.

• An illustrated coffee guide

It just goes to show why Starbucks coffee is so darn awful and why Caffè Nero make a great cup.

My internet World talk Social Networks: build your won or take advantage of an existing one was scarily full with standing room only.

One of main points was to listen to the chatter on twitter and facebook. I was doing the same through my talk and had some great feedback from people.

The audience did better than I did at summerising:

My slides are here:

I’ve written a whitepaper to accompany the talk:

• They’re talking about you online

I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my email and like to keep my inbox at zero messages. I BCC myself in all my email so I can keep a folder with emails I’m waiting for the answer to. Once I have the answer / reply I delete them.

In moving to Gmail the auto BCC from Apple Mail stopped working and I stopped being able to keep track of stuff.

After lots of digging around I found a way of fixing the problem. (Google was no help hence this post)

In the mail settings tab change your username to: recent:your.name@yourdomain.com

Now I get all my BCC’ed messages sent to my inbox, they are marked as unread for some reason but at least now I’m getting them.

cxpartners are off to SXSW. Me and Giles Colborne, cxpartners MD, are spending the next week in Austin, Texas for SXSW the largest interactive festival in the world.

If you want to talk user experience with a European angle or just say hi and catch-up just drop me an SMS +447905 33 4163 or contact me

A recent project I worked on for a high street bank showed that users who clicked on commonly used, important link could not get back to the application form they were completing. Hitting the back button through an error. The form data was gone, and so at that point was the user and the sale of the product, also gone was any good will on the part of the user toward the bank, the user was not going to recommend that bank to any friends. In short a lot of business could be generated for a small, trivial, easily fixable issue.

The will was there to fix that issue, estimates were made of the increase in business but it took months to make the change. Why? Well the estimates were in the tens of millions. Who would believe that making a little change would yield such huge results? The credibility of the recommendation was undermined by the crazy-huge estimate.

What bought this back to mind was a recent article by Jared Spool, the $300 Million Button. Jared talks about an increase of $300 million dollars from changing the text of button to read ‘Continue’ rather than ‘Register’. Simple, logical, unbelievable. I’d love to use this as a case study to sell usability testing, I dearly would, but I can’t see any business believing such a dramatic claim.

So, I hear you ask, how do you sell the benefits of usability testing? In a word modestly.

Finance Directors, without fail, always ask me “How much extra conversion can we expect from making the changes you suggest?” My experience may lead me to think 4%, 5% maybe 7%. I’ll always say 1 to 2%. Partly because I don’t want to to be held to this (who would?) but mostly 5% is a huge increase. For an average client I work with that could be millions of pounds. Who would believe that?

As always if you’d like an informal chat on the benefits of user testing get in touch. I can be honest, modest and realistic. By the way you don’t want to buy some of this oil I’ve got do you? Clear up that problem of yours in no time…

I’m doing a quick 12 minute SkillSwap talk this Tuesday on International Usability – things you never would have guessed all about the things I’ve learnt from international usability testing. The event is at the Pervasive Media Studio from 6pm.

More details:
-User experience Skillswap
-Book a free place

Then on Wednesday I’m on a panel – Working in the South West for the Web developer’s conference in Bristol. Again I’m focusing on the international work I do and how it’s possible to be international and still live in the South West. The event is all day at the Watershed in Bristol.

More details:
-http://www.webdevconf.co.uk/

Thursday is World Usability day and I’m running a free Usability Surgery with Stuart Church and Dave Ellender at the Pervasive Media Studio again in Bristol. Thursday evening brings Bristol Usability Group drinks in the Watershed Bar.

More details:
-http://bristolusability.org.uk/
-Usability Surgery on Upcoming

Drinks in the Watershed bar from 5.30pm
-http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1321355