My own piece of the Internet
 
Category: <span>Experience design</span>

Category: Experience design

So what went wrong?

As an IT veteran, I’ve spent many an anxious  night watching terminals waiting for the load to drop, a server to come up, or just looking for meaning in GB’s of log files. It sucks bug time. So I feel sorry for the technicians associated with Click Frenzy who right now are working feverishly to get the servers back up. They would be wondering what hit them and the marketing folks would be caught between congratulating themselves for accidentally making the right call and calling the IT folks to tell them how much money this is costing them. When the …

Why people drive across town to save $2

In 2009 the Australian Banks were required to notify customers of the $2 fee to use an ATM belonging to another bank. According to The Age there has been a 40% drop of people using foreign ATM’s which surprised economists who had forecast that there would be a negligible change in consumer behaviour as a result of making a previously hidden fee visible. Apart from the absurdity of expecting economists to know anything about human behaviour, there should be no surprise about the results. To an economist or a bank $2 is a very small amount of money. To a …

Well duh, experience makes a difference

If you read up a newspaper recently you would have read that some fashion importers and wholesalers have stitched up deals to prevent Australian consumers buying goods cheaper on international websites and that consumers are up in arms. Australian retailers should be concerned. Almost 50% of Australian shoppers appear to be focused on getting the best price regardless of location. The latest ACMA research report (http://engage.acma.gov.au/commsreport/e-commerce/) into online shopping in Australia, reported that the number of online shoppers buying mostly from overseas had jumped to 19%, and that 29% of shoppers buy from overseas and Australian retailers equally. Some retailers …

Working with the wife

I recently built this website for my wife using WordPress.Yes I know, working with family can be hard. I have the scars to prove it but for a custom written theme I think it looks OK. There is still some work to go but let me know what you think. My wife is an artist, a Masters graduate, a former phd student, a singer and a wonderful mother. She wanted her website to reflect her wide interests and love for crazy form – the alphabet, mythical animals, and crazy stuff. It needed to be a base she could build upon …

What utilitarianism can teach us about product development

Building something truly useful is a fantasy for most designers, entrepreneurs, and product people. Most will build something that is a reasonable copy of something truly useful and along the way convince themselves that it is gonna be great, that the folks are gonna love it. The truth is that there are very few transformative tools with a genuine utility. Transformative products create a new space for utility by solving a problem that we didn’t know we had. Twitter, Facebook, Google,  Get Satisfaction, Amazon’s EC2, Amazon are just a few businesses that have become an integral part of our lives …

Do they want a one night stand or a relationship?

It’s dark in the bar, some nice beats are playing, the lights hit your Grey Goose vodka and tonic, and make the ice cubes sparkle. You’re out for some fun. You are also a little drunk and strike up a drunken conversation about Proust with someone who seems flirty, fun, and sexy. It’s going great. So great that you end up at their place for a night of fun. Two weeks later you’ve forgotten their name. The one night stand is a moment of hedonism later tempered by a sober reality (and sometimes guilt). What if you met the person …

Off-page conversion is off the hook

Years ago, I read somewhere that 42% of people abandon a shopping cart due to slow performance. Recently it was proven to me that this might indeed be true which is surprising because most statistical factoids are garbage. After introducing a content delivery network service into an ecommerce site I saw a 20% gain in cart conversion. This was a pretty stunning result and it made me think about all the off-page conversion factors that can have a big influence on visit conversion that might be ignored because of a focus on design and copy. The standard approach to conversion optimisation …

Entertain me

You see them everywhere – people with their heads down, supplicant hands, silent, staring at a mobile device. They are praying to the god of the Internet, requesting that the pipes and bytes entertain them, illuminate them and placate the boredom of being alive. Between 9pm and midnight around the world, the TV sits mute while people hover around the LCD monitor watching a rerun on hulu, or a cat doing backflips whilst wearing a tutu on YouTube. The Internet has simultaneously gone prime-time and become mobile and this is changing what people expect from their online experiences regardless of …

Why there are no stupid users online

When you’re one of the cool kids, it is pretty easy to forget that not everyone is in the cool club. In fact, some people are so far removed from the cool club that they haven’t heard of Twitter, social media, ecommerce, WordPress, Android, the Nexus 1, or the RunKeeper iPhone application. But generally, every human living in an advanced economy who can read has heard of Google and Facebook. We’re so connected these days that it is easy to forget that there are a bunch of people who are not connected; who are yet to realise the liberating potential …

Ecommerce review: Telstra & Deals Direct

The other day my “portable phone” started to drop out mid conversation frustrating myself, my wife and our callers. What’s a portable phone you ask? Well it’s what I call a cordless phone. Maybe I’m strange, but that’s the thing about language – there are many different ways to describe an object. I was a bit out on a limb with “portable phone” but I should have been able to complete my task quickly and easily regardless of my long-tail key phrase. Sadly it was not so. Choosing and buying my portable phone was difficult. I was looking for a …