People & Personalisation “Focus on people their lives, their work, their dreams.” – Google “Allow users to personalise their experience. People love to add personal touches because it helps them feel at home and in control. Provide sensible, beautiful defaults, but also consider fun, optional customisations that don’t hinder primary tasks.” – Google Android […]
We’re often asked how we implement agile in a digital world so I thought it would be useful to publish our Agile Manifesto; it’s our guiding light and philosophy rolled into one. We follow these principles: Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. Welcome changing requirements, […]
Open “Make things open: it makes things better. We should share what we’re doing whenever we can. With colleagues, with users, with the world.” – GOV.UK […]
Needs “Start with needs. Use data to identify real user needs and design around those.” – GOV.UK […]
It’s frequently said “…he who controls the software controls the world” and this, I believe strongly, applies to marketing. Throw control of data, best practices, reporting, budget and planning into the mix you can easily see how unsexy marketing ops may well become king. Traditionally, marketing ops has been uncool- it was typically under-funded and […]
Make your application predictable “Use industry standard user interface conventions wherever possible. For example, users should be able to use standard selection models and keyboard equivalents like Ctrl+C and Shift+→ (to copy the currently selected object and extend the current selection one unit to the right, respectively) everywhere they work with data. Use a common […]
We’ve been using Zendesk now for nearly 6 months, and I have to say, it not just us who are pretty impressed. We’re recorded 100% client satisfaction since the start of the year; to put this into context we’ve dealt with over 400 support tickets. April was a steady month; 30 support requests dealt with […]
Load Time “Every millisecond counts.” – Google “Your website / app should feels fast and responsive. Focus on primary tasks.” – Microsoft “Make important things fast: Not all actions are equal. Decide what’s most important in your app and make it easy to find and fast to use, like the shutter button in a camera, […]
by Martin Dower [marker ]Reading time is 10 minutes[/marker] The old world marketing approach is well and truly dead; consumers’ behaviour has radically changed in the last 5 years. In summary. Stop whatever you are doing now. Take a step back and re-think it from scratch. Disruptive marketing is not so much a solution as […]
Keep It Simple, stupid “With great power comes great responsibility – very often people have no choice but to use our services. If we don’t work hard to make them simple and usable we’re abusing that power.” – GOV.UK “Don’t make users think.” – Steve Krug “Delight the eye without distracting the mind.” – Google […]
By Martin Dower I was recently sat in a client meeting with an agency and it became clear they needed my help, or more accurately, my company’s help. They were struggling with the world of digital services and they were stuck. I could tell they wanted to ask for my help but at the same […]
In the first UK Path-to-Purchase study, it was found that UK mobile searchers are committed to the research process leading to a longer purchase decision cycle than those in the US. It also revealed UK mobile users’ emphasis on local relevancy and high purchase intent, with more than half reporting to have ultimately made a […]
Read More… from Mapped: Path to purchase on mobile devices [infographic]
Joy “The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing […]
It’s been a quite a journey watching WordPress mature over the last few years and we’ve written quite a lot about how we love it, use it and evangelise about it as the best all-round digital platform and it’s role disrupting the old Web 2.0 world. One of the cornerstones of it’s success is it’s […]
By Martin Dower [marker ]Reading time is circa 7 minutes[/marker] The world of digital design has changed hugely over the last couple of years, caused by: The explosive adoption of tablet and mobile pushing the digital world to responsive thinking A shift from designed web-site to providing digital services Emergence of digital services frameworks to simplify […]
Read More… from Design Principles for a Digital Services Age
Iteration “Iterate. Then iterate again. The best way to build effective services is to start small and iterate wildly.” – GOV.UK […]
We’re all guilty of using crummy words in documents, for us it usually consists of business/industry speak. It’s lazy and also can confuse meaning. So we’re spiritually joining the Campaign for Plain English as they try to rid the world from gobbledygook, jargon and misleading frappery. Note: the actual cost to join is £4,000. It […]
We publish around 150 articles a year and we think it’s a great way to find out more about us; our culture, our approach, our experience and our people. We’re proponents of the mobile-first philosophy and appreciate there are challenges of going “mobile first” so we use a combination of responsive design and an Open digital Services Framework we released in 2012 to […]
Hardware “Design for one hand whenever possible. Take advantage of hardware buttons (start, back, and search). Gestures available: tap, double tap, touch & hold, pan, flick, pinch & stretch. Touch: recommended touch target size is 9mm. Minimum touch target size if 7mm. Minimum spacing between targets is 2mm. Visual size is 60-100% of the touch […]
The world’s already gone mobile, we all know that and at the same time many folks are struggling to adapt to the new challenges it poses. Mobile is not another desktop, it’s whole new game and that’s why the big guns such as Google and Facebook have pivoted so (impressively) quickly to face the coming […]
