Photo credit Matt Harris

Last Friday, a few of us from splendid were lucky enough to go down to Brighton to attend dconstruct 08, a user experience conference that attracts experts in the field from all corners fo the globe. The pouring rain was not enough to put a dampener on the day, the impressive line-up didn't disappoint!
I had been looking forward to listening to Matt Biddulf and Matt Jones speak, the hugely amusing Jeremy Keith was a welcome surprise and took home my award for most entertaining! Other speakers included Danial Burka, creative director at digg and Tantek Celik. All of the speakers were very good, some interesting areas were addressed, all that will be very informative to the way we work at Splendid.

A few of our highlights...

Aleks Krotoski, our second speaker for the conference was a gamer. You may reasonably conclude from the name and preoccupation that we were about to hear a lecture given by a male speaker. However she turned out to be an astute female academic who's plight was to unite the world of gaming with the wider network of web designers and developers. She challenged the audience to consider the seemingly endless possibilities if the two somewhat self-serving disciplines combined powers to form an uber Voltron-esque, unstoppable force of interactivity and information. So does the elusive secret to alchemy lay before us? Maybe not, but we could make some freakin cool games such as Guitar Heropedia and World of Warcraftr.

Stephen Johnson talked about the use of information design and social networking that John Snow was able to use to pinpoint the outbreak of the cholera epidemic of London in the 1870's, drawing on this example Stephen was able to demonstrate to us the shear power of the social web and data.... Though we are long time rid of cholera it was the similarity of how such tools used in the physical world ran in such a close parrallel to how we use the social web today... The rise of Geo tagging in todays culture has opened up an entire new variable in which to interact with our environment, a true merging of the physical and online worlds. This information can be used to not only unite the world globally but refine our information into the community, thus help strengthining the networks that make up the world at it's most granular state.

Jeremy Keith was the final speaker at dconstruct.
He choose to tackle the rather large topic of 'The System Of The World' Beginning with a reference to Isaac Asimov's fictional science 'Psychohistory', I was skeptical that Jeremy was going to make a speech relevant to a room full of designers of the Social Web. But I quickly regained my confidence when he explained the science of Network Theory, whether man made or naturally occurring had a pattern of Nodes and Hubs. Hubs being a major connection and nodes being the weak ties in the network. This pattern has been proven through the Six degrees of separation experiment and can be seen alive in Social networking sites such as, Twitter or linkedin. Jeremy summed up giving us the secret formula for creating successfully social networking sites, there are known knowns

All in all it was a very productive and inspiring day, and Stacca got to hug a gorilla.

Look forward to seeing you all out there in the social web

Depending on who you listen to it looks like we might be in for some tough times ahead. Economic growth is slowing, property prices are falling, mortgage rates are rising and the darkening clouds of recession are gathering. If the American model is anything to go by this means consumers will soon be hanging up their shopping bags and tightening their belts and losing their appetite for spending wealth gains on consumption.

So what to do this year if you're an online retailer? Bring the sale season forward, drop prices and hope you can bag enough cash in the next quarters to see you through the lean months?

Whilst taking on a defensive stance is a common strategy in the high street, research suggests thinking smarter is what works in the online world.

Online enterprises are unique in that all customers visit businesses via a browser window which is for all intents and purposes identical across geographic and demographic user bases. This makes for a very level playing field in which participants are fundamentally bound by the same parameters. Within this small window competitors do not have the capacity to be bigger, brighter, louder, have more street frontage or be closer to home. They can only be better than their competitors.

In this environment it is clicks that count for users, and sites can be made or broken by how well they create a user experience online which matches or exceeds competitor offerings. These days web users are experienced and knowledgeable, they no longer have to put up with bad design and when confronted with it they will quickly vote with their cursor.

The basics of the user experience comes down to interaction design; i.e. how you can create a complex technical system that users (customers) find easy, engaging, and hopefully compelling to interact with. Visual design is important, but making something pretty counts for nothing if it doesn't result in sticky traffic.

You already know the companies that have mastered interaction design because they dominate the top of the online retail tables. The Amazons, Expedias, EasyJets, Tescos and Play.coms of this world are well versed in the art of user centred design and although they started with a viable business model they have overtaken the hundreds of competitors in their space to get to the top of the tree.

In the offline world the master of this discipline is Apple. As an icon of good useable design it's hard to go past the ipod to demonstrate just how potent getting the user interface right can be for a product or business.

Less obvious however are examples of how poor design can sink an idea just as quickly. Probably the best known interaction design catastrophes in the online world is that of the ill-fated Boo.com which went far too long on technology and three dimensional spinning shoes and far too short on usability.

There are thousands more where that came from, all united in the fact that you haven't heard of them and they have either gone bust or are well on the way.

The failure of companies to pay heed to interaction design is all the more astounding when you realise it is one of the most cost effective investments an online business can make.

With modern modular build techniques the web front end (visual layer) can be developed independently of the site infrastructure (business logic). This affords online businesses the opportunity to evolve and improve their proposition without making large investments in technical infrastructure.

If you keep an eye on the big players you'll notice they are making continual gradual improvements to their client interface. Earlier this year Play.com relaunched their site. This is not a functional step change, this is a refresh to improve the customer experience and clarify the site proposition. Similarly Ebay evolves their site design continually to cater to the increased complexity of the site.

We highly recommend businesses undertake some user testing. Putting yourself in the minds of your consumers is good, but getting their direct feedback is better and often surfaces issues you were unaware of. When we worked on OAG (the Official Airline Guide) testing revealed that users believed adding items to a "basket" would reserve a flight despite them not having provided any payment details.

From an investment point of view testing means you have a vast reduction in the risk of changing your site and can forecast with some certainty how changes will be received.

The benefits of good interaction design are evident in the numbers. With a new booking engine and site design GNER (now National Express Mainline) effected a 30% increase in site revenue and a 50% increase in percentage conversions.

On relaunch of their site last year Hays recruitment enjoyed a 25% increase in job applications and a 12% decrease in ineligible applicants.

Done well investment in interaction design will deliver your business better results with less effort. In our eyes it's a no brainer, especially in tough times. The only surprise to us is that it needs explaining.