ExperienceLab

Guidelines to improve the customer experience of London Transport published

Yesterday London Travelwatch, the watchdog for transport users, published '10 policies to keep Londoners moving', a set of guidelines urging mayoral candidates to put the customer at the centre of public transport policies. 

Amongst the suggestions - such as providing longer trains more often, improved information, a fair deal for customers - what caught my eye and that of other bloggers such as Going Underground were recommendations to make transport more accessible and joined up for elderly, disabled and less able users. 

Having experienced London Transport as a mother to be, and latterly as a mother with buggy and toddler I have some limited experience of travelling encumbered. For me lack of lifts/escalators, overcrowding on buses and tubes, inaccessible bus stops, and lack of any available staff to lend a helping hand make journeys around the capitial a drag. And even with tools such as Get ahead of the Games the idea of travelling during the Olympic Games this year brings me out in a cold sweat...I can therefore only imagine the issues facing customers with disabilities. 

So it's really pleasing to see this customer-focussed thinking being published. We can but hope that these guidelines are taken to heart by prospective mayoral candidates. 

Parking by phone

Over the weekend I drove out with my girlfriend to wilds of the North Downs near Dorking. I parked up in a car park at the foot of Box Hill, looking forward to the climb to the top. As I went to pay for the parking, I stopped short when I noticed that there was no payment machine. The only option was to pay by phone. This is something I've never done before, but was keen to try out to see how it compared to a regular coin payment machine - plus I didn't have much in the way of choice to pay any other way!

The stepping stones near the Car Park of Doom

The sign at the car park gave a phone number, and a location number - presumably so they knew what car park I'd parked in. I called the number, and was immediately connected to an automated voice recognition system. My heart sank as these are usually fine at recognising that there's a voice speaking to them, but not so great at figuring out what words the voice is saying...

Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrison's, they all have them: Are self-service checkouts really the future of shopping?

Sometimes it feels like an insult; we to stand in a queue that does not seem any shorter than it was before the manned tills were replaced, and we have to scan them ourselves, only to be told there is an “unexpected item in the bagging area”, which is an item that we scanned just seconds ago...

Siri on the iPhone 4S - why people don't use it

The voice recognition performs well, it's well integrated, it's context-aware, it's location-aware, it has some killer come backs… but do people actually use it? 

Innovation in public service design and delivery - a roundtable

A couple of weeks ago we were very privileged to host senior officers from local authorities and Serco at ExperienceLab's offices in Holborn. The discussion, hosted by LGC editor Emma Maier, focussed on the issue of innovation in service design and delivery.

A number of exciting ideas for future exploration were discussed such as the importance of moving from data to insight, of uncovering the unspoken needs and desires of users, and the possibilities of playful design in service delivery.

Read the full article "Ten Steps to Transformation" at the LGC website. 

 

 

 

Mac vs. PC: an open minded debate

My MacBook Air died about 4 weeks ago, right in the middle of a busy work period. There were no other spare Macs around at work, but there was a nice new Vaio laptop. I thought it was about time I used a PC again, to keep my hand it, so I was fine about switching. I don’t want to be someone who raves about how much better Macs are than PCs, so I went into it with an open mind.

Keep it simple

An interesting Ted talk (TedxO'Porto) by Sandra Fisher-Martin about keeping documents simple and easy to understand. If you've got time watch the video (it's 15 minutes long and in Portuguese with English subtitles).

Her aim is to simplify the language used in contracts and other official documents so that they are easy to understand by everyone, rather than only by experts. The main message of the talk is to ''write for your grandmother'' by following these 3 rules:

1. Your 'grandmother' is busy and doesn't have time to read loads of pages so start with the most important message
2. Use short sentences so your 'grandmother' doesn't forget the point you're trying to make
3. Use simple language that your 'grandmother' already knows

The idea of having a particular audience in mind when writing is a useful practice and helps you to focus your writing. Legal and business documents tend to focus on getting very exact and precise points across to defend a position or state a claim upon which a lot depends. However, this often comes at the cost of clear, concise language - making these documents appear less "human".

However, Sandra clearly believes that the two aren't mutually exclusive, and we'd agree with her. For example, when we write our reports we strive to make sure that they speak our clients' language and are as usable as the practices that we preach. We feel that we've failed if a report isn't easily understood by our clients. There's no reason that other businesses shouldn't adopt this exact same belief.

 

 

Guardian iPad App: a sign of things to come?

Along with the new Newsstand feature in Apple's latest iOS 5, the Guardian has launched its iPad version of the paper. We've spent the last few weeks using it and thought it's about time we shared our opinion with the world.

Lost in translation: tips for usability testing in a foreign country

As part of our activities to celebrate World Usability Day 2011 ExperienceLab and the UXalliance have published a report looking at cultural aspects of usability testing in UXalliance countries.

Drawing on expertise from over 20 partner countries, the report covers planning and running sessions, how to interpret the results and pitfalls to avoid when testing in a country other than your own.

View the report here! Download Cultural-differences-in-usability-testing

 

Special thanks to our partners at Optimal Experience and Optimal Usability for putting this together, and all the UXalliance partners for their input!

For more articles and publications on global user research, visit www.globaluserresearch.com. 

OnLive: the future of gaming?

Thursday 22 September saw the UK launch of revolutionary new gaming service: OnLive. 

OnLive is essentially games in the cloud. The advantage being that you don't need an expensive games console to play the games - you can stream them via your computer, and you don't need the latest, more expensive 25-core processor to run the games: if you can watch fullscreen YouTube videos on your computer, then chances are that you can also use OnLive.

So, we decided to give it a go….