“They say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.” Ronald Reagan

Behind the scenes, today’s products and services are very complex. As consumers demand ever improving customer service and more advanced functionality the complexity only increases. The challenge for design teams grows and companies struggle to create the increasingly important illusion of simplicity.

Complexity presents itself in many forms:

1.       Technology e.g. multiplatform, new technologies and platforms

2.       Legal e.g. FSA regulations, EU Directives, data protection, accessibility

3.       Stakeholder e.g. multiple teams, differing objectives

4.       User e.g. context of use, user needs, expectations and abilities

5.       Content e.g. quantity of data, specialist data

6.       Interaction e.g. balance between intuition, learnability and control.

As designers, we know it’s our job to help bring design projects through this complexity. I’m reminded of a great quote (by whom I don’t know):

“Sometimes God calms the storm, sometimes He calms the sailor“.

It’s the designer’s role to do a bit of both. We work in a highly collaborative way to calm ‘the sailor’ and make sure the team is able to make informed decisions. We also work in a user-centred way which enables us to calm ‘the storm’ by designing content and interactions appropriate to the user and the commercial context.

Sometimes interfaces we design are beautiful, some are purely functional some are invisible. We challenge ourselves to deal with complexity so that the end users don’t have to.

That’s great design.

(Thanks to Lenny for use of his image  http://www.flickr.com/photos/lenny_meriel/3587338182/in/set-72157608595536634 )

What is a cookie?

Very simply, a cookie is a text file which your browser can store to your computer when instructed by a website. It stores information about you, or what you are doing, which the website can access in the future.

Used properly, cookies can greatly enrich a user’s experience of a website.

• Recognition:: Cookies provide a great middle ground between anonymous and authenticated. They enable a site to say “Hi Meriel, here’s your stuff” without forcing an annoying login for a task which simply doesn’t require a full identify check.
• Preferences: Cookies can be used to store user preferences, such as accessibility settings, or preferred formatting.
• Processes: Although shopping baskets are going to be excluded from the legislation, there are many other types of process such as form filling. Cookies enable users to return to a process part way through, thereby providing convenience and removing a lot of frustration.

Most web browsers receive cookies by default, but have options to let people choose individually or refuse all.

What problem are they trying to solve?

This legislation seems be a rather blunt instrument. It is intended to stop websites collecting user data, and using it for behavioural advertising.

• Is behavioural advertising so bad? If you reframe it as personal recommendations then it’s a feature many value. We must remember that all advertising is carefully placed to get maximum exposure to the right market.
• If they are trying to let consumers control whether they receive behavioural advertising then focus on that – don’t put in place blanket legislation which will cause far more damage to online experiences. They should be legislating to control the use of the data rather than the mechanism for collecting it.

What’s the problem with asking for permission?

In normal life, I don’t expect people I meet to get my consent before remembering details about me. On the contrary, I am flattered when I discover that they have remembered me and are willing to tailor future conversations. I would, however, be upset if they had slipped something into my bag without my knowledge. Asking for permission for cookies is effectively likening cookie placement to putting something in my bag rather than remembering something. Physically, that may be more accurate, but the metaphor causes problems because we’re dealing with technology, not people. Technology can only ‘remember’ by storing data – and it needs to store it where it can get to it.

The legislation requires explicit consent before a cookie is placed. With a willing user in the right context, this can be as simple as ticking a checkbox during registration, like the “remember me” ones on many sites. Things are not always so simple.

• Interruption: In a lot of situations, users are in a state of concentration (or flow) and will be interrupted by the request for consent. This damages the experience and therefore the brand.
• Comprehension of benefit vs. risk: Cookies are simple text files which can do no harm to your computer and they are usually used to great benefit, much of which will not be visible (nor should be) to most users. The less technical are likely to get upset about a file being placed on their computer and will say “no” without realising the impact on their experience.

What can website owners do?

The details of the legislation are not yet available even though the restrictions are officially coming into effect in May 2011. Here are a few initial thoughts:

• Placement of consent: It is important to identify the susceptible moments when consent can be easily framed in terms of benefit and with least impact to user flow.
• Consent wording: The wording on the permission is critical. It may be that the “explicit consent” will need to be specific words. I hope that these are focused on the benefits to the user rather than the technology or ‘dangers’.
• Authentication: Consider piggy backing off a single sign-on service. A client of ours has been implementing Facebook registration. This works well because users are often already signed in to Facebook, meaning that our client can identify them and provide a personal experience without requiring their own cookie.
• Page design: You will need to design for the no-sayers as well as those who accept cookies. This will mean really understanding all the different scenarios of use for each page and providing relevant opportunities for login.
• Consider other channels: If it becomes harder to tailor your site to an arriving user, then you might consider using other channels to personalise their experience, e.g. email.

Although the legislation is concerned with a technological restriction, the knock-on effects are all about experience. It shifts the goalposts a little for the design of websites.  We’ll be watching this space closely and we’re happy to share our thoughts with you.

2011 is an exciting year for us at Flow. Last week we announced our merger with Foolproof to create Europe’s largest specialist UX agency. I wanted to explain a little more behind our thinking, and Tom Wood from Foolproof shares his own thoughts on the Foolproof blog.

Fundamentally, a User Experience consultant wants to make things better. We have idealistic goals but we’re proficient at finding realistic routes towards a better future. We find the common ground between the desires, expectations and abilities of our clients and their customers.

Our own history at Flow is no exception. We have always believed that delivering the right user experience was key to our clients’ success, and that the best way to do this was by uncovering insight and applying design principles.

Back in 1998 though, we had to start by creating a market through evangelising “usability solutions”.  This involved simple usability testing and tactical recommendations because the clients didn’t expect, or know what to do with, anything more. In the last 8 years we have concentrated on enabling and inspiring our clients through providing a wider range of user centred design methodologies and training.  Several recent projects have become far more strategic as we are asked to weave customer-centricity throughout our client’s organisation in order to drive a great user experience across all touch-points. We have started to think that our idealism could come of age.

The merger with Foolproof makes this final step towards our goal a reality and creates a real force in the user experience world. We’ve been friends with Foolproof for a while, but we were amazed to find that our client list, sector knowledge and range of skills were largely complementary rather than directly in competition; and that we shared the same vision for the future. Combining forces gives us the capacity and range of skills to deliver a full spectrum of user experience consultancy across multiple sectors and platforms. Both sets of staff are looking forward to learning from each other over the coming months.

We remain true to the following guiding principles:

1. The right user experience is created by uncovering insight and applying design principles.
2. Tactical improvements and full scale innovation are valued equally and applied appropriately.
3. We invite a wide mix of passionate, highly talented people to join a team which becomes far greater than the sum of its parts.
4. Collaboration is key.

And yes – we will still have cake on Fridays which we’re looking forward to sharing with our new colleagues.

The Foolproof and Flow brands are both retained. The expanded business will operate out of two sites: Flow’s existing home at 90-98 Goswell Road, EC1 will become the consolidated London base of the two companies, and Foolproof’s current Norwich office will be retained.

Foolproof’s Peter Ballard and Tom Wood will be majority shareholders of the expanded business, whilst Flow’s owner Meriel Lenfestey will join the shareholder board of Foolproof.

Peter Ballard, Joint Managing Partner of Foolproof, said: “After eight years of successful organic growth, and fresh from our best-ever year, joining forces with Flow will take the business to a completely new level. It will help us capitalise on the clear trend for UX insight and customer-driven innovation to sit right at the heart of clients’ decision-making processes, which gives us a key strategic role within their businesses.

This hugely exciting move will make us Europe’s biggest UX agency, and gives us the capabilities and critical mass to become a truly global force in the digital experience design space.”

Meriel Lenfestey, Founder and CEO of Flow, commented: “Combining two successful experience design businesses delivers a great result for the clients, staff and shareholders of both companies. This has very much been reflected in the positive feedback we’ve already received.

This is very much a move for growth. Our greater capacity means we can continue to deliver the very highest levels of quality in experience design support to our clients, while ensuring that we also capitalise on the many new business opportunities currently coming our way, both in the UK and from overseas.”

There are not expected to be any job losses as a result of the deal – in fact the continued high demand for insight-driven design expertise means that there are immediate vacancies within the account management and UX consultancy teams.

*£5.5m annual turnover would have placed the combined business within the top 50 UK digital agencies based on the latest New Media Age league table.

Our very own Brad Haynes discusses his experience whilst working on the design of Ocado. The Ocado team were determined to "do the right thing for consumers". This meant not only being compliant, but also considering accessibility in a far more thorough way as a core goal of the design process. Brad cites  examples from Ocado including copy length, page layout, technology choice, processes & story structure, site structure and page 'weight'.

If a site is truly accessible then it's truly usable

Flow believes that accessibility is a positive design decision which achieves far more than legal compliance.