It is no wonder then that registration forms try to make sure details are captured correctly. But how to do it while still preserving a positive user experience? Registration forms basically represent a barrier for people to be overcome before they can do what they actually want to do – finally use the website!

Here is how others have tried to handle this (with varying success):

Confirming entry

I frequently see a registration form that has duplicated Email or Password fields. Now, this is a little bit annoying, especially if both Email and Password need to be confirmed (as below).

In the above example, the person’s interaction flow is significantly interrupted by having to answer two identical questions. As per Don Norman’s model of 7 Stages of Action, answering each single question on a form is a small diverting action on the person’s journey towards accomplishing her goal.

Disabling copy & paste

Harry Brignull wrote about a registration form that does not allow pasting into the ‘Confirm email’ field. Quite creative, but I agree with Harry that it could feel patronising, especially for the more tech-savvy people (who know how to copy-paste). On the other hand, it prevents people (hopefully) from simply replicating a typo made in the first field. And typos are arguably one of the commonest kinds of incorrectly entered details. Now let me ask, why do most websites actually use the wording ‘Confirm your email’? Let’s use ‘Re-type your email’ instead, and it might not be necessary to awkwardly disable standard system interactions like pasting.

Repeating key details before submit

A more elegant solution is not to display the second confirmation field at all. But how can businesses eliminate the eventual errors on forms then? I quite like concept prototypes created by Jonathan Knoll and Russ Unger, that repeat the entered email just before submitting. Jonathan and Russ have produced multiple variants, but variant 5 (picture below) is my personal favourite. It puts the entered email within the person’s locus of attention which is at that point in time on the Submit button.

Unmasking passwords

What about passwords, that are by default masked on most forms (even at registration)? First of all, I believe masking a password does not bring any value in most usage scenarios. Nielsen calls for the death of masked passwords, and I am happy to agree with him. However, as opposed to offering a checkbox to mask the password, as he is suggesting, I think the way to go is actually offering a checkbox to unmask the password. After all, in most contexts security is more important than interaction efficiency.  MailChimp is doing this already, and based on a recent live demo of FontDeck, it seems like we will be seeing this pattern more often.

A pattern for unmasking passwords is also frequently used on mobile devices. This is due to the lack of tactile feedback provided by touchscreen keyboards when inputting a password. Moreover, people also cannot rely on their motor memory (remembering the finger movements like in touch-typing, as opposed to the actual password characters). People often utilize the motor memory to enter passwords with little conscious effort, and this does not translate so easily to touchscreen keyboards as visual identification of keys is needed.

Most mobile interfaces support people by revealing the last character entered for a short time and then masking it, thus giving people the necessary feedback. I am not aware of any website doing the same, but it might be a solution for standard monitor-keyboard setup too. On the other hand, the utility of this short-time revealing is debatable since most people type so fast that revealing the last character and masking it with a time delay is very difficult to implement seamlessly.  Try it for yourself - here is an example of automasking.

Inline validation

Another powerful weapon against incorrect entries is inline validation. Validation can only catch a small proportion of specific errors, but it is generally a good approach since people are notified something is not quite right before they hit the Submit button. Therefore it eliminates the need for the dreadful error messages. “Fatal error - you have not filled in all the details!”. “Oh my god, fatal error - someone actually died!” screams the user in horror.

There are multiple ways of implementing inline validation. Luckily for us, Luke Wroblewski put a few validation variants to the test. Based on his study, validation ‘after’ (after the person indicated that she was done answering a question by moving on to the next one) is the winning option - both in terms of efficiency and satisfaction.

So what?

Incorrectly entered details in online forms are a frequent problem that can cause a lot of hassle down the line. However, when designing forms, make sure you use a sensitive approach to minimising those errors and do not make the people do all the hard work for you.

I would love to hear about your tips for minimising errors in forms.

What makes the foundation of an expert is all of those things; education, experience, and a solid knowledge of the processes, methodologies and tools. But what differentiates the consultant from the expert is not just being an expert at implementing UCD in perfect conditions, but the ability to implement UCD in the ‘not so perfect’ context of the client.

As experts we need to be able to assess the client’s current processes, phase of development, schedule, and budget, and then determine what activities and deliverables will provide the best returns within their context. But this isn’t where it should end. As a UX expert, you should be able to deliver not only tactical recommendations, but strategic ones as well. Those strategic recommendations are not just on the user experience of their system or product, but on the activities that can help to move the client towards a more efficient and productive implementation of UCD.

As true user experience experts, we need to propose and implement activities and deliverables for the best return in the context of the client, and work with the client to migrate to a process that will bring to fruition more of the strategic value of UCD.

The brief

The British Association and College of Occupational Therapists (BAOT/COT) is the national professional body for occupational therapy students and staff in the United Kingdom.

BAOT/COT is responsible for setting professional and educational standards, advising on policy, and supporting its 29,000 members’ research and development, professional practice and Continuing Professional Development (CPD).

BAOT/COT’s main channel of communication to members is their website. As a key component of their service to OT staff and students they wanted to ensure they were providing a valuable and easy-to-use resource, so they asked Flow to help them understand what members and non-members wanted from this resource, and then to re-design the site around these needs.

What we did

Using a range of research techniques throughout the project, Flow investigated the needs of Occupational Therapy staff and students, and designed a new website for BAOT/COT around those needs.

We interviewed Occupational Therapists, OT support workers and students to understand their perceptions of BAOT/COT as an organisation, the BAOT/COT website and other resources they use to aid them in their studies or practice. We synthesised the insights gathered from this research into a series of personas, each illustrating characteristics of different members of BAOT/COT’s audience; and used these personas throughout the project to guide and evaluate design decisions.

BAOT/COT had a wealth of information on their existing website, however, as the site had grown organically this information had become increasingly challenging to locate. To ensure content was well organised and easy to locate we undertook a card sorting exercise with people representative of BAOT/COT’s audience. This enabled us to identify the different mental models people used to understand the content that BAOT/COT wanted to include on the new site, and guided the site structure and labelling of content.

Moving into the design phase of the project, we used the insights from our initial research activity to guide concept generation and development. In order to validate our design decisions, we also tested mock-ups of the site with users at every stage – from initial concept sketches through to the final visual design, ensuring we were developing something which met users’ needs and satisfied BAOT/COT’s objectives.

Once the new site was built, we tested it again with users to validate the final designs and evaluate the site against the original brief.

The results

BAOT/COT successfully launched their new website which has been designed to grow organically, forming the foundation of a continually improving member resource.

BAOT/COT’s new website has enabled them to create a more engaging and valuable resource for members and non-members alike. Having moved away from a website which pushed information to members, to one which stimulates online debate between the organisation and its members, BAOT/COT anticipate an increase in membership and in the number of people using the site.

www.cot.co.uk

“Flow's user centred approach helped BAOT/COT understand our users' online behaviours and needs. It also helped clarify our own business goals. Clear user priorities emerged from Flow's research with our members which helped us make confident decisions about site structure, design and navigation. The team at Flow were quick to understand our values and aspirations as well as the practical challenges we faced. Their approach inspired confidence and trust. The new BAOT/COT website which emerged from the project continues to add more and more value to our business.”

Stephen Little, Web Manager and Editor for the British Association of Occupational Therapists and College of Occupational Therapists

Flow frequently uses ethnographic research methods to gain a deep understanding of the social and working lives of people who use different products and services in different contexts. The findings provide richer insights into service and product design requirements and opportunities for innovation, particularly when designing for global and multi-cultural audiences.

One of the key questions around ethnographic research is how its findings are transformed into design. One example of such a process was presented at a recent UX Brighton: ‘A Journey from Ethnography to Design’. The event included two speakers: Simon Johnson, User Experience Consultant at Flow and Miles Rochford from Nokia. Simon spoke about the ethnographic research and subsequent design that he completed for the Environment Agency. Miles’ presentation focused on using ethnography to design products for emerging markets.

The Environment Agency commissioned Flow to conduct contextual research and subsequently design an interactive map that will provide users with coastal erosion information – a national project that will affect 2.1 million houses on the coast. The key objectives were to establish what an erosion map should look like, how it should work and what sort of information should accompany the map.

Claire Mitchell, Flow’s Principal Consultant on the project and Simon started the project with a research phase that included ethnographic field observations in two coastal settings: Norfolk and Hastings. Simon spent two weeks documenting the lives of coastal communities, interviewing local people and immersing himself in their lives. Additionally, Simon interviewed eight professionals at Flow’s experience labs in London.

Ethnography enabled Simon to apply his empathy and humanistic values to drive the project. It was clear that his findings provided the Environment Agency with a rich understanding of the concerns, information needs and myths that people who live in rural coastal communities might have. Simon described how his research findings confirmed some of EA's current thinking, provided new insights and defined the subsequent design process and deliverables.

The research that Claire and Simon conducted described how emotive the coastline is, an institution in British history that invokes strong feelings and forms a strong part of a shared heritage. The implications were the need for the Environment Agency to communicate that it cares and to reassure people that action was being taken to protect the coast. It was also clear that people trust locals and distrust central government, erosion maps caused alarm and that a certain amount of local knowledge derived from  ignorance and/or myth. An example of a myth was the commonly repeated argument that the government was making money dredging ‘their’ sand.

The design approach focused on a simple website that addresses the needs of both professionals and locals. Claire and Simon decided that the design should answer core questions and myths, stick to plain English, use local materials and represent risks  without alarming local people.

Is it Ethnography?
After the presentation the audience participated in a lively debate, which had a particular focus on the true meaning of ethnography. For some designers ethnography was a new concept and their reactions during the Q&A sessions and after the presentations indicated that they found both Simon and Miles’ presentations truly thought provoking. Some felt that rapid ethnography with a specific structure and design agenda was different from “ethnography” and needed a new term associated to it.

Theoretical research has two main aims – the validation of existing knowledge and the acquisition of new knowledge. Flow uses research to acquire and validate specific knowledge, the context in which services and products are used.  Flow uses principles and techniques taken from social sciences such as sociology, anthropology and psychology to inform design decisions. Our main aim is to design solutions that work outside of design studios, laboratories and meeting rooms. As a result, we often use appropriate research techniques to focus on specifically targeted contexts and activities. A term that is often used to describe this work is Design Ethnography.

Simon's presentation

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Many thanks to Danny Hope and former Flow Consultant Harry Brignull for organising the event.

--Ofer Deshe

• Play/Pause
• Next Song/Fast Forward
• Previous Song/Fast Reverse
• Volume adjustment

On the back was a three-position switch to play music in order, or shuffled or to turn off the unit.

The second generation was just as simple as the first, but had more storage and less than half the size.

On 11 March, 2009 Apple released the third-generation Shuffle.

One of the key design decisions was to simply not have any buttons, apart from a button that switches between 'Off', 'Random' and 'Order'. All controls are now part of the earphones.

According to Apple:

The new iPod shuffle is amazingly small and even easier to use.

But is it easy to use?

Soon after the launch, forums, social media networks and blogs started to criticise the new Shuffle. Whilst some disliked being dependent on using Apple's earphones, others criticised the new interface. Physically, the control could be difficult to grab during sporting activities or for those with bigger hands, but more importantly, most of the functions are controlled via a central button that has no labels.

The lack of visual display raises a design challenge. Unfortunately, touch is a less accurate sensory mode than vision and typically slows users down. Apple could have designed an interface with elements that could have been recognised through tactile attributes such as feedback, resistance, size, weight, and/or texture. The father and grandfather of the current Shuffle are good examples of such a control. However, the solution was to include VoiceOver technology, a feature that speaks 14 languages and plays back track and playlist names. Although a minor issue, VoiceOver struggles with pronunciation. Perhaps in the future, additional language information will be included with each track.

One button, nine commands

Apple was once famous for the one-button mouse. Although historically some suggest that this decision was based on cost, it was often argued that one button is all you needed. The one button became a symbol of simplicity. In contrast, the new iPod Shuffle has a central button that accepts many user commands. In fact, this 'one button' handles 9 inputs:

1. click
2. click & hold
3. double-click & hold
4. triple-click & hold
5. triple-click and hold within 6 seconds
6. triple-click and hold after 6 seconds
7. click until a tone is played
8. click until you hear a name
9. click & hold until exit

There is no direct cognitive mapping between users' goals and the required actions. For example, why does 'double-click and hold' fast-forward a track, but 'triple-click' rewind? Moving to the next track is achieved by double-clicking. So how do you expect to move to the previous track? Did someone at the back just say "triple-click within 6 seconds of the track starting"? Correct.

 Poor learnability?

Ultimately, if the device is used frequently, many users will move from being novices to experts. However, if learnability is poor, some users will remain perpetually intermediate and potentially frustrated.

Learnability is inherent in interface features that allow novice users to understand how to use a device and how to attain optimal (level of) performance. Learnability is based on five main factors:

• Predictability: operation visibility - what elements of a user's knowledge from past interactions with this device can help to determine the outcomes of future interactions?
• Familiarity: guessability - to what extent can users' knowledge from other systems and real world objects could be applied to interactions with the device?
• Synthesisability: how does the interface help a user to asses the effect of past actions on the current state?
• Consistency: likeness in behaviour. In this context consistency is related to user inputs and the subsequent output responses.
• Generalisability: support for the user to extend their knowledge to other applications and devices.

In the case of the Shuffle, lack of visual display could slow down skills acquisition. The design is not based on familiar metaphors, and poor learnability may increase cognitive load. Many users will not be familiar with the Shuffle's interface, apart from iPhone users who use a similar earphone-based controller.

As a robust device consistency between actions and auditory feedback that arises as a consequence will be high and usage is likely to be frequent. Therefore, for many users learnability will eventually take place. It is possible that Apple plans to extend this interaction model to other devices. For those who mastered this control acquiring this skill will become generalisable and useful.

Does it matter?

So it might be difficult to learn. Arguably, it has beautiful industrial design, long battery life and impressive storage capacity. Apple could sell many of these fashion accessories to users who would simply click to play whilst sitting on the train, running, or going to the gym.

The best way to gain an in-depth insight would be to test the Shuffle with users. In the next few weeks we are planning to evaluate the Shuffle in one of Flow's experience laboratories and analyse its performance and user experience.

- Ofer Deshe, Principal User Experience Consultant

Thanks to Thibault Baradat-Bujoli for the original illustrations

The unprecedented economic situation means that many products, services and entire businesses are now based on an understanding of their market which is outdated. There's a real danger of businesses providing square pegs for their customers' metaphorical round holes.

In a previous life, I was a recipient of the famous 1995 Bill Gates sea-change email. From that day on, the strategy at Microsoft changed. BillG echoed many business owners around the globe who hurried to adapt their business plans to incorporate online channels and internet connectivity. This simple change in direction has shaped the commercial landscape ever since. Those who adapted successfully and who understood the commercial opportunities and changing customer requirements have been the most successful.

The latest sea change is not one led by technology innovation, but by a dramatic shift in consumer behaviour. In all walks of life attitudes are changing, compounded by the constant media barrage of stories of economic doom and gloom.

"Deep recessions deliver more than just an economic shock: they can shock an entire social system into new ways of thinking and organizing." NESTA (2008) Attacking the recession: How innovation can fight the downturn.

It is all too easy for businesses to focus inwardly to drive efficiencies, or to focus energies on increasing revenue through additional marketing. These energies will be wasted, and even potentially damaging, if the product or service has become fundamentally out of line with the customers' needs & expectations.

We will see...

• Motivations to spend and interact changing, driven by a focus on essentials, economizing, escapism & networking.
• Brand loyalties are shifting as people openly look towards cheaper alternatives and shun luxury goods.
• Trust is no longer a given with established brands... Trust must now be earned in other ways and the risk / reward balance for the customer must be carefully considered.
• The decisions people make and the process by which they research options will be different. The network will play an ever increasing role as people search out value.
• The susceptible moments when customers may be open to up-selling or cross promotion are likely to shift.
• Market segments will rearrange themselves based on potentially new criteria related to goals.
• The list could go on...

Although the effect of these changes varies across sectors, businesses can no longer believe they ‘know' their customers based on old research, results or instinct. While companies focus inwardly on reducing the impact of the recession, the distance between their customer insight and the real customer attitudes and behaviour is growing. Their products and services run the risk of being upstaged by competitors who innovate based on a new understanding of the changing market and user requirements.

This is not a short term situation... these changes will have a lasting impact regardless of the duration of the recession. You only have to look at the attitudes of a generation who have passed through previous economic downturns to see the way it affects their long term attitudes as consumers.

What can be done?

At Flow, we believe that you need to get under the skin of your customers in order to develop and improve products & services. Many of our own case studies illustrate where this user centered approach has led to increased turnover and profits, and reduced costs.

We've previously blogged about a 3 pronged approach to designing in an economic crisis. All 3 require a fresh understanding of your customers:

1. Innovate: The situation provides real opportunities for companies willing to innovate based on fresh user insight. History has shown that recessions are ultimately great drivers of innovation. He who dares wins... UCD enables innovation with minimum risk because you know you're building the right thing from the start.
2. Optimise: It may well be that your existing products and services need a little adaptation for the changing market. Some small improvements can lead to large rewards. Fresh user insight will point you towards some optimizations which are likely to range from simple messaging changes, through to new ways of navigating.
3. Cut costs: A cross channel view across your complete customer will highlight some areas for cost cutting whilst enhancing the total customer experience. Online retailers are currently reaping the rewards whilst their high street rivals are struggling to maintain expensive, and less convenient, channels to market.

User centered design is available in shrink-to-fit. It doesn't need to be expensive, but it must be included if you want to capture the attention of a rapidly changing market.

- Meriel Lenfestey, CEO & founder of Flow

Emma Passey, Simon Pearson (National Express East Coast) and Ian
Worley (Flow Interactive) receiving the IT Excellence of the Year Award

On Thursday evening, 19th February 2009, I was privileged to be at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London for the HSBC Rail Business Awards to co-receive the Information Technology Excellence of the Year Award for the new National Express East Coast (NXEC) booking engine and website.

As any of you reading this who have used the NXEC booking engine know, it dramatically simplifies the process of finding and buying rail tickets online...not just on NXEC routes, but for any train in the UK.  We have blogged before about the intuitive user interface and its cutting edge use of AJAX technology as well as the positive customer feedback and improved business results for NXEC before.

We (and NXEC) have also received lots of accolades from customers and the industry about how great the new booking engine is.  So it fills us with a great sense of pride and accomplishment to receive this well-deserved acknowledgement from the Rail Industry for all the creativity and teamwork that went into making it happen.

It has been a long road, but the hard work and effort has paid off, not just because we won this award, but because we succeeded in creating a first-of-its-kind, innovative and successful new booking engine for trains that will set the standard for all that follow, in terms of business performance, ease of use and customer satisfaction. It is also a clear demonstration of how User-Centred Design makes a tangible difference to customers and business.

I just want to take a moment to thank the entire NXEC team from Flow:  Simon Hatch, Alejandra Obregon, Martina Schell and Kelsey Smith; our partners at Splendid: Paul Bishop, Simon Parbutt, Alistair Thomson and Karl Wortmann; the team at Atos Origin who built it:  Graham Bodman, Richard Phillpot, Ian Collier, Eleanor Waldron and Chris Rees; and the team at Tullo Marshall Warren (TMW) for bringing the marketing website together.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to thank Emma Passey and the entire NXEC team for their vision, passion and perseverance.  We couldn't have done it without you!

Congratulations to everyone. A well deserved award!

- Ian Worley, Director of User Experience at Flow Interactive

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Download Case Studies about this project:

• National Express East Coast Booking Engine Case Study (78k .pdf)
• National Express East Coast Website Case Study (92k .pdf)

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In the early 70s, Prof Geert Hofstede ran surveys with IBM employees worldwide and produced a set of four cultural dimensions which he used to categorise countries in terms of national tendencies. His four dimensions were:

• The Power Distance Index, which looks at how much people accept and expect that power is distributed unequally.
• Individualism, which considers how far people operate as part of extended loyal groups and families.
• Masculinity, which considers how far men's values are from women's in a society.
• The Uncertainty Avoidance Index, which measures a society's tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and diversity of approach.

It doesn't take long to notice that Hofstede's ideas have little to do with interaction design as such. They are focussed on management and communications and offer analysis at the level of general tendencies; they are not about use. But Prof Hofstede's name has become synonymous with cultural research in interaction design. He is quoted extensively. He is held up as evidence that tidy answers exist somewhere to untidy problems.

Interaction designers do need guidance on how to handle cultural diversity when designing technology with international reach. But that guidance may not be best in the form of metrics and measures. The OzCHI 2008 conference on Designing for Habitat and Habitus explored cultural aspects of designing. And every single experienced researcher came back to the same point: The best way for designers to understand the cultures they are designing for is to go get first hand experience.

Good listening

The OzChi2008 conference began with a workshop on 'Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture' . Participants discussed flexible and fine-grained ways of understanding difference in interests, values and use of technology. This understanding, it was agreed, did not come from metrics focussed on national characteristics.

So what did these researchers advocate instead?
The only common method in use was listening. The main goal of each researcher was to get to a condition of trust and respect where 'good listening' could go on. This might involve some understanding of suitable cultural gestures to adopt or avoid, like avoiding the 'thumbs up' gesture, which is rude in Iran or understanding that a head wiggle means 'yes' India. But it had more to do with interest in learning from others and a desire to get insight into other people's needs, behaviours and motivations.

Lesson 1: Embrace uncertainty. Look for the surprising contrasts. Welcome the destabilisation of an unfamiliar situation as a chance to learn about your own assumptions and cultural standpoints as well as others'. Get out there and challenge what you've read about a place or people.

Different cultures expect different behaviours

Lesson 2: Adapt your approach on the fly. Don't worry too much about method. Wherever you begin, it is likely only to be a starting point with plenty of adaptation to follow. So pick something that makes you happy but don't get too committed to any particular process.

Lesson 3: Listen well. Not only is it the best way to collect data, it also shows respect and builds trust. Check back often to see whether what you are hearing is really what the person you're talking to is trying to say.

Many cultures at once

The keynotes at the conference both had something to add to this. The next critique of Hofstede's legacy came from Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics at University of California, Irvine. Paul's opening keynote stressed that people are too complex to assign to a single form of classification. Any system that has neat boundaries is also going to be inadequate because cultures do not start and end abruptly. He gave examples of the way that emigration had spread out certain groups, like the well-documented diaspora of the Trinidadian Trinis and the way that they have integrated media into their lives so that they can keep in touch across distances. Instead of seeking to understand 'culture' at large, he advocated taking a view of people as sitting at the intersection of many different cultures, able to draw on those that suit the moment and behaving differently depending on the context in which they find themselves. These different ways of seeing could be regarded as looking through multiple lenses, each giving a unique perspective.

Lesson 4: Recognise the multiple perspectives at work. Explore the lenses that make up the richness of people's experience and give maximum flexibility to designs so that they fit into the many worlds that are relevant to and desired by potential users.

Human access points

Gary Marsden from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, offered an empirical take on designing. He has many years experience working in sub-Saharan Africa on digital technologies for use by remote communities. After years of trial and error he favours adopting robust, agile prototyping techniques to work with people who cannot imagine a product from drawings of an interface. He also advocates using 'Human Access Points' – people who can mediate between the designer and some of the target users.

Lesson 5: Get your assumptions out of the way. Let local conditions set the agenda for how something gets designed and built. (This may involve formally considering cultural differences, but it may be where the listening comes in...)

Lesson 6: Create a usable and robust prototype. This 'technology probe' will teach whether and how an idea can work. Other simpler forms of prototype may teach more about how your target group thinks about prototypes than about your research question.

Lesson 7: Use local talent to help interpret what you are seeing and hearing. Find someone with a foot in both camps to take on the job of mediation. Encourage them to do the design research. Design something that they can use as a step in designing for the wider community. Spend as much time with them as you can. (Gary called these people 'Human Access Points'. In other work I've done, the team called them 'cultural guides'.)

Designing for somewhere else

So if you're designing for a culture you're not familiar with, here's the best advice: read Hofstede's work and put it back on the shelf with everyone else's. Then engage in 'good listening' with the people you're designing for. Use cultural guides and technical probes to help bridge the communications gap. And keep your attitude and methodology flexible – the unexpected is where the most important ideas await. Talk to others who do this work and are interested in cultural perspectives. And, if in doubt, quote us all.

Ann Light was a co-organiser of the Inclusivity, Interaction Design and Culture workshop at OzCHI 2008. When she gets a moment, she consults to Flow on innovative approaches in user experience design.

1. Support multi-variable trade-offs

Some people prioritise the cost of the ticket whilst others prioritise the time of travel. The type of trip will cause a person to prioritise one of those variables over the other, but most booking journeys involve trading off these two factors. Successful travel booking interfaces help people understand how time and cost influence each other.

For a holiday maker, the choice of location, duration and hotel make the activity even more complex. "I can go to Rhodes from Manchester on the 16th for 300 pounds, and stay in the four star excelsior for 7 nights, or Cyprus from Gatwick on the 19th for 312 pounds and stay in the 5 star Grand for 6 nights." These are really complex decisions, made in conjunction with family or friends, so you'll need to pull out all the stops to design an interface that really helps.

2. Present a well-defined proposition

Trying to be all things to all people is very expensive. Players with a tightly-defined target market will always do better at serving their market than generalised players spread thin over lots of markets.

Know your market and offer a proposition that appeals to that market - whether it's group travel, business travel, family holidays, design hotels, skiing etc. Then build a site that profoundly and accurately addresses those people's behaviours and needs.

3. Fight "search fatigue" - catch people early in the decision process

People are overwhelmed with choice in the travel market. On average, people in our research visited 22 sites before deciding to go with a provider which they visited 2.5 times. By making site that supports people early in the decision making process and helps them fast track the exploration and decision process, you create awareness in people's mind and they are more likely to go with you.

4. Surface the right information to help people make a decision

Choosing hotels is hard. People find it difficult and stressful to make decisions when their criteria are flexible and the field is large.

Good pictures, features, location with map, star rating, Trip Advisor rating, price per room/night (not per person), hotel name and short description are what matters most when sifting through lists of hotels. Enabling people to get this information without having to 'pogostick' is vital.

5. Focus on selling the experience not the product

Beyond the basic factors above, there's a whole list of things that users want to know before they make a decision. Focussing on the experience of staying in a hotel, rather than the generic factors, makes it easier for people to make that final choice.

For example, a hotel in Paris is not just a "3 star hotel in the city centre". It's a fantastic base in the vibrant Place de la Sorbonne, it's ideal for food lovers with 6 gourmet bistros, it captures the image of Paris with its view of the Eiffel Tower, it's ideal for families or ideal for romantic getaways. Understanding what a stay there will be like is what will help people to decide and to buy.

6. Be transparent and honest

Trust is a major sticking point for travel sites. In our research, users rarely trusted the price shown and were always prepared for some last minute surcharges.

Travel sites want to show low prices (excluding as many elements as possible), because they believe it help buyers get started. The flip side: a slippery and arduous booking process repels buyers (one where surcharges slowly build up, and cross-sells appear in your basket uninvited).

Would giving the real prices transparently build reputation and trust that exceed the pulling power of a low offer? No one knows for sure. We do know that removing some of the automatic cross-sells does produce a short term loss of revenue. But whether it offers a long term boost in loyalty, no one has yet had the guts to find out.

7. The seducible moment comes after the sale.

When people go into low-cost flight booking mode, they are very task-focussed and don't really care about anything else. We think that's a learned behaviour coming from the situation that a) the good flight deals go fast b) they need to concentrate to make sure they get rid of insurance etc.

Low cost flight booking is like bargain hunting, and trying to up-sell users during the booking process is like taking the bargain away from them. The seducible moment for up-sell is not really during the flight booking process, but after. Most travel sites are stuck in the business model of trying to up-sell during the booking process.

8. Ensure localisation is an actual part of the design phase.

The most planned and least actualised design stage is LOCALISATION. Lack of effective internationalisation and localisation is costing travel sites money.

There's a myth that Europe offers a unified culture with different languages, but it's not true. Language, rating systems, research, booking and payment behaviour vary significantly from country to country.

A simple example: some cultures will tend to assume that a rating of 1 is the best rating, others that a rating of 5 is the best. (The solution is to use a visual rating scale which is less ambiguous).

To maximise adoption, conversion and revenue, travel sites need to research, and test internationally. Using design skills from a range or different countries helps too.

A market opportunity: Design the next generation of travel sites.

People have very quickly learned how to dodge the failings of one website by jumping to another. In our research we have seen that people have no loyalty, there is no trust and that means that online travel companies will always have a major element of uncertainty in their future.

But the development of the web shows that people are open to new ideas and new ways of doing things. So we urge travel companies to innovate based on these design tips. Come up with the iPhone of the online travel industry. The opportunity is there for the taking.

Thanks to Louise, Peter, Karl, Lola, SimonJ, Ofer, Claire and Alejandra for the research and insights.

I wrote this article about cross-channel ethnography for Internet Retailing Magazine earlier this year. I'll be talking about this topic at the Internet Retailing event in October.

Insight to innovation: The power of cross-channel ethnography

When Bronislaw Malinowski decided to study the habits and culture of the natives of the Trobriand Islands in the South Pacific during his exile in the First World War, little could he have imagined that the techniques he developed to learn about other cultures would be used to revolutionise the marketing and sales of consumer goods and services. However, this is exactly what is happening.

Ethnography, once confined to academic research departments has, over the last 20-30 years, become a widely used and powerful research technique for companies seeking to improve how they market and sell to customers. They have even turned the lens on themselves to improve how they manage their own businesses.

More recently, the desire to provide compelling multi-channel customer experiences that lure customers away from competitors has become the holy grail for many retailers. However, there is a noticeable gap between the precision with which research is used to understand customer behaviour offline and how it is applied in the design of online stores.

This gap is closing, however. As online retailing enters the mainstream, multi-channel retailers are investing more to improve the quality and effectiveness of their online stores. They are also looking for ways to build customer loyalty in a world where technology is making customers more and more promiscuous. Cross-channel ethnography is one of the tools retailers are turning to for insight.

The trouble with websites...

"Well, I can't really tell what the phone looks like from the picture...", said Katie, a participant in a recent usability study for one of the UK's leading mobile operators. "I would go to a shop at this point, before I make a decision".

From a research point of view, this is not surprising behaviour. It has long been understood that customers move fluidly and frequently between online and offline channels a number of times before finally committing to a purchase, especially for high value, feature-rich or lifestyle items. What is surprising, however, is how few retailers actually use customer insights like these to increase sales across both channels. The reality is, more often than not the website and shop are treated as separate businesses, competing for the same customers.

Armed with printouts from multiple providers about the cost of various phones and call plans, Katie later went to that same mobile operator's high street store hoping to buy her new phone. In the store, she was frustrated to learn that the phone she wanted was only available for free (on her chosen plan), if purchased on the website. The shop assistant tried to explain that the website and the store were different businesses and that he was not able to honour what was advertised on the website. As a result, Katie walked down the street to another shop and got a better deal from someone else.

The bottom line is that customers cannot often get a real sense of a product online. In spite of increasingly sophisticated tools for inspecting products (zooming and rotating photos, or seeing the product in different colours, etc.) most people only feel confident about making a purchase once they have had a chance to see and hold the item for real. In addition, in the high street, customers may feel more compelled to purchase because it is less convenient to come back, whereas online they know they can return easily. The problem is that they often don't.

Hindsight vs insight

Unfortunately for this particular mobile operator, these insights came too late. The structure of the business was not likely to change anytime soon. Not recognising the intimate relationship between online and offline shopping behaviour and structuring the business accordingly, meant losing Katie and many other customers like her to competitors.

The irony is, that the use of customer research (in particular ethnography) to understand and influence buying behaviour is probably most thoroughly developed in the bricks-and-mortar retailing industry. However, these same approaches are not often used to design and build online stores, much less getting the two channels to work together.

As online retailing has gained market-share in recent years, customer research has become more commonplace, though often only in the form of focus groups, usability testing or accessibility studies. However, these types of studies rarely identify genuine opportunities for innovation. This is because all of these techniques either focus on optimising the present based on historical best practice or seek out user’s opinions about things which they know and care little about. People are notoriously bad at identifying their own latent unmet needs, particularly where technology is concerned.

The best way to understand customer motivations and draw out insights that can have tangible impact on the bottom line, is to observe customers through the entire purchasing lifecycle; from learning about products, deciding on which ones to buy and ultimately buying and using them. This means using various ethnographic research techniques, from short context studies through to more in-depth longitudinal studies (which occur over a much longer timeframe), to observe customers in the different contexts in which decisions occur, physically, emotionally and socially.

For instance, we know that customers use the internet to shop around and gather information about their available choices before purchasing. In a recent study by Comscore and Google, users visited websites 22 times before making a purchase, with the "winning" site being visited 2.5 times on average. As we saw with Katie in our earlier example, similar patterns of behaviour can be observed across different channels, with customers often finding products online, visiting a store to see the products up close before purchasing, often online. Learning to capitalise on this behaviour can have a huge impact on customer experience and ultimately sales.

It's the little things that count

When a leading educational toy company, decided to overhaul its web presence, they decided to use a customer-centric design approach that combined insights from studies of on and offline customer behaviour. The company knew that they had a winning format with their high street stores. Play areas which allowed kids try out the products (and even let mum do some shopping) were popular with customers, as were the helpful staff and the educational nature of the products. While the online presence provided the facility for customers to purchase all of the same products from the comfort of their own home, it simply wasn't generating the desired sales figures.

In order to understand why the online experience was not living up to the in-store experience, lab-based usability research with the website was combined with short, in-store ethnographic "probes" to observe un-moderated customer shopping behaviour. For the online research, new and existing customers were brought into a lab where they were interviewed and asked to use the website to find products they would be interested in buying. Then, over a three-day period, customers at several stores were observed while they shopped and then interviewed after they had completed their purchases. Staff, too, were observed and interviewed.

The online research indicated that a key barrier to purchase was the customer's lack of confidence in whether they had found the right product. Faced with this uncertainty, the vast majority of customers interviewed indicated that they would go into a high street store to ask for advice. However, the real insight came from observing how customers interacted with the shop assistants once they came into the shop.

"I would like to find something that will help my son develop his creative skills." said Jane, a first-time mother, to one of the shop assistants. "He is two and very active, so I am worried he won't focus on one thing for long. What would you suggest?" The assistant promptly showed Jane a number of different options and, after some discussion and comparison, Jane eventually chose a water-based "magic" drawing mat.

This simple transaction between Jane and the shop assistant revealed something very important about the shopping experience, particularly for this brand of educational toys. Far more than the ability to easily browse or search for products online, what customers needed was assurance that the toy they were buying was going to help their child develop in some important way. It was about being a good parent.

In-store, this problem was solved both by the availability of advice from the shop assistants and through the age and developmental information printed on the packaging. However, this information, which is fundamental to the brand's value proposition, was not being used on the website to help customers find and compare products to buy - yet it was essential if they were to feel confident about their purchase decisions.

The new site was then redesigned with additional age-based navigation, age and development stage search filters, product-level development information and customer reviews. The company also introduced a policy that allowed customers to reserve a product online and then come and pick it up in store, for those who wanted to have a look at it before buying. Simply by changing the website to support customers like Jane, the company was able to increase online sales by 33% in 12 months, with individual customers viewing 21% more toys and spending 19% more per visit.

The future is personal

With online retail sales in the UK growing at a dizzying 40-50% year-on-year (and now accounting for approximately 15% of total retail sales, according to a recent study by CapGemini and the Interactive Media in Retail Group), this is a lesson that many retailers should learn from.

As the internet evolves and becomes more mainstream, it is fundamentally changing how customers interact with businesses both on and offline. At the same time, customers are becoming ever more sophisticated in their buying behaviour and use of technology. As a result, it is important for retailers to continuously engage customers to understand what really matters to them and identify those factors that have a tangible differentiating impact on the customer experience.

In this ever more personalised and competitive environment, cross-channel ethnographic research with customers is an essential tool for any online retailer who wants to continuously leverage the changing behaviour and expectations of their customer base. If the insights gained from this research are then used to enable customers to move seamlessly between online and offline channels to achieve their goals, companies will reap the benefits in sales, customer satisfaction and ultimately, loyalty.

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Ian Worley is Director of User Experience at Flow. We're a leading London-based User-Centred Design consultancy which specializes in using research to empower better and more effective design solutions.