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.

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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Since we've recently redecorated our offices, we thought we'd host the party there. It gave us the space to create a mural about the history of Flow and put up photos of past projects. A game of PS3 Rock Band provided a great interactive experience too.

Clients and staff enjoy drinks in Flow's newly-decorated offices

A lot to celebrate

Flow was set up by Meriel Lenfestey in 1997. From humble beginnings in Meriel's house in Stoke Newington, Flow has grown to a team of over 40 people with an annual turnover of £4 million and offices in London and South Africa.

In her speech at the party Meriel stepped us through the early years.

"In the 1990s, I could see companies jumping on the interactive bandwagon with websites that were often visually stunning, but virtually impossible to navigate - and therefore not commercially viable. I set up Flow to introduce User-Centred Design (UCD) to my clients. I'm proud to say that we're now one of the leading UCD consultancies in the world."

Lola and Ian. Mimi and Louise (on guitar). Flow's history in mural form.

User experience for a competitive edge

Next, Flow's Managing Director, John Thew, looked to the future.

"We've faced a challenging economy before and we emerged unscathed from the dotcom bust. In a risk-averse economy with tightening budgets, user experience becomes even more critical for organisations looking for a competitive edge. It reduces risk, increases loyalty and returns and reduced costs. Flow is well placed to ride through new challenges this and next year."

Thanks to everyone for coming. Thanks to all our clients for choosing Flow. And thanks to the talented folk who delivered great results and helped make Flow a success.