User Experience (UX) is one of those tricky terms we see banded around the digital universe, but what’s it all about I hear you bellow with underwhelming enthusiasm?  The clear cut answer is simply that its not clear cut!  When the Web was in its infancy the term HCI was used extensively around software development circles (boy threes a group of people to join on a night out!) HCI originally translated as ‘Human Computer Interaction’ but this was soon replaced with ‘Human Computer Interfaces’ largely driven by the need to study web interfaces in order to maximise conversions and ensure return on investment. However UX has now become the industry standard expression to encompass a number of former disciplines including:

HCI

Interface Design

Information Architecture

Interaction Design

Usability

Human Factors Engineering

The key similarity of each of the above is that they are fundamentally qualitative in their measurement. Yes it could be argued that methods such as web analytics provide hard statistical quantitative evidence for decision making, but all this really tells you is the ‘how’ not ‘why’ e.g. ‘how many web visitors originate from London’ to work out the why you need to further investigate your UX, which normally results in some form of subjective analysis.

So that we can highlight the problem, lets have a quick Wikipedia provided description of each of the principals.

Interaction design is a sub-discipline of design which examines the role of embedded behaviors and intelligence in physical and virtual space.

Information Architecture (IA) is the art and science of structuring knowledge (technically data), and defining user interactions.

Usability is the measure of the ease with which particular people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal.

Human-computer interaction (HCI) is the study of interaction between people (users) and computers.

Human factors engineering, also referred to as Ergonomics is the study of optimizing the interface between human beings, and the designed objects and environments they interact with.

User interface design is the overall process of designing the interaction between a human (user) and a machine (computer). It includes graphic design, information design and a wide variety of usability methods.

Notice anything? Well I pick out these three words to critique the above: crossover, ambiguity and well, ‘soft’ (meaning study by opinion with limited hard measurable techniques) Don’t get me wrong I love UX as a concept and I love designing to maximise user journeys, but can we truly gain valuable insight via focus groups, workshops and surveys?

The answer techno-fans is yes… I have been involved in various analytical studies where ‘soft’ techniques were the only option for measurement and I definitely believe that subjective user opinion can refine and transform digital experiences. However it can go wrong, very wrong. I have seen cases where due to poor planning, workshop data and survey data has been ‘tweaked’ by analysts to bias a certain decisions or replace non-understanding from test subjects.

Now, not saying that I am lord of UX and designing measurement techniques (I am actually lord of dragons and other fire breathing sky dwellers) but here are some guidelines to ensure that your subjective measurement is fair, accurate and meaningful:

1. Ensure that your test groups are an accurate demographic of real users

2. Ensure that tasks / questions are clear and concise, all testers must understand everything

3. Organise everything to account for unexpected questions / strain on your system

4. Rehearse workshops with colleagues to allow for problems

5. Reward attendees with the lure of bourbon biscuits

6. Ensure that the test environment is accurate to reality

7. Plan an efficient data collection strategy

8. Plan an efficient analysis strategy (don’t just bung everything into excel and see what happens)

So there we have it, common sense points? Absolutely, but I have seen numerous occasions where tiny problems can have a large impact on results, if you are accurate and organised real insight can be measured which can dramatically increase website goals and ultimately that magic word that we all love: conversions..

Ta for reading..

The site is rich with web 2.0 including twitter and youtube, and has been highly optimised for Google, so Binny can expect a lot of hits from people searching for this increasingly popular treatment technique.

Here is quick look at the site’s ‘natural’ design

http://www.bowenbybinny.co.uk

More exciting projects on the way, keep posted.

Expanding on the old website the new experience will detail more specific information about our services which are not just limited to web design, but also SEO, Hosting, E-marketing and Graphic design.

We have also included a case studies page which is aimed at giving visitors a idea of the different types of websites that we build and how these sites have  benefited their respective owners.

We have built some great sites recently and are involved in some very cool and innovative projects which will be delivered soon, so keep posted to the new blog.

This is a quick rundown of what we have been doing for the last 2 months.

In mid November we were instructed on a fairly novel project for a national company called Global VAT Recovery. They had an existing website and brand presence using a ‘do it yourself’ web template. They asked us to re-build their site maintaining the look and feel but using correct web standards, XHTML and hosted on the Jellyphish servers. Along with this the site had absolutely no presence on Google.

We have now given it a total ’service’ and you can now check it out at http://www.globalvatrecovery.com or simply type ‘Global VAT Recovery’ into Google to see the search engine optimisation results.

Next we were approached by an up and coming music photographer based in London to develop a photoblog and photo ordering system for her new business ‘Magic Photography’  For the photoblog we decided to go down the Wordpress route and found a great theme developed by Squarefour which you can check out here: http://blog.squarefour.net/2009/05/28/introducing-new-wordpress-photoblog-theme/ 

So Tina from Magic Photography asked us to come up with some suitable graphics and layout solutions to meet her personality and photography style.  We were really chuffed with the results and her password protected ordering system makes it so easy for bands to sign in and order their favorite snaps for their album, check it out here: http://www.magic-photography.co.uk

December has also been a great Month for new website ideas as people are beginning to think about re-brands or start-up businesses for the new year. Early in 2010 we will be delivering some cool looking sites for diverse businesses such as: Shark Photographers, Restaurants, Bars and Fitness instructors along with a few exciting but hush hush projects.

On that note we bid you all a very happy Christmas and a great and fruitful new year.

 DOT approached us to re-build their website with the aim of achieving a high Google rank for keywords such as ‘Bournemouth Architecture’

http://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/4703105._Why_we_should_give_Boscombe_surf_reef_time_to_prove_itself_/

A lot of discussion and debate is going on about this article so feel free to join in and express your opinion

Along with the lovely look and feel we have included some simple ways for the LEAF owners to update their latest news using twitter and keep up to date with the latest goings on using an intuitive Flickr gallery.

The site will soon be live at: www.leafcharity.com but in the mean time here are a few visuals.

We have also been working a new web site for London based photographer Dwikoarie. After we designed and developed his current site he decided to come back to us to come up with a concept to take his business to a new level.

We recommended going down the flash route. This led to the development of a very cool and colourful animated flash photography site, after further discussions we then decided to include an online shopping system to allow users to buy photos at various sizes.

The challenge here was producing a great working e-commerce site without losing the aesthetic appeal of the original flash. We are very happy with the result and expect Dwikoarie to see a real boost in sales,

Again this site is in the testing stage so here are a few visuals to tickle your design buds.

More exciting work coming up, keep posted web fans..

Just a quick note to let you know that our Bournemouth surf report will now appear on Magicseaweed.com at this URL: http://magicseaweed.com/Bournemouth-Boscombe-Surf-Report/12/

This is a great chance fo us to get our report out to the MSW masses.

Good times had by all.

What can we say, our first month has been busy busy busy. Along with developing our web presence and getting the Jellyphish name out there we have been hard at it working on exciting new projects. Our surf report for Bournemouth and Boscombe has started to become pretty popular and we have been asked to provide the daily report for the team at A1 surf.

I guess this came about because we were getting bored of the local shops / surf schools giving out ’misleading’ reports to try and sell their products. Our report is based on the local conditions as and when they happen so if you surf keep posted to www.jellyphish.co.uk/surfreport.html or follow the report on twitter!

 Ok back to the web design stuff:

 Sally Dixey – Personal Trainer goes Live!!! Sally is over the moon with this project, the key to this website is simplicity and layout. Sally was keen to get lots of information on a small number of pages, and we feel that the solution works really well. The other great part about this site is the use of CMS! Ok so it’s not the traditional Content Management System but I guess that’s the beauty of twitter. Using twitter Sally can quickly (and easily) keep clients up to date of her fitness course dates and locations. This then appears on her homepage and works as a real eye catcher due to the cool scrolling of the twitter widget.

 DOT – The Bournemouth based design company DOT have a great looking stylish website. Jellyphish have been instructed to re-build the site (to the same design) to allow for better search engine optimization and CSS architecture. So expect to see DOT up at the top of Google soon.

 Leaf – Leaf is a leukemia charity based in Dorset, Jellyphish and DOT are currently working on a re-brand / design for the charity to create a great looking usable website. This is a really nice project to be involved with. Leaf was founded in a hospital bed back in 2006 by Natasha Jones when she was diagnosed with leukemia. Leaf provides days out and holidays for leukemia sufferers in Dorset. You can check out their holding page at: http:www.leafcharity.com. Leaf is funded by donations and fundraising so if you can why not contact Natasha and help them out:

 tash@leafcharity.co.uk

 Thats all for now folks, for daily updates follow us on twitter here

 tatty bye..