Issue #33 - Bucking trends and analysing spend

In the first of a series, Sarah Richards does the mother of all retrospectives. In this part, she retells the situation UK Government was at prior to her leading content design initiatives. In the early days of shutting down sites, done was better than perfect. Also, take a look at the list of closed sites! 

Conducting user interviews is a skill in itself. Do you know what you want to ask and how to ask it? Don’t prepare too much though as “the only way to get good at it is to do it.”

“Is our site accessible? What is accessible?!” Helpfully, the UK Home Office have created a set of posters to easily explain what Accessibility considerations designers need to make. Think screen readers and designing for people with autism - good tips!

People buy from people repeatably because of trust. Trust that they’re not going away anytime soon. Look at Amazon. Customer Lifetime Value is one of the most important factors in determining your business’ present and future success. It also lets you evaluate your cost of acquisition and ultimately, return on investment.

“And neither can you.” Jared Spool highlights a key criteria to successful design teams. You need to understand whether your CEO values design. “I’ve been pitching our services for 23 years and I’ve never once successfully convinced an executive of anything.”

I’m working on a navigation piece at the moment. “Discover-ability is cut almost in half by hiding a website’s main navigation. Task time is longer and perceived task difficulty increases.” Think about it. Not every one of your users is going to understand what a hamburger menu does, even if it is the cool thing to use. Instead, design mobile-first and visible navigation. Hamburger menus are the result of desktop-first. As James Archer notes “this hamburger is made of mystery meat.”

Make something easy and people will use it. That’s the takeaway from London’s Cycle Superhighways. With Quietways coming, it won’t be long until people reclaim the streets from the mass of cars and lorries. And pedestrians win too. The Quietways will mean wider paths to walk and enhanced crossing places.

Gary Hustwit is raising funds for RAMS: The First Feature Documentary About Dieter Rams on Kickstarter! If you watched Helvetica, you’re going to love this. Take a peek at the trailer and enter the world of Rams.

A commitment to craft (plus I’ve always had an interest in film making.) Mark Jenkinson gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his latest spot for the Audi R8. It’s making me hungry for doughnuts this morning!