Doug Brace and Drew Barrymore are just like your computer. They all have no idea who the hell you are. There is a slight difference between Doug and Drew though, Doug had no memory and slowly starts to rebuild connections with people, Drew lost hers every time she slept. Drew is pretty much like your computer. Making you Adam Sandler. Sorry.

You have to do the same as Adam did in the film, everyday reminding your computer that you are still indeed, well, you. You need to remind it so you can get access to log in, email, calendars, websites and your bank. We are all familiar with the idea that more of the day to day services we use are going to in some way authenticate and be processed by a computer. So, we now have an ever growing list of things we need to repeat to our amnesiac computers on a daily basis.

Just last week at With Associates we published an article about the impending cookie law. The talented writer Sarah Chapman researched and wrote up the article with the brief being that we wanted to clearly explain what is going on to our clients and peers who have yet to poke their nose into this rather messy legislation. The article is a great read so you should spend five minutes and go and read it. The legislation is rather silly and in most cases over complicating the user experience of the web. Which, if you care to care about ‘ux’ and the web you will already know that most experiences are not great, adding another layer of decision, doubt and confusion is a perfect mix for a shitty end result. Most importantly, imagine that every site you visited now required you to authenticate your personal settings before browsing. We now have a computer that you spend most of your time interfacing with to remind it who you are. This is worse than being Adam Sandler.

What is the alternative to this legislation then?

Computers need to know who you are. Logging in sucks. Setting privacy preferences on every website in the world sucks. This should all be controlled at machine level so websites are told the settings of the user by the machine. Human recognition really should be the next big innovation in computing. Put thinner laptops on hold for a couple of years. Authentication by human body does exist, retina scanning and fingerprint scanning can be used. Both of these methods are not great though as they only really authenticate at the beginning of a session, so they have no way of knowing during a session if another user has started to use the machine. Ultimately, the machine will soon enough have a dumb moment and let anyone have access to your information.

For me, machines need to be more like Doug and less like Drew, they need to start building a relationship with you and recording that relationship for reference. They need to know what you look like, how you behave and most importantly learn who you are. I think the very thought of AI working like this is outstandingly awesome. Sadly, there will always be many others for whom this idea should remain just that, an idea. I think that the majority of us still enjoy the separation between humans and machines, they are clever enough to do tasks for us but dumb enough to forget who you are every half hour. You can pick your nose infront of them and they won’t remember and save your technique as a behavioural authentication token for later reference.

For now though we are stuck reminding our computers who we are and a legislation is round the corner that could see the majority of websites you use ask you who are as well.

I remember thinking that the penny had dropped for me. Why? At the time I thought the penny must have dropped because I knew that you started your degree expecting a job and a career to land in your lap at the end and I had learnt that in fact, you had to get out there and start making that happen for yourself – while you were still studying. However, later on I started to think, shit, what if that wasn’t really what Christian meant – did I have the wrong penny?

We always have a touch of self doubt, even the most arrogant people have their moments. The more I wondered about the right and the wrong penny I began to think that the ‘penny drop’ is whatever you want to make it. Fundamentally though it’s all about understanding a different or new perspective on something. That moment where you see or feel what it’s like to step out of where your brain once was and putting it somewhere new.

Last year I was riding up a hill in Wales on my road bike, Wales is relentless, just when you think you have climbed the hardest hill of the day it spits you down a super fast decent and then slaps you with a hill even bigger and steeper. At the time I would look at the road ahead and sit up off my saddle, legs burning and lungs getting heavier I would painfully fight my body to what looked like the top of the hill. The whole time thinking about how great it would be once I was at the top. The thing is though, and this is quite a massive thing, you are very unlikely to ever be at the top. The bit of road you can see ahead, thats just another turn up the hill, it’s rarely the top of the hill. I would set myself up for constant dread and ultimately disappointment as I saw turn after turn and more climbing being added to what I had guessed as the finish of the hill climb.

Then. The penny dropped.

Hill climbs are not about wishing on the next turn being the end of it. They are about forgetting about the next turn and seeing the hill as a whole, a thing that you will have conquered that day not in the next 10 seconds. Finally, it’s about using your body like the machine it is, feel it’s heart pump, it’s legs stiffen and it’s brain focus.

I guess penny drop moments are those times where our brain flips and understands something new about something we were already aware of. Perhaps it’s insight, perhaps it’s reverse thinking or even just ‘getting it’. The most interesting thing for me is that I felt compelled to write about these two moments because the more consultation and strategy work I do in digital the more I find myself having penny drop moments. Some might say this is a little Edward De Bono, it is, and I firmly believe that with practice you can force yourself into a different line of thinking and with that hopefully you gain some insight.

My following count went from under 100 to just over 300 in the last few months. I started to just dip my toes in for five minutes here and there. Would click on a few bits and bobs and either indulge in cat or dog lols, read some current news or send an article to ‘Read Later’. Instapaper’s ‘Read later’ service is great for having a space to go back to and enjoy reading when your ready. I hate to say it and it’s pretty sad, but, the change from ‘reading it all’ to just ‘dipping in now and then’ left me feeling like I was going to miss that juicy link that I had previously noticed and saved. Daniel Howells recommend I use Summify a few months ago and after a few days of using Summify it started to change my perspective on how I could use Twitter. My new approach was to follow as many related and relevant accounts that interested me and let Summify drop me that daily email telling me what went on, how many people were sharing and a brief summary of the the content itself. One of my daily routines is to open the links, hit ‘Read Later’ to send them to Instapaper and enjoy them on my Kindle or read them on my phone when I have some time to kill.

When Summify announced the acquisition they also announced the closure of the service. It will no longer exist in a couple of weeks. Well it’s nearly a sure bet that the newly introduced ‘Discover’ tab that arrived in Twitter has something to do with this. It makes perfect sense. Creating a digest of what you missed helps give Twitter its very own ‘Read Later’. A page where you can see what was noisy in the last week or day.¹

I’m really interested in the value of using algorithms to curate content. I used Shaun Inman’s RSS reader Fever for a while. I use Google Reader’s ‘Sort by Magic’ now and then. I use Summify. All of these tools have allowed me to follow more content creators (for want of a better word) because they do a good job of condensing what I should read first.

I feel the really exciting bit is going to be watching the algorithms get better and seeing more content providers using these services to their advantage. What I would really like to see is video content getting a bit smarter with this distillation technique.

Prediction: You will have a Twitter TV/Video channel in the future, it will be a smart distilled playlist of the must see television from the last week, movie releases and internet lols, all driven by your social connections. Yes it will have adverts. The same adverts you have always known on normal TV, instead this time they will be targeted much better than a skippable Youtube deodorant advert stuck to front of Charlie bit my finger. All the big players in television have watch later services and more of them are hosting shows up services like Youtube. Televisions now have built in apps and internet and retro fitting units like Boxee to those that don’t is easy. In fact, it’s already happening, in many different forms. Just remember – it was only in 2008 that the iPlayer launched.

Image credit: Stephen John Bryde

Gutenberg had a clear objective, increase production to improve the distribution of a message. Today there is no demand to increase production of information, we have solved this problem with computers. Distribution is still an issue, everyone would like to think that their message is exciting and important enough to reach those who care, those who need to know and even those who are blissfully unaware that they need to know.

This however is the content delusion, distribution. There is a vastly disproportionate concern to constantly increase distribution of content over the actual quality of the content itself. This manifests in a few key ways. Features and attractions, the belief being that more technical features alone will improve distribution. Aesthetics, design and style will improve, enhance and encourage distribution. Advertising, linking, shouting, selling and telling everyone will improve distribution.

Increasingly, one hears something along the lines of “We can add the content in later, don’t worry, it would be great to get a price for this website to do X, Y and Z right now”. Sometimes it might be “That’s perfect, we love the design, can you build the template and then we will go away and get some content”. The bottom line here, is that content is treated in a very poor manner, often ignored, pushed to the end of a job list, handed over to someone in the company who has spare time and in most cases never of the quality, tone or direction od this content is far removed from what anyone had in mind on day one of the project. We are often deluded by attractions, aesthetics and advertising.

How can we change this?

Quite simply. What do you want to say? If you can establish what you want from a message you can start to look at sculpting and crafting ideas that will help facilitate it. You need people who are great with words. A good copywriter is worth their weight in gold.² Production, someone to glue it all together and be willing to pull and pick at every part of the project to make sure it still answers the original question of “What do you want to say?”. You will no doubt need some kind of visual output be it photography, illustration or graphic design – working with the right people will again be one of the most important things you can do.

Content first. Then follows the attractions, aesthetics and advertising.

I do agree that bad design and usability can dramatically effect the consumption of wonderful, delicious and crafted content.

I think about users journeys on the web day to day, if a button looks right, what information a website asks for, colours and so on. This can make me a bit of an analytical bore about user experience and well… I noticed a few things about my checkout experience with Jessops and started thinking about how it could be improved slightly.

Jessops current customer experience:

1. Your item is scanned and you are asked for your address
2. You have to give your address to complete the purchase and let them know you would not like to be included in any marketing
3. You wait while the sales assistant taps away
4. You put your card/pin in or pay in cash
5. The printer spits three bits of receipt out, a card transaction, a itemised list and a ‘Brucey Bonus’ money off voucher
6. You go on your way

A few things to note here:

• I asked the sales assistant why he needed my address, he didn’t really know – other than ‘the computer needs it to complete the purchase’ – it could be a bit of fraud prevention. Your address is printed on your receipt, this *could* actually be a bit of a privacy issue for customers when it comes to identity fraud.
• I find the wait a bit boring in shops, so I often check email/twitter/etc – this time round I had plenty of time to like a dog picture on instagram and reply to a text.
• I was not told about my money off voucher, it was printed on the same paper as my other receipts and can easily go unnoticed.
• I accept I was just buying a twenty quid mount on a busy Saturday – who cares? Well… the classic old mantra applies – you don’t always know what your customer needs and wants.

So, how can this be improved?

My proposed customer experience:

1. A till for the sales assistant to use with a total payable display mounted for both the customer and assistant to read.

2. The customer has a kiosk to use, this is an iPad inside a casing and a credit card reader with a pin pad. Instead of asking the customer for their address, the sales assistant tells them they can choose a voucher (I think address harvesting should be abandoned completely - it feels too intrusive and an old school way of shovelling direct marketing junk through letterboxes)






3. The customer is presented with the Jessops internal app. This app could load in a tariff of deals depending on the amount spent – e.g. if you just spent over a grand you could get a free memory card rather than 30% off a photobook.

The UI here is all to play for, there are loads of things that can be done to personalise and engage with the customer – perhaps in another post I will look at these. Primarily though I believe the user should be able to choose a voucher and then send it to a phone or print it out right there.

This choosing and sending/printing action by the user makes them feel included, they have selected it for themselves and are engaging with the company during dead checkout time.

4. They can put their card in and pay while they are selecting.






5. Ideally the voucher would be pushed to a mobile device, this enables Jessops to link it to an app, a customer account and profile and have live metrics on the voucher.

Other things to note:
I think the app would be a great opportunity to create more than just a voucher app. It could show users tips on taking photos, improving knowledge of camera settings, loading manuals for your cameras in your bag and finally offering you relevant vouchers.

Their current receipts suck

They are too long and print loads of additional guff that could easily be stripped out. They are also missing a MASSIVE trick with their strapline on the actual receipt you get. ‘Advice for life’ sits on its own on the receipt. Why not put some advice underneath it? Just a simple beginners tip will do.

So, I had a five minute go at redesigning the bit of paper I was given. Again, I could have spent a lot of time on this and made something very detailed and sexy.

Acknowledgements:

1. Mathew Wilson for passionately suggesting that companies should just offer useful information about the industry they are in rather than just making link bait content for quick hits. We were speaking about a bike company actually taking on the level of detail that Sheldon Brown has on his site.

2. BERG for inspiring me to think about the bits of paper we are given.

This time round it’s the turn of Plusnet: “Good honest broadband from Yorkshire”. Queue series of light hearted ads with a few mild Northern cliches thrown in. Yorkshire is huge, it dwarfs all other counties in England and is home to the hardworking, straight-talking honest sort. Home of the Yorkshire pudding, creators of fine ales, rolling hills and back in the day a lot of coal. These things all came from Yorkshire.

The internet is not from Yorkshire. Nor will it ever be. You can have datacenters, call centers, engineers and offices in Yorkshire. You can’t make the internet from Yorkshire.

This isn’t a big problem, nor is it a confused rant about being technically correct in your brand strapline. What they have done is a really clever thing, they have humanised a service that the majority of the general public are confused about. We know we need it, we know it can be fast but generally customers have no knowledge of how it is all glued together and what differentiates one service from another.

Differentiation is usually played out through speed and price with broadband services. A few companies over the years have sung the ‘UK based call centers’ sales-line and this works well, but its too played out now and probably not seen as a primary selling point.

Plusnet have said “Good honest broadband from Yorkshire” and they even have ads with a paunchy Yorkshireman trotting around cobblestone streets. It works wonders for cementing the viewers representation of the company being these guys just down the road.

I like the idea of regional warmth, they have in some way jollyed up a very dry and technical service. It got me thinking a couple of things though:

1. What other dry services and products could you regionally realign with Yorkshire so they came across more approachable?
2. Even with the laughs a minute regional line, there is the flip slide of cliched regional stereotypical opinions. Shhhh! Don’t mention how they’re all tight with money and your internet is made from whippet droppings and lard.
3. This isn’t new. Hovis,

One final thing… thinking about Plusnet and the brand of Yorkshire led me on to think about the golden comedy sketch from Hale & Pace – Yorkshire Airlines.

“If its outside Yorkshire, it’s not worth bloody visiting”