There are many ways that digital can create pollution. Let’s start by looking at how much data we use and what pollution it causes. Analysis by Cisco indicates that an average US citizen is using 140 gigabytes (GB) of data a month. What sort of pollution is that causing? That’s n … | Continue reading
It is often assumed that online meetings are better for the environment than physical meetings. That is not always the case. A one-hour audio call consumes about 36 MB of data per person. A one-hour standard-definition video call consumes about 270 MB per person. A one-hour high- … | Continue reading
I saw my first intranets around 1997. They suffered from terrible governance, zero management interest, resulting in an aimlessness and purposelessness. Usability was appalling, tools were like torture instruments. And the content? If content rotted and smelled as it got older, t … | Continue reading
If we could design without the packaging, we would have a major impact on waste reduction. To save our planet we must firstly radically reduce the amount of packaging we create and consume. Under certain circumstances, e-commerce could be better for the environment than driving t … | Continue reading
Digital is physical. Every byte is supported by an atom. Every single action in digital costs the Earth energy. Turn the electricity off and you turn digital off. Digital is demanding an increasing share of the Earth’s energy and resources and is a major contributor to the genera … | Continue reading
When the means of communications change, societies change, though not always in the ways intended or expected. The printing press revolutionized society, though some of the change was backwards rather than forwards. “There is no evidence that, except in religion, printing hastene … | Continue reading
If we printed out one zettabyte of data as books, we could give every one of the 7.7 billion people on this planet 129,870 of these books. They’d have almost 13 billion words to read. An average reader can read 1,000 words in about five minutes. It would therefore take 752 years … | Continue reading
The problem with physical is often not enough space. The problem with digital is too much space. When new communication technologies expand the capacity to create more communication, people invariably create more communication. With the invention of the printing press, publishing … | Continue reading
The earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, and it is believed that life began to emerge about 800 million years later. Humans evolved from apes around three million years ago, with modern humans emerging only about 200,000 years ago. The evolution of computers is generally des … | Continue reading
In the United States, tractors built during the 1980s and 1990s are in big demand. “Tractors from that era are well-built and totally functional, and aren’t as complicated or expensive to repair as more recent models that run on sophisticated software,” Adam Belz wrote for the St … | Continue reading
It’s not that difficult to create or to add something. To remove what needs to be removed, to see what is unnecessary, what is getting in the way, that is such an unappreciated and deep skill. Not just that, to remove requires bravery. The old logic goes: ‘This thing is here. It … | Continue reading
Most of my career has been based on a simple idea: If we became more customer-centric instead of organization-centric, then things would be better for everyone. I still believe in the basic concept but have slowly and painfully come to realize that when customer centricity become … | Continue reading
I still have occasional nightmares where after I have given a presentation on how to improve customer experience by focusing on what matters most to customers, two marketers walk up to me. One looks me in the eye and says: “What about branding?” The other smirks and says: “What a … | Continue reading
Kids! Get inside! Enough of that fresh air and frolicking around playing some useless chase. Inside now! Don’t you know you haven’t done your PlayStation yet? Five hours every day. Why do I have to keep hammering on about it? I’ve been telling you this since you were toddlers: En … | Continue reading
“Don’t be evil” has been the Google tagline, mission statement, guiding philosophy from practically day one of its existence. In 2018, it quietly dropped the “don’t” from the tagline. Google was entering a new phase of sucking up personal data and sucking up giganormous profits. … | Continue reading
A database-driven website is a bit like having a seven-seater car. If there’s only two in your household do you really need it? Perhaps a simpler, more energy-efficient static website is better? I used to make these sorts of arguments a lot about 15 years ago, and then for whatev … | Continue reading
I’ve been asking people to send me examples of where digital government is working well. I’ve been getting lots of great examples but some maybe not so good. One suggestion was a link for a website in a language I don’t speak. When I clicked on the link I was confronted with one … | Continue reading
Web analytics are highly susceptible to error, manipulation and misinterpretation. They should never be depended on as the sole source of insight. “Facebook might be hosting upwards of 8 billion views per day on its platform, but a wide majority of that viewership is happening in … | Continue reading
People have been trained by the likes of Amazon and Google to expect that things will be made fast and easy for them. However, often when they interact with government they find that things are slow and difficult. The thought that government is complex is corrosive to democracy. … | Continue reading
The greatest brands tell the biggest lies. Although not all branding is bad, the art of modern branding is indeed very often the art of manipulation and propaganda. For many years, Coca Cola has been the world’s most valuable brand. Think about that for a moment. Here is a compan … | Continue reading
The greatest brands tell the biggest lies. Although not all branding is bad, the art of modern branding is indeed very often the art of manipulation and propaganda. For many years, Coca Cola has been the world’s most valuable brand. Think about that for a moment. Here is a compan … | Continue reading
The number of UX professionals I meet who don’t regularly undertake user research is disturbing. In fact, in many organizations, digital teams rarely interact with customers. Failing to maintain closeness to the customer is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to digital des … | Continue reading
The number of UX professionals I meet who don’t regularly undertake user research is disturbing. In fact, in many organizations, digital teams rarely interact with customers. Failing to maintain closeness to the customer is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to digital des … | Continue reading
The number of people you need to observe in order to identify the primary problems with your website or app depends on the quality of your website or app to a significant extent. If your app is of very low quality and an immature environment, then very few people are required—typ … | Continue reading
The number of people you need to observe in order to identify the primary problems with your website or app depends on the quality of your website or app to a significant extent. If your app is of very low quality and an immature environment, then very few people are required—typ … | Continue reading
My old landline phone gave out (yes, I still have one), and when I lifted it off my desk, I had to remove two wire connections. As I did that, I had a strong impulse to push the old wires off the back of my desk and let them fall (my desk faces a wall).… Read More » | Continue reading
My old landline phone gave out (yes, I still have one), and when I lifted it off my desk, I had to remove two wire connections. As I did that, I had a strong impulse to push the old wires off the back of my desk and let them fall (my desk faces a wall).… Read More » | Continue reading
Digital is mainly garbage. 90% of data is never accessed again 90 days after it is first stored. 80% of downloaded apps are never used again after 90 days. 90% of data has been created in the last two years. Over the years, we found that we had to delete 90% of a typical website… … | Continue reading
Digital is mainly garbage. 90% of data is never accessed again 90 days after it is first stored. 80% of downloaded apps are never used again after 90 days. 90% of data has been created in the last two years. Over the years, we found that we had to delete 90% of a typical website… … | Continue reading
In the grand delusion that is Brexit, the grandest delusion of all is the Brexiteers’ fawning adoration of the Technology God. According to Brexiteers, the Technology God will banish all problems, particularly those associated with the border on the island of Ireland. Grand Boffo … | Continue reading
In the grand delusion that is Brexit, the grandest delusion of all is the Brexiteers’ fawning adoration of the Technology God. According to Brexiteers, the Technology God will banish all problems, particularly those associated with the border on the island of Ireland. Grand Boffo … | Continue reading
In the physical world, beyond a certain point, speed becomes perilous and destructive. One crazy driver can wreak havoc. The greater the speed, the worse the crash. Thus, much of our road infrastructure is concerned with managing speed. We have created a digital world where so mu … | Continue reading
In the physical world, beyond a certain point, speed becomes perilous and destructive. One crazy driver can wreak havoc. The greater the speed, the worse the crash. Thus, much of our road infrastructure is concerned with managing speed. We have created a digital world where so mu … | Continue reading
I have been using Survey Monkey software for more than ten years. Over that time I have seen it become more and more cumbersome and complicated. I used to be able to put surveys together without thinking. It was so simple and smooth. I have a lot of colleagues who have used Surve … | Continue reading
In 2014, we completed our largest ever Top Tasks identification project for the European Union. It was in 28 countries and 24 languages. Almost 107,000 voted. After 30 voters, the top three tasks had emerged. Yes, the top three tasks after we closed the survey with 106,792 voters … | Continue reading
Data is not fact and fact is often just a hypothesis anyway. We humans design how data is created and we humans are the ones who interpret data and draw conclusions from it. Therefore, data will always be inherently fallible. Unless we approach it with a sense of humility and a w … | Continue reading
Let’s say you’re trying to deliver an excellent customer experience for a health website or app. You start by truly knowing your audience. Let’s say, for example, that you have statistically reliable data that tells you that mental wellbeing, which includes stress reduction, mind … | Continue reading
Low information people tend to be highly emotional, impulsive and habitual. They hero worship. They blindly trust their instincts and fiercely distrust everything and everyone else. Much traditional marketing and advertising was designed to pull the emotional triggers of low info … | Continue reading
People tend to avoid feeling empathy because it requires too much mental effort, according to a study published by researchers at Penn State University and the University of Toronto, in June 2019. “Across all of the experiments, participants on average chose the empathy scenario … | Continue reading
As the Web matures, we search less for our top tasks, and we search more for our tiny tasks. When you move to a new city, you’re going to do a lot of searching. You’re going to search for supermarkets, local shops, local cafes and restaurants. The longer you live in the city, the … | Continue reading
Shortlisting is the process of moving from a long list of often poorly worded statements to a clear list of tasks that might matter to people in a decision-making environment (buying a car, choosing a university, using a piece of software, etc.) Typically, it takes about three we … | Continue reading
Did you hear the joke about the Danish medical system for the amputation of legs? It gives you two choices. To amputate the “left” leg or to amputate the “correct” leg. Actually, it’s not a joke. It’s an actual IT system installed by Epic Systems (what a name!). The Epic health … | Continue reading
Anything that focuses on customers is heading in the right direction. Jeff Sauro calls the Net Promoter Score (NPS) “a reasonable proxy for historical or current revenue in some industries and potentially for future revenue and likely self-reported customer retention”. Conversely … | Continue reading
“So we want to better organize our content,” the manager told me one day. “Get rid of all the old and irrelevant stuff and rewrite what’s important in more customer-centric language.” Everything sounded good so far. “We want to simplify the navigation and really improve the searc … | Continue reading
A friend of mine was waiting in a long queue in a small Irish town to get money out of a bank machine. It was a big queue. When he got inside he saw four machines, but only one of them allowed him to take money out. Three of them were exclusively for lodging money… Read More » | Continue reading
“More than two-thirds of employees around the world say they have to consult with more than one boss to get their jobs done,” The Wall Street Journal quoted a Gartner report in 2018. Nearly the same waste significant time waiting for guidance from senior leaders. Buurtzorg, a Dut … | Continue reading
A constant stream of unfiltered customer comments fill large screens placed in busy areas of the Fidelity International offices in London. Close by are white screens and markers and chairs and tables. Staff will regularly be found congregating around the screens, discussing what … | Continue reading
According to “The Cost of Music,” a joint study penned by the University of Glasgow and the University of Oslo, greenhouse gases were recorded at 140-million kilograms in 1977 for music production activities (vinyl; plastic packaging). Moreover, they were at 136 million kilograms … | Continue reading