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Shefik: Hi I'm Shefik Bey.
Sean: And I'm Sean Smith.
Shefik: We've been doing a little whiteboarding today to talk about what we see as the trends
to watch in User Experience in 2013.
Sean: Here we've got the top 5 trends that we think are things to watch out for. Shefik
what would you like to say about number one?
Shefik: Ok, well the first one is Omnichannel UX. This is an interesting one that we are
working a lot more with clients on.
This is really about looking at the User Experience across every channel that the business operates
- whether it's mobile, ipad, website, instore or point of sale. Any particular medium.
The point about this is that it is really about driving loyalty and a consistent experience
through these interfaces. It's obviously a difficult one to execute, but nonetheless
a really important one.
Aberdeen research recently suggested 42% of individuals expect a consistent experience
across each channel. And not many are delivering, so ... big challenges ahead.
Sean, what's at number two?
Sean: Here we've got the prevalence of mobile.
It's no real surprise that mobile is on the rise. But what we're seeing at the moment
is that the iPad has lead to a number of other tablets coming out on to the market.
And what we're seeing a lot is that clients are actually re-configuring their design through
responsive design. And they're actually taking elements that work on mobile devices, and
reconfiguring desktop experience so that only have to have one design. Which works across
multiple platforms. It fits in with the omni-channel experience as well.
Shefik: Making it a lot more scalable.
Sean: Yes Definitely.
Shefik: Ok, number three - We've got summative user testing.
And really this is about providing some quantitative insights and confidence around testing results.
As a compliment to lab based testing, this is something that's happening more and more.
And often a chance to provide some benchmarking data, and mark some performance.
It includes elements such as Path Analysis, Task Completion, Net Promoter Score (to see
whether people are advocates for a product), and SUS score (System usability scale) as
well.
It's really about providing information up the value chain. And convincing the powers
at be that decisions are actually tried and tested, and trusted.
Sean: OK - Number 4 is gestural interfaces
OK, so we've seen with devices like X-Box and Wii that the person is the controller,
and there's a lot more gestural control for devices.
So we think that something to watch in the the future is the individual being able to
use more natural gestures in order to interact with appliances around the home and consumer
electronic goods.
So for example, if you download a movie to your TV. "Do I want to pay for it?" "Yes"
(thumbs up) or "No" (thumbs down).
Shefik: One to watch - certainly a move away from the mouse and keyboard - in a certain
context.
The last one we have here is lean UX. And this is one that we've been experiencing some
significant growth in the last 6 months. And in 2013 we expect this to grow even further.
This is really about offering a more regular and consistent approach to research and testing
that's both quick, informative and iterative.
It fits much more with an agile approach to research.
It's making sure that we can work alongside developers and creatives to ensure that we
can provide that actionable and timely feedback. And not necessarily spending hours, weeks
and months on preparing pretty reports. Although there's always a place for a pretty report!
But often its the case of ensuring that we're getting that timely insight out to market.
Sean: And it's a very collaborative experience, where the the designers are there watching
the research. So they're able to have a conversation with us about experiences. And this leads
into them into quickly making some improvements. Which in turn goes back into testing.
Shefik: So that's our thoughts for UX trends for 2013. We'll keep an eye!
Sean: Yep!
Shefik: Thanks!
Sean: Happy New Year!