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Ergo

Very random thoughts on a variety of interactive media topics. Broadly looking at experience design, brand, digital consumer strategies, innovation and a fair dollop of user-facing technology. I'm Experience Director at EMC Consulting and you can also find me masquerading as @poleydee on Twitter.

Just because you can, doesn't mean you should

A phrase I've used a few times to demonstrate less than thoughtful design. It sprang to mind here, but all may not be what it appears...

screenshot of Odeon Cinema homepage showing dropdown box list of movies, with a hover-over balloon text area appearing above it, that also says the name of the movie.

Take a look at the drop down box on the right hand side. Now look at the balloon that appears on hover-over. It takes up space, covers up other list items and says exactly what it already says in the drop down list.

Just because someone found the bit of javascript that did this, they probably shouldn't have used it without a solid rationale, or good user-centred reason. However...

I will bet several thousand dollars (Australian, just in case I'm wrong) that this actually did have a very good design idea behind it.

Picture the same view above, but instead of the balloon simply repeating the name of the film it said: "Certificate PG, children's animated movie"

Now, that would be useful.

So I think what this example shows is not an example of bad design. I think it's an example of bad meta-data, and a business that cannot deliver the data required to support a good user experience.

We can design and develop great user experiences, but unless the business can produce _and_ maintain the meta-data required to make it happen, the value of that design is lost.

The question still remains whether or not they should have implemented the balloon without the data that was intended to go in it, but that's another story.

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About Paul.Dawson

I started working in 'new media' when it was new... around 1996, doing websites for people like DHL and Cellnet (remember them?) as well as CD-Roms for people like Dorling Kindersley. I joined Conchango in 1999 because I was fed up with the conflicts and overlaps between the companies that we tended to partner with to deliver these things. Usually it was a tech company and a marketing agency. Neither had the user's needs in mind, and both were trying hard to take business away from each other. So at Conchango I saw the opportunity to create an integrated team, who as a result of all being on the same side, and following good user centred design process, delivered better stuff for both our clients and their customers. Bizarrely, now that we have teams who truly understand all these aspects of projects, we now partner very well with both tech and creative companies! So we built an interactive media team who do design, branding and user experience, and since 2006 have consistently been rated best in Europe at this by Forrester Research. Which was nice! Since then I've worked on digital strategy and innovation for companies like Virgin Atlantic, Barclays, Tesco and other great clients as part of EMC Consulting. Now I spend a lot of time evangelising to customers and at conferences, about what EMC Consulting do in the field of Customer and Brand Experience, as well as still working for real clients on real projects. The final thing I do is look out for what new user-facing technologies will be relevant to us, our customers and consumesrs. I help shape how we adopt them, and how we apply them, and how we build the skills we need to be the best at them.

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