Alleviating World Hunger to Stopping Fake News – Is Blockchain for Real?

5th of June, 2017 / / No Comments

Every day we hear “blockchain” is solving another of the world’s problems.  Here are some highlights from 2017 so far;

Its being claimed that Blockchain will enable the next generation of cars?… [Keep reading] “Alleviating World Hunger to Stopping Fake News – Is Blockchain for Real?”

The Art Of War – Is your Tech Department Combat Ready?

19th of May, 2017 / / No Comments

Strategic planning is becoming increasingly important in the technology fuelled world we live in. It’s critical an organisation’s response to shifting external events is measured & appropriate. The flow on effects of change to the nature and structure of the IT department has to be addressed. Is a defensive or attack formation needed for what lies ahead? In this post, I’ll introduce what is meant by strategy and provide a practical planning process.

Operational vs Strategic

I often see technology departments so focused on operations, they begin to lose sight of what’s coming on the horizon & how their business will change as a result.… [Keep reading] “The Art Of War – Is your Tech Department Combat Ready?”

7 tips for making UX work in Agile teams

2nd of February, 2017 / / No Comments

Agile is here to stay. Corporates love it, start-ups embrace it and developers live by it. So there is no denying that Agile is going nowhere and we have to work with it. For a number of years, I’ve tried to align User Experience practices with Agile methods and haven’t met with great success every time.

But nevertheless, there are a lot of lessons that I’ve learnt during the process and I’m going to share 7 tips that always worked for me.

… [Keep reading] “7 tips for making UX work in Agile teams”

Service Strategy – How do you become Instrumental?

2nd of December, 2016 / / No Comments

There is a well-known concept developed by Ronald Coase around organisational boundaries being determined by transaction costs.
This concept stated that organisations are faced with three decisions.
To make, buy or rent.
In some scenarios, it makes sense for organisations to own and operate assets, or conduct activities in-house, however, at other times you could seek alternatives from the open market.
When seeking alternatives from the open markets the key factor can be the transaction cost.… [Keep reading] “Service Strategy – How do you become Instrumental?”

Enterprise Cloud Take Up Accelerating Rapidly According to New Study By McKinsey

19th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

A pair of studies published a few days ago by global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company entitled IT as a service: From build to consume show enterprise adoption of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) services accelerating increasingly rapidly over the next two years into 2018.
Of the two, one examined the on-going migrations of 50 global businesses. The other saw a large number of CIOs, from small businesses up to Fortune 100 companies, interviewed on the progress of their transitions and the results speak for themselves.… [Keep reading] “Enterprise Cloud Take Up Accelerating Rapidly According to New Study By McKinsey”

What is the difference between POC & MVP? and Which comes first?

15th of September, 2016 / / 1 Comment

In past couple of projects, several clients have asked me this question: What is the difference between POC & MVP? and Which comes first? Most businesses are familiar with these terms but don’t know the exact meaning that’s why they often experience mistakes while building a product. They jump into starting up a development team to build a product. Knowing what each term means is not good enough, you should know when to use them, is vitally important to the success of your next product launch.… [Keep reading] “What is the difference between POC & MVP? and Which comes first?”

Why user experience matters

15th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

User Experience is a means to drive product innovation and differentiation. When implemented successfully, UX contributes to a number of critical business key performance indicators including customer engagement, retention, and loyalty.

Over the last two decades, most of the fortune 500 companies have come to the realisation that UX is an integral part of their business success. In his 2016 Design In Tech report, John Maeda suggests:

A good User Experience matters a lot, because we experience digital products a lot

Furthermore, the report (illustration below) uncovers that:

  • 89% of companies believe that customer experience will be their primary basis for competition —Gartner
  • 81% of executives surveyed place the personalised experience in their top three priorities for their organisation — Accenture
  • 90% of executives surveyed agreed that customer experience and engagement are objectives of their corporation’s digital strategy — MIT Sloan/Deloitte
  • Customers are 6 times more likely to buy with a positive emotional experience, 12 times more likely to recommend the company, and 5 times more likely to forgive a mistake — Temkin Group
 tech-report

UX improves the overall customer experience

UX is a critical part of CX.

… [Keep reading] “Why user experience matters”

Customer Experience Vs. User Experience

13th of September, 2016 / / 3 Comments

I was in a design meet-up a couple of weeks ago where I heard someone saying this – CX is the same as UX. And to my surprise, there were about a dozen of people who nodded (in agreement) to this statement. Now, this is where I lose my fuse!

As design professionals, it’s imperative for us to learn the difference between Customer Experience and User Experience.

User Experience is everything that affects a user’s behaviour and interaction with a product or service.

… [Keep reading] “Customer Experience Vs. User Experience”

Applying Business Rules to Profile Photos Using Microsoft Cognitive Services

7th of September, 2016 / / No Comments

A customer I am working with at the moment is in the (very) early stages of discussion around the gathering and application of profile photos across their internal systems. In this particular case, we are considering that the photos themselves do not exist. Sure, there are ID card photos of startled staff taken on day one of their employment, but people being people, they would rather not be forever digitally represented by their former selves – particularly not the version of themselves which had an ID photo taken in a poorly lit un-used meeting room 7 years ago before they got that gym membership.… [Keep reading] “Applying Business Rules to Profile Photos Using Microsoft Cognitive Services”

Driving innovation & user experience using Kano model

27th of June, 2016 / / No Comments

How often are you asked to jump straight into design without doing any research? Well, it happens to me quite often. Reason – lack of time or budget.

No matter how tight the budget or timeline is, I always recommend to do some research beforehand. And  if “how to do it in a cheap and efficient way?” your question, then here is how:

I stumbled upon Kano model in my MBA book – an incredible technique used by many businesses to discover, classify and integrate consumer needs into the products and services they offer.… [Keep reading] “Driving innovation & user experience using Kano model”