Caplin Systems gave me the opportunity to attend my first conference in London last Friday; it was “Nudgestock” at Digital Shoreditch. The topic, ‘Behavioural Design’, has always interested me, and it ties in with my work at Caplin. It was an exciting and inspiring day, and yes, I am trying to make you jealous….
Ta da, success! But then jealousy is a very common human behaviour, and evoking an emotional or physical response was a big part of what the events and the excellent exhibition were about. It was fun to listen to some great speakers and look for parallels in what was going on around me.
When I started from home I was excited, but the rain made me feel a little low, it’s still a newish experience for me, and not a good one. Entering Shoreditch Town Hall cheered me up though: The tables of colorful brochures, bags, tags and sweets welcomed us in. Climbing the stairs with all our merchandise, we entered a grand hall full of different kinds of people, food, music, gadgets, colorful posters and projections.
As the conference started, people were still filing in, moving around for more information at kiosks, tweeting and then settling down only to leap up again to noisily greet friends and workmates. Some of them were taking notes the old-fashioned way, some working on laptops, a few on tablets and phones, displaying the full array of media usage, with Moleskine and Apple the most prominent brands on show.
One very important observation was people’s adjustment behaviour. For the most crowd pleasing or important talks, the audience crammed themselves in without caring about their shoulders hitting their neighbours or their legs poking someone in front. This is personal choice in action; a human behaviour that needs to be taken very seriously even by the most established businesses. Because if an organization fails to understand that the public is using a service not because it is good, but because they have no choice, as soon as there is one that offers a better user experience they will jump on to it. This is why User Experience, User Acceptance, and User Behaviour are important; there are so many more options available for us.
The whole day passed like that, listening, moving, eating and chatting. We were satisfied when we came out of the conference, and I felt I’d learned a lot. There is one another important thing to be noticed here. Not all the talks were great, but those five, which mattered and were very good, brought us joy, so it is not important for us to create something totally perfect, it’s probably impossible anyway, but it is important to perfect the ones that matter – another parallel with the talks. It is not easy to design for zillion different users types, as it is not possible to control User Behaviour. But it is important to understand it in order to create a great user experience.
We, a group of smart User Experience Designers at Caplin Systems, work together with the finest technologist to create an extraordinary trading experience for our clients and end users.