10. • The basis is the same. We can focus on local markets and
specificities.
• More effective to manage.
• Simplifies communication and collaboration between
countries.
15. In 2013 at UXLx, we heard Luke Wroblewski talk about Mobile First
16.
17. • To prioritize and focus on the most important services
• To deliver new experiences to users by taking
advantage of the capabilities of mobile devices
Starting mobile allows …
40. Iteration nr.1
Week #1
• Travel to Brussels
• Work on the product
selector (compare
products)
Week #2
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
41. Iteration nr.2
Week #1
• Travel to Brussels
• Work on the product
selector (compare
products)
Week #2
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
Week #3
• Travel to Bristol
• Work on the Telecom
selector (compare telecom
tariffs)
Week #4
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
42. Iteration nr.3
Week #1
• Travel to Brussels
• Work on the product
selector (compare
products)
Week #2
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
Week #3
• Travel to Bristol
• Work on the Telecom
selector (compare telecom
tariffs)
Week #4
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
Week #5
• Travel to Lisbon
• Work on the Energy
selector (compare energy
tariffs)
Week #6
• Travel to Brussels
• Test the prototype
• Refine the prototype
51. • Helps bringing the right product for our users
• Helps focusing on the most important
• Gives us the opportunity to connect more closely with
our users
#1
Having a good User Centered Methodology…
52. • Helps create a common understanding of what we
want to achieve
• Makes future project iterations more efficient
• Helps getting buy-in from stakeholders
• Quickens the decision process
#2
Involving people from different areas on the
project …
53. • Creating a good work environment is a must
• Working together in the same room instead of remotely
is more effective…
• … but having people working abroad is physically and
emotionally demanding
• As tiredness lowers patience, people need to make an
effort to be understanding
#3
Commitment and effort from everyone involved is
required…
54. • Work follow ups
• Light planning
• Minor discussions
#4
Working remotely is helpful for…
I’m a UX Expert working for Euroconsumers
And your first question might be…
Who are we?
We are a non-profit consumer rights organization working in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Brazil.
We basically promote and defend consumer rights. We work for about a total of about 1 million consumers.
We are represented in Belgium by Test-Achats
In Spain by OCU
In Portugal by Deco Proteste
In Italy by Altroconsumo
And in Brazil by Proteste
On our web strategy, you probably noticed,…
We have a global approach.
If you take a quick a look at our websites you’ll see that they’re very similar.
And why we take this approach?
Through the years we’ve been learning that basis doesn’t change that much from country to country and the same with people’s behaviors. And having a global approach allows us to focus more on local markets and specificities.
From a development and design point of view it’s way more effective to manage. For instance when we implement a change that will affect all markets the deployment will be faster.
Collaboration and communication across teams from different countries is simplified as everyone has a common understanding of what our web platform is.
Reaching this stage took us a lot of sweat and tears. But as the world wide web keeps evolving so must we…
So last year, something funny happened
We decided it was time for us to go mobile.
We already had developed some apps for Android and iOS, but our websites were not mobile friendly.
At the time, there was a lot buzzing about “Responsive”, “Adaptive Design” and “Mobile First”.
But what all of that meant for us?
We clearly had some doubts about what was the right path, the right strategy for us to go mobile.
So last year, at this very conference, we heard Luke Wroblewski talk about Mobile First.
Basically on a mobile first approach, you start by developing mobile and then go to larger resolutions.
So after this talk we thought “This might be the right strategy for us”.
However, we didn’t know where to start…
On euroconsumers projects are mainly developer/ technology driven, where UX is new a thing.
So we decided to look for external support…
An that’s how we came to work with Giles Colborne and cxpartners.
Funny thing about this, is that we met Giles Colborne, the managing director at cxpartners, last year at UXLx!
Some of us attended his workshop on Advanced Simplicity and were impressed with his work. And when it was time to pick a partner we contacted them, and other companies.
But, After some negotiation, we closed the deal with cxpartners…
And it was the beginning of a beautiful partnership!
In fact we got along pretty well working together.
With this partnership we wanted 2 things:
To set up an environment that would allow us to develop a good quality service for our users
And to learn. Technically, but most of all methodologically. We wanted to bring the user to the center of our decisions.
IT all started on September 2013. We had the project kick of meeting in Brussels where we:
Got to know each other
Clarified the scope – basically we divided the thing in 3 main areas
And set the planning by defining the next steps
What we did was:
To pick the inputs we had from the previous 2 weeks – the Experience map, behavioral profiles and design concept – and start to work on our main areas, one at a time.
We started by defining the concept. We went through discussions about the flows, what is important, what we have, etc. and defined our strategy.
Then we started to put our ideas into sketches that helped discuss and refine them to finally put them on a prototype.
On the second week of the iteration we tested the prototype. We rented a lab with an observation room. We invited team members and stakeholders to attend. We were able to see and ear the user and also his interaction with the website.
Right after our user research we gathered and defined how we should improve our prototype.
What we did was:
To pick the inputs we had from the previous 2 weeks – the Experience map, behavioral profiles and design concept – and start to work on our main areas, one at a time.
We did 3 iterations of this methodology, during 6 weeks. It was an adventure
And at least, but not less important, the team!
The team had people from different backgrounds: Designers, Developers, UXers and business representatives.
We also came from different countries: we had Belgian people, Portuguese, Spanish, French and English.
We all spoke English with each other (and sweared on our mother languages!).
In spite of having some difficulties we were able to understand each others pretty well. The language was definitely not a barrier!
And after…
Where we had business buy-in
And we are already adopting…
In fact we are already doing the same in Spain!
We took advantage of all the valuable input we had from the Belgian portal and did 1 longer iteration where we developed the prototype for the whole thing. This time our focus was on a new area - the saving accounts comparator.
With this adventure we were able to gather some important lessons that I would like to share with you.
…
Helps bringing the right product for our users – Probably you are sick of earing this but is true, and I think it’s never too much to reinforce this message. Sometimes is forgotten…
…
Gives us the opportunity to connect more closely with our users: during our user research sessions in Brussels and Madrid we had the opportunity to interact with 20 users of our websites. This gave us a lot of insights of who they really are, what are their expectations and common behaviors. This type of insights has tremendous value for this and future projects!
…
Makes future project iterations more efficient: as everyone has a common understanding of what we want to achieve, future iterations where for instance, the developers have a main role, and some questions arise the developer knows how to answer because he knows why that decision was taken.
…
Quickens the decision process: the decision process can be hard thing in our company. For one simple thing, we might have to inform and get approval from a lot of people. Since we had business represented in our team that person took the decision and was the advocate for it among other business people. This made the decision process more efficient.
In summary, it’s important for creating a good work environment and working more efficiently, however you cannot possibly do this type of things all the time and expect people to be at their best.
It’s normal that people feel tired, start to miss their lives, their homes, their families and this causes stress. It’s important to be understanding and respect people’s personal space.
Basically everything that doesn’t require a lot of brainstorm, ideas discussion and get your ideas validated. After doing the heavy work it’s easy to divide and conquer and give people individual responsibilities. Then you just need to do some follow up and project status meetings, some light planning and minor idea discussions.
It also helps to have the right tools for collaboration. Where for meetings many people can be involved at the same time, share the screen is possible. This type of things help a lot.
