POKE

UX London – Designing For Connected Devices

Jen Williams, our lead UX designer supreme, recently went to the first day of UX London, which focused on Product Design. Here’s what she had to say about one of her personal highlights of the day. The focus on ‘connected devices’ and the necessity to design more in this way for the future...

It is estimated that by 2020 there will be over 50 billion connected devices* capable of connecting to each other using the Internet. It’s a rapidly evolving field, and therefore appropriate that UX London selected a talk by Chris Heathcote and a workshop by Claire Rowland on the ‘Internet of things’. An important topic amongst the UX community, but one that perhaps hasn’t had the focus it deserves just yet.

The day provided inspiration for how to design experiences that use connected devices, primarily focusing on the ‘connected home’ - a controlled space with many devices. What’s apparent is that designing experiences that make use of both digital and physical devices isn’t dissimilar to those that are solely digital. The starting point is the same - understand your audience, identify their problems and their needs and design an experience that meets them.

What does change is the consideration of the various elements that bring the experience together. Claire Rowland suggested thinking in terms of ‘bears’ (devices capable of many tasks, like computers); ‘bats’ (single task devices like Withings scales); and ‘bees’ (large numbers of tiny sensors that act as the inputs) - the connection between devices and objects becomes as important as the interfaces that are involved. You’re creating new interactions, potentially with new devices, that fit into people’s lives in an unfamiliar way, so unlike a website or app alone, the experience of the overall service is key.

Currently, there are few established patterns in this area and everything is an experiment. It is still largely an innovators market – mostly developed amongst those with technical skills designing for themselves. Despite this, we should be asserting the importance of user experience in this area now.

The ‘connected home’ has been the focus of attempts to bring the Internet of things to a wider audience. With the odd exception (such as Nest), companies that already offer services in the home (and start ups providing these services to them) are in the best position to move on this. In the US a remote home control service is something Verizon have integrated into their offering. In the UK, British Gas are one of the few providers venturing into connected home services - they offer a thermostat that can be controlled remotely with an app, requiring a British Gas account to use. Major service providers are starting to use services based on connected devices in the home as a way to tie customers into their brand, give a point of differentiation and inculcate loyalty. For this strategy to work, the experience of using these services will be fundamental, as consumers will increasingly make buying choices based on these experiences.

UX designers should start to understand how to design for this type of experience by applying our existing processes with a close collaboration of tech and creative. We need to be part of the creative process to understand how connected devices can be applied to meet user’s needs, and we also need to have an awareness of when this type of service is relevant to a brand. In doing this we can help ensure that the user experience of these services is considered from the start.

Sources: http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/whitepapers/wp-50-billions.pdf

Social Brands 100

In an eventful first year for EE, including its 'socially driven launch' and its entrance into the top 5 UK brands by social devotion, we're proud to see it leading the charge of British companies in the recently-released Social Brands 100 list.

Sitting alongside the likes of John Lewis, Innocent and ASOS, EE is the only UK mobile operator to have been included.

Whittled down from over 700 brands from 23 different industries, the list uses data generated by Socialbakers to measure, amongst other things, response rates and community growth across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube - ultimately championing those leading the way in social engagement and customer service across the world.

Poke Radio

When our developer Chris Reeves wanted to play with the python wrapper for LibSpotify earlier this year, he spotted an opportunity to improve the way we do things and solve some of the common gripes people had in the office, as well as build something cool.

After a quick proof of concept, some great UX thoughts and some serious love for the design we’re are putting together something to make our office a better place. We’ve set out to create Poke Radio; a collaborative playlist generator where tracks and users can be liked or disliked. Users can be temporarily barred if they receive too many down-votes, and the wealth of data allows us to create leaderboards for most popular artist and DJs.

As well as solving many an office dilemma, Poke Radio provides us with the perfect platform to create an exciting new collaborative project and challenge our development skills with the chance to try out a few new things.

Our front-end developers have been itching for a chance to try Angular.js (A javascript framework from Google), and from a backend point of view we’ve enhanced our standard stack (Django + Redis + celery + mySQL) as well as evaluating Tornad.io as a socket server. We also hope to run the whole application on a Raspberry PI with an external sound card. Watch this space...

Currently Showing At Poke: Masha Karpushina

The Poke studio often showcases the work of many talented artists, designers and creatives. We’ve been privileged enough to play host to the work of Sarah Maycock, Peter Frank, Chrysa Koukoura and our most recent Poke studio artist in residence, illustrator Masha Karpushina.

Masha makes surreal drawings inspired by nature, beauty, tradition and the essence of love. She has created work for clients such as Kurt Gieger, Liberty London and All Saints, and we felt rather privileged to play host to her private view and fill our studio with lots of her work.

If you’d like to pop up and see Masha’s work at Poke, feel free to drop us a line. For all print enquiries please contact Masha through her website.

Two Shining Examples

The Aurum Group own two of the most glamorous jewellers on the high street. And we’re very proud to say that we’ve just launched both of their sparkling new websites. With one set of wireframes and one code base, we’ve managed to create two very distinct and hardworking new sites.

For Goldsmiths we took our cues from fashion retailers. This is reflected in everything from the new layout and design, through to style advice editorials and our choice of photography.

Meanwhile, for Mappin & Webb, we’ve focused on bringing their brand proposition to life, with greater emphasis placed on evocative storytelling moments.

Our research showed that both brands’ audiences have embraced smartphone and tablet shopping. So we’ve also made sure that both sites have brains as well as beauty: each browsing and buying experience has been optimised for every device.

You can take a look at our latest full-blooded, multi-channel retail experiences here and here

Social Bakers Engage 2013

Social Bakers Engage – one of the newest events in the social conference calendar returned to the Hilton London Metropole hotel on Tuesday for the second year, following its 2012 debut.

Some of our more socially specialised Pokers headed to the event for a day of insights, updates and presentations from some of the most influential minds in the business, including Poke’s very own “friendly Viking” Nicolas Roope, who took to the stage with EE marketing director Spencer McHugh to discuss the role social has played in the EE brand launch.

As one of the most significant brand launches of the last 10 years and the first telecom provider to introduce a 4G service, social represents an integral part of the EE offering. Following its October launch, EE has remained persistently as one of the most engaged brands in the UK, highlighting the vital role social has played in the promotion and initial positioning of the brand.

The afternoon schedule saw Nicolas Roope educate and engage the crowd in equal measures as part of a four-strong panel discussion:

To find out more about this conference, and for details of other speakers visit the Social Bakers Engage site here

Celebrating 10 Years Of Global Rich List

After ten years and over 12 million visits since going live, we've un-veiled a brand new GlobalRichList.com to coincide with the publication of the 25th Annual Sunday Times Rich List.

Using a simple human insight and a no-nonsense digital mechanic to highlight a much-misunderstood inequality, the original GlobalRichList.com was built to reveal the unequal distribution of wealth and raise awareness for the huge population of the world who struggle to make ends meet.

Ten years on as we enter a new age of economic struggle, there are still estimated to be over one billion people living on less than $1.25 a day (at 2005 prices), making the message of Global Rich List is as relevant as it’s ever been; possibly even more so in these times of austerity. And that’s why, over the last few months, we’ve been making sure that the Global Rich List is fit for another decade of eye-opening use.

A lot has changed since 2003, and vast changes in technology and the digital media landscape mean that the 2013 Global Rich List is more accurate, more accessible and more sharable than ever before. Making use of the wealth of open data now available, the new Global Rich List features live data feeds via the World Bank's Data API, and takes not only salary, but property assets, savings and investments into account for a more accurate ‘wealth’ based approach.

Our modernised, fully responsive design supports smartphone, tablet and desktop use, while taking careful consideration to support even the lowliest of browsers. And, of course, there are now multiple ways to share your results, (remember the original was born into a time before social networks, frictionless sharing, and possibly even dinosaurs existed).

Instead of staring enviously at the names on the Sunday Times Rich List, why not find out where you really sit alongside the rest of the world? You might be surprised, and we hope you'll be generous. www.globalrichlist.com

Social Devotion

At Poke we know that it pays to be social on social media. That’s why we're proud to be managing two of the most socially devoted brands in the UK.

In an age where 80% of social media users prefer to connect with brands through social and 77% of brands acquire customers though Facebook* now more than ever it’s vital for brands to position themselves correctly online. Measured on response times, response rates and queries answered, the T-Mobile and EE accounts came in at 2nd and 3rd place in Social Bakers ‘most socially devoted brands in the UK’ February report. And with a 84% response rate on T-Mobile and a 92% response rate on EE, we like to think of ourselves as pretty good conversationalists.

Following its October launch, we worked with the EE team to focus on maintaining a singular brand channel to deliver top-notch customer service advice, whilst creating engaging content. As a result, EE has featured in 'most socially devoted brands' for three months in a row. T-Mobile saw an overhaul of the social approach after arriving at Poke as the least socially devoted brand in the UK. The increased engagement now positions them comfortably in the top 5 most socially devoted brands in the UK for two consecutive months – a complete turnaround for T-Mobile on social.

Both successes are a testament to the collaborative approach between agency and client, as well as the hard work and quick-witted responses of the Poke social team.

*Source - http://www.business2community.com/facebook/facebook-marketing-statistics-you-need-to-know-0289953

Fenton At The Webbys

Last year a loveable, deer chasing Labrador named Fenton bounded back into our lives in glorious, re-mastered 4G enabled Technicolor. And it seems that we weren’t the only ones fond of his antics: we’re chuffed to announce that ‘Fenton, 4GEE Remaster’ has been nominated for a Webby Award in the Video Remixes/Mash ups category.

Dubbed the ‘Oscars of the Internet’, the Webbys honour excellence across a wide variety of categories, with winners decided by industry luminaries including David Bowie, Damian Kulash of OK Go, Internet inventor Vint Cerf and of course, the voting public.

With a company legacy spanning 8 years and 13 client and agency wins, we’re proud to be part of this celebration of the very best in global, digital culture. If you love Fenton as much as we do, help us to make it 9 years, 14 wins - vote for us here. If you want to see our HD hound in action again, here he is in all his 4GEE glory:

The Webby archive wizards have been hard at work compiling the ultimate winners gallery - previous POKE wins, nominees and honorees can be found here, alongside some of the best of the web from the last 17 years.

Free Desk Here

Are you a creatively minded free spirit looking for a no strings attached, short-term desk space? Then look no further, because we’re offering a two-week, rent-free desk space to a worthy creative at our Shoreditch office.

At Poke we understand the value of collaboration and the role it plays in the generation of creative ideas. That’s why we’re offering a creative freelancer the chance to base themselves at Poke for two weeks completely free of charge as part of the Open Studio Club. A scheme designed to unite agencies with a little extra room, with creatives in need of a place to work and develop their practise.

Aside from a spot in our Shoreditch based studio; you’ll be in the vicinity of some of the most creative minds in the business, with the opportunity to share and create work with a variety of practitioners with different skills and perspectives. Speaking of the scheme, executive creative director and Poke founder Nicolas Roope said;

“Poke thrives on collaboration because it's only through cross fertilisation that fresh ideas emerge. Free Desk Here is a simple, light touch means to bring fresh faces into our little world here in Shoreditch.”

We’re a friendly bunch with great ideas, lots of energy, good coffee and a willingness to share it. All we ask in return is that you’re a creative who is smart, sociable and accepting of occasional Nerf Gun crossfire. The deadline for applications is the 10th of May with the final decision resting with the vote of your potential studio fellows. You have 60 Pokers to impress, so be sure to make to make your application inspiring, entertaining and original enough to win us over.

More details about the scheme and submission details can be found here so drop us a line, we look forward to hearing from you.