John Clarvis Creative Technologist, MEC UK I believe that the future of brand communications is to move from Brief Centred Advertising to User Centred Advertising. Abstract Brands are useful, but brand communications are not because they provide a bad user experience. This has resulted in decreasing CTRs and the rise of ad-blockers. Agencies, networks and publishers need to agree advert usability standards to rebuild trust. User Centred Design is based around understanding users and their interactions with a problem to reduce errors, streamline solutions and provide pleasurable experiences. Employing UCD principles into brand communications will provide more than brand awareness and instead transform advertising to become invaluable and liked. It is appealing for agencies to adopt UCD because it requires few new skills and little reorganisation. 7024 words, 7000 words marked with *

I believe that the future of brand communications is to move from Brief Centred Advertising to User Centred Advertising. Strong brands offer utility, they help differentiate between products and reduce the complexity of the purchase problem faced by consumers. New, more successful brands build solutions to deeper user problems. While brands offer a positive consumer experience, brand communications, particularly digital ad formats frequently do the opposite, in the best case offering little to help solve a problem, and the worst interrupting and overcomplicating a problem. The most useful objects are forgotten, a doorknob is rarely recognised for its utility compared to how many times it is used. I believe that many brands have already achieved being so useful that they defy requiring recognition and just are (e.g. Facebook is social networking, not a social networking platform in the West). To do so requires focusing brand communications on solving user centred problems. User Centred Design (UCD) provides the means of achieving this goal by focusing on the user and their interactions with the problem. Since Uber people no longer get a taxi home, they Uber home. Uber was started with $1.2M capital investment (1) and is now worth $40B.Uber do not own any vehicles and possess only 12 patents (2). Uber has a strong brand, but yet they do very little of what other brands would call branded activity or advertising. When they do advertise they seek only to reduce the choice problem and increase awareness, letting their service communicate their brand once awareness is taken care of. The value of Uber’s brand lies in its design and usability. It solves a problem that people face, and solves it better than anyone else. Uber’s brand is based on what problems it solves: 1) Lack of availability of cars – solved by displaying cars on a map close by 2) Waiting for taxi that might not arrive – solved via trackable cars 2) Random quality of taxi drivers – solved by allowing users to review and view reviews of drivers 3) Driving via a cashpoint – solved with automatic mobile payment 4) Lack of transparency on price – solved with visible and transparent pricing Uber is a strong brand because it is built from the perspective of User Centred Design in so far as it reduces the complexity of the problem of finding a taxi while reducing the errors and mistakes a user may experience trying to solve the problem (e.g. not getting in the right taxi, being overcharged). Originating in Scandinavian web developer houses (3), UCD has revolutionised how websites, services, apps and products are built. Put simply UCD reduces down a problem to be solved into the most basic interactions possible for a user. A common phrase describing Apple products is that, “they just work”. By placing the user, and their relationship with the problem that they are trying to solve at the heart of product development Apple deliver products that instantly make sense to their users. Most importantly, the experience of solving a problem via an iPhone is smooth and without errors. Most examples of UCD are from B2B software and SAAS products in which productivity and safety are the most important function. Aircraft control systems are the most well-known UCD applications. A pilot has to control a delicate, highly flammable, high speed vehicle in three dimensions with poor visibility. Indeed, most aircraft are piloted through instrumentation alone as windows offer very little utility. The risks of air travel are very high in its raw state as there are many ways in which a flight can go wrong. It is therefore imperative that the controls, feedback and instrumentation work with the pilot in mind. User centred design has been the de-facto principle of all aircraft controls since 2011 due to its record in reducing errors in aviation (4). UCD has delivered not only better products but significant ROI. In areas such as software design, industrial design and web development UCD has demonstrated 40% time savings on project planning, in customer facing developments (e.g. e-commerce) UCD delivered 225% improvements on sales compared to non UCD developments. UCD does not only increase customer satisfaction, but is good business practice (5).

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Brands offer a strong user experience, but brand communications do not. While Brands are excellent at solving the problem of an overabundance of choice, brand communications do not provide an easy, pleasurable or error-free solution to a problem and in many cases increase the complexity of the problem. Although many companies and brands intend to put their customers first very few centre the design of their communications on them. By applying UCD principles to Brand communications I believe that agencies can deliver the success of Uber and Facebook to their clients’ customers. The key objective of UCD is to build seamless products which: 1) Solve a particular problem 2) Reduce the complexity of problem 3) Provide a solution to the problem which requires a minimum effort 3) Provide a solution to the problem which minimises the chance of errors and mistakes occurring 4) Provide feedback on the process In principle, UCD is applied across Industrial design (5), the development of consumer goods, software development and by Tech businesses (6). Examples below (table 1) highlight good user experience brands. Category

Problem

Brand solution

Taxis

Availability, opaque information

Uber offers GPS trackable cars, bookable from mobile

Music

Fragmented media (CDs, streaming, piracy, ad funded)

Apple Music and Spotify offer a Paid subscription to HD streaming music

File sharing

Version control, huge email attachments

Dropbox provide a cloud folder to share work.

Messaging

Fragmented delivery, lack of rich media, texting costs, no backup

WhatsApp – uses data, not texts – enables sharing of video and images

Film and TV

Adverts

Netflix and Amazon offer subscription based HD video streaming Table 1 Brands and the problems they solve

In the above example, the brands have solved a specific problem for their users. In fact they have become so successful they have become adjectives, people Uber home, Spotify music, Dropbox files, Whatsapp their friends and even “Netflix and Chill”. In the seminal book “The Design of Everyday Things”, widely regarded as the bible of UCD, Donald Norman describes three types of problem: 1) Wide problems – these problems essentially quite simple, the user is presented with a wide variety of solutions to a problem, and in many ways is a classic brand example. Choosing a drink in a bar represents a Wide problem well, a user wants a drink, there are many on offer and they need to choose which one to buy. The role of a brand is to reduce the width of this problem, a Beverage brand like Diego reduces the width of the drink choice problem by having a brand in each drink category. If a user wants a whisky, a beer or a wine then Diego help reduce the width of the problem by having a well-known and liked drink in each category. 2

2) Narrow problems have a number of steps to accomplish, but there are no real choices to be made. Following a recipe successfully is a narrow problem while choosing what to cook is a Wide problem. Solving this kind of problem is easy but is often quite boring as many steps have to be taken with little imagination. Applying for a loan is a Narrow problem, the user has to provide many pieces of correct information and documents in a long, boring form. The chance of an error is high because boredom causes an attention deficit, leading to lapses in concentration and mistakes. 3) Deep problems are those with many layers of complexity, in each step of solving the problem the number of decisions to be made, and number of potential errors increases. Chess is a deep problem, in the first turn there are 20 possible options which so far is just wide, however by the time the second turn has occurred there are 400 possible options. What differentiates a deep problem from a wide problem is that the number of options increase in complexity with each preceding decision. Holiday planning is a Deep problem, by picking a destination (initially a Wide problem) then the choice of transport becomes more complex (which airline, what time, which airport). After choosing transport, secondary transport becomes another more complex problem, getting to and from the airport at home and away, coordinating times and pickup points. After choosing location, transport and secondary transport then accommodation has to be arranged. This accommodation has to be available within the time constraints of the transport options, be in the correct location and be free at the correct times. All of these decisions impact each other, and have to be fitted into a wider schema of price, comfort and convenience. Travel agencies such as Thomas Cook are in essence Deep problem solvers. UCD aims to understand how users interact with these types of problem. UCD applies a cognitive approach to design and makes three assumptions about designing human centred solutions to these problems. 1) People are error prone - , bad design makes errors more frequent and good design makes them less frequent. This assumption is best summarised by, “if a mistake can happen, it will”. The basis of this thought is that people do not frequently pay attention to what they are doing and that mistakes often go unnoticed as a result of bad design. Aeroplane accidents still happen, despite several layers of redundancy, heavy investment in safety and strict governance. The barrier to 100% safe flight is human error, with human error accounting for 76% (4) of all air crashes. In less safety conscious industries than aviation, and in everyday life, human error is considered by UCD experts to be the leading cause of bad user experience (8). Hence, UCD focuses on the user as the most important part of the problem. 2) Procedural knowledge is superior to declarative knowledge – Declarative knowledge refers to things that people consciously know, and can declare. Knowing that the capital of England is London, for example. In everyday life many experiences are declarative, operating a washing machine for the first time is a declarative experience, separate clothes into coloured and white clothes, open the door, set dial A to a boil wash, press the start button, wait 30 minutes, open the door, remove the clothes. This processes works but is slow and requires full attention, because people are error prone they may lose attention and make a mistake, by missing a step or misinterpreting an instruction. The prime example of procedural knowledge is riding a bike, nobody can tell another person how to ride a bike. They can explain the principles and offer demonstrations but cannot declare how to do it. However, once an individual learns how to ride a bike they can do it at will, without making mistakes. Procedural knowledge is automatic, fast and produces low numbers of errors because it is learned. When designing products, a procedurally learned action is superior, once someone knows how to use a washing machine they do not need to repeat the steps ad nausea, they simply “put the washing on”. 3) There is no such thing as an average user. Everybody is different and no two people respond to things in the same way. There are very few examples of products that work for everybody. Considerations such as age, education and cultural heritage make large differences to the success of a design. Many market research companies when conducting research in German markets receive confusing scores because Germans perceive numbers in rank rather than order, with 10 meaning the lowest possible score and 1 meaning the best. While apps are popular solutions, in older users the technology can provide a barrier to entry and increase the number of errors possible, leading to a frustrating user experience. 3

How is it applied? A good design does not equate to a beautiful design. The UCD model places usability at its very core. Consider the London Underground tube map. Navigating the London Underground is a deep problem. Getting on a train at one station impacts which other choices are available to arrive at a destination. Not only are there many stations and options (is it easier to switch from the Northern to Central Line at Bank or Tottenham Court Road?). There is also the perceived speed of each line, business of trains, time of day and line branches. Displaying this information in a map is a difficult problem in a traditional paradigm. The first maps of the London underground published in 1909 (figure 1) applied cartography to the problem.

Figure 1. the original Tube map, which answered the brief, but didn't solve the problem

The designers were tasked with making a map, so they made a map. Although answered the brief, the result was indecipherable and unusable as a means of getting around London. Rather than reducing the complexity of the problem, the complexity was increased by confounding users with the actual geography of London, which underground is largely superfluous. In addition, the geographic proximity of many stations (e.g. Liverpool street, Bank, Aldgate) and geographic distance of other stations (Earl’s Court, Barons Court) made scaling the map difficult, with some stations so close together it was difficult to read. The designers answered the brief, but did not solve their user’s problem

Figure 2. Harry Beck's user centred Tube map

Harry Becks 1931 design focused purely on making travel easier for the Tube’s users (figure 2). Exact geography was removed and the map became topographical. Beck’s map displayed the information that the user needed in order to make a successful journey. The focus was shifted from accurately mapping the tube stations of London to creating a system in which users could easily navigate from station to station. Tentatively launched in 1933 the design has become so popular to have only been changed three times, with each change adding useful rather than beautiful features (e.g. what charge zone a station is in and the inclusion of the London Overground. Despite these changes the user focused design of the tube map has never been changed because it reduces the complexity of travelling in a complex system.

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Brands offer a strong solution to the Wide problem of consumer choice Brands serve to raise the price of a product over generic products (9) and to provide differentiation from competitors (10). From this perspective brands are adept at solving a wide problem; the problem of choice. Too much choice is confusing, the “Tyranny of choice” (11) describes the problems faced by people when faced with too many options. When presented with too many options people become confused, anxious and immobilised as they attempt to choose the “perfect” option. In the physical and digital world too much choice is a bad thing, as it takes too much mental energy to decide. An abundance of choice leads to depression (11,12) and mental fatigue (11,12). When deciding on Medicare healthcare plans, participants found the number of choices bewildering and led to bad decision making. In experimental conditions when presented with sixteen choices of health plan participants made their worst decisions (e.g the worst healthcare options) when presented all of the options at once. (12) The effects of too much choice are not only bad for consumers, but bad for business. When customers were presented with twenty four varieties of Jam at a Diegers store they spent more time in front of the shelf, but bought less jam (6 times less) when there were only six varieties of jam available. (13) A brands purpose in a choice abundant world is to reduce the width of the problem, a decision is easier to make when there are 3 options than when there are 30. High brand awareness and trust should reduce the width of the purchase problem. The scarcity of choice offered by Apple reduces the width of the consumer problem to a choice between Android and Apple. Brand communications are a bad user experience. Agencies currently operate in a Brief Centred Design, their purpose is to keep clients happy and deliver work for their client’s brands. This is clearly a good business objective but it regularly fails to deliver utility to customers beyond brand awareness. The result of the bad user experience of brand communication is that people hate advertising. Although advertising worked in the early days of the internet, many services now exist that make them at best an irritation. TV advertising is too broad in its targeting to solve specific problems and does not offer a complete solution. A core function of UCD is to produce a solution that solves a specific problem. In the case of advertising this is rarely the case, most TV budget is spent around audience segments with little understanding of the motivations of the users watching the TV show. In the cases in which a user is in market for a particular category then an advert is relevant, however based upon broad targeting techniques most adverts disrupt their users with an irrelevant solution. TV is good at building brand awareness overall (14), which reduces the width of the problem when it arises but in most cases does not solve the problem that users are trying to solve at that point. That is, people watching TV are not doing so to watch adverts, they are watching TV in order to relax or be entertained. The inherent problem with TV planning is that other brands in category are likely to be advertising in the same slots, which in turn expands the width of the problem for users, if they are in market. In which case it is the value of the solution being sold which determines which brand will ultimately be successful. The solution is to communicate the problem being sold, as well as increasing brand awareness. TV advertising offers only an introduction to the brand and it is hard to close the loop of the problem. An ideal path would be for a TV to raise awareness of a problem and then offer an immediate way of solving that problem. The lack of connectivity between TV and other devices, for example makes the copying down of a phone number or web address prone to errors. UCD principles seek to reduce errors that humans inevitably make. TV offers an excellent means to communicate the solution to a problem, with the highest reach of all media channels (15). Where its usability becomes problematic is in taking the next step towards solving that problem. 5

Despite being declared dead many times (16), Press advertising does offer excellent value in building brand awareness. Press does however suffer similar problems to TV, the usability offered is only good at reducing the width of a problem by building brand awareness and is difficult to transfer across to complete solving a problem. Again, increasing the chances of a user making an error, thus restricting its usability. Digital advertising in theory should offer the best user experience. The skills used to build websites, adverts, mobile pages and online shops are exactly the same as those used to build Uber, Facebook, Autotrader and any number of user centred services. Digital advertising also offers the most efficient way of providing a complete solution as the entire solution can easily be linked together in theory offering an human error free experience. Messages can even be targeted based on behaviour, personalised, regionalised and linked directly to purchase. Yet of all media formats digital offers the worst user experience. A study carried about by Yahoo and eBay (17) identified the design items that lead to users viewing the page negatively or very negatively. All of them represent a bad user experience (table2). Users Answering "Very Negatively" or "Negatively"

Design Element Pops-up in front of your window Loads slowly Tries to trick you into clicking on it Does not have a "Close" button Covers what you are trying to see Doesn't say what it is for Moves content around Occupies most of the page Blinks on and off Floats across the screen Automatically plays sound

95% 94% 94% 93% 93% 92% 92% 90% 87% 79% 79%

Table 2.Top reasons why people leave a website with a negative impression

Digital display often widens the problem, similar to TV advertising, however like TV multiple Brands bidding on the same terms cannot be avoided. The key issues surrounding digital advertising come from formats which create more complexity, distract, or cause errors for the users. That they arrive without permission only serves to harm their utility as from a user perspective they exist as an item to be removed. A significant responsibility lies on the part of publishers, and professional standards need to be set in order to limit pages which are inaccessible due to too many, intrusive adverts being placed on a website. This example below from Metro.com (figure 3) breaks almost every rule of UCD. The user is attempting to solve a fairly simple problem of reading the latest Manchester United news. The format, colour and prevalence of the advertising distracts from the content making it all but unreadable. The end result is that users of the page will go elsewhere to find their news.

Figure 3. A good example of bad user experience 6

Ad formats that automatically play audio or video break the rule of complexity. In the case that a user wants to engage with any content online their attention will be driven towards stopping the interruption and not on what they are interested in. the same principle applies to Interstitials, pop-ups and pop-unders. These formats have high Impression rates, at the expense of infuriating their users. These formats are in fact so unpopular that the inclusion of interstitials leads to 63% of users who see them not returning to the site again (18). Most importantly for users, digital adverts drastically increase the chance of errors occurring. Of the few actual clicks on banner ads 40% are misclicks (19), in these cases the user was attempting to close them, and instead opened them instead. More serious errors occur from Flash adverts which frequently crash the page and all other pages open which contain a flash element, this has culminated in frustrated users running their own campaign against flash ads via http://www.flashadsarebroken.com/. Poorly built adverts also slow down websites (20), increasing the chances of users misclicking due to lag, or just avoiding the website in total. More significant damage come from the errors caused by viruses contained in some adverts, although advertising professionals may believe that this only happens on “bad” adverts, once a user is exposed to a virus via advertising they lose trust in adverts in general. This culminated in the 13th October discovery that the Mailonline.com (a website with 156M monthly visitors) had served ads which contained the “Angler” virus (21). The Angler virus blocks a user’s computer until a fee is paid and installs Trojan Horse viruses to open backdoors, threatening a user’s security. Mobile advertising represents the worst user experience because they fail to understand their users, 71% of mobile users report being “too busy” to watch an advert on mobile. Users browsing on mobile are more likely to be looking for information on the move, on a small screen the amount of information available is already small. Interrupting this small space, at a potentially crucial time (e.g. searching for a bar to meet friends when the phone battery is low) mobile ad formats which block, interrupt, or redirect their users to something not directly relevant represents a poor user experience. The end result of this is that people are taking steps to remove advertising from their lives because it solves no problems for them, and makes solving a problem more complex. As a result of poor user experience trust in all formats, but particularly in digital display, texts and mobile adverts is at an all-time low (22). This lack of trust has an immediate knock on effect on the consumption of adverts; in 2008, 85% of the UK population had the ability to record TV (23). Of those people, 86% of them skip through the ad-break (24). These figures are replicated in digital with 76% of users believing that adverts ruin their online experience (25). Their opinion translates into two behaviours: 1) Digital display doesn’t work. The first online adverts had a Click Through Rate (CTR) of 44% (26), indicating that people were interested in what the brand was communicating. However, the novelty quickly wore off. A meta-analysis carried out for this paper has collected 7 studies and internal agency data on CTR over time (chart 1) and created an average CTR per year (27). Of the 0.06% times that somebody clicked on and advert, nearly half of those were by mistake (28) 2) Adblocking is becoming a major issue. Previously Average CTR 1994-2015 adblocking only existed on desktop. However with IOS9 mobile adblocking (both in app and mobile web) is now a reality. Meaning that not only can the mobile internet be ad free, but so can Facebook, Twitter and Instagram who were previously immune to adblocking. So Chart 1 CTR unpopular is online advertising that 20% of the UK (29) decline since 1995 population and 30% of the Polish population (29) have already installed a form of adblocking, with a growth rate of 41% in the last 12 months. The final cost of this dropout is estimated to be $22B to the digital advertising economy (29). 7

Repairing the damage by rebuilding trust The damage of bad user experience is not terminal, but it is critical. I believe that while brand communication should focus on solving user problems, unless they know a solution is available then there might as well not be a solution. Therefore, the first step in fixing brand communications is to rebuild trust from users. They key target in this case is digital and mobile advertising in which trust is the lowest (22) and the user experience is the worst. I believe that to rebuild trust, Agencies, Networks and Publishers need to formulate and publicise an Acceptable Usability Agreement on digital advertisements. One of Google’s many key innovations is the Quality Score, used to rank pages in search and in AdWords. This score ensures that when users search, they receive a site of a certain quality which matches their expectations. A practical step would be to introduce a quality score for digital and mobile Networks on all digitally adverts with the following conditions required in order to be served: 1) Only allow ads built in JavaScript rather than Flash. JavaScript is supported in all browsers, has a lower crash rate and is faster than Flash (30). 2) A maximum file size to increase loading page time. 3) All links to be visible with visible indications of their destination. 4) Destination links to be use tested and virus checked. 5) Pop-up and Pop-under adverts to ask permission via an initial popup to be displayed to avoid erroneous misclicks. 6) Clear visibility on the close button for adverts to avoid errors and enable users to easily consume the content they intended to visit. From publishers similar tests should be conducted at random on adverts served on their properties to ensure that they meet minimum usability levels. Facebook’s advertising guides (31) conform to strict user centred principles so as not to damage the reputation of Facebook as a brand. Facebook’s advertising principles a limit on the amount of text, minimum image resolution, a whitelist of services allowed to advertise and clarity on the final destination of clicks. In addition to these principles publishers should perform their own usability checks on their inventory, including but not limited to: 1) A maximum proportion of real estate dedicated to advertising to make pages readable 2) Introduction of an open CSS style guide to match homepage formatting to ad formats to avoid pages in which the content is obscured, preventing the user from viewing the content. 3) A visible demarcation between ad space and publisher content to reduce erroneous misclicks 4) Pop-up permissions to play video or audio content to reduce the number of steps needed for a user to consume content To build truly User Centred Advertising, brand communications need to place solving user problems at the heart of their work. The three steps below demonstrates the stages required.

User Centered Design Process Wide Problem Building awareness Deep Problem

Reducing complexity

Narrow Problem

Reducing errors

Streamlining process

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It is important to ensure that the first problem solved is the problem of width. That is, making users aware of the brand and how they solve the user’s problems. Brands are an excellent way to increase differentiation and therefore reduce the width of the customer process. The differentiation that a strong brand offers is the value of the solution they offer to their users and how personally relevant and useful their unique offering is. Moving brands beyond awareness An underlying assumption of UCD is that people each different to each other, whereas brands and agencies build audiences, UCD practitioners build more, and more detailed “personas”, which represent the specific types of people who will use a design. These personas explain the day to day life of a user, their demography, psychometric profile and approach to solving a problem. To apply this to Branding activity is not difficult as it is already commonplace in market research and media analysis techniques. However, this is where much of brand planning stops, whereas the full solution requires a crucial second step: the environment. Understanding the environment In order to build a useful solution the problem faced and the user are combined into a Use-Case. This use case forms the basis of a product design. It is this step that elevates traditional media research into a UCD process. Let’s look at three fictional briefs and apply this thinking: 1) Screwfix are well known amongst Tradesmen, but want to expand into consumer DIY sales. 2) Admiral Insurance have ambitious targets for home insurance and need a marketing plan to reach these targets. 3) Volvo are suffering decreasing sales in Europe and America. The first step in this process is to reverse engineer the problem, from a Brief focused problem to a user focused problem. This involves building personas, to first understand their problems, and secondly to understand their usability limits (e.g. an app is not useful for a non tech savvy person). Situation

Problem Wants to save money, so

• Male

• Home owner • Nationwide

• A-level degree education • 35-55

Problem Type

Deep Problem

DIY's a lot. He cannot DIY big things like boiler repair, but is sure he is getting ripped off.

• Med-high income

• Okay with tech (has a iPhone & adept with apps)

Problem

Problem Type

Know that they need house

Narrow Problem

Situation

• Male & female • London based

• Young (18-25) professionals • University educated • Low income

insurance, but it takes too long (e.g. finding out lock types), so they have put it off.

• Renting

• Beginning professional graduate lives

• Tech savvy

Situation

• Male

• Middle aged • Family

• High income

• Highly educated, MSc +

Problem Wants a status car but

Problem Type

Wide Problem

cannot differentiate between BMW, Volvo and Mercedes. All cars are safe now, not just Volvo.

• Safety conscious

• Conservative mindset

• Still uses a Nokia 6310

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The second step is to understand the specific problems that the persona group faces, and defining where the pain points exist in the process. In the simplified examples below we have an example of each type of problem; Narrow, Wide and Deep. Already this has taken a parallel approach to solving the brand problem, rather than focusing on what the brand or agency wants to accomplish the focus is on the specific problems faced by the target group in the category. The third step is to map out the problem in detail to understand the areas in which error can occur. The use cases below outline the pain points that users face. These are the areas that a brand needs to solve in order to solve the user problem and provide an improved experience.

Screwfix Use Case User

Environment

Search for plumber (100+ results)

Boiler Breaks

Read Reviews

Hire Plumber

Plumber doesn't turn up

Search for plumber (100+ results)

Plumber arrives

Check Insurance / Service Plan

Problem is water inlet and boiler

Select Boiler Type (x5)

Match boiler to service plan

Match boiler to water inlet

Change Supplier (x10)

Select Service Plan (x10)

Unsure about changes, not able to dispute

Boiler and inlet fixed

Unhappy with price

Plumber charges for parts

The Screwfix problem is deep, at every stage of repairing a faulty boiler another layer of complexity is added. The diagnosis of a boiler fault requires a new boiler. The replacement of a boiler necessitates consulting a service or insurance plan. Once this is negotiated the practicality of which boiler to choose has to be solved, this then requires decisions on which energy rating, fuel source and brand to choose. Each of these decisions re-impacts the choice of energy supplier and service plan. The problem to be solved is not the complexity of the problem, but that this complexity provides the perfect smokescreen of confusion to hide price and service charges behind. The end result is that the user feels confused by the process and unsure about what they have actually paid for, and how much of the work was necessary. The problem isn’t that Screwfix need to move more into the consumer market. The problem is that users feel ripped off when their boiler breaks down and there is an opportunity for Screwfix to remediate this problem.

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Admiral Use Case User

Environment

Moves House

Needs to switch contents insurance

Choose supplier

Cross reference tenancy agreement

Fill In Deails

Postcode and house details

The Admiral insurance problem is Narrow. Changing home contents insurance is a necessary, long, frustrating and boring task with no immediate end reward. The process is not complex, like boiler repair but requires the collection of many facts that require expert knowledge, to which no easy or cheap solution exists (e.g. finding out how many, and what kind of locks are present in the house, valuing the contents of the house). Again, the problem isn’t that Admiral need to sell more insurance to renters, the problem is that renters don’t insure their contents because the process of finding the necessary information is difficult and time consuming.

Assess value of contents

Find out lock types : door

Find out lock types : windows

Burglar alarm & alarm service history

House contents insured

The Volvo problem is forced by an overabundance of choice for the user, and this relates directly back to the brand. If the user cannot differentiate the brands in terms of what is important to him, then he will make his choice based on other criteria, such as price. The Volvo user is educated and therefore needs showing how a Volvo is safe rather than being told that it is. The user in this case is not technically sophisticated, so apps and even digital content are unsuitable. A more appropriate solution is to demonstrate the most important feature that the user cares about; safety. This would take the form of a partnership with the Telegraph Motoring Supplement. In this content, various Volvo models would be tested in a car safety testing centre weekly. The sponsored content would be in print form to match the user’s tastes and describe in detail the mechanics of the how Volvo cars are safe.

Volvo Use Case User

Environment

Compare choice bracket

Define choice bracket: features, brand, prior experience, price

Existing car becomes too old

Mercedes BMW Audi Volvo

Decide on brand and model

Sell old car, arrange finance for new car Transfer insurance and tax

Purchase new car

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Once the problem and the user are defined, finding a solution becomes much easier because the constraints become tighter. Mark Barden (32) argues that it is constraints rather than freedom that lead to innovative ideas because they shift perceptions from “if ” to “how”. This is the fundamental application of User Centred Design. Examples of this application are described below. Screwfix Accredited Plumbers The Screwfix problem is solved by resolving the lack of transparency between the Plumber and the user. This could be accomplished by the creation of Screwfix Accredited Partners and a companion price comparison service. Plumbers would receive a price discount and be listed as Screwfix Partners in store and online. They would also receive a discount on replacement parts by entering a closed system with Screwfix a) Services were peer reviewed at random by Screwfix b) Invoices were reviewed at random by Screwfix Unexplained discrepancies would result in the Plumber being blacklisted with their Screwfix Partner status being removed, losing their discount and affiliation with Screwfix. The users are comfortable with technology so an app would be built which scanned reference numbers on the invoice and validated these with the prices in the Screwfix catalogue. This would provide transparency on the price of parts purchased and remove the uncertainty of a boiler replacement. Admiral Quick Insure The Admiral problem is solved by looking at the user frustration, the level of detail required to fill in the form cannot be altered to ensure the validity of the policy. The brand can however make the user experience easier in the two key areas of frustration. Valuing the house contents is difficult without an appraiser or a best guess. Finding out the age and type of locks in the house is possible, but requires significant effort. Admiral would launch Admiral Quick Insure: 1) The contents insurance application form would be online as it already is, as the users are already very tech savvy and would prefer this kind of form. 2) To value the contents users would be able to link their bank account to the form. This would scan the last 5 years’ worth of statements and categorise expenditure on home goods e.g. kitchen equipment, TVs, Laptops, stereos etc. It would then provide an estimate value that users could adjust up or down to their preference. 3) To determine lock types, the form would sync to a smartphone camera. The users would photograph their door and window locks, the app would use image recognition to identify what type of lock was in each location. Volvo Crash Test The Volvo problem is forced by an overabundance of choice for the user, and this relates directly back to the brand. If the user cannot differentiate the brands in terms of what is important to him, then he will make his choice based on other criteria, such as price. The Volvo user is educated and therefore needs showing how a Volvo is safe rather than being told that it is. The user in this case is not technically sophisticated, so apps and even digital content are unsuitable. A more appropriate solution is to demonstrate the most important feature that the user cares about; safety. This would take the form of a partnership with the Telegraph Motoring Supplement. In this content, various Volvo models would be tested in a car safety testing centre weekly. The sponsored content would be in print form to match the user’s tastes and describe in detail the mechanics of the how Volvo cars and safe. 12

The changes agencies need to make aren’t significant. The steps involved in adopting a UCD approach are similar in many ways to the steps involved in media and brand planning. That is, researching an audience and matching media consumption. The change in application comes from focusing on solving User problems rather than solving Brand problems. The case for UCD in bringing brands to life is that the User is the only important feature in the brand planning process. Agency Skills Advertising and Media in general have taken enormous steps in changing their recruitment criteria. From an interview with the group head of recruitment for one of the major media agency groups, the following information was made available (33). In the last 10 years proficiency in Maths has risen from holding a GCSE in maths, to holding a C in GCSE maths to demonstrating GCSE and even A-level maths skills in a measured test. Digital skills although less supported by the UK education system similarly have moved from being a differentiation point 10 years ago to being a bare minimum standard at even graduate recruitment. While coding and digital design skills are becoming more important, they are not currently required unless they are in specific software development jobs they currently serve as a point of differentiation between candidates. I believe that possessing a minimum level of aptitude in these skills will soon transition from “nice to haves” to “essential skills” in the near future. Media and advertising agencies have in-house, or rely upon agency research teams to build user audiences. These teams have expanded to encompass social media monitoring and digital analytics, for them to expand into Usability research is not difficult. The building of Personas and customer journeys is a staple of marketing research. With the guidance of a UCD expert these processes could be adapted very quickly. Along with the skills of planners, strategists and client teams marketing is well placed in terms of recruitment and staff to build multidisciplinary teams, which are a requirement of a good User Centred Design process (34) In order to fully embrace User Centred Advertising team organisation, research focus, planning response and client relationships are also within an easy grasp of agencies. Team organisations It is rare for many agencies to be split into a hard functional organisation, e.g. Planning, Activation, digital, sponsorship and strategy. With the exception of research teams, most agencies deploy client teams in order to provide the best levels of service to client groups. These teams are multidisciplinary by nature and match the criteria of a UCD group. The only change required would be to have research team members trained in UCD forming part of each group in order to carry out user centred research and advise client teams on user problems. To kick start the process, agencies should employ UCD experts from areas such as industrial design and digital design to operate in these interdisciplinary teams. These staff should also train existing staff in UCD principles in the long term. Research focus Current research focus is based around consumer behaviour, overall trends and consumer responses to campaigns. Research teams would have to instead focus on two crucial aspects of UCD; the user and the problems that they face. While analytics and performance will need to remain quant focused UCD research will have to re-engage with qualitative methods at an individual level. That is, rather than building aggregated consumer profiles they must build Personas. Rather than focusing on brand opinion and response they should focus on category problems and diagnose opportunities in the problems that users face. 13

Planning Responses Planning responses should represent the importance of user problems that a brand can solve. A good planner interrogates a brief, and an excellent planner challenges it. The challenge to be raised in the paradigm of User Centred Advertising requires a new set of questions to be asked of a brief, the most important being moving beyond brand awareness into understanding and solving user problems. The brands that are succeeding now are those that build user centred solutions for their customers. Both media and advertising agencies are well placed to employ the same methods and reap the same successes as Apple, Uber, Facebook and Google if they stop asking “how can we solve our brand problems” and instead ask, “How do I solve my user’s problems”. Final thoughts Brands help users solve problems, whereas brand communications currently increase their complexity. The results of the bad user experience of brand communications are only now becoming apparent with decreasing CTRs and increasing use of ad-blockers. To address this problem, agencies, networks and publishers need to address the quality standards of current brand communications. This is most pressing in digital advertising, which demonstrates the worst user experience. By employing UCD principles into brand communications, adverts can provide more than just brand awareness and move to become invaluable and liked. For agencies to adopt UCD does not require a significant effort or seismic shift in agency staffing or organisation. Rather agencies * need a small shift in mind-set from answering briefs to answering user problems and ensuring that the solution is streamlined, smooth and easy.

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References 1. http://firstround.com/company/Uber 2. http://www.faqs.org/patents/assignee/uber-technologies-inc/ 3. Greenbaum&Kyng (eds): Design At Work - Cooperative design of Computer Systems, Lawrence Erlbaum 1991 4. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-696/paper6.pdf 5. http://www.amanda.com/joomla_uploads/whitepapers/AM+A_ROIWhitePaper_20Apr0%201.pdf 6. Moggridge, B (2007) Designing Interactions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 7. the development of consumer goods (REF) 8. Karwowski,W (2006) International Encyclopedia of Ergonomics and Human Factors, Second Edition 9. King, S (1971) What is a Brand? JWT (available here: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/743160/stephen-king-1971-brand ) 10. Reeves, Rosser (1961), The Reality of Advertising 11. R,Salec (2001), The Tyranny of Choice 12. Besedeš, T, Deck,C, Sarangi,S, Shor,M (2015), Reducing Choice Overload without Reducing Choices, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 97, No. 4, 13. https://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_choosing_what_to_choose?language=en 14. http://mecglobal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AdQuantumReport.pdf 15. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/the-total-audience-report-q1-2015.html 16. See http://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jun/03/who-says-print-is-dead for an excellent summary 17. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-hated-advertising-techniques/ 18. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.fr/2015/07/google-case-study-on-app-download-interstitials.html 19. https://gigaom.com/2012/08/31/report-40-percent-of-mobile-clicks-are-fraud-or-accidents/ 20. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/426208/this-is-why-your-website-is-slow/ 21. http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/read/malvertising-hits-the-daily-mail-one-of-the-biggest-news-sites-on-t he-web 22. http://www.nielsen.com/uk/en/press-room/2015/consumer-trust-in-traditional-advertising-declines-in-uk-wh ile-a-recommendation-from-friends-remains-most-credible.html 23. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4248774.stm 24. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/aug/24/tv-advertising 25. http://teads.tv/en/advertising-matters-it-funds-the-content-we-love/ 26. http://barker.co.uk/banner 27.

See a. http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/horrifying-display-advertising-stats b. http://www.smartinsights.com/internet-advertising/internet-advertising-analytics/display-advertising-clickthrough-rates/ c. http://adage.com/article/digital/incredible-click-rate/236233/ d. http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/digital-display-ad-benchmarks-by-region-in-2013-42087/ e. http://www.npost.com/blog/2012/04/09/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs-36/ f. Also - internal agency data

28. 29.

https://gigaom.com/2012/08/31/report-40-percent-of-mobile-clicks-are-fraud-or-accidents/ a. http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ad-blocking-publisher-problem-no-co-ordinated-solution/1368048 b. http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/heed-warnings-inherent-ad-blocking/1367789 c. http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ad-blocking-publisher-problem-no-co-ordinated-solution/1368048 d. http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/2015_report-the_cost_of_ad_blocking.pdf

30. http://www.hanselman.com/blog/JavaScriptHasWonRunFlashWithMozillaShumwayAndDevelopSilverlightInJSWithFayde.aspx 31. https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/ 32. Barden,M, (2015), A Beautiful Constraint: How to Transform Your Limitations into Advantages, and Why it's Everyone's Business Please see REF for further details. 33. Given anonymously but transcript available 34. Seffah, A & Gulliksen,J (2006) Human-Centred Software Engineering - Integrating Usability in the Software Development Lifecycle: 8