Rise of evidence in human decision making
Technology should be embraced when it leads to better decision making. Human experts should not be followed blindly.
“The door is closed. The decision was not to use technology at all,” FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke stated in March 2010, as the governing organization of football rejected the use of technology as a support to the […]
The shift to service
Cloud computing and virtualization reflect a general movement driven by the Web: a shift towards a more service-driven economy.
There are two major trends that are now coming together to reshape our economies and societies. One is the continuing replacement of humans by computers in the workplace. Computers are essential in manufacturing and in the office. […]
Website design: Impatient versus bored
Customers are much more likely to get impatient with your website than they are to be bored with it.
When was the last time you were bored with a website? Do you get bored with Google? Do you get bored with Amazon? Perhaps the last book you bought from Amazon was boring, but was the Amazon […]
Building a brand on the Web
You build a brand on the Web one click at a time. You destroy your brand by wasting your customers’ time.
I am a customer of a number of banks. I judge these banks, at least partly, by the experience I have with them online. I used to really like the National Irish Bank experience. Then […]
No such thing as a free toilet
Ryanair has recently been voted Britain’s worst family brand. Yet more people fly with them than any other airline in the world.
Ryanair represents the rise of the rational consumer. The rational consumer is much less open to manipulation by branding than previous generations of consumers.
What do people really want from an airline? […]
Oven Stories
Web teams often think progress can’t be made because “it’s always been this way.” By challenging tradition you can find that it’s not as immovable as it seems.
We Irish love traditions. My parents were avid newspaper readers and the first page they’d always go to was the Death Notices page. Because the Irish love going […]
The great big grand Web
The Web has happened in a really big way, and most organizations have not adapted to the way it has changed the world. But they will.
Organizations take time to change and adapt. That’s the one big lesson I’ve learned since I started in the web business back in 1994. It’s easy to stand on […]
Is your website a needy child?
The public website or intranet that keeps screaming for attention with useless images and vain content will get little from the impatient and sceptical customer.
The needs of the organization are great, and the larger and older the organization gets, the greater those needs become. The problem is that the internal needs of the organization rarely […]
Obsessed by technology
It’s time for a more realistic view of technology. Human input is still useful, and in some situations essential.
If you go to the bottom of the Google News homepage you will find the following statement: “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.”
What exactly is […]
Interactive is a meaningless word
Making your websites more interactive is a meaningless strategy. Make your website more useful instead.
Picture this scene. You are sitting in a meeting with some very cool people. These cool people think that, when it comes to the Web, they totally get it. They’re very smart people and they’re so important that they have to […]
