iQ Blog / we write about design and business (and sometimes we make puns)

“Er … have you ever broken the law?”

July 1, 2011 by Shane Diffily

Ever feel you want to ask an awkward question in an online survey – but think everyone will simply lie in their response?

This article from Scientific American shows how – with a little simple maths – we can get the insights we want.

Broken love

Example…

“Have you ever cheated on your husband / wife?” … YES or NO.

Before your respondent answers you simply ask them to privately flip a coin – but (this is the important bit) they must not tell anyone how the coin lands.

  • If it lands ‘heads‘, they just click ‘YES’ no matter if they have cheated or not.
  • If it lands ‘tails‘, they should answer truthfully.

To see how we can then find the right distribution of YES and NOs, just read the article.

It’s short, brilliantly simple and potentially very useful for some types of online survey.

Frustrated housewives seek satisfaction online

June 28, 2011 by Shane Diffily

No. This blog has not been hacked.

The title just summaries one of the notable findings we made during a recent project to improve online help for a telecoms company.

The challenge facing our client was to reduce call volumes to its Help Centre by diverting activity online – but without reducing the quality of service experienced by customers.

And therein lies the rub.

Is it possible to produce an online support experience that matches the standard available via a 1-to-1 phone call?
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Design isn’t just a deliverable, it’s a process

June 27, 2011 by Laurence Veale

The video below was sent around the office and, for me, got me thinking about how we see and how we judge design.

It’s about 4 minutes long. After you’ve had a look and, if you’re still around, join in a discussion below. I’d love to hear your thoughts

The video is clearly very well put together. It reflects a designer’s attempt to realign the Innocent Drinks website. Check out the short post on Think Vitamin here.

Alone, however, the designs and the video cause a problem for me. When we are presented with stunning visuals we tend to focus on the aesthetics rather than the substance. Non-designers don’t know how to judge design unless given a framework to do so I’m not patronising here nor am I saying that designers possess a gift or talent that others don’t.

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A multichannel stroll down Grafton Street

June 24, 2011 by Colman Walsh

When times are tough, retailers are usually the first to feel it. And Irish retailers have been getting hammered, with the market shrinking by 20% since 2007, according to IBEC.

So you would imagine that hard-pressed Irish shopkeepers are working hard on their multichannel strategies, eking additional revenue from their websites and offering an integrated, all-round better service to keep their customers loyal and engaged?

Well, maybe. As our office is a stone’s throw from Grafton Street – Ireland’s preeminent shopping strip – I visited some well-known Irish retailers to see just how “integrated”, if at all, the Irish retail sector has become.

What was I looking for? At a basic level, I was expecting that shops would be promoting their websites wherever possible, placing their URLs on windows, packaging and even till receipts. Beyond the basics, I was hoping that retailers would be actively pushing people to the online channel, with promotions or even strong calls-to-action. Finally, I was hoping – but not expecting – to see signs of innovation: QR codes, in-store kiosks, anything out of the ordinary.

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Zero Sum World and the Irish Internet

March 25, 2011 by Colman Walsh

It’s fair to say that the Irish business establishment has been slow to use the web as a source of competitive advantage.

Looking across the major sectors – banking, insurance, telcos, utilities, retail, media – it’s hard to think of a single blue chip firm that has broken the mould and disrupted their market with a strong internet play. Although investment was made online, the nettle was never really grasped. (Ryanair is probably the exception that proves the rule).

One likely reason is the complacency brought on by the fat years of the Celtic Tiger. Which begs the question, will complacency be replaced by urgency now that the fat years have gone? The question occurred while reading a book called Zero Sum World by Gideon Rachman, a journalist with the Financial Times.

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Want to evangelise content strategy? Stop talking about content.

March 3, 2011 by Randall Snare

. . . or so says Gerry McGovern, one of the leading content strategists (although he doesn’t call himself that).

Last week, I spoke to him, in the first podcast of the Content Strategy Forum’s speaker podcast series.

What is the Content Strategy Forum?

It’s the second annual European content strategy conference. Last year it was in Paris, and this year it’s in London – from the 5th to the 7th of September. The call for speakers is still open, but it closes this Friday. Full disclosure: I am the conference chair (and I don’t accept bribes, but feel free to try).

Gerry McGovern tells it like it is

Stop talking about content is not something a content strategist likes to hear. And, of course, it’s not universal. But in terms of talking about its value, it’s far more powerful to talk about what content has done than the content itself.

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