As a prolific user of software, I use applications from various companies on a daily basis, many from Adobe or Microsoft. These companies are on a path to make the user experience easier and cheaper [Adobe’s Creative Suite bundles, or Microsoft’s new Office 2007]. mainly so workflow and productivity are increased, both of which are very laudable - more work, in less time, for less cost. But, and this is the nub of what I'm on about, making software easier to use opens up a whole can of worms, as it encourages people who have little, or no design or software knowledge, to pick up their mouse and 'have-a-go'. So what – well I have no issue with anyone having a go – it is only when these have-a-go efforts are used by companies to portray their ideals and values, companies that usually have spent money on branding and value how they are seen by clients or customers.

As a designer in a busy studio, I see many pieces in the public domain, produced ‘in-house’, because of cost or time restraints, none of which bears much resemblance to the Company branding. This hidden cost, and it is a cost, a cost that many companies don’t even consider [as it is seen as cost saving because an agency has not been used], can have a huge effect on the profits and revenue of a business.

Design can create a template and guidelines for branding, but ultimately branding comes from within, and it is from within that the most damage can be caused. The perceived cost saving of a DIY approach, if analysed, can show that this positive is in fact a negative.

Reflecting the ethos and philosophy of the company, design is a tool for making that philosophy visible and managing it, so that your customers perceive an organisation as one they can trust and rely on, and the staff, firmly believe in the values they represent.

For example, the Sales Executive has a new customer wanting to see a brand new [highly designed and costly] widget. Details are sketchy, as it is so new, and have not been made country specific. The Sales persons answer is to produce the information themselves. The message is complex, but rather than spending all the time available getting this perfect, this person will have to spend at least a third of the time; sourcing imagery, logos, branding guidelines, templates and then wrestle with the chosen software to make it all fit. The result is usually a piece of work that falls way outside anything that company would normally allow to go in front of potential customers – the cost, wasted time of the Sales Executive, less than perfect finished work, poor brand ID and a customer that sees the company as that, less than perfect and with no real ID, potentially taking their business elsewhere. It is this that is the hidden negative, because the potential customer was never a customer. There will be no figures to show the loss, just no new customer, ergo no new sale, which could have been 1 widget or 1,000,000, the difference between profit and loss?

Take yourself out of ‘business mode’ and think about the every day purchases that you make – Go and look at a couple of items that you normally don’t buy or use and ask yourself why you choose one product over another. Is it the advertising, or the packaging or both? If it is either of these reasons it is because of design and good design means time, effort and money needs to be spent by experienced and professional people. Good design works, period.

Fact: Design intensive companies out performed the FTSE 100 by 200% over a ten year period!*

For more information go to: www.design-council.org.uk

*Design in Britian 2004-2005

Chris Trevallion

I should of course add an extremely important caveat to the above title: as long as the budget is big enough.

Having said that, whatever the available funds are, the principle still applies. The more engaging e-learning is, the greater the number of people in the workforce it is aimed at will use it.

This seems an obvious statement, but in the early days of e-learning, when the industry was still in its infancy, the majority of e-learning output were dull, tedious screens of rolling text and a few uninspiring images. There was desperately little animation, low interactivity and certainly no games based learning.

It reminds me of when CD-ROMs were first introduced into the marketplace containing whole encyclopaedias on one disk and not much else. It was thought by many that simply because the information was in a new form, and could be contained on a small piece of plastic rather than a bulky book, people would quite happily trawl through screens and screens of text with the odd image and use their old books as doorstops. As we now know, much to the chagrin of the CD-ROM industry, sales were disappointingly low and as a result forced everybody involved to have a serious re-think on how they were to package such information on this new format. 

A similar pattern of events happened to the e-learning industry when it first started out. Initial success was below what was anticipated, and far fewer people than expected used this new resource. Just because the text and images are on a screen rather than in a book did not mean people were suddenly going to start rushing to the computer to learn sometimes quite dry subjects, even if it would ultimately help them in their respective jobs.

Thus the evolution of e-learning began. Slowly it became visually and aesthetically more pleasing, interactivity grew to be more imaginative and extensive and finally game-based learning on big projects started to appear.

Of course it will always be necessary to produce quick, low cost e-learning at a fraction of the price for certain fields, now known as rapid e-learning. However, in the case of traditional e-learning (high budget, content-rich based modules), although many monotonous examples are still being produced, there is now a commonly felt mantra that to motivate the workforce to use e-learning, it is now not enough for it just to purport to help them better themselves at their work. In addition, e-learning should be fun and engaging. If the subject is not a particularly interesting one, introduce some light relief by way of a simple game or even some humour. In a nutshell, if you personally find it a pleasurable experience, then there’s a good chance your workforce will as well. Dare I say it, it may well be worth investing a little more money to achieve such a goal.

James Lubbock.