In the light of recent fiascos at a number of UK companies and government departments, it’s important to realise that with each event consumers and the public’s trust in these bodies diminishes.
Our clients trust us with sensitive information. We take great care of that trust because once it is lost it won’t come back.
Like Northern Rock, we hold peoples money for them. Which is why it is essential that we have reserves to meet any redemption.
Like HM Revenue & Customs, we hold data on all of our end users. We have a number of processes to ensure that this data is held securely. We are registered as a Data Controller with the Information Controllers Office under the Data Protection Act (1984), and review our processes with regard to privacy and security.
Like Southern Water, we make assurances about our level of service. While we are not regulated we do have a duty of care. Once you start being deceitful, you create an edifice built on lies and misinformation. Truth and openness is a much stronger platform on which to grow a business.
Our clients are more than welcome to ask us about our business processes, and what we are doing to protect their money, their data, and their users privacy.
Everyone is obsessed with change, but there’s nothing worse than empty rhetoric. Change has become an overvalued commodity, change for the sake of change, with almost no consideration of what is going to be changed and to what.
As they say, the more things change the more they stay the same.
Check this out. Apparently, Hillary Clinton “embodies change”, while Milt Romney has “brought change for the last 25 years”, but I think he might have been referring to his lunch money.
If there’s a serious point to make here, then make sure if you are looking to change behaviour with an incentive, be clear what the new behaviour should be. For corporations, behaviour change has to also be good for the bottom line.
As we develop the next version of iD-points, it’s tempting to add in a lot more features and functions. In trying to try and meet the exact requirements of everyone, a once elegant solution can become riddled with complexity, and beset with kludges, hacks and workarounds. Giving in to this temptation leads to feature creep, which leads to bloatware, and before you know where you are you’ve created Microsoft Office.
Taking the path of simplicity is more challenging, but ultimately leads to products and services that cut through the complexity too often associated with computer hardware, software and services, and deliver real benefits to users.
The iPhone could be considered the acme of simplification. Apple have looked at the whole mobile phone experience, from purchase and activation, user experience and functionality. At every point they have thought long and hard about how the process can be simpler, more elegant.
The result is a smart phone that has redefined the market. It’s beauty lies as much in what was left out as what has been included. It can almost be a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking.
If products like the iPhone teach us anything, it’s that stripping away is incredibly empowering, and ultimately leads to a better user experience, and a better product.
A reading of the Pareto principle tells us that 80% of users only use 20% of the features of an application. The challenge is to create systems that are loose-fit enough to adapt not only to the requirements of different companies, but critically, the changing requirements of any organisation.
