Goodbye ABN AMRO

Got bit of sentimental after hearing that ABN AMRO's name would be changed to RBS (Royal bank of Scotland). Perhaps the reason is given the fact that I had been associated with ABN AMRO for the past 9-10 years or so. Not many of my colleagues know this but I was the Information Architect who was part of the design team that had created the the entire ABN AMRO net banking website.  This was way back in 2001 or something. I was working in an IT company in Delhi. We used to deal with ABN Delhi HO. This was my 1st experience of dealing with IA of a full fledged banking application. I remember the workshops that the design team and client used to have at ABN's CP office. We used to do endless rounds of white boarding & card sorting exercises to arrive on user mental models. Of course there were rounds of heated discussions also with the customer during the workshops which used to spice up our thinking process. In one such incidence we were discussing the Online Account Summary flow. The client had a 'banker's view of the same while we felt it won't work and presented end user's view point. It went on for some time. We took a prompt decision. We went down to the branch and randomly selected few users and expressed out point of view to understand what they feel and they agreed with our thinking! Bang on. The discussion was closed. The client team were a bunch of tough nuts but they accepted points when presented with logic & strong rational. When the banking website was launched, we had even created a banking site demo which used to be part of the online application for quite a few years. We had slipped in our names in the demo as account holders and shown lakhs of rupees in fictitious account number. That was the only closest way of demonstrating that we were quite rich! :-) 

When I shifted to Mumbai in 2003 my relation with the bank continued in form of corporate salary account which I got transferred to Pune when I shifted the base here in 2006. I still maintain the account and use the internet banking that I created. I have always loved ABN's services. In my 7 years relationship with the bank,I have only visited my bank once for sign verification else all my transactions have been carried online or through doorstep banking. After nearly 10 years of its online existence, I am glad to see that the core task flows and navigation of the net banking application has not changed at all. It's means a lot as it bears a stamp of users acceptance and seamless interaction & transaction that they have on the site. In fact I was told that the online site was referred as one of the best internet banking applications present in India. 

Now that the bank has been bought over by RBS, I hope the services that I enjoyed earlier would continue to be the same. It's very weird feeling calling my bank RBS now ;-) but hopefully over the period will get used to the new name now. :-)        

Foxed over flux!

I was in two minds about writing this post. This topic had been on my mind for quite some time but I was really dragging on this post. Well some personal experience around this topic last Friday triggered me to put my thoughts across – and of course some help from Sarah Palin!

Couple of the days ago, Sarah Palin called Twitter as ‘little twittering thing’. It was an innocent response to her reference to how speedily things happen on Twitter.  But what came out was the negative connotation rather than an endearing one.

Last week I was discussing an onsite project opportunity with one of the program mangers. Since they work a lot in embedded & desktop apps space, I highlighted them on how they can pitch for technologies like Silverlight & Flex in their projects which are the emerging technologies in RIA (Rich Internet Applications) space.  The Program manager replied ‘oh yeah we are aware of flex…it’s to do with UI skin & design…’. I told him it’s not just about UI skin but more to do with backend technologies which makes the interaction simple. He and his team mate reply ‘ but the flux presentation that you sent in proposal talked about that’. Which presentation I inquired, since I was managing the flex initiatives and I had never sent any prezo. The FLUX prezo – the guy replies. And then it struck me. He was referring to the new capability presentation sent by the usability practice titled: flux. I winced my teeth and politely went on to explain the bizarre branding name that has cropped up couple of months back.

The 1st time I heard about the new branding for usability team I was very surprised. I saw the branding in a team mate’s email signature and this is how it looked.       

The other variation of the branding I saw was like this: flUX which is used in document or as file name of any capability prezo or overview. It didn’t have any tag line along with it. Then I also see it in email credentials like this: flUX – The User Experience Group
 
Branding is a very important exercise and there are various aspects you need to keep in mind before going in for brand christening. Is branding needed for a usability group working in a pure play technology company – I’ll come to that part later but my 1st question to myself and to few peers around was what did flUX – the word meant to them. I was told by the mates who coined the branding that the reason behind using the word flUX is that in metallurgy flux is a chemical cleaning agent that removes oxides from the metal to be joined. Since in UX space we remove the ‘impurities’ related to ‘bad experience’ hence flUX. To add to the touch was the byline ‘flawless user experience’, the ‘fl’ from flUX stands for flawless and ‘UX’ for user experience. Neat. But do people really understand that’s how the term got coined? When put on a ppt or when sent in a document to customer/prospect/internal stake holders – will they understand what flUX means? From my last week experience I don’t think so. Intelligence doesn’t always sell. In colloquial language flux most of the times is used in negative connotation. It means ‘uncertainty’. His mind was in a state of flux over the decision. 8 out of 10 times in spoken language it will be commonly used to express a state of indecisiveness. The remaining 2 times folks in white coats would be using it. The point that I want to make is when it comes to branding, you also need to consider all these aspects, debate it out, research and then proceed. By discussing it internally with 2-3 practice guys or getting the branding feedback done from few external ex- college design friends won’t help in discovering the real issues. A brand name needs to be really thought through; researched and extensive feedback needs to be taken.    

 I know that one of the lessons in branding is also to make your brand stand out, think of uncommon brand names/acronyms, to have a recall value but you need to consider that the brand name unknowingly doesn’t give different context meanings. Also as my flex-flux experience highlighted, the brand shouldn’t get confused with something else, especially in a technology company where the word got confused with a core technology which the company is building capabilities in.  

More than often, you might not be available for any presentation or physically won’t be present when flux branded collateral would be presented or discussed. The luxury of ‘Hi we are from usability practice and our group is named as flux which stands for flawless user experience…” won’t be available. Then what?

Francois gossieaux in his article on customer vs brand advocacy says “most buying decisions happen when your people are not in the room – not part of the conversations that lead to buying decisions. So for them (your company’s marketing team) to be brand advocates is to a certain degree a waste of time. What you need is for your customers and prospects to be your brand advocates.” And this is where the 2nd important point of my whole take on branding comes in.

Should branding be done for usability team or the services that they pitch? Your customers be it internal stakeholders or external one will not recall your group brand name when they need your services. When there is a need for UI design/evaluation etc, do you think the question that will pop up in their mind would be “hey we need to call flux guys in for this”? No. Don’t be under any illusion. For your internal stakeholders, you will always be known as the ‘usability team’, ‘UI team’ , ‘UI guys’ – irrespective of any fancy name that you coin. When the call would come, the top of the mind recall would be usability, UI design, html developer and NOT flux. Similarly for external customers flux will not make any sense. They would be approaching ‘the company‘for certain services which may or may not be aligned to UI/design and not flux. Even if you send them capability branded doc all pasted with flux – their final call of action would be with ‘the company’ and NOT the branded group. Don’t expect the customer to call the company and say “ I need the flux team services for my website revamp”.

Brands need to be created in usability but these should be around the services that you offer. Create brands around your specialized offerings. Let these be the talking point amongst your internal stakeholders and customers. Your well executed work itself becomes a brand within the organization and has a better recall value for the employee and the group than any fancy brand names. Create brands around your resources who come with niche skills.  Their skills and knowledge in the specialized area would indirectly reflect upon company’s capabilities and your practice and help in getting business.

To sum up this branding discussion, signing off with a testimonial that one of the UX person recently received from an internal stakeholder.  Notice the highlighted part.

“…... Minor details on the portal in terms of graphic representation was taken care of well by co-ordinating with others in the UE (Flux?) team…”

The question mark still remains.