Interview with Lastminute.com’s Leah Russell
Leah Russell is European Head of Usability for Lastminute.com – one of Europe’s largest and longest established online travel brands offering everything from flights to theatre tickets. I caught up with her to talk about the problems of international user testing, the challenges of mobile internet and whether we’ll ever solve the big questions in user experience.
International user experiences
Giles Colborne: You operate at European level. What are the challenges of running an international user experience team?
Leah Russell: Our European team works as an internal consultancy for teams in each local market. Our team creates the strategy and guidelines. The markets localise – combining our user experience expertise with their local knowledge.
As far as the challenges go – language is always a challenge, but so is local style and approach. There are strong design cultures in different countries and everyone wants to do things that fit their local culture.
Our challenge is to present a consistent brand experience across Europe, while still accommodating those local needs. And it’s absolutely true that certain countries want to do things according to a local pattern. But I’d better be careful what I say! [laughs]
Adapting to cultural differences
GC: Do those cultural differences show up in user testing, too?
LR: Sure. For example, Brits will tell you pretty much what they think, but Italians will be much more polite – they’ll tell you everything is wonderful – but if you watch their actions you see that they may not be finding something easy. And one test plan does not fit everyone’s needs.
You need to adapt it to different countries and how the different markets are most comfortable giving feedback.
GC: How has the company taken to international user testing?
LR: It’s been a real eye opening experience – both for my team and for the company overall. lastminute.com has a real commitment to test properly – at least two rounds of full testing per country each year, which is a big change for us.
Before this, many of our smaller markets had never had the chance to see a user test. It’s been great to allow them to see people using their site for the first time.
I also think it was a big learning experience for people on the Customer Experience side. There were some assumptions that all markets in Europe behave in the same or similar ways on some functionality, but we definitely learned how untrue that was.
You can always read about market statistics and do research about user behaviour, but until you actually see the local users using the local sites, you will never fully understand how to build the site correctly for those market users.
GC: So can you place countries in a hierarchy of maturity of Internet use?
LR: No. Some things work better in certain countries and it depends on the country. That makes it hard to adopt a one-size fits all approach across Europe. So although there’s a drive to find a single solution, different markets still have different needs. In my team, we need people who can think like that – see a single solution and address those local variations.
New plans for mobile
GC: What about mobile? Travel is one of those places that you’d think it’d be perfect, so why has adoption been so slow?
LR: We’ve certainly got exciting mobile plans, in fact last week lastminute.com launched a mobile restaurant search – and we’ve been working with Google to integrate their Gears browser plugin for determining a user’s location.
I believe mobile presents two challenges.
Firstly, competition is really intense in the here and now – the web interface. Companies are so focused on this that they’ve had less time to put into mobile.
And secondly, mobile is moving so fast that it’s hard for everyone to play catch-up let alone innovate. New platforms like the iPhone however, will change that.
Selling complex ideas
GC: One of the problems that’s unique to travel is that it’s often a low margin business, but you’re not selling CDs: the product is complex to describe and explain and there are many factors in buying it. How do you deal with that tension?
LR: This is a difficult one, as we do have to make a complex process easy – and fun – for customers. They are planning their holiday, and are getting excited about it. We don’t want them to get frustrated or stressed out planning something they have been looking forward to for possibly a year. Because of that, we try to do a couple of things:
Firstly, simplify the complex process and quantity of information as much as possible. In user tests, people always ask for more information and if you give it to them they complain that they’re overwhelmed, so it’s a delicate balance to strike.
One way our French market has started to address this is by using video as a great way of presenting information. People get really excited by video. Many other formats seem to raise more questions with users, but video is a good way of presenting the product that is self contained and seems to really help customers make sense out of a great deal of information.
Secondly, we try to help the customer by thinking about things they may not have even considered up until now, such as dining or theatre tickets to add on to travel – things that will make their overall trip more enjoyable and their planning even easier.
We want to show customers that we do more than just sell travel, but also want to help them make the most of their holiday time.
Solving big usability problems
GC: Ever since the dot com crash seven years ago, people have realised the need for usability in websites. Do you think that by now everyone’s solved the big problems in usability and that user experience teams are just dealing with what’s left?
LR: I think we know more about them, but they’re not solved. The problem is that technology moves on. Customers’ expectations move on. They’re changing so rapidly that we’ll always be looking for new ways to solve the big problems.
GC: So customers need new solutions for old problems?
LR: Yes. I’m in awe of how quickly paradigms change. The ways that customers expect to interact with our sites changes very quickly and we constantly have to come up with new ways to address the same issues because previous solutions don’t always cut it anymore.
For instance, I was using a BA in-seat entertainment system – one of their latest ones – just the other day and I found myself trying to use it as a touch screen, swooping my hand across it, just as you would with an iPhone. I thought ‘where did that come from?’ and was shocked to notice how quickly my own expectations had changed. A few years ago I’d never have tried that, but now, it is a customer expectation.
It’s a common problem – how to wake up a touch screen application – but customers’ expectations for addressing it are changing every day, and therefore our solutions have to evolve, too.
Meeting customer expectations
GC: How would you say customers’ expectations are changing?
LR: They’re much less tolerant. Even little things like spelling mistakes on a page can undermine trust in the whole user experience and then they’re back on Google looking for somewhere else to go. People expect you to be as close to perfect as possible.
GC: So are you using more advanced techniques like eye tracking?
LR: Well, user testing companies that have eye tracking will tell you its wonderful and those that don’t will tell you it doesn’t matter.
This year, we’ve decided to concentrate on the big stuff and are not yet using eye tracking. But you may have noticed that we have a rather strong pink in our colour palette [laughs] and I think eye tracking is a tool we can definitely use in our future, helping us to determine how to best use that strong colour to guide users’ attention, rather than shock them.
The future of user experience
GC: Looking to the future what changes do you see for user experience?
LR: I think there are more opportunities to bring new ideas into the user experience. For instance, applying ideas from games design to the user interface, and thinking about how people interact with other entities – offline objects – and applying those sorts of interactions.
We need those fundamental skills, but I see paradigms continuing to change. We need to keep adding new ideas and finding better solutions.
Summary
It was great to catch up with Leah, and I hope you have enjoyed getting an insight in to the thinking within Lastminute.com’s approach to user centred design.
This interview is the first of a series of interviews we are running with leading industry figures, keep a lookout for the next one!
About the author
Giles has been making products more usable for over fifteen years. He was President of the UK Usability Professionals’ Association from 2003-2007 and speaks frequently on usability in the UK and overseas. He writes on usability for Revolution magazine and was one of the editors of the PAS 78 accessibility guide from the British Standards Institute. Email Giles, or call +44 (0)117 946 3930
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