Archive for July, 2009

CWA – Te Tere Auraki

July 31st, 2009

tetere
Te Terea Auraki is one of the communities within TKI, the bilingual education portal built by CWA.

Lushai re-interpreted the previous Te Tere Auraki brand and developed the visual identity for the new website.

Visit the live site »

Brand value and the user experience

July 13th, 2009

Like most designers I end up becoming almost subconsciously critical of the things I love. At Lushai its usually my latest ‘user experience’ and most of the time it’s not even digital, it’s anything from door knobs & potato peelers to cell phones and this weekend a new car. All of these experiences adds to the perception of a brand.

Every action builds on the experience of the brand as if it were a person. Recently we have been frequenting a certain drive thru and every time the same branch forgets the same thing. Every time! So much so that I’m beginning to think they just don’t care about me or my family – their customers. Do I really want to mix with this person anymore? Nope, not me.

I’m sure the user experience of a brand is old in branding circles but in the online world it seems so many companies and their branding partners just don’t get it. Their ‘brand’ goes as far as guidelines for logo placement, colour and typography but very rarely do they follow through to the actual experience of their end-users. So the perception of the company is someone who cares a lot about how they look but could care less how they interact with customers. They just don’t get how their persona(lity) is experienced, and ultimately perceived, online.

Turkish anyone?
Try finding anything on a certain online yellow phone directory. The key words ‘Turkish’ and ‘Petone’ should surely bring up the most popular Turkish restaurant in my area. Hmmmm brezelmania anyone? Google does it with a snap but not the big yellow. Guess which one I never use?

That’s a big user experience fail, therefore brand fail. On a side note maybe Yellow need to do something about their SEO, they should be first on the list for New Zealand businesses in any Google search.

That’s only one of many examples where the experience and interaction just lets the brand down big time. How about online banking? My own bank makes everyday business a chore. As if the teller didn’t speak English and had to travel great distances to do anything. The whole experience is slow and unforgiving. If it wasn’t so hard to switch I would have moved out a long time ago that’s for sure.

This is just a tip of the iceberg post. I will be doing plenty of ux brand reviews over the next few months so let me know of your own experiences.

What online experience has hammered your brand perception recently?



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