From making mobile phone bills understandable to assisting single parents, the following examples prove that information design is an invaluable discipline
Project: Improving customer satisfaction in Royal Mail's invoices
Client: Royal Mail
Designer: Boag Associates
Year: 2001-2003
Using internal and external stakeholder review, user-experience research, and the development of key performance indicators, redesigned Royal Mail business to business invoices could be measured against improvements in customer satisfaction, reductions in unnecessary helpline calls and increased speed of payment.
The design won a plain language award and an International Typographic Designers Award in 2004.
Project: Mobile phone bills for today's mobile services
Client: Vodafone
Designer: Enterprise IG
Year: 2005
Mobile phones now do a lot more than make phone calls, and the new generation of phone bills needs to cope with a wide range of information and entertainment products. Also, bills are critical communications that can easily erode the brand promise, and detract from the customer experience. The specialist information design team at Enterprise IG used a range of innovative approaches to help Vodafone customers understand their bill, achieving hugely improved rates of customer satisfaction, and using 35% less paper.
Project: Improving conversion rates on a web form
Client: Loanbright, Inc
Designer: Effortmark
Year: 2003
Loanbright's web form captured details from people interested in re-mortgaging their property. The existing form was looking tired and the business wanted to improve it. Effortmark recommended changes based on good practice in form design. The new form improved conversion rates (the proportion of visitors to the form who successfully complete it) by over 50%.
Project: Shaping information for lone parents
Client: One Parent Families
Designer: Text Matters
Year: 2003–6
Focusing on the very different information needs of single parents and their advisers, the charity One Parent Families worked with Text Matters to develop an innovative research-write-edit-design-publish process which delivers very different information products to different user groups from the same underlying information in a largely-automated publication process. Professional advisers can buy a printed reference book or host an electronic reference resource on their Intranet. Single parents can use the web-based Lone Parent Helpdesk which uses a tick-the-box approach based on key events and issues in a lone parent's life - again, using essentially the same, high-quality, information. The system helps One Parent Families reach diverse user groups with high-quality information, promptly and at relatively low cost.
Project: Helping writers collaborate effectively
Client: e-skills UK
Designer: Text Matters
Year: 2003-5
Documents which are developed by several writers and editors through many revisions and stages are notoriously complicated to manage. Working with e-skills UK, Text Matters developed a web-based writing system which allowed e-skills editors, subject specialists, educators and regulators to collaborate effectively on the development of occupational standards for the IT, telecoms and contact centre industries in less time, at less cost and with less confusion than similar previous projects.
Project: Increased take-up of services from the Key Skills Support Programme
Client: KSSP/Learning and Skills Development Agency
Designer: Boag Associates
Year: 2001-2003
Using a controlled research programme, brainstorming, scenario development, rapid prototyping and focus groups, Boag Associates developed a strategy for a sustained direct (and email) marketing campaign, incorporating a refocused brand, and clearer and more timely communication with potential users. The project achieved a 100% increase in take-up over eight months.
Project: Forms without errors
Client: General Social Care Council
Designer: Enterprise IG
Year: 2002-2006
Following government legislation in 2001, all people working in social care have to be centrally registered for the first time. There was great potential for confusion: a large number of people to be registered; a range of categories in which they could be registered; a brand new system; and interaction between the separate registers for the four home nations. Through careful structuring, writing, design and testing, a suite of forms was developed to cope with the full range of complex situations. For one of the first forms in the suite, just 0.28% were found to be incomplete – an outstanding outcome.