Interview: a specialized consultancy
I recently came along Travel UCD, a usability consultancy specialized in a very specific market (travel and hospitality web design). I was intrigued: it makes sense to specialize in a market like this because you can reuse a lot of specific knowledge, but I didn't know of other usability consultants specializing like this. I wondered how it was working out for Alex, and whether it could be a model for others. Alex has an academic background is in user interface design & development, a degree in Applied Computing and has worked within the travel, IT or web industry since 1995.
Q: Hi Alex, thanks for doing this interview. When did you start the company, and how did you come up with the idea of limiting your offerings to such a specific market?
Alex: I started in April 2002. At that time I had just been employed as head of web design & development for a leading consortium of hotel chains in Europe. With my expertise in creating hotel reservation websites for both B2C & B2B marketplaces, and prior experience as a Managing Director of a UK based tour operator, it seemed natural to continue within this sector with Travel UCD. A large amount of the design work that is undertaken on travel websites involves having an understanding of travel & reservation technology - not the normal realm of a web designer or usability consultant. It seemed like there was a market for this.
Q: You are offering some reports with best practices for download; some free, others for payment, similar to what the NNGroup does. What is the thinking behind offering these? Do they sell well? Do they lead to potential clients contacting you?
The NNGroup model was an inspiration, but our reports address specific design questions common to many online travel websites - much more niche than the NNGroup. A useful part of the reports is that we include all tasks and observations from our usability testing. Designers working on similar websites can take the same tasks and repeat the usability testing on their sites and compare results.
We started the reports project for three main reasons. First, it demonstrates to clients and potential clients the kind of knowledge that a specialist usability consultant can bring to a project. Usability is still an alien term for many project and product managers and I wanted to have something tangible that I could demonstrate. Much of my work (prototypes, designs etc) is for future projects - or projects that are not public - so I can't show this work to potential clients for contractual reasons.
Second, and this is important, it defines our intellectual property in a public location. As I work in one specific sector I may be working for clients who compete with each other in some way. By publishing the reports I can clearly demonstrate the key intellectual property that Travel UCD know prior to a project starting.
Third, it provides some revenue from sales. The free report has had about 6000 downloads since July 2002. The 2 recent reports, available for US$150 each, haven't quite sold that many, but enough to cover the research and promotion costs. Most of the household names in online travel from all corners of the globe have purchased their copies as well as a few travel technology providers.
Q: How do your organize your research? Do you wait for client engagements to pay for testing? Or do you organize tests outside of client work? How do you store your data? (video, ...?) Do you revisit earlier tests for more insights later?
The research for the reports is conducted proactively. I choose topics that I know are of keen interest to travel website designers & product managers. These questions may have come up at industry conferences or from previously unanswered design questions from earlier projects.
I begin by looking at the main design approaches to a particular issue. I then evaluate statistically how many travel websites apply the design in the alternative ways. Following that I then take a sample of 4 or 5 websites who all use different approaches and then conduct usability testing with 12 users on these 4 or 5 sites. Although not statistically significant, I believe that by tying my observations from the testing with the statistical analysis and my own experience, I can devise guidelines that define best industry practice.
At this stage I have not revisited earlier tests as there are so many areas left to study!
Q: So what do you think is the best site in this category you have seen, from a usability point of view?
I tend to look at travel websites on a product by product basis rather than as a whole site. For example I may say that a certain site has a good hotel reservation booking process whereas another site may have a well designed flight section. At this time I don't have an all round firm favourite. In my opinion even the major online travel websites that everyone knows and uses demonstrate usability flaws that impact on the user experience.
This leaves some space in the market for a well designed website to acquire greater market share using usability as the core of their strategy much like Google has for search engines. In the travel industry this would probably be an existing company not a new entrant as the success of travel websites is not solely defined by design; underlying technology and having a large range of well priced products and inventory are equally important.
Q: What would your advice be for someone wanting to set up a usability consultancy?
Ensure you have a potential client list before you set up as finding them afterwards is much harder.
Thanks Alex! I am looking forward to seeing how your company flourishes. I also wonder wether this could be a model for other people wanting to start a usability consultancy. I can imagine a usability consultant specialized in, say, human resource intranets. Or gambling sites. Lots of possibilities there.