Personalisation - The future of the web

Posted by: Matt Lasky, Senior Designer 12 Jul 10 - 1:49PM | World Wide Web

I watched an interesting programme on bbc2 the other week. It was about design and where personalised design came from.

Let me briefly explain how it went:
After the 2nd world war, when the world was a more stable place, people found that they liked nice things to own that they could not have owned before. This sparked an industry of design and manufacturing for the home, but only the most affluent could afford quality design that felt like it was made just for them.

In the harsh economic climate of the early 1980’s concerns about the standard of British design moved up the political agenda and design was crucial to the revival of the British economy. Margaret Thatcher was involved in setting up design studio initiatives in England - after visiting Sweden and seeing the vision they had.

So the 80's became the time of low cost products, which seemed to be designed for your own identity. Personalised design on a massive scale. We now live in a world of designer products from kettles to lemon squeezers that seem as if they have been designed just for us. Research shows quite simply that when we purchase things we like it makes us happier.

The “personal” computer compounded this and the idea of personal products has been growing ever since with the iPod and Mobile Phone prominent examples.

So to the internet.

The internet is no exception with the BBC leading the way a year or so ago with their personalised home page (Select the location for weather updates, move boxes around to set your own homepage). With e-commerce sites following suit such as John Lewis (remembering your last viewed items), ebay (Remebering your name, your last search) etc. This is a great way for e-commerce sites to make life as easy as possible for the user - the less work a user has to do the more profit they should receive.

Social networking sites are also heavily involved. With the latest facebook apps that intertwine with other websites so that you can see what your friends have been upto on the site, or simply clicking a “like button” to show your friends what you like.

Recruitment websites have been slow to pick up the personalised design – But there are many possibilities:

Imagine when a candidate arrives at a recruitment website – it already displays jobs that are specific to the candidate.
It could display the last jobs you viewed.
The information of a sector a candidate is interested in.
Blogs or news that relate to a candidates industry.
Targeted advertising or job campaigns (like google targeted adds).

The list is endless. And one thing is for certain, the web is growing into a more personalised experience. The question is will you embrace this or be left behind?

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Edward Bernays (1891-1995), for many the father of PR, was one of the first to introduce what later become the "lifestyle". Personalisation was the vehicle that allowed political, social and economical systems to define our lives and thinking. If there is anything to learn from the past about the future of the web, then Edward Bernays should be studied along, Tim Berners-Lee and Seth Godin.

Posted by: Sotos, Date 12 July 2010, 04:16PM

Interesting articles focussing on Zappos shoe shop, http://bit.ly/b6D3Xy. I have noticed similar ads on my gmail account (seem to be based on searches I have made)....Amazon must also be using a similar model to Zappos! This also links back to Facebook's open Graph, maybe soon we won't need to search for content, it will find us......

Posted by: Andrew, Date 04 August 2010, 08:55AM

Fantastic blog post Matt, very thought provoking!!

Posted by: Nadia, Date 19 August 2010, 12:51AM