Summary

In this episode, Lucy Collins interviews Scott Fulton, Director of Digital Rebels, about the importance of evidence-based design in creating effective digital services. Scott shares his experience of becoming a digital leader and the pivotal moment when he realised the importance of user-centered design. They discuss the common mistakes organisations make in designing websites and intranets, such as being organisation-centric and not prioritising user needs. Scott emphasises the need for organisations to be open to being wrong and to prioritise customer empathy. He also shares his insights on coaching and training teams to thrive in the digital age.

Keywords

evidence-based design, user-centered design, website design, intranet design, customer empathy, coaching, training

Takeaways

• Designing digital services based on assumptions and without user evidence can lead to ineffective and unhelpful experiences for users.
• Organisations should prioritize customer empathy and be willing to admit when they don't know something, in order to gather evidence and design better digital services.
• Intranets often suffer from egocentric thinking and department-centric structures, which can result in content that is not user-driven.
• Investing in employees and providing them with the information they need to do their jobs better ultimately benefits the external customers.
• Cutting through the noise and prioritizing tasks that deliver value to customers is essential for teams to thrive in the digital age.

Titles

• Prioritising Customer Empathy and User Needs
• Common Mistakes in Website and Intranet Design

Sound Bites

• "Design your website in the boardroom is the worst thing you can do."
• "The lack of evidence combined with organisation-centric thinking is a common problem in digital services."
• "Being okay with being wrong or not knowing is fundamental to designing effective digital services."

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Overview

02:04 Transitioning to User-Centered Design

05:25 Common Mistakes in Website and Intranet Design

13:03 Prioritizing Customer Empathy and User Needs

25:16 Coaching and Training Teams to Thrive in the Digital Age

Ep 6. Thinking in an evidence-based way with Scott Fulton

Lucy Collins

Welcome to the Web Usability podcast, where we explore what it takes to make the web a more accessible and enjoyable place for everyone. Whether you're a website owner, developer, or just a curious mind, we're here to share insights, tips, and stories that can help you improve the user experience of your digital world. I'm Lucy Collins, Director of Web Usability and your guide on this journey to better usability. If you need a transcript of this podcast, just visit our website at www.webusability.co.uk

Now, let's dive in..

Today I am joined by Scott Fulton, Director of Digital Rebels, Leadership Coach and International Speaker. Scott is a busy man at Digital Rebels. He is responsible for designing and developing websites, intranets and apps that work for both businesses and customers and are built on evidence, strong values, human beings and the courage to embrace change and new digital developments. He's also a coach and trainer helping teams overcome challenges many of us will be familiar with, trying to juggle too much, burnout, bogged down in the detail with no chance to step back and look at the big picture all of which helps teams thrive in the digital age. We had the pleasure of first working with Scott many moons ago when he headed up the digital team at Avon and Somerset Police. In this role, he grew the force's web presence from nothing to a best -in -class example of how public sector organisations can and should serve their customers digitally. It is a real joy to have him here on the podcast today, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing his wisdom.

Scott, hi. How are you today?

Scott Fulton

Hi, Lucy. I'm good, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Lucy Collins

No, it's an absolute pleasure. So, there's obviously quite a lot there in that intro that you've done and are doing. I mean, tell me how have you ended up where you are today?

Scott Fulton

So, without boring your listeners with the whole life story, I did spend 20 years, as you mentioned, in the police heading up the team there, primarily the website, built the first one from scratch, didn't have a clue what I was doing and hired people much smarter than me to then take on that role. I think it's fair to say that one of the biggest milestones and not just to big up your company, which is of course amazing was actually working with your mum and dad as part of bringing in Web Usability to help us. And one of the things that will probably be one of the themes I major on today really is about that point where for the first time my eyes were opened to me making assumptions naively, foolishly that I knew what users would do. And my team would be designing websites in our office speaking to users without getting any evidence, just thinking we knew best. And maybe there's a bit of arrogance there. I'd like to say it was more naivety. And when I first worked with your dad and he said, you're doing it the wrong way in a very polite way. And we sat in a room watching users using our website and struggling for the first time. That to me changed everything into my, my mindset, how I approach my work, where I am today. So maybe we can delve into that, but that's kind of a bit of a nutshell. It was all about actually suddenly realising; I don't know what users are to do and helping people understand that that is really important and to design your website in the boardroom is the worst thing you can do.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. And imagine that's something that you've hopefully seen changed quite a bit in the time that you've been working in this digital space. It was, I believe, quite the norm for people to be designing in the boardroom, you know, 15, 20 years ago. These days, there definitely feels like there's a move towards being more user cantered and evidence -based, which we will definitely dig into more, but it's probably not always the case for everything. And it would be interesting to talk about some examples of where it's worked, where it hasn't worked, that sort of thing. I also thought interesting, you were very polite about the way that my dad suggested you might not be doing things the right way. I can't imagine he was that polite, knowing the way that he would offer consultancy. But yeah, I mean, it's, one of the lovely things about being part of this family business is that I feel like user evidence and this sort of research is sort of in my blood as I take over the business from my mum and dad.

Scott Fulton

He was polite, but I needed it. It was almost that wake-up call to say, you don't really know. Let's come and let's sit in a room and let's watch users using your website from the other side of a wall. And I brought my team with me, and my team were there naively thinking, we put this here on the left and the menus here on the right. And of course, users will know where to find it. And the minute we started to see them struggling and we were almost shouting at the screen, it's there on the left. Why can't you see it? Why can't you see it? Suddenly walked out of that a different team. So yeah, your dad was polite, but it was almost the wake up call and virtual slap that we needed to say, get out of your heads and actually work with users. To me, it's so obvious now, but back then, yeah.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. So that probably leads us nicely onto where you are now. obviously, Director Digital Rebels, the strap line on your site is, employees and their customers are suffering with awful websites, intranets and apps. And when I saw that, I just immediately felt it resonated. It's something that we agree with wholeheartedly. There are a lot of really terrible websites and definitely terrible intranets and apps that are out there still. Too many digital services, I'd say, are just really not up to standard. Why do you think that is?

Scott Fulton

I think because, you did mention earlier, you think it's not quite as bad as it used to be. I still see it though. And I think that's why there is still this problem. And I'm working with a client at the moment. I can't say who they are, but I'm the outsider saying the same to them that your dad was saying to me all those years ago. Almost championing the users, trying to protect the users and customers from the organisation. Because I think fundamentally there are people in there who don't know that it's important to get evidence that to work with companies like yourselves to say, actually, let's actually see what our users want and let's see what they do. It's very organisational centric, especially with intranets, but also bizarrely with websites where I've had clients where they think the most important part of the website is there About Us page with all their photographs. And I'm like, the users don't care. They're not browsing your website at home saying; I'm going to go and see what who's works with the company. They might do if they're thinking about working for them, but fundamentally it's the same with the police website. got so many examples of that. Can I give you an example now? that right?

Lucy Collins

Yeah, no, please. I was going to ask next for, mean, I've described it in my notes as horror stories, but we don't perhaps have to go that far with it. But yeah, certainly any examples where you feel the lack of evidence has been quite detrimental to the site would be fantastic.

Scott Fulton

Yeah. So, I think it's the lack of evidence combined with the organisation centric thinking. And when I help clients with building websites, I say to them, this website isn't your website. It's not for your company. It's for your customers. I'm trying to get them to think in that way. One of the stark examples I can give is we had a burglary page on the police website. Now the user goal for that page was I've been a victim of burglary. What do I need to do? And it was very clear. set out steps, you know, secure the property, contact the police, but all those kinds of things. But we fundamentally knew that's why users were coming to that page. Now the police, my colleagues in the police at the time, wanted to give out crime prevention advice about burglary and make sure that the public were putting prickly plants in their garden and locking their doors and locking their windows. So, I was sat in a quite senior meeting where an officer pulled up the burglary page and said, Scott, this page has not got any crime prevention advice on it. And I said, I know, because it's too late. The people on that page have been burgled.

And that's like them phoning you on 999 to say, I've been burgled and saying, wait a minute, before we send out the cops, have you locked your windows? Have you put some prickly plants in your garden? And the time and place to communicate those crime prevention changes are not at the point when they need that service. So, I think that's going on in the organisations that we work with, your company, I'm sure, as well as me, where there are just people who are just stuck in organisational centric thinking and not trying to put themselves and have empathy for users. I think that's another bit.

Lucy Collins

And I think you're right. It's two halves of the same coin in many ways, in that you've got a concern about, it's almost like there is a fear that we don't want to hear from what the users say because it's going to not align with the way that we want to run our business or the key things that we feel need to come across. And as a result, you end up with all this push messaging. You end up with lots of people shouting about what needs to be on the homepage, what's most important. But actually, this is coming from a point of view not something that's evidence -based, not something that's user -led. This is, have a drum to bang. I want to bang that drum on the website, even if it's not something that people want to hear about. And yet you're completely right that I think we still see that today. There are some organisations we work with who are better than others, definitely. Another guest I had on the podcast a few episodes ago was from David Austin Roses. And when I asked him the question about balancing organisational priorities and user goals, he said he didn't see the difference between the two. He thought that the two were one and the same. And I thought that was quite interesting and quite unusual answer to that question because it often feels like organisational priorities and strategies are at odds with what the user wants, but fundamentally they shouldn't be because the two things, you know, without your users, without knowing what they want, you're not going to able to deliver what it is that they need in the long run. So yeah, I thought that was an interesting take on things.

Scott Fulton

absolutely. I agree. I think it's surprising how often that isn't the case. actually for, you know, public sector is one thing, you know, people are brought in to be public servants and you think that's their job. And I would even find myself arguing with people saying that this isn't aligned to what the public need. And sometimes I think there's some egos going on where, this is my pet project and I want to shout about it on the website or the internet. like, I'm sorry, but very few people care. You're the only person that cares about this. And its quite difficult conversations because then you get seen as Scott's negative and his team won't do what we want. we're like, trying to protect the public from the organisation. And in the commercial world, of course, it could mean cost customers and lost sales fundamentally if you're putting it not putting the customers first.

Lucy Collins

I love this, this idea that your role is protector of the customer. mean, it sounds so wonderful and so true though, because as you say, if okay, not only might you not be delivering what they need, but actually you might be delivering stuff to them is damaging to their perception of you as an organization. Because as you say, if you're leading first with, this is us, look at us, aren't we the best people ever? And it's like, yeah, but what do you do? And how can you help me? Those are the questions that I really need to answer first. And then once I feel confident that you offer what I can do, then tell me about yourself, then give me the credibility, then tell me that you're going to be a worthwhile person to work with. But as you say, that big about us story, the who we are page, the pictures of our faces is not going to be people's first port of call when they come to your website and your face as pretty as it is, I'm sure it's not the first thing that they want to see. that you make it,

Scott Fulton

You made me think about that whole big banner thing. You know, how many times have I had to say the banners don't work. It's like shouting at somebody's face when they come into the site. And I try and liken to it, certainly in the communication space where their job essentially, certainly in intranets, I've done a lot of work with intranets is quite politely the job of the communicators, largely to interrupt people from what they're trying to do on an intranet. So, they want to put big banners on the homepage. want like quick links. And this is important. This is important. The whole homepage becomes a battleground when actually, as you've said quite rightly, the time get that message to them is at the end of the journey when they've completed their goal. And I would tell the story of again, the police example, sorry, it's going to be plenty of those because it was in their 20 years. But someone walks into a police station to report a crime, remove the friction as much as possible, make that a seamless experience. Then at the end, when they leave, you would give them the leaflet to say, really sorry, you were a victim of burglary. Here's a leaflet for you to follow some advice, make sure it doesn't happen to you again. That's the time to do it. However, the equivalent of what they were doing before they let them in the front door, jump in front of them with a big sign and poster shouting in their face saying, hey, look at this, look at this. So yeah, anyway, I could talk for hours about it.

Lucy Collins

No, I love that analogy. think that's, really brings it to life because I think this is one of the hard things that I think people try, struggle to understand. it's why it was lovely hearing you talk about the experience of watching user testing kind of in the early days when you were working with and how you were there literally shouting through a wall at someone not being able to find the thing that you wanted them to find. But without that experience, without feeling the pain, as we always say, it can be really hard to understand why this might not be the appropriate place to put this information in the journey or even what journey that person is on. to sort of bring it into a physical space to recreate that experience for someone walking into a police station is a really nice way of bringing it to life and I think getting people to feel that pain and also see how ridiculous it is. Yeah, of course you would jump in front of someone walking to a police station and wave a banner about burglary prevention. You would be there helping them. You'd be there consoling them and offering the right advice. it's a really nice way of doing things. We've talked quite a bit about what people are doing wrong. What is it that you think organisations can be doing to improve the experiences that their customers have online? So many years of experience with this now. I'm sure you've got some nice examples you might be able to bring to the table here.

Scott Fulton

Yeah. So obviously if you haven't got the in -house capabilities, then hire professionals like yourselves, of course. And I'm not being paid to, to recommend Web Usability here, but I think the fundamental number of it is being okay with being wrong or not knowing. think one of the biggest challenges for me as a digital leader, and I think this applies to any role actually these days. I used to feel that it was my job to know and be right about what the customer would do. And that would be just have this blinkered biased vision. But actually, if you are prepared to say, don't know, my job is to find out, not necessarily have all the answers, but to find out. think the companies that think differently like that, that are flexible, that I'm going to use agile with a small a but think openly and are willing to work alongside customers to get their staff sitting with customers, getting them out and about. So, I would get my developers out to sit in the front office, to spend time in the custody cells, to actually work with their colleagues and see in the real world environment how the customer's using their tools and applications. I think that is critical. It's very easy to sit in the boardroom, as I said earlier, and design things and think, make lots of assumptions. So, I think what works is you know, being humble and saying, I don't know, but I'm going to find out because that's really important. And it's that, that customer empathy, I think, I think that's the nub of it really to be successful in this space.

Lucy Collins

And do you think, cause as you said, as a digital leader, sometimes you feel like you need to have the answers. And when you then hold your hand ups and go, actually, I don't know, I need to go and speak to some people that obviously feels like it needs to have buy -in from the organisation more broadly, you know, outside of any digital team, they need to know they can come to you with questions, but they won't necessarily immediately get answers, but they will be able to get something evidence based in the long run. How do you think you can kind of foster that wider trust or the wider understanding that it's okay not to have the answers in this digital space?

Scott Fulton

I found the most powerful was actually I would get a lot of people coming to me with their own ideas about what should be on the website. So, this thing is on this other police force website, so we should have and I would say, okay, well, do we have any evidence that that is working for them? How do we know that isn't actually making their customer experience really bad and frustrating them? And then it gets people to take a step back and think, wait a minute, actually, it's trying to get people to realise they might not be right. And if Scott, who's meant to be the expert, doesn't know, but is willing to find out, then a police officer who's designed a website in Word overnight, which did happen quite often, I'd get a Word document sent to me saying, I've designed a new website. I don't tell you how to be a police officer, but quite politely would say, thank you, but how do we know this is going to work? Can we get some evidence? So actually, I found that was quite disarming for those people who came and tried to tell me how to do my job, frankly. And I would say, well, I don't know, why don't we work together to try and get some evidence and find out what the customer needs. And I still do that with my clients today. So working on an intranet project at the moment. There's a lot of assumptions being made. There's a lot of different parts of the organisation is working in silos. And again, I'm trying to get them to think more openly and say, we don't know what's going to work. Do we want this to be successful or not? Because actually if we, what's the phrase? The sign of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. I can't read, something like that. I've got exactly the same problem with a client at the moment where they don't want to resource the intranet properly. They think, this time it will be different.

And we won't take any evidence -based thinking. So, I'm trying to negotiate and influence them to say, you're going to end up with the same problem you've got at the moment. The problem you've got is not about the platform, it's about the thinking, it's about the governance, it's about resourcing it properly. It's about being user centric; it's about having governance principles for the content so it doesn't become a wild west like the current internet, all those kinds of things.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. Interesting. I'm just a boggled by the fact that police officers would give you websites of word documents. I I'd love to have that kind of self -confidence to think that I could redesign an entire forces website.

Scott Fulton

Their heart was in right place. I'm not...

Lucy Collins

Absolutely. Brilliant. So, I mean, you touched on a little bit there about how you are helping organisations go for this evidence -based user -led approach to their digital service design. But do you want to elaborate on that a little bit more? mean, how are you helping people? And if there are any success stories that you'd be willing to share, again, no need to mention names, but it'd be lovely to hear some more of those.

Scott Fulton

So, my pitch is like, I'm trying to say I'm an insurance policy for you wasting a lot of money and frustrating your customers. It's actually being on their side, but also on their customer side. And as we said, it does feel like protecting either if it's a website project, protection, the customers from the organisation. Or if it's an internet project, protecting the employees from the organisation, just because they were where I was many years ago, just thought I knew how to do it. And it's trying to say to them, it's okay to not know how to do it. I'm here to guide you on that and let's work together on some principles. And in terms of success stories, that's in progress at the moment with this big client. I've been working with them for quite some time and there's been some politics going on and budgets and all this kind of stuff.

Lucy Collins

So you've talked a bit there the fact that you've worked across intranets and external websites. So say either you're protecting the customer or you're protecting the employee. Have you found that there's been differences when you've been working on those different types of digital services and the fact that you have, I guess, different users or are there similarities between the projects despite the fact one is internal, and one is external?

Scott Fulton

So, I think the intranet ones are a lot tougher because I think there's a lot more egocentric thinking. There's a lot more politics. There's very much a problem where a lot of organisations see their internet as a way to shout to other departments about how great they are. And again, without that user -centric thinking, you come across content that's just department -driven rather than user -driven. So that push and pull content. So, examples being there was an internet where I won't name the company. They had a training page and it was meant to be where you could find the training that was available to you as an employee. And it was actually the homepage was the head, a picture of the head of the training school with a bio. And it said that they were the three times badminton champion for the region. Well, and nothing about actually the reasons people were going there. And I think another part of the problem with intranets is they tend to be structured. The default is by department. which again, I advise against because that requires every person in the organisation to know which department does what and quite often they don't, especially in large organizations. So, some tasks always an HR thing or is it an IT thing? Cause actually the system I use is where I do my leave and my pay, but they don't know and shouldn't need to know which department does it. So, I think intranets are a lot tougher because of that is breaking down that thinking around being department centric and organisation focused rather than actually the user. And as you will know, the homepage becomes this battleground of whoever shouts the loudest gets the biggest thing on the homepage. So, they're a bit tougher, I think. Websites, you'd like to think, although as we were discussing just now, it's not always the case that websites, there's a lot more at stake in terms of customers and getting them to their goal and buying the products quickly and without friction so they don't go to a competitor. With an intranet, you can't generally go to a competitor's intranet to get what you need. What does happen is then internal demand goes up because people hate the internet, don't have any confidence in it, and then just pick up the phone to HR, which creates waste demand because HR are getting the same phone calls every day. So, I do approach them differently in that regard that there's a lot more at stake with the internet and a lot more persuasion to be done. And you have to get buying at the top of the organisation to have good governance. And as I mentioned earlier, resource it properly, protect the organization from itself.

Lucy Collins

Is the way you go about getting the evidence. different as well, or is that similar for intranets and external websites?

Scott Fulton

The actual evidence gathering, I think it's probably a bit easier on the intranet because you've got your employees, and the key is obviously to go and visit them in their environment. So, there might be mobile workers, might be frontline workers who just access the information on a mobile device. They may have very different needs from desk space users. So, I think the approach to actually doing the user testing, et cetera, will be similar to what you would do with the external customers. But obviously you specialise in getting in those external customers in and doing testing as well. I think the fundamental principles are the same, but I think it's probably a bit easier. And what we did, what I've done before as well is before and after testing with the same tasks for internal users and measured the time difference and success rates. And that again is really powerful evidence to then justify why you want to protect that. Because again, as we know, we measure people's patience in seconds, if not milliseconds. They can't find what they want, they lose confidence, they pick up the phone and that would just keep happening and spread. That's why I'm really majoring with my client at the moment. The importance of getting this right. If they don't get it right this time after the previous feedback on the current intranet and they launch a new intranet that declines after the first few months, they've lost.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. Interesting. It's sort of ironic that when it comes to building intranets, as you say, you've got a captive audience actually doing user research, speaking to your customers in this sense is quite straightforward to do because they're people that you work with compared to, obviously, when we test external websites, sometimes you can be looking for incredibly niche audiences, people that work in laboratories in the US or people high up in certain government organisations that can be really hard to actually just get in to speak to them. I always find it slightly mind -boggling that an intranet is often so un -user -centered considering the users are literally sat next to you, you can go and ask any of those other teams and as you say, get out and about, see people in action. I was chatting to a friend who works at TFL and he was saying that a lot of the people that are obviously out on the network, they will only ever access the intranet or certain company sites through an iPad, which they get given. So, their experience has to be completely tailored to that iPad experience, but it doesn't seem to be because it's being built by people that sit in head office and have two giant screens in front of them.

And so, they're not considering that experience that the people out on the ground are having. So, as you say, you need to get out, not just speak to your neighbour, but actually speak to people in teams that reflect the broader work that the organization does. And it shouldn't be that difficult. I feel.

Lucy Collins

No, you're right. And I think part of problem is investment as well. think investment goes into the website more because that's where the customers are. That's where the income comes through for a lot of organisations. But frankly, if don’t invest in your employees and give them the information they need to do their jobs better. The customers ultimately suffer. So, I would quite often say to my teams as a principal, the intranet's customer, the external customer, not the internal user. And they would look at me like that's, that doesn't make sense. The external customer cannot access the intranet and they don't ever see it. But the point is if you get that right for the employees, then the customer benefits from a good intranet and the external customer benefits. So I found that quite a grounding principle to communicate to people. How does this intranet help us serve our external customers better, even though they never access it?

Lucy Collins

Yeah, fascinating and layers of evidence and then the layers of impact that that can have across the board is really interesting. I wanted to ask briefly a bit more about the kind of coaching and training side of things that I believe you now dabble in as well and taken from your LinkedIn, you talk about how this allows people to kind of thrive in the digital age. I wondered what do you think it does take for people to thrive in the digital age? It feels like a quite a big question. So, I don't know how you want to tackle this one.

Scott Fulton

I think what made me pivot into that area was largely born out of the stuff we've been talking about. It's about saying, how do we serve our customers the best? And to me, that's about prioritising your time to make sure that you're doing the right thing and you're serving your customers or whatever it is that is the most valuable thing that you can do. The problem with a lot of workplaces these days is people are just juggling so many different things at the same time. They're overloaded. They've got 200, 300 emails hit to their inbox every single day. They're sat in pointless meetings. They're wasting time. None of that is actually delivering value to the customer. So, I became very passionate from that website work and digital work to focus on what matters, what really matters and cut waste and not put stuff on the website that doesn't add any value. So that same thing applies to use of my time and people's time. So, I help teams understand how to prioritise, how to negotiate when people give them vanity, ego -driven work to do, how to manage your inbox. So, it doesn't just make you want to lose the will to live every time you log in in the morning. So, I became very passionate about helping teams do that because I found a way to do that with my teams in the police, a very busy organisation. So yeah, it kind of pivoted from that really. So yeah, it's about helping enjoy work and help them cut through the noise to serve their customers better and ultimately go home satisfied. That sounds really corny, but yeah, in answer to your question, I think that's it. To thrive, it's about making sure you can prioritise and deliver value rather than go home at the end of day and think, I didn't do anything today other than sit in meetings and battle with my inbox.

Lucy Collins

Yeah. I mean, if we could all work in that way, what a lovely way it would be to work. mean, it's very easy for me as director of a micro business, you know, I've five employees, the idea of all day meetings is just a complete non -entity in my space. But we work with enough big public and private sector organizations where I can see that tendency towards meetingitis, as we would always call it. And what ends up just being a duplication of effort a lot of the time because of the silos that people seem to work in or the inefficiencies with which information is communicated between different parts of the organisation and quite often we will have a longer band of knowledge about a project think some of the clients we've worked with, where we've worked with them for a decade, often we will know more about the research that's happened than the people within the organisation because they've moved out on or they've moved to different parts of the organisation and they're not speaking to one another. And so, you get bought in by a slightly different bit of the organisation and you can say, we actually did this work three years ago. Absolutely, you can pay us to repeat it, but I would much prefer for you to perhaps build on it rather than for us to just do exactly the same thing all over again. so, you know, the fact that you can help teams’ kind of cut through some of that improved productivity sounds like a fantastic thing to be able to offer people. yeah, brilliant. Well, that brings us to the end of today's episode. A huge thank you to Scott for joining me today to share your thoughts and experiences. What is clear from the work you've done over the years is how important it is to use evidence to challenge the status quo and the way we think about how digital services should be. I really want to say that perhaps we should all be a bit more like my dad, who all those years ago made Scott realise that designing in the boardroom without input from users and customers would result in ineffective and unhelpful digital services. Scott has been kind enough to share some really powerful examples of the good evidence can do, as well as the harm making assumptions or scrimping on that evidence can have.

I really hope our listeners can take on some of Scott's advice so that they too can thrive in the digital age. Thank you for tuning in to the Web Usability podcast. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any questions, comments or topics you'd like us to cover, reach out to me on lucy at Webusability.co.uk or connect with us on LinkedIn. Please don't forget to like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time, keep making the web a better place one user at a time.