Video and slides from the Orange Bus and the Marketing Industry Network seminar - Turning Clicks into Sales.

The aim of the seminar was to deliver an insight into the reasons why businesses need to continue to put online at the heart of their marketing strategy.

Video - Persuasive design:

Joanne Richardson - Persuasive Design from Orange Bus on Vimeo

Slides:

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Continuing on from yesterdays post: 

Orange Bus UX team at dConstruct 2011 - Part 1 >

Oh God, it’s Full of Stars - Frank Chimero

Frank Chimero addressed the ever growing issue of content curation and the data we’re putting out there. In the real world our CD collections and books are tangible objects we can sort and arrange, we remember where we left them (most of the time), we must go to them in order to find them and we feel we have ownership of the object.  In contrast, digitally we have invisible items which are easy to forget, items become sear

chable so they come to us rather than us go to them, we often pay for access (e.g. Spotify) and don’t feel any sense of ownership.

Digital content is vast. Our tweets, tags, downloads, bookmarks, Instagram photos, Facebook likes etc are all adding to the content out there.  This content is multiplying with retweets, sharing and the ease of creating digital copies into an unknown vastness like the million of stars out there.

Frank explains that curation is not just the finding and collecting of items but the arrangement of them - getting something out of all that information to create meaning. Normally our digital products be ordered chronologically, but if we look beyond the meta-data the stars can start to align to constellations, to map a particular thought or expression within time and space.

Frank demonstrates the Biblion NY public library iPad app which collates text, images and timelines together.  

What to take from this:

1. Provide meaning when collating data
2. Users expect digital data to come to them, not have to go to it
3. Relevant content is increasingly important - suggesting appropriate content and collections

Web: frankchimero.com Twitter: @fchimero

Storytelling, Play and Code - Dan Hon

Dan Hon starts with some great examples of storytelling and play through unconventional use.
However, Dan points out some platforms lend themselves well to stories and play, others do not. Heello is a platform for pretending. When it first launched, many fake accounts were created for celebrities where the audience could play and tell stories. Quora is not a service for pretending, it is for facts, answers which are valuable, where the community does not react well to time wasters.

Moving onto our digital expectation, Dan asks where are our cues? He states “this is not a meta data problem, it is a design/content/code problem”. If we look at a VCR tape we have a fair idea of the content, a film, a TV series or a home movie. In the digital world at the moment, movies are a thumbnail in 640 x 480px wide box.  Dan explains the Apple address book, it looks like a paper based address book so we have the cue for what the content is and sets our expectation..

We’re not sure where the code bit came in but the presentation had lots of good examples.

What to take from this:

1. Know when to encourage play and storytelling - its not for every product.
2. Think about how we set expectation to the audience.

Web: danhon.com Twitter: @hondanhon

Slides:

The Transformers -  Kars Alfrink

Kars, from Hubbub, specialises in physical, social games for public space which he believes can break down boundaries in the social groups we create for ourselves. Kars explains that he believes games provide a perfect platform to test out new ideas and see ‘what sticks’.

Kars references the recent riots in the UK. Civil disorder is nothing new, but what made the the riots in the UK a bad thing, versus the riots in Egypt which were perceived as a good thing? Kars answers - rules are what differentiate the two.  In the UK we perceived the riots as breaking the rules, ie ‘do not loot in your own neighbourhood’.

The use of games models in design are not new, Kars refers to Gamification, where challenges and rewards are used to encourage use. Kars believes this focuses too much on rewards and should also consider conveying the rules.

What to take from this:

Kars outlines some key rules games which can change our social awareness:

1. Need to be part of everyday life, fit into daily routine.
2. Rules as memes like bookcrossing.com (a physically viral game where books are passed round the world and their progress tracked on a website).
3. Self governing – No gamesmaster, with simple rules everyone understands.
4. Need to be easy to digest, shareable and discoverable.

Web: leapfrog.nl Twitter: @kaeru

Pocket Scale - Matthew Sheret

Another favourite speaker of the day, Matthew Sheret from Last.fm covering personalisation and providing intimate, meaningful objects that humanise networks making time travel more fun.

Matthew starts with the history of the pocket watch, where time became portable and accessible to the masses which made them the first real network as they connected people together through the ability to sync time, plan and communicate with each other more efficiently.

To Matthew, the items in his pocket are very valuable to him and he often finds out a great deal about a person by the items they choose to carry with them everyday. The Items in our pockets are very intimate and demonstrate connections to our networks.  By designing to connect to our networks we can really personalise an experience for someone.  For example connecting your Last.fm account with your Oyster card can offer a magnitude of personalisation from song choices to suit the journey, or connecting songs to places - it has great potential.  A great example Matthew used was Chromaroma which uses Oyster card data as a gamescoring mechanic, plotting your daily journeys on a map to provide a new level of value for your journey - it now earns you points and turns something mundane into something new that you get value from.

RFID tags are the chips in an Oyster card which identify who you are, number of tube journeys, where you got on, where you get off, how much money you have left - a wealth of information. Matthew is very excited for the possibilities of using this data with RFID tags and combining networks to create personalised experience.

At the end of his talk, Matthew reflects of what is being lost from the humble pocket watch - personalisation and memory. iPhones are replaceable every 6 months, we no longer have physical devices we can pass on, personalise and share. Matthew believes the devices which will matter most to use will be the ones we can make personal to use.

What to take from this:

1. Usability testing - ask people to empty their pockets or bags - you can find out a lot about them.
2. Harness the networks and data out there to provide meaningful content and reflect useful data back to people.
3. RFID and similar technologies are going to be a huge gift for interaction to provide pocket experiences.

Web: matthewsheret.com Twitter: @mattsheret

Reality is Plenty - Kevin Slavin

Kevin ended the conference on a high and challenged augmented reality, which was hyped to have taken over our lives by now.  Kevin talks us through the pitfalls of augmented reality today, that we face a world of lost GPS signals, batteries dying, and a multitude of devices and apps.  Kevin aimed to interrogate augmented reality today, with the aim of getting us to ask ourselves where can we go instead? and why augmented reality?

Augmented reality aims to add to the world around us adding information, context and reality to supplement what we can see.  However, Kevin argues that the focus on what makes something ‘real’ or adds value is sometimes misdirecte. For example, AR baseball cards where a 3D player pops up on the front of the card, does not make the player real. It’s the information on the back of the card, the stats, story and history which provide the context the user can relate too.

Kevin explains, Jim Henson understood that it wasn’t the realism that made things real, but the movement, character and behaviour which made the Muppets real. Another great example from Kevin was the Tamagotchi which took the world by storm with its incredibly lo-fi graphics, the complete opposite to the industry at the time which was racing to achieve realism. The Tamagotchi was a success, certainly not for looking real but by becoming real through behaving real.

Working on a mobile game called Crossroads where a character, Papa Bones would display on a map in relation to your location and move randomly around the city. Kevin explains he found game players physically ran away from the virtual character and confessed to being surprised of his reaction himself as the character swept through the office and vibrated all the phones off the table. There is power in the invisible.

What to take from this:

1. Ask what will really add value.
2. How can we humanise and create an immersing experience.
3. Ask what can add to the world around us not just what we can already see.

Web: areacodeinc.com Twitter: @slavin_fpo

Overall dConstruct served as a great inspiration library with good examples and memorable stories to look back on. It provided great insight into the bigger picture and certainly provided food for thought around designing for the whole system, across multiple devices and reminded us of the value of research and the important role it will play in ensuring we design experiences which are memorable.

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For the seventh year running the dConstruct conference played host to some of the industry leaders in interaction design, mobile design and computing, with an array of new and familiar faces. The Orange Bus UX team managed to grab tickets for the one day event in Brighton last Friday which sold out within 7 hours!

This year centred on “...how designers can bridge the gap between the physical and digital world in order to make better, more human experiences.”

Strong themes from all speakers were around:

• The rise of multi-platform devices (desktop, mobile, ipad, TV) and responsive design.
• The big picture, designing for the whole ‘system’ looking at the experience across multiple touch points.
• Time and how it affects and evolves the products we make.
• Personalisation.

Emotional Design for the World of Objects - Don Norman

First up to set the tone for the day, Don Norman (whilst his wife played Sudoku - clearly she’d heard the rehearsals!). He chose not to use slides but to talk to the audience about points which really got you thinking. Like Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) Don hit us with the revelation that we are not Google’s users, advertisers are Google’s users, we are their product. There has been some criticism that this is not a mind blowing insight, however it certainly got you thinking about audiences and who a big company like Google consider in their products. Don went on to explain that the future is ‘Systems’ - understanding how a product or experience fits into the big picture and the potential in all the touchpoints - something Google do well.

Don believes an experience lasts a moment, a memory lasts for years. By providing a reminder of our memory, then the experience can be held onto for a lifetime. For example, Disney souvenirs and photos let you relive the fonder memories of the park experience whilst pushing the long queues and prices to the back of your mind.

He moved onto great happiness and success coming after a negative. Don explained, if we think about the way things unfold through time such as games - you want challenges and failures so successes seem triumphant and you are engaged in an emotional response.  We related Don’s point to thinking about a product life span. Over time we can predict on the first release that there will be negatives (i.e. features people expect which are missing, interfaces which can be improved, the compromises we know we have had to make). From these negatives, a positive and uplifting experience can unfold as features and improvements develop.  For example, Twitter just provide the platform, the users develop the content and have formed how it is used i.e. hashtags and retweets.

Don finished by demonstrating that we’ve come full circle with our interface designs and the gestures of tomorrow are set to change, to ensure consistency across devices, as there is now no distinction to a user from the Internet in their pocket to their Internet at home.

• Command line                            Memorise everything to interact and achieve results
• Graphical User Interface (GUI)     Less efficient but easier to use and no need to learn
• Gestures                                     Memorise everything e.g. how do you undo on an iPhone?

What to take from this:

1. Systems are the future - look at the big picture, understand where your product or experience fits and its potential in its system.
2. An experience lasts a moment, a memory lasts for years - provide the triggers for people to hold onto that memory.
3. Time, think about the way things unfold - great happiness and success comes after a negative. Make sure you can recover from the negative.
4. Consistent gestures and actions are coming across all the devices we use to aid with learnabilty of gestural interfaces.

Web: www.jnd.org Twitter: @jnd1er

Beyond Usability: Mapping Emotion to Experience -Kelly Goto

By far our favourite talk of the day. Kelly demonstrated the importance of research and insight which allows her company to create ‘addictive experiences’ through empathy and looking at the spaces between the experiences they are creating.  Kelly explains that you cannot create addiction, but you can understand peoples rituals and craft an experience to fit into their lives through research.  

Kelly challenged the audience to “help people to stay upright”. Instead of encouraging users to be super-glued to their screens, its time for a shake it up and re-engage with the world around us.

Covering her research methods Kelly explains, contextual research, observations, and in-depth interviews can tell us how people live their lives, traditional market

research such as surveys and focus groups tell us how people think they live their lives.  For example, a focus group asking ‘Do you wash your hands when you go to the bathroom?’ will demonstrate peoples behaviour influenced by the group, how do they want to be perceived? What are other people saying? What is the ‘right’ answer? Observation in practice is where we really find out what people actually do.

What to take from this:

1. Help people to stay upright - Get back to creating experiences with real people, get our heads out of devices
2. Understand the value of research and understanding the audience’s rituals
3. Keep asking why - why is it important to you? why do you love it? why did you do that?

Web: gotomedia.com Twitter: @go2girl

Letting Go - Bryan Rieger & Stephanie Rieger

The Riegers’ (I’m going to use the collective name as they both contributed) took us on a historical journey of how ideas have developed, from sharing knowledge through books, to patent systems to protect our knowledge and ideas, through to modern day where those ideas evolve and grow when let loose online.  

The Riegers’ demonstrated that we are in a time of rapid technology shifts. Traditionally, an audience of 50 million would equal market penetration. It took 40 years for radio to reach this, it took TV 10 years, You Tube less than 6 months and Google+ is at 25million after just 3 months. Rapid technology growth means the traditional ‘generation gaps’ are no longer generation gaps and that people 2 - 4 years apart are having to adapt to different technology.

Bryan Rieger explains that we can’t expect customers to interact with our creations in a linear, exclusive manner anymore. Users no longer have to wait for the experiences we create for them, they can get to the end and they will evolve it into new experiences themselves. Bryan gives Instapaper# as an example, which takes the websites we lovingly create and takes the design, content and layout down to a stripped version which provides the content into a better experience for reading.  The best example we could relate this to was Little Big Planet 2, where Sony have thought about the experience over time and what happens when their audience reach the end of the game (the experience Sony created).  Sony have provided the means for users to create their own levels/experiences and share these with others to provide longevity.

The Riegers’ ended on the point that we should be enabling pathways for users to find meaning and enrich their lives, through experiences they create themselves.

What to take from this:

1. Think about the lifetime of the experience we are creating
2. What we create does not have to be the finished article but it should not be sub-standard
3. How can we facilitate and encourage users to take things further?

Web: bryanrieger.com  stephanierieger.com  Twitter: @bryanrieger  @stephanierieger
Slides:  

What Is the Shape of the Future Book? - Craig Mod

The award for strangest presentation lies here.  We can’t say we now know the shape of the future book, but Craig did tell a well structured story around a very large, book-like artifact which is uncovered and explored through generations.

What to take from this:

1. Stories are excellent at capturing peoples attention and explaining a concept (it’s the only part of Craig’s presentation we can remember)
2. Don’t make stories too long, as we did switch off near the end. Lunch time may also have been a factor there...

Web: craigmod.com Twitter: @craigmod

Part 2

Continue reading about dConstruct 2011 - Part 2 >>

I had lots to write about!

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2 years and I haven't added a description to my job on Linkedin - they phrase it as a question & I do it straight away.

The Linkedin profile completion % has been used as an example of persuasive design for years - on how to encourage members through playing on our human need to complete items and break down tasks into manageable goals. However Linkedin have a new method to entice visitors into providing more information on their profile - questions.

The profile completion % is a great incentive at the start of profile creation, however it is likely to become less effective as they become long serving members of the community. As the tasks to reach 100% are a lot more perceived effort such as "Ask for a recommendation".  No-one wants to email and ask for a recommendation - its very daunting and against our nature to ask another individual to publicly write what they think of us, and we don't want to impose on those we are friends with.  Also, prompting members to complete areas of their profile through the normal "edit" functionality again has its hurdles to cross.  Members are likely to perceive their Linkedin profile as an extension or replacement for their C.V. - editing it in the traditional way is very formal and requires a lot of thought and planning, which can lead to the member procrastinating and leaving the task for "another day".

Short and snappy questions change the attitude the member has towards their profile.  It's no longer a formal document.  It can be short, informal and to the point.

Pros of questions

• Informal and plays towards our need to answer questions about ourselves.  Think of all those "50 questions about me" surveys you've completed online.
• Less thought required - allows for a quick response and stops procrastination as the form is right there.
• Reminds members to keep their profile up to date on areas which are likely to change or areas they have not completed yet.
• Prompts members to think about their profile content and ask themselves "what is missing?"
• Long term - Linkedin can feature and add to the profile template and encourage all members to complete the new information

Cons of questions

• Encourages shorter answers as the input box for the question response is small  and may lead to not getting the same level of detail as going through the edit function
• Too easy to do? With no spell check and formatting members make mistakes and do not represent themselves in the best light.  My profile is now likely a prime example of bad spelling, typos and grammar through the use of the question boxes.
• Simple to hide the questions, but no clear method of getting them back when you want a prompt to help you start updating your profile. If you can hide a feature it should always be clear how to get it back.

Up to date profiles are important to Linkedin as their content is their business. Linkedin understand the value of up to date, accurate and detailed profiles and as such need to encourage members to provide as much information as possible. Rich content will lead to more accurate search results, more members linking back to their full Linkedin profile, and the Linkedin targeted marketing can become more accurate and demonstrate better results to potential customers. Questions are an ideal way to prompt members to provide as much content as possible and to keep it up to date.

Posted origially on the Orange Bus Blog

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Is this door locked? [picture]
....I have no idea! I hope yes, but I don't trust it! I turn the latch, it makes a locking sounds, I try the door & it opens! I'm presuming it's for fire reasons but when you're in a hotel room alone you never quite trust that some random will walk in!

Worst. Nights. Sleep. Ever!

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Really easy to get started with great features such as image upload for backgrounds and a wide selection of props which can all be rotated & moved up & down the layers, along with easy exports in useful formats for premium. The annotation features are a bit tricky to use & the text is easily lost but could still be useful.

Thinking it would work well for a quick concept slideshow, a story behind a persona such as the journey of their day to highlight their needs, behaviour & goals or could develop in the future to help plan how users interact with a touch screen.

Free & premium available (£8.99 - too pricey)

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Wireframes Magazine have published my Persona template which we use in client workshops at Orange Bus - available for free!

Persona_Template.pdf Download this file

Personas are a crucial step in our process to keep decisions grounded and centred around the audience. They help to provoke questions which will challenge decisions, helping the whole
team understand the audience being designed for and shaping the design of the site. Templates like these have invaluable to clients such as Family lives, Nexus and Barclays ClearlyBusiness in communicating their audience needs.

As Wireframes Magazine points out, its a great hands on tool which invites doodling while the less-polished feel of the template relaxes clients and lets them share their insights. We've used it recently in a few different ways:

• To understand the wide variety of stories clients have about their audience, to really understand how individuals use the website and discover their priorities. This resulted in some powerful stories everyone understood.
• To get individuals’ perspectives of their defined audience, often with some conflicting views to discuss.
• To work together to complete and get a client thinking about different audience types as opposed to "Everyone is my audience".

Developing a final product which engages with your audience, from customers, to new prospects, to product evangelists requires a deep understanding of their goals and needs. Personas provide this insight to craft a seamless journey for them.

Updated: An alternative version of the Persona template V2 with more focus on goals

Workshop_Persona_Template_v2.pdf Download this file

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Notes from form podcast:

http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2011/01/18/spoolcast-answered-your-top-questions-on-web-form-design-with-luke-wroblewski/

Field Repetition
Email

• Only 1-2% of emails addresses are mistyped - small amount of people.
• Most people catch their mistakes if people can see the input so make the input field clear and long enough to see the whole address to help reduce errors
• Or allow people to change the email address on the confirmation page and correct their mistake.

Password

• The only people who benefit from these strong passwords with lots of requirements are IT teams.
• The result is a password you never remember which in turn makes it less secure as your likely to write it down on a post-it.
• Let people see what they are doing on password so they can catch mistakes.
• 99.9% of the time we do not have someone looking over our shoulder when entering a password.
• Make the default shown and give an option to hide it.

Accepting Terms of use

• Pages and pages of legal docs which can change often
• Biggest move forward was removing the checkbox to accept the t&C and looking to make the ‘Continue/submit’ button the action to accepting the t&cs.

Do help links in forms help completion rates?

• Simple answer yes, if people are likely to have stopping points and you have some simple information that can help them complete it then yes.
• e.g. credit card info need on a free account to verify an account - added help text to reassure people on the screen as they were getting to the confirm screen and clicking back on the browser and loosing all their details worrying they’d picked a non-free account.
• Help text adjacent and visible to where it is relevant is best but if it gets too wordy best broken down and displayed in context as and when the help is needed.

Bets practice after you’ve completed a form

• Often you just get a success message.
• Can sometimes call for more e.g. posting a blog post you’d like to see the blog post to check it’s posted correctly.
• Don’t leave user with a dead end if you can’t do above. Let people have next step actions and inform them of the process e.g. we’ll respond within 15mins, you’ll receive an email with a confirmation code and a link to follow and complete.

Conditional dependant input

• Hide irrelevant form controls from people who don't need them. Only ask for necessary info, don’t ask for the sake of asking.

Mad libs approach

• Sentence or paragraph of text and you fill in the blanks. huffduffer.com sign up form example
• Found that mad libs forms are performing well in correct use. One extreme example, conversion went up 25-40% increase in enquiries from A/B testing with other tweeks.
• Take the time to think about the wording and keep it concise, make it more of a dialogue. Limited fields, say 5 or 6 at a max.
• Can also double as a nice welcome to the website instead of being greeted by a sign up form.
• Can be an ice breaker - e.g. sending a quick message, makes it less intimidating to get in touch.
• Again the  size of the input field is important, make sure people can see their full input.

Filed size

• Affordance - make the field size match the size of the expected data , make sure its long enough to see all the data
• Making all the input fields bigger can help reduce errors as people can see everything more clearly.
• Set expectation of the type of input you would like from the user. e.g. if you would like a long answer then allow enough room and encourage users to complete the field. For a short answer, have a short field and indicate any limits and why.
• example - Wii form to order wrist strap. Learning curve on this form was more difficult than the learning curve of the wii. The serial number field was 8 characters long, the Wii serial number is 11 characters long so had to keep resubmitting as couldn't see the mistake being made.

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An advent calendar with some thought put into who's buying it...sad lonely 20-something year olds. Also bought my friend one (no names to prevent mocking). First thing she said "oh i hope number 1 isn't over Edwards face". Well tada! Its not, in fact there's no numbers so you choose where to start and can leave ur fictional dream boy till last and remove a certain person from the picture in 4-6 choccy days!

Know your audience, keep them happy with the simple things :)

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We stayed at the amazing Juyongguan Great Wall Hotel last night. Lovely hotel, oh so pretty rooms and buildings. It's right next to the wall, actually surrounded by it - beautiful.

Final day of trekking the great wall! Up at 4am to climb the mountain in the dark to reach the highest tower for sunrise. Drinking the night before (as usual) probably not wise but we lived! We all started off fairly quiet and tired in the pitch black climbing with our torchers. It's just as well it was dark so we couldnt see how high up we had to go! Massive steps!! And as soon as we thought we had reached the top we realised there was so many more steps to come! Massive mountain to climb! The sun was coming up as we climbed and we all had breakfast at the highest tower watching the sun rise over the mountains.

We then went down again and had our group photos taken then onto the final length of the wall, which as per usual meant going back up again in order to come back down! Bit sad for it to be finally over but it was nice to look back at the wall opposite at what we had achieved in the morning and all cross the finish line back at the hotel. Passed the finish line then onto Beijing :D

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More touristy today but so many steps n a donkey trail up to the wall this morning.  Briefly made it into Group A (the speedy group) because it was so hot we just wanted it to end.

Loads of tourists and the steps arn't so high today just lots and lots of them.  The tourists kept taking photos and we couldn't get moved for them.

Went all the way along to the steps from the new Karate Kid then back on ourselves with a choice of Toboggan or cable cars down to the market at the bottom.  Subway for dinner! Heaven! Lots of haggling in the market, they always start off with rediculous prices!

New hotel again tonight, last day trekking tomorrow. Stayed up late and up super early for sunrise trek to the top.

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Today we went through waterfall park jumping from rock to rock over streams & rivers. Only one person fell in the stream whoo! Really loved today!  We went up through the park up an incredibly steep bank where people had to hang off trees and help everyone else get to the top. Following the red ribbons (so we don't get lost) through the trees and past lovely waterfalls. Then a teeny bit of rock climbing up to the highest point & down through a few caves into Black Dragon Paw park to the touristy bit.

Finally a lunch i like, chicken and coke!!

New hotel again tonight, it's like an empty Butlins, but the showers are getting better and better. This one is completly seperate from the toilet! Today we didn't even get changed before finding the Bar which they had to open for us. Disco lights, kareoke stage, Christmas decs and a wandering cat - lovely. More beer!

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Great day today, 6hrs of trekking on really old parts of the wall, no other people around today, very remote and lovely blue skies. Think someone mentioned we did 12 miles today.

First up again this morning, China beer seems to agree with us! Went wandering around the hotel and took obligatory touristy photos. Started out with breakfast - cucumber and cold sweet toast for moi, "mystery meat" available for everyone else and fried eggs. Iso Energy drink time and energy tablets before we set off on the coach to get to the start point.

Quite a hilly climb up to the old parts of the wall, having to walk single file along most bits as the wall is 0.5-1.5metre wide with big sheer drops. Not foggy today so great views. We walked quite high up and then down into a valley to meet up with people to bring us lunch. Thank god todays snack is cookies or i'd be done for! Can't wait to get to Bejing for some food i like. After lunch we climbed back up again, no photos from now on as we near the military zone. Some scary moments walking alongside the wall having to shimmy across ledges to reach the next part but we all made it without tumbling down into the valley! whoo! And then finally down back to yesterdays start point. Hurried onto coach as stalked by wallcatcher again trying to get me to buy something, then off to a new hotel.

Staying at the Impression hotel, just for tonight. Tea had chicken nuggets and chicken skewers... and beer ofcourse! FOOD!!!! They set up a big bonfire for us and as usual we were sat outside way past our bedtimes downing a few Coronas :D

iPhone photo: Some of the new bits of wall we started with yesterday. On way back now - phew!

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Arrived in Bejing last night a bit later than planned, epic journey, it had everything - loads of flights, delays, running through airports, donuts, lightning and meeting so many new people!  Spotted a couple of people on our trek at Newcastle airport... small world! Donut time with them at Heathrow waiting to meet the big group (think there are 64 people on the trek). Flight to Istanbul delayed causing the next flight to wait for us, so had to hurry onto the plane so we could make it to Bejing. As the plane was going up there was a massive flash of light and a rumble as we were hit by lightning - that woke me up!

Staying at Jinshan hotel for two nights 20mins from the wall. Fabulous shower facilities above the toilet and first glimps at the giant beetles which are everywhere! £1 beer!! whoo!  Last ones to bed, first ones up - hardcore hehe.

Day 1 of 5 complete now, 5hrs trekking 11 miles constantly climbing up steps then down steps just to go back up again a few mins later, it got really tiring. Did 15 towers today new and old bits of the wall, shame is was a bit foggy, hopefully blue sky tomorrow so we can see the views. Really hurts everywhere & I did spend a lot of the time on my hands and knees crawling up big steps, running away from flying things...oh the giant black and white spider incident on another woman's back was a bit eee!

Knew it was going to be a bad day when I was knackard climbing the path just to get to the wall!  Dreading 2moro a bit as it gets harder n harder but it'll be worth it :). Stalked by Wallcatchers all day, they're farmer's wives who follow you along this section of the wall and offer to carry your bag for money and sell your souvenirs, so they're constantly waiting for you to give up the entire way - very tempting on a day like today! Made it all the way through the day saying no to help and "later later" for souvenirs so at the end mine was really bugging me to buy something. My wallcatcher gave up in the end but we didnt realise the wallcatchers have teeny shops opposite our hotel so now i'm being stalked by this woman!

Today included the "OMG steps" 103 very steep n massive steps - I was crawling up on my hands and knees by the end of them! My face apparently matched my hair i was that poofed and it attracted the wallcatchers and one Chinese tourist who thought it would be nice to video my red face and make me wave and say "ellooo" at the camera - YouTube nightmare!

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