A little understanding goes a long way

People want to be understood. It’s a basic human trait that we all share and exhibit in every form of interaction and exchange that we undertake.

If a user is sitting at home surfing the web, an advertisement targeted towards their specific interests makes them more likely to click on it. Equally, the best clothing retailer on the high street is the one that is going to sell a customer the jeans that best fit his or her shape, lifestyle and image.

A great corporate salesperson will never go into a large enterprise prospect with a generic presentation; instead he or she will have something tailored to the organisation’s specific goals.

These examples manifest themselves in every aspect of life, including digital life.

It is not enough for a Facebook page, Amazon’s bookstore, a smartphone app, an online banking portal or even a corporate email application to be delivered to every consumer of the application or service in exactly the same way.

To make the user experience great, a little applied contextual knowledge is also necessary.

Awareness and understanding

Applying context and awareness to how applications are accessed and from where and what are the keys to unlocking a great user experience.

The type of device, its connection speed, how secure it is, where in the world the user is connecting from: from the perspective of the application or service provider, beginning to understand and act upon all of these factors means we can start to apply this context, awareness and understanding in a beneficial way.

In an era of context awareness, F5 allows these principles to be applied to application and services traffic over the Internet. We bring intelligence and awareness and, in so doing, we enrich user experience and benefit the provider.