The charm of a handwritten note
Last week I went to #gumtreemeet to hear the guys discuss the extensive work they've done over the past year or so to in designing the new face of Gumtree. Late last year, I had the pleasure of discussing the UX approach to the redesign with Cenydd Bowles of Clearleft. It is really rather cool to see things like fuzzy location-based search make their way from concept to product.
Steve Bulling, Gumtree's product manager, walked through the new site describing the rationale behind a few of the UCD decisions and site changes and some of the planned innovations. I think the thing I'm most looking forward to is the ability to search listings by proximity to Tube line. :-)
The event was organised by 1000heads, who on learning about my gluten-free-ness, expressed dismay that there were no g-f cupcakes for me to munch on.
It's no biggie - over the last year or so I've just grown used to having few options in the cupcake field, unless I make my own. So I shrugged it off and enjoyed the sushi instead.
A few days later, I got this in the post along with a hand-written note from Nicola Jackson at 1000heads. It was your typical post-event thank you note with additional info which, if I'd have received by email, I'd have just dismissed without much thought. So, okay, a postal follow up allows them to include some non-Newtonian Gumtree Goo, which is always fun to play with, and hey, who can't use (another) USB stick? ;-)
The thing that really impressed me was a) the hand-written note and b) the postscript, which reads: "P.S. I've included a gluten-free treat to make up for the lack of cupcakes!"
Entirely unexpected, totally made my day. Thanks, Nicola and Gumtree! :-)
Posted from Greater London, United Kingdom
