If you’re a UX Designer who’s been around a while, you know that oftentimes part of the job is “selling” UX to clients & colleagues. I recently talked with a company who warned me that one group in their org would automatically dislike UX; in their eyes what designers do is something mysterious and they’re afraid of what will happen to their longstanding product once the company rolls out a UX practice. While this may seem exaggerated, it is indeed a reality that designers will find themselves explaining—and at times defending—UX Design and its importance in our digital world. That’s OK with me, as I said: it’s part of the job. When it comes to building a case for investing in UX, blog posts like this one are great tools. They cite reputable sources, and lay out a wealth of examples & solutions in contexts that most professionals across various industries can understand.
To supplement the well thought-out points made in that post, I’d expound upon 2 points of focus/practice that UX design & process would bring to the table to turn things around for a flailing product:
- Getting into the End User’s Head: You (CEO/employee at a given company) are not the user
- Information Architecture is a Must: Scalability is critical
It can be challenging not to fall into the trap of assuming we know what users want without doing any research. It’s easy to get excited about features, functions & ideas explored in brainstorming sessions, but it’s imperative to validate that the target demographic for a given product will want what’s been conceived—or to learn about the target demographic and adjust accordingly. So, first and foremost, I always remind myself and the teams I work with that, as much as we love the ideas & technologies we’re working on, we may not represent our target user at all. Further, even if we do hint at what the user base is, we’re still not the user. We work in tech/design and have an inside view; we therefore should largely disqualify ourselves from the pool of target users and focus on learning who the customer really is, aiming to get a deep and clear picture of their mental model. Once we’ve accomplished that, it’s good to have tools that keep our focus on those personas, as well as on what we really should be designing for them. For most of my career, I’ve used a tool called Scenarios to keep myself and my teams honest about the features we include in a given release. I’ve heard the term “scenarios” used interchangeably with “user journeys” and “user stories,” and depending on the teams I’ve worked with, the definitions of each can change. In the case of Scenarios, I’m using this term strictly as I learned and practiced it while at Microsoft, when the company was building a more comprehensive UXD practice. Scenarios are brief yet detailed solution-agnostic stories that illustrate the following:
- The personas in focus
- The pain point or problem aimed to be addressed
- A high-level idea of how what you’re designing can solve the problem and/or create delight for the target user
EXAMPLE:
Katrina can Share specific content w/her social network.
Katrina stays continuously connected to her friends through a handful of social networks and entertainment experiences. She likes to share out what she’s into, but doesn’t always have time to share it out to different sites & channels. Recently, she’s been following episodes of Fringe and has been very impressed. Several of Katrina’s friends are JJ Abrams & Sci-Fi fans, and she can’t wait to tell them about how great the show is. After watching 3 episodes in a row on Wednesday night, Katrina publishes out her ratings and reviews to all her social networks, through Xbox.
In general, these scenarios are cataloged and prioritized, helping teams further focus on what’s most important for a given release. Throughout the design & development process, teams can use them as references to help reduce scope creep and other challenges that inevitably arise.
Point #2 above refers to the importance of frontloading at least some design work up front, especially when working on an entirely new product. As attractive as it may be to just get something out there and see if it sticks, this would be done at the risk of marring a new brand’s identity & first impressions about their app, site or product. Another significant risk is that of ending up with something that isn’t at all scalable. Without a product roadmap, an idea of what will be included in not-far-off releases, and some time spent on a related information architecture, the “Frankenstein” effect can occur, where features get piled on and plopped wherever they can fit after a v1 has been out for a while. Investing in a designer who can organize an app or site with an eye on what’s to come can save a company from having to start all over again when they get to a new release cycle. An analogy I use often has come in handy in illustrating this point to non-designers and design mentees: I live alone and I don’t have much stuff, so when I build my house I only include 3 rooms and 2 closets—all on one floor. Then, unexpectedly, my mom needs to come live with me, so I hasten to add an extension to the side of the house. A while later I get married and have 3 kids, but I’m out of space to expand horizontally since I’ve built on all my land. That means I need to build up…but I didn’t think of that when I first built my house, and the existing level won’t support an additional floor above. The only solution I’m left with is to demolish my house and start over. Ouch. It’s not only expensive, but it’s disruptive and time-consuming.
Companies often find themselves in this position: unable to stop the train, so to speak, and redesign/rebuild an app from the ground up, but in turn unable to address their customers’ dissatisfaction in any real way (or change their market position) because of their inability (or unwillingness) to make the investment. This is why it’s so important to make that investment up front, and if not up front, then as soon as time can be found or created to do so. As Miklos Philips states in the post cited earlier, research shows that companies save money if they’re willing to invest in design.