This is my presentation from eMetrics Toronto 2011, presented April 29th. The purpose of the presentation was to introduce Analysts to the user experience design process so that they could understand how UX practitioners design experience, and could see where metrics might help inform the design process.
Last night’s fireside chat – you cant be a great analyst until you understand the UX process for yourself. Restructured this presentation over night for those of you who haven’t experienced the process – I want to bring you into it so you can be embedded in design.
Tweet me, connect to me, just please be nice.
Despite the weird title, I consider myself a UX designer. But I got there by way of helping build two WA practices at major digital agencies. I’ve worked through hundreds of full, end to end experience design projects, and want to share that perspective with an analysts slant.
This is what I believe. Their job is to represent the business value in experience design. Last night – great conversation about the difference between a pure analyst and a strategist. Analyst supports decisions. Strategist makes them. As an analyst, it’s your job to support informed decision making and to influence the direction. Unfortunately, you’re not always asked to provide that feedback. That’s what I’m here to talk about.
There’s a quick foundation that I need to cover. I’m sure there’s going to be a bit of controversy around these two points, but please believe me.
I know this is a stretch. No matter how illogical some of the things my wife does, there’s a reason behind it. I may not agree with that reason, but she’s got a motivation. Wasting time is a reason. Keeping up to date is a reason. Forgetting about the world is a reason. There are conscious and subconscious reasons that people do the things that they do, but there is reason.
I know, again, a stretch. But there is motivation there. When rogers has no one manning the customer service lines, there’s a reason. Usually that reason is making money.So with those two fundamental, underlying assumptions, lets roll.
It’s not any of the individual pieces, it’s the pieces all coming together.
User experience is about flow – it’s everything a customer experiences from point a to point b. We try to control it, but it’s not easy, because there are a lot of factors at play. Motivations – what you want to doExpectations – How your frame of thinking was set upAbilities – What you’re capable ofPerceptions – how you interpret what you see
We start with you.
So with all that framed, I thought I’d look a bit at this presentation as an experience.
Fulfill personal hidden agenda which is to get analysts into the actual UX design process instead of delivering data into it.
While I’m trying to control the situation, here are the macro factors that are affecting your interpretation of this experience. I can’t even hope to present a unified experience, because there’s too much variability between you. What I can do is design for commonalities.
UX is not about just usability. All of these factors that need to be considered in order to deliver a great experience. Useful. Does the interaction have value for you, user. Usable. Is it easy to use for you. Desirable. We need to balance efficiency with emotional design. Findable. Is it navigable, and can you find what you’re looking for. Accessible. Just as our buildings have elevators and ramps, our web sites should be accessible to people with disabilities.Credible. Is the content authentic, true, valid. Valuable. Our sites must deliver value to our sponsors. For non-profits, the user experience must advance the mission. With for-profits, it must contribute to the bottom line and improve customer
The base design needs to encompass these core ideas.
Useful and Valueable are the tension that exists between analysts and creative design. That’s the foundation of digital strategy.As an experience designer, it’s my create a way to bring the business goals and the user goals together in a way that maximizes business goals. So how do we bridge this gap?
Tools are specific deliverables. Methods are approaches.
Unfortunately…
The data should rule all decision making. That perspective actually isolates us.
For a little bit
Proof is important, but our focus on optimization as opposed to jumping into the design process is a missed opportunity.
For a little bit
If you’re not currently a do-er
For a little bit
Exaggeration, but this is our world. And with every new design iteration, measurement is sadly often absent.
Here’s the other problem – the incremental improvements model.
I’ve spent a lot of time in this “waterfall” in the past. Shockingly, with only a few rare exceptions, measurement is often not a consideration. There’s an old site, we go through the loop of optimization, then everything is rethought by design resources. The design process is a house of cards. If the foundation isn’t right, then it falls.
Help weigh the feedback based on who has more business impact.Help define what really drives bottom line impact.Help describe how experience impacts profit.
Most companies do none. EthnographyContext labsWA can help define who we should talk to, based on business outcomes.
Who are the major stakeholder groups that the experience needs to represent?Some aren’t worth meeting.
Personas are often done superficially. Data is vague or inaccurage.
Mental model development
Prioritized against user and business performance. But these are heuristics, not science. They’re best guesses. Can a designer really predict business impact better than you?
Prioritize – ideally with the biggest impact on business / customer value first.
This is where a history of path analysis data can help teams make extremely informed decisions. Patterns from previous directions can be applied here too.
The goal is to grow customer relationship and consider behaviour as it expands over time. Design for adoption curves. This is all information that you have.
Design the variance in the experience.
Design the heirarchy of information. You may not be hands on here, but you intuitively know based on historical data and experience what needs to be surfaced to provide value.
Nowwere’re talking about on site experience design. Features functionality, layout. If you’ve done page level analysis, you have input.
You have pattern-based data from previous work. Designers will re-think it.
Data from marketing testing can impact this
Showing, but don’t tell. Bob from eBay talking about balancing analytical testing with respect for the fact that the push for data discounts potentially dozens of years of design experience.