Pragmatic UX - 10min talk at UX Australia 2015
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People in glasshouses shouldn’t put up post it notes. It is easy to criticise companies that have “obvious UX problems”, but how easy it to change it from within? How do you make continuous improvements that balance organisational needs with the customer? Pragmatic UX disciples walk the line between budgets and customer satisfaction – how do we help them?
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Pragmatic UX - 10min talk at UX Australia 2015
- 2. 2 MartyCrampton @MartyCrampton Jun 12 When a bank changes its online account functionality & it's a big #Westpac #fail. So much I'm considering changing #banks after 20 years! Guy Pearson @guy_pearson Aug 26 After being with @Telstra personally for 6 years they are unable to identify me + won't take digital copies & I have no printer . #fail #bye John @bhrjnq Aug 1 Really slow DSL internet & all @Optus can say is you're welcome to go to someone else. 3 years with them and treated like that #optusfail
- 3. 3 pragmatic /praɡˈmatɪk/ adjective dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.
- 4. 4 A great customer experience is… Start here Desirable (Customer) Viable (Business) Feasible (Solutions)
- 5. 5 A great customer experience is not… Desirable (Customer) Viable (Business) Feasible (Solutions) Poor Design Agency Led Desirable (Customer) Viable (Business) Feasible (Solutions) Poor Business Led Desirable (Customer) Viable (Business) Feasible (Solutions) Poor Tech Company Led
- 6. Start here Desirable (Customer) Viable (Business) Feasible (Solutions) 6 A great customer experience is…
- 8. 8 Collaborate Be present Be proxied Be precise
- 10. 10 Show respect Respect people Respect yourself (na na na na) Respect ecosystem
- 11. Jason Crane (@snapperwolf) Pragmatic UX Practitioner Thanks!
Editor's Notes
- It’s been great to see that there’s been a lot of talks this conference around moving away from screen design and taking a look at the bigger picture, different touch points etc. This of course is not without its dangers: as the complexity to design changes that affect multiple siloed teams and to Dave’s keynote from yesterday - people’s jobs, then so does the effort required to navigate to a workable solution.
- Not to mention the backlash from the very people we tend to design for when part of that bigger picture experience is a little thin. In the next ten minutes I hope to share with you some of the frustrations I’ve experienced working with organisations and what I’m doing to be a more pragmatic ux practitioner.
- First a definition: Pragmatic is defined as “dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.” If what I’m designing for isn’t feasible, or viable, then it’s neither sensible nor realistic. A waste of my time, and anyone I’m working with or for.
- Some of you may be familiar with this diagram. To get to the best experience you start with desirability - does the customer want it? Does the customer need it? And then you check to make sure it’s viable - does it fit in with the business, can the business support it, and the delicate third part is: is the experience feasible - can it be created in the time and budget allocated. Don’t get me wrong, I still think we should be leading with desirability, but a pragmatic UX practitioner needs to consider the feasible and viable, in fact I would argue that these two areas are where we should be spending a good proportion of our time.
- Why? I’ve seen designer agency led project fail, because the designers have come in, done their UX and visual design then ‘finished’. I’ve seen business led projects fail, because the project sponsor has been too domineering, and team members lacked the spine to talk out of turn, or stand fast in the research outcomes. And I’ve also seen solutions led project fail, because well, developers don’t specialise in design.
- Coming back to this diagram, a pragmatic UX practitioner should always be sense checking against the viability and feasibility of the solution and maintaining the balance. It is the pragmatic UX practitioners responsibility to maintain this balance, because if we are leading with customer first, it makes sense for us to help the other parts of the puzzle to make a great product, service or experience. How do we do this? Here’s two ways…
- Collaborate It cannot be understated how powerful collaborating with business and solution stakeholders can be. As UX designers we implicitly get customers to help us design experiences so surely extended this to the other stakeholders is a natural extension.
- Be present: be part of the project from inception to completion and beyond and ensure the right people from the business and solutions side are also present. I worked on a project last year where the design team had been and gone, and I had to take some of their work forwards. Their wireframes had single line annotations per page. Now I hate documentation as much as the next UXer, so in an ideal world someone from that design team would have been sitting in the project team so I could ask questions and understand the rationale behind their design decisions. With this project for me to get any answers, I had to go through two people on my side, wait a week for the design agency to respond, then get the answers I sought. Via email. ugh. Just as we use personas as a proxy to speaking to actual users, so too does a pragmatic UX practitioner need to have assets to proxy their presence if they cannot be physically there. In a non-ideal world where you can’t be part of the project ongoing, ensure you have sufficiently detailed design assets so anyone who comes into the project can pick it up. As a bonus, create documentation on how to use those design assets, or how it works, so people on the periphery can understand their purpose. Be Precise. Recently I worked on a project where I completed a Customer Journey Map. It was great to present it to stakeholders, because I was there and it was easy to field questions, and explain parts of the map in more detail, drawing on anecdotal stories to tell. But then the client asked for a digital copy, which we was happy to provide, however it ended up being circulated, and we had to run a number of ‘followup’ meetings to explain why that journey map wasn’t relevant for other parts of the business. I now bundle every journey map digital asset, with a ‘how this works’ deck, that steps through every element, what it means, and how it works.
- 2. Show respect - Wait - what does respect have to do with being a pragmatic UX practitioner? I showed some tweets from people complaining about some of Australia’s big companies. Do these companies not have any UX people? I know they do, because they attend conferences like this one. Big problems are wickedly hard to solve, let’s show some respect. It’s super easy to redesign the boarding ticket for an airline, without understanding any of the complexities and nuances inside the airline that keep it humming along. For the last few years we’ve been talking about breaking down silos and getting collaborative. Let’s not belittle this effort by sitting in our own UX silo, talking down the work of others and gatekeeping the UX secret sauce.
- Respect the people you’re working with. Understand their motivations for your the project and how they see themselves contributing. Step out of your own bubble, and empathise. Respect the ecosystem. As our designs become more complex, so needs to be our awareness of what our designs will impact. Earn respect, by giving respect. Respect yourself: Whilst the first two ways to show respect seem to hamper our efforts to push the best customer experience forwards, be strong in your own knowledge and skills and be empowered to challenge.
- Hi, I’m Jason, and I’m a Pragmatic UX Practitioner.