Commentary

User Experience is Irrelevant

Until recently, business managers believed user experience is a time consuming process adding cost and complexity to a project. In the past few years, due in great part to wildly successful products defined primarily by their excellent experience design, managers have come to believe user experience design (or “design” generically) adds incrementally to a product’s allure. Begrudgingly, it seems, many business managers have granted user experience design a place in product/service strategy when “usability” defines a competitive difference.

The logic goes something like: “If the product (MP3 player, let’s say) can’t play music (or store songs, or comply with a specific standard) it doesn’t matter how sexy it looks or how seductive the experience.”  That logic is reasonable at face value; an MP3 player experience has to play music in an MP3 standard.  But I can hear the skeptics saying: “You’ve made our point! The example relies on a commonplace technology. When the technology is no longer the differentiator, naturally user experience must be differentiating factor.”  The history of successful products suggests otherwise: the “best” technical solution may not be the most widely accepted product. Defending an approach to product development by hiding behind technical specifications ignores the human being in the equation. As a paraphrase of the familiar Zen koan: “If a product meets the technical standard but no one can use it, does it really matter?”

Hiding behind technical capabilities is self-deluding based on flawed assumptions:
· user experience design is somehow applied to a solution rather than being an integral part of the solution
· product success depends primarily on meeting technical specifications
· the human-technology “ecology” status quo is a given that can’t be questioned
· user experience design will add value to an offering without fundamentally changing the way the product is developed or brought to market.

These assumptions, along with the perception of added cost, continue to marginalize the impact and incorporation of user experience design.

Our counter-attacks have initially focused on the issues of cost. In spite of the pioneering work of Deborah Mayhew to demonstrate usability engineering’s contribution to reducing costs, businesses have been slow to incorporate it into their financial models.  More recently, practitioners such as David Siegel have proposed that usability engineering should be viewed not as cost-reduction but as risk reduction.

Both of these approaches are important and crucial: we must get the ear of the money-people if we are to make inroads into the business. These rationalizations, while necessary, are insufficient - we need the sizzle along with the steak.  In my first few articles, I stressed how moving user experience design from the development stage upstream to strategy definition transforms it to Architecture.  When we can get the business to question its assumptions about its market, its offerings, the technologies it depends on, and ultimately its vision, we demonstrate how questioning the rules of the game opens new opportunities (and risk).

Nothing succeeds like success

In my last article I suggested several political means of influencing corporate stakeholders to move user experience design upstream into strategic planning.  Nothing is more convincing than successfully demonstrating how user experience design, in the context of strategic planning, radically improves the outcome to the business.  Unfortunately, we have to have access and opportunity, which we won’t get until we can prove the value of the process.  But luck happens, and the harder we prepare and work, the luckier we get. Put another way, if we aren’t prepared when the opportunity arises, we will miss our lucky chance. To raise the stakes, in most organizations we won’t be given a second chance.  So let’s pretend we’ll be given the opportunity, and let’s prepare for it.

How can user experience design rapidly influence strategic planning in ways that business leaders recognize as important? How can UX Architecture help shape strategic plans so they point the organization in a direction with a higher likelihood of profit, customer satisfaction and growth? Can we assist the business in getting to key metrics earlier and with greater confidence?

Agile User Experience Design

Just as software development teams have applied Rapid Application Development (RAD) or “agile” methodologies (such as Extreme Programming (XP), Rapid, Iterative, Testing and Evaluation (RITE) and Scrum) to accelerate software development while simultaneously improving quality, we can apply a similar approach to user experience design in the context of Strategic Plan development.

Business has less and less time to do big picture assessment, analysis and planning even as risks (from competition, technology changes and shifting consumption patterns) increase in number and severity. A means of rapidly iterating through possible solutions with frequent, low cost sanity checks against real-world conditions is as desirable to our business managers as it has been to software development managers.  Business managers get their data from a variety of sources, but much of the work of strategy boils down to “gut feel.” Managers must spend time in the field, talking to real customers, observing “conditions on the ground” and immersed in the real world problems their customers are trying to solve.

As many of us already have experienced, there is nothing more transformative than taking an individual out into a customer site and having them quietly observe users struggling—whether the struggle is with one of our products, or simply trying to get their work done efficiently.  I’ve had managers literally beg forgiveness from users after observing the pain inflicted by their product.  This same transcendence occurs during strategic definition; if the right managers are present to experience it, the very core of the business can be shifted in a heartbeat.

Rapid strategic planning, based on immersive, intimate and transformative experiences with real users is the promise of agile user experience design in the context of a strategy development phase. The process is not too different from generative research performed during a product development cycle: the number of participants is small, the data is qualitative not quantitative, and the amount of uncertainty is high. If anything, the risk of being misled is even higher since an incorrect shift in direction at the strategic level has survival implications for the business. But the advantages are similar as well: rapid identification of likely directions to pursue or avoid, indications of “whitespace” (areas where customers are not being well-served) and a higher confidence in the right set of questions to ask to better resolve which of several directions is best.

Artifacts from the future

One of the most profound and agile techniques (and by no means is it necessarily unique nor the best method to use in all circumstances) is to carry an “artifact from the future” to a customer meeting. For this technique to elicit good results, the right customer stakeholders must be in the room with expectations properly calibrated in advance. Key users from the customer organization responding to the artifacts in the presence of key business managers is a powerful confluence of the right kinds of questions and responses. Things like price point, feature / function trade-offs and other product-specific characteristics melt away to reveal the bedrock issues users care about most: how will (or won’t) this thing let me get my job done, or more likely - how will this thing improve my status within the organization because I get my job done better?

One of the beautiful characteristics of this approach is its speed and low-cost: the conversations bear fruit at the strategic level even when the artifact is barely recognizable as a potential solution. I have gone out on these sorts of expeditions with artifacts I know aren’t even close to what the final product will be and have returned with volumes of data shedding light on strategic opportunities previously unimagined.  Imagine taking only a couple of days to highlight key opportunities the business didn’t even suspect were possibilities?

Reducing Risk, Increasing Opportunity

As with any tinkering at the strategic level of the business, the risks from misunderstanding trends and data are huge. Leveraging a handful of data points from a biased selection of users into a business strategy is likely a career-limiting move. When organizations rely on small numbers at the development level, the risk of making a bad decision is high, but the impact can be low or at least limited. When the results from qualitative research are incorporated into strategic planning they must be qualified in ways that increase stakeholder confidence, generally through more expensive quantitative approaches.

The formula I use for determining the level of investment is the same regardless of whether we’re working at the strategic or developmental level: about 5% of the projected cost of the effort should be invested in the generative research.  On the development side of the equation, if the organization is projecting a five year budget of about $5 million, it should allocate about $250,000 over that same period for generative research. On the strategic side of the equation, if the organization expects to spend $100,000 on research, consultants and the like, it should allocate about $5000 for generative research. In either context, the 5% represents money to be spent identifying the right questions to be investigated further.

Quantitative research ought to be tuned to the questions raised by qualitative research. To put it metaphorically, the captains of the ship are given two types of spyglasses: a wide angle lens to see elements of interest, and a telescopic lens for greater depth and resolution. Using an agile user experience process, those questions can be identified quickly and with a high degree of confidence.

If we’re ready, all it takes is a little bit of luck.

In the next set of articles I describe User Experience Architecture in terms of deliverables, principles and key components.