Harnessing the Power of Experience Design & Strategy In A Time Of Uncertainty

Episode 1

In the current state of the global economy, as a climate of uncertainty dawns upon various businesses, it is drawing a number of industries to shift into pilot mode — remaining vigilant and becoming more strategic with their spending in new ventures, phases, products and services. Working in tandem, is the rise of advanced GenAI which adds another layer of complexity to the current digital landscape.

A March 2023 report from Goldman Sachs estimated that AI capable of content generation could do a quarter of all the work currently done by humans. Across the European Union and US, the report further notes, 300 million jobs could be lost to automation. And that could be dire, says Martin Ford, author of Rule of the Robots: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Everything. Amid the talk of artificial intelligence replacing workers, experts say there are some jobs computers aren’t taking — at least for a while. These are jobs, Ford says, “where you need a very deep understanding of people. I think it’ll be a long time before AI has the ability to interact in the kinds of ways that really build relationships”.

In this mini-series, we will explore a few key strategies on how to stabilize business growth, get more value (with ROI) for mid to large-scale digital transformation projects, and stay relevant at the same time. We will shed light on how harnessing the power of Experience Strategy and merging it with User Experience Design (UX) (and supplementary GenAI as a personal assistant and co-pilot) can help accelerate business growth, customer satisfaction and productivity.

Customer Experience Strategy provides a framework for understanding business/user needs and developing processes to meet those needs. It includes analyzing metrics, KPIs, journeys and roadmaps. A well-defined strategy helps align the efforts of employees, stakeholders, and technology toward a common goal, guiding the organization’s path into the future. User Experience Design translates that understanding into actionable, practical, and tangible solutions. However, by carefully fusing and bundling these two related fields, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of users and business impact, resulting in better-designed experiences that meet customer needs and expectations. At the same time, it helps meet business objectives, leading to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty and business growth.

According to the recent UX Trends Report 2023, interest in the User Experience (UX) field has grown more than ever. It is forecasted that the field of UX will evolve immensely and continue to grow exponentially in an Experience-led Economy. As a result, it will play a crucial role in almost every industry and technology and will concern everyone, becoming a significant part of everyday life. UX will continue to incorporate other disciplines and fields of expertise, such as mixed reality, GenAI, behaviour research, and cognitive psychology, to achieve the best possible outcomes — informed by evidence-based data and testing.

Cassie Kozyrkov , Chief Decision Scientist at Google suggests that “Today’s AI revolution is more of a UX revolution than an AI revolution. “That’s why”, she further notes, “the emphasis is shifting away from delivering the most correct answer and towards delivering the most useful answer.”

This insight makes most sense if we are either embarking upon or continuing to tinker with the current GenAI tools and harnessing them in our everyday personal and professional work output. In previous times, artificial intelligence primarily served as a domain driven by corporations and development teams. Today, it is readily accessible for direct use by individuals like yourself.

Speaking about the UX of GenAI, Jacob Neilson, co-founder of NN/g suggested in his post “Fast forward to 2025, and I predict that at least a million companies worldwide will scramble to hire UX professionals with at least two years of AI usability experience.”

As we closely monitor the escalating participation of both major enterprises and smaller firms in the race to harness AI tools, be it for optimizing internal operations or enhancing client services, the prospect of swift increase emerges as a distinct and foreseeable reality.

Alright, it is time to move beyond the research insights and walk the talk. Without further ado, here are two strategies (for now) that businesses can employ to derive maximum value and return on investment from Experience-led Strategy and UX Design-driven initiatives:

1. Prioritize Experience Strategy and UX in Sales Solutioning and Roadmaps

By encouraging XD to have a “seat at the table” alongside Solution Architects and Sales teams, we can influence across disciplines and align complex, cross-company efforts. According to Jon Friedman (Corporate Vice President, Design & Research at Microsoft) organizationally and individually, we must empower UX seniority to actively shape product strategy, vision, and roadmaps to ensure they’re humanity-centered from inception. Regardless of what business strategy or tech platform is devised to deliver an experience, users are not interested in the fragmented experience, what they care about is the seamlessness in the experience that helps them complete a task (digital or physical) with ease of use and the least amount of friction possible — having technology serve as the backbone.

Moreover, Solution Architects can break new ground in deal shaping if they unpack these learnings as part of their Sales planning and pitches — shifting the focus from cutting project costs to advocating and amplifying the value of Strategy and Design that is sustainable with measurable ROI.

?? Tips:

1. Establish a cadence with your Sales and Solutions Architect(s) to gain a deeper understanding of the common themes that your clients are facing, e.g. issues around customer loyalty, lower conversion rates or missing out on KPIs with their current state product/services. Subsequently, these themes can be unpacked with co-ideation in Service Design strategy & Design Sprints (more on that later) to articulate high-level ideas with rapid prototyping. It’s easy for us to be empathetic with our users, but we can always grow to be more empathetic with our business partners too.
2. A great piece of advice I received during the NN/g VP/Director UX course: Strive to find leaders that want to collaborate with you on UX, and demonstrate how this brings value to your team. Then get them to promote this benefit to other leaders. Over time, most of these leaders will learn that their own personal success accelerates when they cooperate and collaborate.

2. Align and Calibrate a Strategic Experience Design team with a Business Design Mindset

In the recently published UX Trends Report 2023 report, the emerging importance of seamless experiences in business has been identified as one of the key trends, stressing the strong connection of strategic experience design to business strategy. This pivotal connection can only thrive when companies encourage UX teams to understand and accept that roles and activities require work in strategy and business design.

Business design, for further reference, is a way of operating that combines the tools of business thinkers, analysts, and strategists with the methods and mindsets of design. Business designers think about how every element of the business model affects the consumer and client experience. User experience, however, is still underrepresented in many areas like Business Strategy. Society, media consumption, devices and environments, all are changing extremely fast, and Experience Designers can and should be leaned on to design that change. As such, UX teams also need to increase the skills related to that challenge: Business Strategy, Product Managing and Leadership as well as Industrial foresight/trend analysis.

?? Tips:

1. Create goals and prioritize cross-training for UX Design and Business Advisory teams to align and speak the same language–upskilling them with a Business Design mindset. This skillset in turn can help unveil and propel the sweet spot for innovation (desirable, viable and technically feasible).
2. To lead at an executive level, UX professionals must learn to articulate UX in the language of business and ROI. Here is a great resource to learn more about the ROI of UX.

This concludes Part 1 of the series. Stay tuned for Part 2 with more tips. ??

Please feel free to visit Nomans Land Creative for additional UX resources.

Noman Siddiqui is an Experience Design Leader, DesignOps Strategist, Adjunct Professor of Design and a self-professed Usability Geek. He’s the founder and UX Director at Nomans Land Creative Inc.