How Do You Rate Your Own UX?

In the space of a week, you probably interact with hundreds of products and services. Which is more common for you? User experiences that tend towards brilliant or those that tend more towards disappointing? And how do you react in the event of either?

UX is close to my heart. It relates to a core value of mine – whatever you create or do, make sure it satisfies your own standards and serves others well.

A poor user experience so irks me that I will devote a significant amount of time providing feedback to providers of poor UX and suggesting ways to improve their offerings. My support can range from non-intuitive websites, labyrinthine customer service processes and non-existent point of sales staff.

I was discussing UX with a design professional recently when I began to think about myself in terms of UX. How do others’ rate their user experience of me? What do I do that enhances or diminishes their user experience?

Below are some of the ways I reduce my UX and some possible steps to avoid presenting a less than optimal user experience to the world. You may share some of these, or you may recognize your own UX pitfalls:

1. Multi-tasking

Especially now with so much work happening virtually, there is huge scope to divert your attention from a discussion with your counterpart(s), to checking email, reviewing a proposal or scanning WhatsApp.

Two things to consider:

a) Your counterpart knows you aren’t fully focused on them. How does that make them feel? And what message are you communicating when you do this?  

b) Multi-tasking reduces the ROI on invested time and energy. It isn’t effective to try to do two activities that require concentration at the same time – it’s unlikely you will complete those tasks faster working on them simultaneously than you would handling them sequentially.

Whichever way you look at this – in terms of productivity and personal effectiveness, multi-tasking is a losing proposition. Rather, plan – execute – reflect.

2. Vague intentions

Have you ever been aware of having some idea of where you are headed, but lacking in sufficient skill to articulate a meaningful vision or logical route to reach the objective? When others aren’t clear of the goal and the path you are charting, trust and confidence dip. People feel uncomfortable.

Rather, onboard people in the visioning process, discuss plans and the need to trial each in turn. It’s ok not to know precisely how everything will work out. It isn’t ok not to layout the plan.

3. Time’s Up

Do you predetermine the amount of time something should take? E.g. A conversation with a potential partner = 30 minutes. Discussing progress on a project with a team member = 15 minutes. A conversation with an ex-colleague = 10 minutes hampers my ability to really engage with another person.

Whilst it’s a good idea to schedule time (and that includes scheduling down time for your brain), setting a conscious time limit on interactions can be self-defeating. Some people are quick to get to the point, others take time to warm up. If you’re disengaging from the conversation before people feel comfortable to share, you lose out on the opportunity to connect and build trust – as well as to hear their perspective.*

A ‘time’s up’ mentality can be particularly harmful when working on longer term projects. ‘This needs to happen now,’ doesn’t offer scope for deep-dives and considered discussion. Perhaps this is one of the contributing factors to the lamentable success rate of change initiatives – approximately 70% fail**.

Engage your EQ and understand when your strictly defined timeframes can work - and when they can’t work or aren’t working.

4. Outcome

Do you find yourself wondering: what am I going to get from this? It is almost as though engaging in any interaction requires a definite outcome. Of course, outcomes are important in professional interactions. But if most of your interactions are outcome driven, might you miss opportunities to satisfy the human need for deeper understanding and creating genuine connections.

Yes, humans need to achieve goals and enjoy the accompanying self-fulfillment and satisfaction. They also need to feel included - part of something bigger, as well as have at least one deeper personal relationship in their professional life.

I once coached a leader who felt every interaction needed to yield an important result. His customer was more interested in building a stronger personal connection rather than consistently discussing business plans, progress and results.

5. Take it or leave it

In a drive to make progress towards a goal, you’ve considered various options and decided on the best approach. You share your thought process and present the best way forward, which sounds somewhat like an ultimatum: Take it or leave it.

We naturally seek to simplify the complex, speed up decision making by creating ‘either – or’ scenarios. This may be our intention in offering two choices. But if these choices are presented as the only options, people may feel cornered. Rarely does a human being presented with an ultimatum roll over and play ball.  

Even if there are only two viable options, all else being equal, would it hurt to explore others’ perspectives and open up discussion, before zeroing in on the optimal choice? This is more about the emotional rather than rational aspects of decision making.

A drop in others’ user experience of me is most likely to result from too much 1 and 3. Knowing this is important. Choosing how I behave in trigger situations is even more critical. And like many behavioural changes, it is a work in progress.

 *I appreciate that each organization has a particular culture. If the organization’s culture is to speak up quickly and directly, then it’s important to adapt to the culture. We all know that diverse perspective foster improved decision making, so in the spirit of increased inclusion and enhanced decision making, some people need to work at ceding airtime and others need to claim more of it.

**70% of change initiatives fail according to McKinsey and Kotter.

? Andrea Stone at Stone Leadership Coaching and Consulting Pvt. Ltd.