Mobile First to Cloud First to AI First to UX First – UX, the key to business success!

We used to hear mobile first, then we heard cloud first, fast forward we started hearing AI first. As new technologies started to emerge that could truly make a difference in driving business innovation, the tech community started to emphasize the technologies with “X first”, where X represented some new technology or platform that is expected to drive engaging, unique, and personalized user experience. As “X” got replaced by different terms/technologies every few years, “user experience” evolved with its journey from being customer experience (CX) to user experience (UX) to digital experience (DX) etc. where each of these terms only focused on subsets of overall “user experience”.

Why do people use a new product or service?

People have pain points and the new product or service is going to solve their pain points. Using a new product or service is change. Change is tough, change is daunting but these types of change can easily be adopted provided the overall experience of using the product or service is excellent. Coming up with a seamless, engaging, and unique experience does not happen by accident, it happens by design. iPad like products existed long before iPad took birth! What made iPad an iPad and drove exponential adoption of the new “convenience” was its design, not just how it looked & felt, but how it actually worked. A well-developed user interface (UI) and thoughtful user experience (UX) can make or break your product or service.

Views and opinions expressed in this article are my own?and do not?reflect?official policy or position of my employer and/or any other organization(s) I was/am associated with.        

Experiences vs. Things

We carry the memory of experiences with us much longer than we do the memory of things - all the more reason for businesses to focus on experiences. Deliberate and purposeful design of service interaction is equally, if not more.?Year after year, research shows that companies with a determined focus on user experience perform significantly better. They enjoy higher revenues due to better retention, less price sensitivity, greater wallet share and positive word-of-mouth. In turn they lower expenses with reduced acquisition costs, fewer complaints, and fewer customer service requirements. That’s why it is extremely important to focus on UX from the very start of planning your product or service.

How is UX different from UI?

In short, UI is how good a car looks and UX is how good you feel driving the car. UI is about optimal use of white space, proper usage of colors ensuring contrast for visibility/usability, smart choice of shape & size of icons, and focus on ensuring the interfaces look good on all touch points. UI designer’s role is only limited to a sub-section of the overall UX design. UX design is more of function than of form.?Consistency, simplicity, don’t-make-me-think are key words associated with better UX.?

To illustrate the difference further, something that looks great but is difficult to use is an example of great UI and poor UX. While something very usable that looks terrible is example of great UX and poor UI. And we see plethora of examples of both scenarios in day to day life.

What does a UX Design process look like?

UX design process usually starts with research which comprises of understanding (user interviews to identify their requirements), user personas (represents a typical user to identify their goals, frustrations, etc.), use cases (how might different people use this product or service) and journey maps (how a user might start and finish the experience). Next up is brainstorming, which includes creating user flows (diagrams that outlines the steps a user might take during the experience as they go from step to step in the UI), wireframes (rough skeleton of UI and various components that make up the UI). After that is implementation; this is where a UI designer create Prototypes (low and/or high fidelity prototypes, which may or may not be interactive) and then developers/engineers convert the approved prototype into a working product through frontend and backend development. Next up is reporting for setting up feedback loop and continuous improvement. Once the product or the service is implemented you can have Usability Reporting (observe real use using the product through variety of means), Split Testing (testing the effectiveness of one design over another) and Analytics (gaining additional insights such as time spent on pages, bounce rates etc.).

So, where do we start?

One way to start is to identify the moments or micro-experiences that matter most to your customers and understand frictions in them. Depending on your business those could be search, sign-up, check out, reservation, setting up appointment, comparison, etc. Have mechanisms to detect whenever anything changes with those and other micro-experiences you should be focused on. Everyone around you will have opinions about what customer experience should look like; those opinions will sometimes be contradictory to each other and would rarely be thought through end-to-end. Knowing end to end customer journey map, representing the true voice of customer and not a specific business unit is key to creating an elevated user experience; otherwise chances are that you will end up with a laundry list of things that may not do anything to move the needle.

The business world is undergoing a revolution, driven by technology. We have an opportunity to harness the energy of this change and capitalize on the momentum with the goals of creating new, amazing and nimble businesses that resonate with the hearts of our customers and our communities. If you are looking to stand out in a crowded market, focus on UX is a must. Mobile, cloud, digital, AI and the likes are enablers of awesome user experiences, choose them wisely. Start with key moments and micro experiences that are critical to your customers and start improving those. UX First mindset drives brand awareness/recognition up, results in happier employees & higher customer satisfaction and greater NPS.?

“No product is an island. A product is more than the product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences. Think through all of the stages of a product or service – from initial intentions through final reflections, from first usage to help, service, and maintenance. Make them all work together seamlessly.” — Don Norman