The problem of zero and one

Zero and one. True and false. Technology driving computer-taken decisions. Key performance indicators (KPI’s) related to time spent on sites, number of sales and revenue. In theory, having a good idea for a product or service is all we need. There are enough developers and designers around us to make things work. As long as we only take right business decisions and decide on costs, resource allocation and a number of other things — everything will pan out.

The common understanding is that user experience (UX) of the digital era relies on digital solutions. Websites, applications and clicks. If they work, then all is dandy.

This seems logical. Why then do we have City Council garbage collection trucks waking us at 7am on Sunday morning? I bet they run accordingly to a schedule maintained with a nice digital system, or a calendar. Did no one check if customers — us — sleep at that time?

Why a major British bank’s mobile app does not allow its users to see the yearly interest on their savings in plain text, but asks them to download inaccessible PDF files instead? It’s a digital service, after all; shouldn’t it allow anyone to fulfil their goals, regardless of their abilities?

Why does the ticketing app for Edinburgh’s bus transport company rely on the network connection in a city, where getting even a 3G signal is often a challenge? Surely there was a way of caching tickets? This way the person ready to embark on the bus wouldn’t have to throw tantrums at the software not responding to furious taps.

Black and white

I’ve had an interesting conversation lately. I went to a conference to speak about UX and its relation to web development. One of the visitors, a seasoned back-end programmer, asked me about my work. I explained what I do: “I help organisations getting their heads around their customer behaviour — I am a UX designer”, I said. The developer said: “I work at a company where we make logistic software, for large warehouses and similar places. We don’t need any UX, we don’t have that there.”

My jaw dropped. I didn’t ask: “Do you want to tell me that your software is floating in the void, not used by any human being?”. Perhaps I should have.

The problem of zero and one. Binary true and false. Something works or it doesn’t. It’s online, so it works. It works, so it’s user-friendly. It works, so there is an experience — and, as designers, we’re sorted. Such a misunderstanding.

A recent meeting with one of my former students made me think about this again. Now a UX designer, but trained to be a developer, my interlocutor said:

“The biggest problem I have with UX is that nothing is black and white. It’s hard for me to tune into that. Just yesterday we were designing a form. I’ve spent an hour thinking about the main submission button; should it be on the right? Should it be on the left? I will only know if I test this. There’s no time, however, as everything needs to be done now!” — he wasn’t happy about that.

Where’s the issue?

We’re good at fulfilling tasks related to our professional practice. We can write code (if someone provides us with a good spec). We can develop user journeys and work with personas or prototypes. Some of us are excellent at crunching numbers of analytical data. One thing we’re sometimes forgetting about is that a good experience spans way beyond technology. And that it has a common sense embedded at its core.

What would happen if, instead of planning ahead for functionality or service of unknown value to a customer, we’d spend time investigating this value beforehand? What if instead of asking ‘how’ we’d ask ‘why?’ in the first place? Even more; what if we approached the problem from the perspective of learning and looked for a solution that is best applicable to the outcome the customers want?

We are all reasonable creatures and we know how to seek rationale when we’re dealing with daily tasks. If we’re hungry, we’ll ask ourselves: “What do I want to eat? Eggs? Avocado? Or a burger?”. If we’re planning to buy a new car, we’ll consider it carefully, basing our ultimate choice on how functional the vehicle is and whether we can afford it.

Yet, when faced with a design problem in a professional setting we’d often go for a solution that does nothing else but fulfils a set of requirements based on assumed values communicated by stakeholders. All too seldom we’re doubting their choices and ask “what’s the rationale — where did this come from?”. Perhaps we should start doing that?

Adaptation is key

We’re all designers. Yes, all of us involved in software development. From the marketer to a developer; from a visual designer, through a content writer, down to a hardware engineer. That’s why learning about our customers’ behaviour is so important. It’s a good practice embedded at the heart of many successful organisations that we all admire.

We’ve all worked in or for organisations that, driven by vanity metrics, delivered solutions that could only be described as digital garbage. We’ve been rarely exposed to the measurement of customer satisfaction other than dreadful and completely meaningless Net Promoter Score (NPS). It’s not enough to know if someone would recommend our service; we need to know why would they do that. Or why wouldn’t they? And react; take a different course of action if a change is required.

This is user experience design. Reactiveness and common sense. We can no longer ignore it. There are many smart and big labels attached to this phenomenon of organisation-customer relationship; service design, UX, digital transformation, foresight and a number of others. These are just labels, though — and we need to understand how they are related to the real world.

We’d better start adapting our methods to the ever-changing needs of our customers. Finding out about their behaviour is the first thing we need to do.

From there we can choose the zero-and-one technology that would offer the best solution. The other path will lead us to an abrupt awakening in the middle of a lazy morning. Or to a PDF that we can’t read.

Which way will your organisation choose?

Why did I write this?

Some time ago I’ve written a successful UX Fundamentals course for CodeClan. In a few weeks, I will deliver the next edition of it in Glasgow. Originally I thought that I could write a nice, typical sales article. Something that would communicate how great the value of the course is and that you can join us to learn UX methods such as proto-persona and persona generation, user journey mapping and user testing (amongst other).

As I looked around my recent Twitter interaction with some of my colleagues, frustrated by the lack of quality in public services and offerings of many businesses, I’ve changed the approach. Yes, I can teach you methods of UX, but it will be your responsibility to use them well. I will show you the path to making stuff really work and teach you how to engage your stakeholders in that process. Design is not a box-ticking exercise.

I want to show you how to think about what people around you do — and how products of your work can deliver real, meaningful value, not the one driven by meaningless metrics and stream of project initiation documents. If you care about it and are keen to learn more, come to the course.

The warmest invitation that I can think of is:

Challenging the status quo in our workplaces and in the mindset of our clients is our duty. Technology might be binary, but the experience is not. The only way to bring value is to embrace it and to focus our efforts on ultimate, desired outcomes of our customers.

This almost never means pushing pixels — but often stepping outside our comfort zones. So be it.

Some links, credits and thanks

• The fantastic NPS article by Jared Spool
• An interview with Paul Boag that I have conducted a while back — we've explored similar concepts
• Many thoughts and ideas that Josh Seiden and Jeff Gothelf speak about in their books of Sense and Respond and Lean UX — buy both.
• Rants and discussions on Twitter — many thanks to amazing @leahlockhart (never surrender!)
• Finally, once again: the UX Fundamentals Course at CodeClan.

Header photo by Jo Szczepanska on Unsplash.