Seeing is believing: Realising the value of User-Centred Design

Early on in my career, after just completing an MBA, I was hired by an IT and Management Consulting firm and tasked with starting up a User Experience Design division. The firm was really enthusiastic about incorporating User-Centred Design practices into every element of their business and wanted to offer it as an additional consulting service to their long list of clients.

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During a pitch of a large-scale IT system redevelopment project to one of the largest health insurance companies in the world, we recommended to the CIO that we should follow a User Centred Design process to ensure that the project would be a success, citing the many reasons why projects without User Experience Design fails. She responded that while she believed in the importance of User Experience, we could definitely tackle the UI design at the end of the project, after we knew what we were implementing. Our Head of Consulting reluctantly agreed with her recommendation in order to secure the project, and proceeded to introduce me (their Lead User Experience Designer) as the project manager on the project.

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As we kicked off this massive IT Project, I sneaked in a couple of User Experience Strategy and Design activities as part of our initial strategy and analysis workshops. We conducted some User Interviews, created User Personas and I even facilitated a series of Customer Journey Mapping workshops. Later on we created wireframes and prototypes and conducted User Testing, all before coming up with a “final UI” for the project.

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We never mentioned that these were all “UX” related activities, and the CIO and her team absolutely loved the approach and deliverables – so much that she even asked me to facilitate some Journey Mapping workshops with her existing mobile app design and development team (that up to that point had a full time “UX Designer” in the team that only ever focused on UI Design.) At the end of the project, I explained to her that all these value adding activities we did that were critical to the success of the project, were in fact User-Centred Design activities. Their organization proceeded to embrace better design practices and has grown their maturity and appreciation of it since then.

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The true value of a well-executed User Experience Design approach is not in the beautiful User Interfaces (UI) you end up with - it’s about steering the ship in the right direction in the first place – it’s not just a nice-to-have, but a critical success factor in IT projects. The misconception that UX is a final polish rather than a foundational pillar can lead to missed opportunities, misaligned strategies, and ultimately, solutions that don't meet user needs. UX Design is much more than crafting beautiful interfaces; it is about understanding and addressing user needs from the very beginning, setting the right direction for the project, and facilitating seamless communication between business stakeholders and IT teams. Remember, a well-executed User Experience Design approach doesn't just add value - it multiplies it, fostering more successful outcomes, shorter development timelines, and reduced defects. In the end, seeing truly is believing when it comes to the transformative power of User-Centered Design.

?Jaco van den Heever is the Head of Consulting at User-Centered Design firm Sand Dollar Design , a global design firm. Find out more at www.sanddollardesign.co