We talk a lot about cross-channel experiences and how to address these new challenges as designers, but what about using our design skills, our hard won knowledge and empathy for customers to help companies decide what products and services will help grow their business? While companies are coming round to the value of customer experience, they're struggling to acquire the skills needed for creating and managing touch points as well as understanding and prioritizing needs. And when we're talking multi-channel ecosystems, who's better equipped to address this complexity than those who have the skill set to not only understand it, but to design it and guide how it's built.
From optimizing the cross-channel customer experience, to creating new product and service extensions, we're heading into a prime moment for bringing our toolkit into the business arena. This talk is meant to be both a thought starter a around how UX can begin to play a substantive role in a company's digital strategy. Using examples from my own experiences and input from a variety of seasoned practitioners, we'll examine the challenges and map the opportunities across our own journey as UX professionals who are starting to think about what's next.
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New Frontiers: UX Professional as Business Consultant
1. NEW FRONTIERS: THE UX PROFESSIONAL AS BUSINESS CONSULTANT
TITLE
SUBTITLE
Cindy Chastain
@cchastain
#uxconsultant
Interaction 13 | January 30, 2013 1
2. Business (management) consultant:
Someone who engages in the practice of helping
organizations grow and improve their performance,
primarily through the analysis of existing
organizational problems and development of plans
for improvement.
2
3. UX Professional:
Someone who engages in user-centered design
practices to generate cohesive, predictive and
desirable designs based on holistic consideration of
a users’ experience.
3
9. The Panel
JESSE JAMES KAREN MATTHEW STEVE WHITNEY GENE SAMANTHA DAVE
GARRET MCGRANE MILAN BATY HESS SMITH STARMER GRAY
CXO, Independent CEO, Principal, Independent President, VP, Ecommerce Independent
Adaptive Path Consultant Normative Meld Consultant nForm Razorfish Management
San Francisco New York Toronto Sydney Miami/NY Edmonton Chicago Consultant
St. Louis
9
10. Understand their customers
Identify market opportunities
Rethink business models
Articulate a vision
Define their UX strategy
Plan for organizational change
10
11. For companies that have been around
for a long time, it's often the case that
they can see the looming threat on
the horizon, that their business model
is
no longer working.
- Dave Gray
11
12. Companies think: we're struggling in
this market. We need to reinvent and
reinvigorate.
- Steve Baty
12
13. Companies are seeing that their
products have to support their
customers in a very different way
than they've been doing it in the past.
- Whitney Hess
13
18. Any UX work that we've done has
involved guiding a client through a
decision-making process. That's the
core of what strategic management
consulting is.
-Jesse James Garret
18
19. I'm fond of saying that all the work we
do is change management.
-Karen McGrane
Interaction 13/ January 2013 19
21. What Impactful UX Requires
Experience Customer UX
Measurement Governance Culture
Strategy Understanding Design
Setting a clear vision Clear, consistent, A set of activities An ongoing set of A clear, proactively- Cultivating a culture
of the type of and accurate and disciplines practices to measure minded set of in which delivering a
experience you seek picture of your required to define user experience practices for great user
to deliver customers. the characteristics quality enables the monitoring quality experience is
of a person’s company to enhance and execution. embedded in the
interaction with your and optimize over organization’s DNA.
company. time.
21
23. The more things are brokered through
digital products and services, the more
important it is to look into how these
companies operate.
-Gene Smith
Interaction 13/ January 2013 23
26. What needs to be done is already
known by the company. It's just not
consciously known. What I can do is
to help facilitate that knowledge into
consciousness.
-Dave Gray
Interaction 13/ January 2013 26
28. You could have the best
recommendation in the world and the
smartest person in the room, but it's a
change management problem. Have to
understand the subtle dynamics of how
people feel and how they work together
and you have to be able to influence
that.
-Karen McGrane
28
30. We ask: what are the processes and
capabilities we need to have in place
internally in order to continue to deliver
this experience on an ongoing basis?
-Jesse James Garret
30
31. The solution is not the service.
The service is the path we can provide.
31
32. Understand the Figure out Create a plan for
problem and identify how to make implementation
the opportunity. change happen. and
sustainability.
research, prototype, test, refine
32
35. Ability to listen to customers
Systems level problem solving
Facilitating consensus
Inquiry based processes
Ability to go deep
Patience around finding solutions
Seeing multiple facets of a problem
35
36. A lot of business problems that fail in
analytic approaches are much better
served with a design approach.
- Steve Baty
Interaction 13/ January 2013 36
37. The UX field benefits because all of us
have a ground in making things. That
is incredibly powerful. We're starting
from being the builders. And moving
upstream into the strategy world.
-Karen McGrane
Interaction 13/ January 2013 37
40. How to use and understand their language
How business models work
Being really good at translation
Understanding how organizations work
Basic sales stuff
Budget and numbers
Evangelizing and persuasion
Intellectual honesty and strength
40
42. Ecosystem maps will be the new journey maps
Customer experience professionals and
business process pros will become best friends
Customer experience pros will chase employee
engagement
Firms will pay a premium for scarce talent
Forrester, January 2013
42
44. There’s way more clients who don't
get it than those who do. It's the
forward edge of the market that
recognizes the value of an experience
driven approach at the strategic level.
-Jesse James Garrett
Interaction 13/ January 2013 44
45. There's a step that a designer needs
to take where they abstract out from
their particular type of design and
recognize that at an abstract level
there's a design process that has
common principles. Once you can
take the step you can start to
appreciate the intent of the design
process and then apply it in other
ways.
-Steve Baty
Interaction 13/ January 2013 45
46. So much opportunity if people want to
be leaders. But they're going to need
to know how businesses run.
-Samantha Starmer
Interaction 13/ January 2013 46
47. I would be interested to see the field
to stop acting like we are impostors
and to start embracing this more fully.
-Karen McGrane
Interaction 13/ January 2013 47
An industrial design, for example, had to be accountable to business. Understanding process. Understanding the economics of materials. Understanding holistically how the business worked.
In a digital space we didn’ t ’ have to think about business…we had a group of technologist in a room some where who could magically create what we designed.
But the world is a very different place. [talk about ecosystems of product and service] Portable computers became ubiquitous the morphed into even smaller, more powerful and cheaper phones and tablets Mass product and consumption of news, entertainment, products service and ideas have lost the battle, giving way to personalization and customization Control of information shifted from the media to the forum of public opinion and everything has become connected
These are some of the companies who have embraced and have excelled at “customer experience”
As I come at this from only one narrow angle, I needed some help to tell the story. So I’ve created this virtual panel. All of these “UX Pros” have deep knowledge of design and the industry. Almost all have been in the business more than 15 years. And they are some examples of people who are functioning as management consultants to the clients and companies they serve. So…I asked them for input in this presentation so as to better understand the range or work, challenges and insights that they’ve encountered. It was also interesting to hear that they had new labels for themselves in this context: coach, facilitator, catalyst, translator, as well as designer.
So if you take a look at what these folks have been doing you see some common common activities. The kinds of help they were giving to their clients.
DG
SB
Mention expense report system story.
There are a lot of business management consultancies and innovation firm incumbents out there who are edging into the customer experience space. Here’s what IDEO says: At IDEO, we combine design thinking and traditional corporate strategies to help clients create avenues for market growth. They say: Whenever a company designs a new product, service, or experience, it is essentially designing its business.
But when you think of how other types of consultants work. It’s often the subject matter expert who gets the gig. Like a cop, who becomes a consultant for a TV show. Or a doctor who consults M&A transactions in the health industry. So why shouldn’t the subject matter experts for user experience step up to these business demands? That’s our challenge and our opportunity.
Experience strategy: as well as defining the priorities that will help us get there. There should be a global experience strategy, as well as a more focused set of priorities for each application. Customer understanding: Understanding their needs will enable us to identify opportunities for delivering an experience that goes beyond expectations. UX design: through the applications and services that support the business process UX design can extend beyond the application itself, to how we can improve the on-boarding and transition of customers. Governance: will be essential for ensuring a consistent user experience.
But I have only one perspective. So I took spent some time with the interview transcripts, to see if I could tease out some common threads across the experiences of our illustrious panel. There was a fairly wide range of activity amongst this small group, but there were some very clear themes related to the work they were doing in the domain of business consulting.
Business consulting for all of these folks was about facilitating insight. I say supported by a design process because facilitation had many dimensions and wasn’t always about design. But the primary value of their service to the client was around integrating a new approach and new way of thinking about problem solving. Not one of these consultants thought they were the ones coming in with the big idea or solution. They were there to help the client understand their customers, the problem space and get to the best insights in a very collaborative way. Here are some of the things I heard: Person delivering the solution is not generally aware of all the stakeholder needs There's no channel for taking research findings to the larger organization when working on a specific product Often the people have great idea of where they need to go, but often their ideas aren't synthesized or connected. Companies have the illusion of being efficient when they're really being inefficient. I work with people who need someone to think with about their challenges about how to solve them. Guiding a client through a decision making process. Instead of telling them what them solution is I'm teaching them how to find it for themselves.
This is the land of the soft skills. Listening, communication, consensus building. All the things that are crucial to seeing change within an organization. It’s about truly being a part of their team. It’s about talking in a way they can understand as well as helping them communicate to their own employees. Some of you are used to putting together presentations that unveil and idea or an approach or a solution, but all of these folks seemed to be helping their clients build their own presentations. Here are some of the things I heard: Helping companies envisage, communicate and design their new workplace. Involved months of pre-selling. Building consensus. I work with clients on a long-term basis so that I really get to know their business. Connect what you want to do with what they want to do. The more you try to control people the more they resist control. How to communicate a concept. The way in which you communicate a concept is not standard for everybody. Getting to know a sense of what they feel comfortable with. Dealing with power dynamics and multi-stakeholder environments. Overcoming the fear of changing. Letting other people do the work. Over time reminding them of why we do things this way and why it matters What you need are internal champions. That's where you start to see those culture changes.
This is a picture from one of the projects I’m working on right now. What’s been so awesome about where we’ve come is that we’re seeing individual employees as well as the company change the way their thinking and working. [tell story] This was another big theme. The reality is that a company doesn’t want to rely on a consultant forever. It just doesn’t make economic sense. And it’s not scalable over time. So part of our job is helping the client begin to adjust and learn so that they can begin to take on more things themselves. It doesn’t mean that their becoming interaction designers, they’ll either neither to hire those experts or continue outsourcing, but they can begin to make decisions on their own. And the can grow and maintain what we help them build. Here are some of the things I heard about this: Help them do the work but understand what the work looks like and how to measure it over time The transition to mobile is adding a layer of complexity. And companies have to deal with this level of complexity. They have do deal with it in their org structures and practices. Teaching companies how to communicate, connect and coordinate activities. Helping them restructure departments and roles in a way that will enable greater impact across the business. Working a level above product: multiple product lines and how to integrate them successfully. Teaching them how to measure experience efforts against other ways to increase usage. To articulate KPIs. Giving them the tools to engage in a design process on their own. UX is everybody's responsibility, *not just the responsibility of one person or department
After talking to these folks, the thing that struck the deepest cord was this.
So what is that path, exactly? Assuming the role of the business consultant that facilitates, works with people and helps a company to fish might look a little like this. And all of these things involved deisgn.
So like I was saying, the subject matter experts should be the ones who are among those help to advise companies on how to gain value through a better customer experience. So I asked our dear panelists what they thought differentiated them from the McKinsey and Bains of the world when it comes to this kind of work. What was it in their UX background that helped them naturally evolve into this kind of work?
But of course, we’ve had to learn new things. It ain’t all peaches and cream. Just went we think we’ve got it we’re being dragged through the corridors with another new challenge. And some of those things might bring a little discomfort your designerly mind. As mentioned earlier, we should be partners with business. Rather than thinking of it as something that gets in the way it should be a channel through which we work. Many of the people I spoke to profess to still be learning. Their veterans with years in the industry but they anticipate having to do this another five years before they get it right.
Forrester thinks we're still some time away from CX being embedded to that degree. It's really only a small minority of orgs that have been at the CX game for some time. The vast majority is dabbling ---- and some have yet to realize the importance of CX as a business driver. Early adopters will refocus their efforts to drive differentiation Companies in the mainstream will continue to seek buy-in Late adopters will panic as they realize how far behind they are
But for us. Those of us with a background in design and user experience. What’s that look like? Most of the people I spoke to see the opportunity but wanted to point out the tough road getting there. And they actually spoke with mixed levels of optimism. No easy path but a worthwhile pursuit. No more overnight success. Designers are well positioned to see the future, but I don't think there's a lot of patience. It's going to take a long time to learn this stuff. Organizational cultural inertia is forced to be reckoned with. Internal UX teams. I'd be surprised if this didn't become a standard part of any UXers toolkit. Either that or your a commodity provider of basic designers. My advice is that they will at some point in their careers be responsible for this kind of organization change. Don't need to ask yourselves right now. 10-15 years into your career. Depth of experience is key. Wishes apprenticeship and practice for designers was much longer.