TALK: Repositioning User Experience

operational

Repositioning User

Interaction
Experience as a Strategic organizational
Process
Jon Innes
Liam Friedland strategic

TM

Why Is User Experience Strategic?

 UX becomes a differentiating factor in a commodity market
 Technologies mature and become mainstream
 Competitors develop comparable offerings over time
 Mainstream markets value UX more than early adopters

 UX methods lower costs and reduce risks
 Improved planning & decision making
 More efficient development processes

 UX methods help companies adapt to market shifts
 Design research leads to systematic innovation
 When properly executed it can inform business strategy

© Jon Innes & Liam Friedland

The Experience Economy

Stage
Differentiated Experiences

Deliver
Services
Competitive
Position
Make
Goods

Undifferentiated Extract
Commodities

Market Premium
Pricing
From ―Welcome to the Experience Economy‖ by Pine & Gilmore

Product Maturity and UX
Transition point
where technology meets
basic needs
Product
Performance

Excess quality
Most customers
uninterested in this
Level of region
performance
required by
average
users Technology is good enough and
Unfilled need therefore irrelevant.

User experience dominates

High technology Consumer commodity
Customers want more Consumers want
technology, convenience, reliability, low
better performance cost ...
From ―The Innovator’s Dilemma‖ by Clayton Christensen

Adoption of UX Strategic Thinking

We are Here

Early Early Late
Innovators Laggards
Adopters Majority Majority

"The
Chasm"

User Experience Adoption Process

Based on ―Crossing the Chasm‖ by Geoffrey Moore

A Framework for Viewing UX Strategically

The structured work processes which lead to a
operations
desired set of outputs (physical, knowledge, etc)
Interaction

Groupings of people that provide concentrations of
organization specialized expertise, work experience, and skills

A detailed plan for achieving success in situations
strategy such as war, politics, business, industry or
sport, or the skill of planning for such situations
-Cambridge Dictionary Online
TM

From ―Repositioning User Experience as a Strategic Process‖ by Innes & Friedland

Operational Processes

 UX contributes unique skills to the development process

 Leverage the ―sweet spot‖ to maximize impact and ROI

 Analyze where you spend time and what tangible outputs you
produce:
 How UX work adds value to:

• The company and its customers
• Any internal groups that benefit from UX deliverables
 Track things quantitatively whenever possible
• Establish simple metrics that management at all levels can track
• Embed metrics into organizational consciousness


Organizational Processes

 UX needs to serve as a ―change agent‖
 Product designs reflect the organizations that create them
 You need to change the culture and influence others to change the UI

 Make influencing others a part of your job
 Gajendar’s concept of the ―Heroic Designer‖* acting as a catalyst
 Put together a plan and execute it

 Don’t be afraid to share responsibility for UX
 Engage others in your mission as team mates
 You can accomplish much more as a team
 Sharing your knowledge of UX makes other recognize it’s value and yours

 Introducing new UX processes impact many existing people
 Be proactive, talk to those impacted and partner with them
 Consider other groups your customers—listen to them!

* From ―Barbarians or Bureacrats‖ by Uday Gajendar


Strategy—It’s Not Just for Marketing Anymore

 What is strategy?
 Defining long term goals and then using those goals to guide in
the selection of the appropriate tactics to achieve those goals

 Strategy example: Types of management
 Operationally focused:
• Row harder!
 Tactically focused:
• Why row, put up a sail…
 Strategically focused
• Are we rowing in the right direction?
• Do we need to go there at all?

 For too long, people in our profession have been
focusing on rowing harder


One External Worldview of UX

Outdated View: Consulting / Service Organization

 Design: Makes things look good
 Usability: Tests to find bugs after the code Need to move
is working from this…

 Not a core business competency
 Important but not essential
 Practitioners don’t have a good sense of
business issues


Strategic Worldview of UX

Proposed View: Strategic Function

 User-centered product planning informs all
aspects of product direction

 Essential part of the development process …to this

 Key contributions throughout the product
or service lifecycle

 Business value is large, wide-ranging, and
demonstrable

 Quantifiable, reproducible, high-quality
processes


Run UX Like a Business

Optimize based on the following questions:
 What do you produce?
 How efficiently do you produce it?
 Can you justify what you cost to your customers (ROI)?
 Do you effectively leverage your value-network?
 Do you market your products and services effectively?
 Are you considering the market trends for UX?

Could you sell your UX business plan to investors?


Operational Expertise—User Research
 Cataloging detailed information on users
 Key activities
 Goals & Tasks
 Needs & Wants

 Understanding human factors relating to product design
 Cognitive
 Physical

 Focusing on contexts of product use
 Communities
 Interactions
 Collaborations


Deliverables—User Research

 User research is only useful when the information it creates
reaches others and impacts organizational behavior

 The tangible deliverables are reports and presentations that
capture:

 User requirements and profile data (formative)
• Surveys
• Field studies
• Formative usability tests

 Design defects and enhancements (refining or summative)
• Cognitive walkthroughs
• Traditional usability tests
• Field studies


Operational Expertise—Design

 Creates tangible artifacts by synthesizing data from multiple
requirements streams:
 Marketing
 Technical
 Legal
 Usage
 Aesthetics

 Problem solving to guide planning and development
 Exploring multiple solution spaces
 Rapid, iterative prototyping processes

 Visualizations to communicate and help inform decision making
 Information, messaging, and branding materials
 Structural, and behavioral diagrams
 Descriptions of form associated with ergonomics


Deliverables—Design

 Design is only useful when it generates specifications
from which products can be built

 Prototypes & specifications serve as detailed plans for
building products and normally cover:
 Software
• Information architecture, conceptual models
• Interaction, and navigation
• Screen layout, and UI terminology
• Branding elements (product graphics & identity)

 Hardware
• Form
• Materials
• Branding elements (colors, finishes, product graphics)


Designing is Synthesizing

 Our future depends on synthesizing more than just
design ideas but also:
 Our outputs with other UX related disciplines
• Highly collaborative multidisciplinary teams = innovation
 The work of other functional teams
• Engineering
• Quality Assurance
• Marketing
• Sales
• Professional Services
• Others...
 Most importantly with business leaders at all levels


Symbiotic Functions

Design

User
Experience

Research

TM


Organizational Synergy

Market Research
Field
Studies
Subject Matter Experts Project Planning

Information Interaction
Architecture Design Product
Technical Writing Management

Market User
User
Research Experience
Experience Brand
Strategy
Engineering
Concept Visual
Advertising
Prototyping
Sales Design
Technical Support
Quality
Usability
Assurance
Testing
TM


Tactic—Product Differentiation
Design / Implementation Alpha / Beta Release
Field studies Design refinement Design refinement Analyze support calls
Task analysis QA of the UI QA of the UI Site visits

Use cases Formative testing Next cycle planning
Usability testing
Market analysis Develop visual identity Finalize visuals UI post-mortem

Competitive evaluation UI Walkthrough Baseline studies
Develop resource files
Feature planning Beta site visits
Project plans & dev Documentation review
estimates UI Walkthrough
Task diagramming
Documentation plans
Heuristic evaluations
Info architecture
Visualizations
Concept prototypes
Testing prototypes
Design specs
(flows & screens)

TM
Research Design Intensively Collaborative


Tactic—Time Shifting
Design / Implementation Alpha / Beta Release

Other UX Opportunities: Highest
UX Sweet Spot: ROI
UI QA & Usability Validation

TM
Ability to influence product direction

Cost to make changes to product

Tactic—Resource Reallocation

High
Level of Effort

Low

Before After

Consider Your Value Network

What is a value network?
 The context in which you produce your existing deliverables

 It limits what you can do and defines how you are rewarded

What should you consider?
 Who benefits from your work?

 What partners do you have in creating your value-add?

 Who provides your necessary resources or materials?

Listening to your value network has both pros and cons
 Can help you determine how to improve existing offerings

 May blind you to new opportunities and limit growth

From ―The Innovator’s Dilemma‖ by Clayton Christensen


Collaboration is Key

 Step outside of your cube or office
 Make sure you interact with people in other groups regularly

 Take a big picture perspective of the organization
 What groups are responsible for what?
 What is your ―foreign policy‖?

 Define your goals and strategies for influencing other groups
 What have you done for them lately?
 What can they do for you?

 How do you interact with other groups in your company?
 Take their viewpoints to understand how to influence them

 Cultivate allies in other groups to help you:
 Drive UX initiatives
 Educate others and change the company culture


No One Understands What We Do—Why?

Does your  Is this mission clear to everyone in management?
group have a  Can managers in the other groups articulate UX’s mission?
clearly  Do those at the C-level know your mission?
defined
mission?

Does your  Do you have a group website?
group  Does it highlight what your group produces?
communicate  Does it provide useful resources for those in other groups?
to the rest of  Is it up to date and informative?
the company?  Do other intranet pages link to it?

Does your  Is your group’s work part of the project plans?
group’s work  Do UX milestones/deliverables appear in the process
fit into what documents?
the company
does?


Collaborating with Product Management
PM Myths UX Myths
UXconfuses developers by PM doesn’t care about
adding new requirements ―the user‖ or usability

Design is about form only Marketing research and user
(aesthetics) and not function research are not complementary

Next
generation UI previews PM only cares about feature lists
might stall current sales

Win-Win
Improve requirements processes & documents
Develop detailed use cases based on user research
Better consideration of overall design & tradeoffs among new features

Bring end user versus customer perspective into requirements

Improve communication with engineering teams


Tactics—PM & UX Initiatives

Work together to
 Specify UI designs to support new feature descriptions
define UI related
requirements  Help provide UI samples for presentations and collateral

Do customer  Document what customers really do and need
case studies  Add UX skills to ensure user profiles and tasks are captured
together

Develop a
demo for a  Use as driving force behind UI prototype
trade show or  Helps create a shared vision that can be used in
for a sales customer presentations
presentation

Introduce ―use  Introduce user-centered approach to the requirements
case‖ oriented
analysis phase and planning efforts
requirements
process  Benefits both customers of PM and UX


Collaborating with Engineering

Engineering Myths UX Myths
All this (UX) stuff is impractical Engineers are the enemy
It takes too much time to study users They care more about technology
and write specs than users
We need to focus on coding All they want to do is meet the

schedule
UX is a threat. They want to take the
creativity out of being a developer UX doesn’t need to understand
 Process = Bureaucracy = Bad anything about technology &
engineering
All it takes to design a usable product
is intelligence & common sense

Win - Win
Buildthe best product possible given the constraints
Improve efficiency and focus – stop wasting time!
Determine the design earlier so we can focus on building it
Avoid iterating in code needlessly and discussing it in endless meetings


Tactics—Engineering & UX Initiatives

Develop a
reusable code  Helps enforce UI consistency
library for UI  Promotes reuse and reduces development time
development

Develop a style  Helps coordinate UI work across all staff & groups
guide for a
 Ensures UI is consistent and UX has voice in process
product or
product line  Design re-factoring = code re-factoring

Collaborate on
prototyping  Reduces project uncertainty and risks for dev and UX
new product or  Helps build a sense of team ownership
features

Work together on  Help the development group specify the details related to UI
development &
 Get involved in review of functional specifications
review of
specifications  Ensures UX specification is feasible & improves planning


Collaborating with QA

QA Myths UX Myths
UI bugs aren’t really bugs UX process is unrelated to quality
Unimportant or a matter of opinion engineering approach
Usability can’t be measured

QA engineers can’t help improve
UIbugs are unimportant or the UI or evaluate usability issues
low priority

Win - Win
Improve the quality of the product as measured by the bug counts
Improve the metrics by which the company tracks quality


Tactics—QA & UX Initiatives

Improve the bug
process to better  Improve process of tracking of usability and UI issues
capture UX  Integrate user research data into quality dashboards
issues

Organize UI
walkthroughs  Decrease QA’s workload by finding defects early
to catch UX
bugs earlier in  Allows QA to concentrate on functional & stress
the process testing

Collaborate on
testing and bug  Help ensure UI bugs get identified and addressed early
prioritization with
QA  Help QA better identify and classify UI bugs

Leverage use  Facilitates the test planning process
cases & UX
specs for QA  Helps QA create better test plans
testing  Facilitates automated testing


Building Relationships for Success

The following principles should guide your interactions:

 Involving the right people at the right time
 Does everyone in your team know who to contact and when?

 Achieving results through formal & informal channels
 Who owns things and who has the power to get things done?

 Fostering effective give and take relationships
 Build relationships through reciprocity

 Understanding perspectives and agendas of others
 Learn about your ―organizational neighbors‖

 Knowing when to fight and when to compromise
 It’s fine to be an idealist in theory, but you have to be a realist in practice

Adapted from the ―Successful Managers Handbook‖


Long Term Strategic Planning

 For an organization to endure it must adapt

 All too often we neglect managing this change
 Too busy with operational work
 Fail to take the big picture/long term perspective

 Drucker* talks about planning from the following perspectives
 What will our business be
 What should our business be
 What new things should we go into
 What existing product lines and businesses should we abandon

 You need to consider these questions from a UX perspective

* From ―Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices‖ by Peter Drucker


Six Forces Impacting Businesses

Power, vigor, and competence of Power, vigor, and competence of Power, vigor, and competence
existing competitors complementors of customers

The Business

Power, vigor, and competence of Power, vigor, and competence of
suppliers potential competitors

Possibility that what your
business is doing can be done in
a different way

From ―Only the Paranoid Survive‖ by Andy Grove


Strategic Inflection Points

The Inflection Curve
Business goes on to new heights

Inflection Point Business declines

Requires a fundamental transformation from what you were to what you will be

From ―Only the Paranoid Survive‖ by Andy Grove


Inflection Points in Detail

Home to academic Local to global

Market Usability/design to User Experience

Nuclear family to aging boomer Consumer to enterprise

HTML to RIA/AJAX Pager to Blackberry

Tech Disconnected PC to WWW Lab testing to remote usability testing

CD to MP3 Brick & mortar to eCommerce

iMac to iPod Database to applications

Version 23 to vision project Concept sketch to design spec
Product
Software utilities to enterprise security Hardware to software

Total quality management Balanced scorecard

Process Total design management True UCD Data-based design

Extreme programming Offshore development 6 Sigma


Example: Vision Project

Forces
 Need to invent a new product or market to survive
 Changes render old offerings obsolete or uncompetitive

Inflection Point
 Product, market, or technology focused change
 Create a shared vision around new ways of doing business


Example: Vision Project

High
Level of Effort

Low

Before After

Example: iMac to iPod

Forces
 Computers become a low margin, high volume business
 Internet & MP3s enable new distribution channel
 Music industry lacks digital-age strategy
 Existing MP3 players provide poor UX

 Inflection Point
 Focus: Market? Technology? Product? Process?
 Advances in technology impact content distribution and
creation to create a unique product & market opportunity
 Designing with the ―Experience‖ mindset gave Apple the
advantage over entrenched competitors (Sony)
 Traditional value network ―blinded‖ competitors


Think & Act Strategically

Develop a UX Influence and drive
strategic initiative corporate strategy
Breadth of UX Vision

that leverages from a UX perspective
existing UX activities

Analyze and improve Align and integrate UX
current UX operations to reflect existing
based on metrics strategic corporate
initiatives

Level of Difficulty


Driving Strategy: Planning
Plan Align Execute

 Understand the corporate strategy by ―tapping-in‖
organizationally

 Identify the thought leaders or their proxies and study what they
are saying

 Inventory your assets and core competencies to assess where
they lie relative to the new strategic initiatives

 Analyze the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of your
team and others

 Assess potential organizational alliances and blockages

 Perform initial business-value benefits analysis


Driving Strategy: Alignment
Plan Align Execute

 Meet with the organizational thought leaders or their proxies

 Interview these individuals to determine opportunities

 Explain your position, alignments, and key value add to other
organizations and the business overall

 Determine mutually beneficial points of collaboration

 Ask for feedback and recommendations for additional points
of synergy company-wide


Driving Strategy: Execution
Plan Align Execute

 Adjust group’s priorities to align with the new initiatives

 Develop value-benefit metrics based on new UX outputs

 Always be on the lookout for new ways that UX can contribute

 Collaborate with partners to ensure successful execution


Fine-tuning Strategy

 It’s all about creating a self adapting organization
 Cybernetics
 Kaizen
 ―The Fifth Discipline‖
 Organizations must adapt or they become extinct

 Setup reliable feedback loops and evaluate your strategy continuously
 How does the current strategy impact UX and its deliverables
 Always be on the look out for unique ways UX can contribute

 Be prepared for changes!
 Long term plans are by nature dynamic
 Make sure you get continual feedback on any strategy
 Avoid putting all of your eggs in one basket
 Always have a backup plan (or two)


Final Thoughts

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route
to victory. Tactics without strategy is the
noise before defeat.

-Sun Tzu


TALK: Repositioning User Experience

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