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New Frontiers: UX Professional as Business Consultant
The document discusses the evolving role of UX professionals as business consultants who help organizations enhance performance through user-centered design practices. It emphasizes the need for UX experts to engage in change management, understand business dynamics, and facilitate organizational transformation. The future of UX consultancy lies in integrating deep operational understanding with strategic insights to deliver impactful user experiences.
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New Frontiers: UX Professional as Business Consultant
- 1. NEW FRONTIERS: THEUX PROFESSIONAL AS BUSINESS CONSULTANT TITLE SUBTITLE Cindy Chastain @cchastain #uxconsultant Interaction 13 | January 30, 2013 1
- 2. Business (management) consultant: Someonewho 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 whoengages in user-centered design practices to generate cohesive, predictive and desirable designs based on holistic consideration of a users’ experience. 3
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- 7. Customer experience andtechnology is becoming an essential business strategy 7
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- 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 Identifymarket opportunities Rethink business models Articulate a vision Define their UX strategy Plan for organizational change 10
- 11. For companies thathave 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'restruggling in this market. We need to reinvent and reinvigorate. - Steve Baty 12
- 13. Companies are seeingthat their products have to support their customers in a very different way than they've been doing it in the past. - Whitney Hess 13
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- 15. sort of 15
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- 18. Any UX workthat 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 ofsaying that all the work we do is change management. -Karen McGrane Interaction 13/ January 2013 19
- 20. picture WIP 20
- 21. What Impactful UXRequires 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
- 22.
- 23. The more thingsare 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
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- 25. picture It’s about facilitatinginsight (supported by a design process) 25
- 26. What needs tobe 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
- 27. It’s about thepeople and the relationships. 27
- 28. You could havethe 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
- 29. It’s about teachinga company to fish. 29
- 30. We ask: whatare 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 isnot 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
- 33. We have comeprepared… 33
- 34. Interaction 13/ January2013 34
- 35. Ability to listento 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 ofbusiness problems that fail in analytic approaches are much better served with a design approach. - Steve Baty Interaction 13/ January 2013 36
- 37. The UX fieldbenefits 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
- 38. But we’ve hadto learn new things… 38
- 39. Picture 39
- 40. How to useand 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
- 41. So what doesthe future look like? 41
- 42. Ecosystem maps willbe 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
- 43. Picture 43
- 44. There’s way moreclients 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 stepthat 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 opportunityif 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 beinterested 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
- 48. THANKS! 48
Editor's Notes
- #5 An industrial design, for example, had to be accountable to business. Understanding process. Understanding the economics of materials. Understanding holistically how the business worked.
- #6 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.
- #7 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
- #9 These are some of the companies who have embraced and have excelled at “customer experience”
- #10 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.
- #11 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.
- #12 DG
- #13 SB
- #14 Mention expense report system story.
- #17 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.
- #18 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.
- #22 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.
- #25 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.
- #26 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.
- #28 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.
- #30 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
- #32 After talking to these folks, the thing that struck the deepest cord was this.
- #33 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.
- #35 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?
- #40 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.
- #42 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
- #44 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.