UX At Your Desk

UX@Yourdesk
An ‘at your desk’ mindset reference
for people outside of UX.
June 2015 Edition

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UX is a huge field, with a lot of things to cover.
As such, we know there won’t always be a UX expert on hand to help,
or answer questions, but this doesn’t mean that UX has to stop.
This deck provides a quick reference mindset of how to make your
development solution more customer focused.
It’s not a process guide of how to do UX.
It doesn’t replace your UX Expert.
It doesn’t mean you are now responsible for UX.
It does mean that you can now help shape the product with a more
customer focused mindset.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Outcomes, not outputs
Don’t Get Attached
Simplify the Context
Thinking Human
Having One ConversationTM
WYSIWYB
Collaborative Design
Don’t Make Me Think.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
UX@Yourdesk
Role. Goal. Reason.
It’s easy to jump to solutions.
Sometimes even before we know the real reason we’re
delivering them.
It’s the natural one-stop fix in a hectic development cycle.
But is it the right solution for the actual problem you need to fix,
or are you just firefighting a number of smaller issues, leaving
the underlying issue largely untouched?
Capture who you are delivering for.
Role Who is your customer, what is their mindset?
Goal What does your customer want to achieve?
Reason Why is this an issue for them?
Where does this affect them?
It gives you a wider understanding of the issue and will let you
target your fix much closer to the source than reacting to a
one-liner complaint.
Step back, look at the big picture.

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
Outputs are single silo features.
Small pieces of a bigger picture.
A button, a design, a code snippet.
An Outcome is where the customer wants to end up.
Focusing on the outcomes will help make sure your
product ends up in the same space your customer is
looking.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
This one is the most difficult to achieve fully.
We’re hard wired to be emotionally most attached
to things that are ours. Design. Approach. Code.
Letting go any of these early enough if it doesn’t
meet an overall customer outcome is a major
factor in creating the correct experience for your
customer.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
Simplify the context
Remove the complexity if you’re struggling with the details.
Don’t get stuck in one approach.
Put yourself in a similar simplified situation outside of what is
immediately in front of you.
What would you want to happen?
What would you get out of it?
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
Thinking Human
Don’t let a machine shape what you want to provide.
Humans don’t talk in binary, machines do.
Think what a human wants to do.
Why are they using the system?
Before UX, there was HCI.
Human Computer Interaction.
That’s what we are doing… having a conversation between
humans, via a computer.
Your customers expect your code to be correct.
Their expectations are exceeded when you provide the best way
to do it.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
Having One Conversation TM
If you converted the solution you are trying to provide digitally
into a real life human to human conversation, how would it
sound? Where would it start and end?
Would you get up and walk away from someone half way through
that conversation and feel like you’ve provided exceptional
service? Do you know any key information you would say face-
to-face that have been missed out in your digital solution?
Would you hand off to someone else to continue a discussion, or
would you take ownership it from start to finish to provide a
better experience?
Make sure your digital solutions reflect the level of exceptional
service you would provide in a face-to-face conversation in order
to create to help the customer get to where they need to be in the
easiest manner possible.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
WYSIWYB
What You Say Is What You Build.
In that conversation you’ve just had, take note of what you’ve
said.
That is the mindset of how your customers will use your system.
If there are Personas provided by your UX team, refer to these to
validate your mindset and workflow.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
Collaborating gets the best ideas from many people.
Silo’d design isn’t open.
It isn’t inclusive.
It doesn’t get the best solutions to market.
For quick, high level validation of development solutions, present a
task out to a colleague and without coaxing, or providing answers,
observe someone attempting to complete the task*
If they pause and ask questions, don’t provide the answer, ask
what they expect to happen and where and why they are looking
for it.
*Does not replace actual customer testing.
UX@Yourdesk

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Role. Goal. Reason.
Thinking Human
WYSIWYB
If there’s 1 thing you can keep in your brain out of
all this - make it this one.
Don’t make me think.
Making customers pause to think runs the risk of
them seeking workarounds, self-solutionising and
multiple threads of work you didn’t expect to ever
happen.
If brain power was a currency, we don’t want our
customers spending all their money trying to
figure out the UI…
…we want as much of that money spent on doing
what they actually need to do...
UX@Yourdesk
- Kevin McDonald

thanks
uk.linkedin.com/in/mrkevinmcdonald

UX At Your Desk

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