Bordering the UX Culture
Considering contexts, users needs and business goals in a broader way.
Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO, recently argued during the Adobe Summit 2018 that “Consumers are seeking phenomenal experiences.”
“Today, people buy experiences, not products.”
“Products are not the main differentiator anymore,” he said. Instead, companies are struggling for the hearts and minds of all customers and should aim to exceed their expectations through every point of the journey.
Even though this idea is already in the mind of many Designers, it is troublesome to implement that concept when we grasp that we have many elements along the journey and countless of them are not within the direct reach area of the Design.
In this article, we are going to think about the User Experience (UX) concept as a Culture. A Culture to consider users needs and business goals as a central committee for every product and service we Design.
Defining UX
“User Experience (UX) is related to the perception of the individual as a user of a product, system or service and with the pleasure and satisfaction evoked in contact with this artifact.”
- (PREECE, ROGERS and SHARP, 2015)
The User Experience concept has demonstrated to be vital to all types of products and services, and if it is not positive, people will probably not use them any more (GARRETT, 2010). It is also observed that it is not limited to digital environments, it befalls in the physical world and even in the invisible interfaces.
Moreover, the UX concept is an instance that occurs at the user level. It is not something we could directly design (PREECE, ROGERS and SHARP, 2015) or delivery.
As Designers, we face various responsibilities to sustain and support such environment. It is our role and our mission to connect everyone with such concept. More than provide those principles in some particular job, we have to go further helping the company to understand its value as a Culture.
UX as a Culture
We can define culture as:
“The way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time.
Cambridge Dictionary
Culture is something learned as values. It is not necessarily written somewhere. It is behavioral, not genetically programmed. It is based on rules and patterns used by some group of people, sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious. Also, people decide how to behave using their culture’s rules and patterns.
Observing the UX concept, we realize that it is not a particular responsibility for one specific person in the process of designing something. Many people are responsible for creating elements that could evoke great Experiences. From Designers to Developers, from architects to people that are face to face with other people and so on. It exists from when we only have an idea, to when the product or service is running in the real world and goes on.
Even those elements that are out of the range of a Designer have their value in the Experience, like some areas of engineering, mechanics, electronics, and others. The physical aspects are part of how we look and feel things. Promptly, think about all electronics and engineering necessary to make even thinner smartphones. Well constructed devices are indeed a significant portion of the User Experience in the end.
How can we reach such broad scope and convey the idea of creating a great experience? There is only one way: converting UX being a Culture. UX should be a shared belief.
As a Culture, the UX concept can be expanded as a shared concept to design elements able to evoke great experiences. It needs to be painted all over the process, along with the people responsible for Designing, Developing and maintaining and so on.
The Elements of the UX Culture
Surely many elements compose the UX Culture.
However, as mentioned before, many of them are out of our directly reachable region of a Designer. Furthermore, we are not mentioning that elements that are related to the user’s repertory, like previous experiences and personal perspectives, which influences the perception of the Experience.
For now, let’s focus on the designable or somehow reachable elements. We can identify many elements that can be touched by the UX Culture in such puzzle.
In this example, which could have much more elements, we can have a look at the power of UX Culture and all its complexity. It is composed of elements such UI Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Coding and so on. They are the building blocks of the broader User Experience. Only a Culture can drive such different pieces to the same goals.
As mentioned, any culture exists within behaviors and shared values. Action with such behavior is the key to grow this concept.
Expanding the UX Culture
The UX Culture depends on us as designers, teams, companies; on our attitudes and behaviors to be broader. Like as:
#1. Be Responsible for your Job and beyond
You become responsible, forever, for what you have designed. However, it is also our role to expand the UX all over the people involved directly and indirectly in the process.
#2. The design is about Business (and It always was)
The balance between users needs and business goals will guarantee the future of the UX Culture since we need profitable business, but that reach the real user’s needs at the same time.
#3. Say more ‘I do not know’
Don’t assume issues like truth and be open to research and discover new knowledge. In this process, you will explore and discover new things, speak with different people and analyze through a different point of view. That is where the best innovative products were created. Sometimes, even the most apparently obvious aspect of our project only exists because of our personal beliefs.
#4. Protect the UX Culture from distortions
Distortions in UX Culture, like Dark Patterns (It involves when some strategies based on UX studies induce the users to perform not desired actions) are not suitable to the future of the UX Culture, because of a simple aspect: we need the users participating with us to create great experiences for them. This will create an all-embracing business automatically. Confidence is essential here, and It is a vulnerable aspect of any relationship.
#5. Be Aware of the Metrics
Designers need to measure their work and prove the value of the UX Culture inside an organization. How many people are using some specific APP, which interface is converting better than others, how to engage people besides. However, don’t be only focused on numbers. Sometimes they can overshadow the Experience itself. The Design can be quantitative, but it is mainly qualitative.
Conclusion
Big companies are already concerning the value of the User Experience but, sometimes, they believe that this is only a Design role. Even thou the Design is crucial for every organization and teams, the value that drives the design should be broader and touch every point of any product or service, both internally and externally, from the beginning and through the whole user’s journey.
References:
PREECE, J.; ROGERS, Y.; SHARP, H. Interaction Design — Beyond Human- Computer Interaction. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley, 2015.
GARRETT, J. J. The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web and Beyond. Voices That Matter, 2010.
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