This is never so true than for product development, be it a service, software or a physical product.

Often when we design and develop things we get so intensely caught up in the moment that we forget to stop and consider the bigger picture.

In so many of our projects, every single day we waste a lot of the resources that we could otherwise be redirecting to more productive pursuits within the project.

Really it is simple to overcome this, when we are doing anything for a project we should consider:

“Is it of benefit to the customer.”

Yes every aspect, from documentation, to techniques themselves.  Think about it.

• The 100 page analysis report – is that a benefit to the customer?
• The 70 page detailed test plan – is that a benefit to the customer?
• The highly detailed failed wireframes – is that a benefit to the customer?
• The 250 page detailed requirements – is that a benefit to the customer?

If the answer is anything but a solid “Yes”, if it’s in anyway ambiguous then it’s being done wrong.

Often we just fail, over documenting as we go, especially if we have to be seen to be busy. We are all guilty of it. I know I have done it too.

Stop the over documentation

Remember the point of the artefacts for any UX process is not in the artefact itself, but the thinking, questions or answers they raise when you have a collaborative discussions around the artefact or when you build it.

So in a way any UX artefacts, wireframes, user journeys, mental models, issue reports, should be presented as the minimal visual requirement to get the process done.

All communicative documentation, technique or processes should kept to a minimum unless it is of direction benefit to the customer.

Just questioning everything like this allows for the removal of some time leeching on a project’s resources.

Customer (user) centric design is more than just validation with the customer; it’s about complete empathic focus on the customer.

For those not familiar with the event it’s basically a pressure cooker weekend where teams take a hypothetical problem, solve it and produce a viable startup business as a result.   Well that’s the ideal outcome.

Interestingly you would think it this age where UX design principles and agile are commonplace that there would not be many teams getting it wrong or making mistakes with the process.

Well sadly that’s not the case.   The more shocking thing is I see this in a lot of projects all the time.

Rushing to the Technology

Overwhelmingly one thing iwas done wrong – they rushed to the development and started immediately designing a solution.

I have a phrase for this – “rushing to the shiny”.

Also most people from the first moment started to think about the technology they would use for the solution.  Maybe the solution doesn’t need technology.

This rushing to the technology has a good number of issues with it.  Sadly most will not become apparent till a little later, after resources have been wasted and the project fails.

How do you avoid this?  Well it’s really simple: Stop!

1. Work out what the real problem is you want to solve; then work backwards to the core issue that started it all.
2. Pick a point on this problem curve that you can solve realistically.  Don’t’ try and fix a massive behavioural socialistic issue, as you are going to need a while to do that.
3. Work out the audience that has this issue.
4. Go talk to the audience, face to face if you can, see if the problem is real.  It may not be.
5. Brainstorm several hypothetical solutions to the problem; build the final outcomes for the solutions.
6. Go test them or talk to people about the process and solutions.  Note there are several directions here, they may not be technical.
7. Build or work on a service based solution for the one that tested well.
8. Go back and test with the audience again.

Talk to People

See the common theme – talk to people.  Go talk to the audience, engage, collaborate and test with your audience.   Your audience may even tell you of issues that are of a greater concern if you are lucky.

Don’t assume anything.

You may think you know what they want; you may think you have results that confirm your hypothetical solutions or even the problem itself.

How do you know it’s not just a little confirmation bias raising its ugly head, making you see patterns or agreement that isn’t there?

 Learn from Mistakes

The main thing I have seen that derails any project all the time, is the failure to go talk to the right audience or kill off a bad solution and flip it to an alternative when needed.

We are just forgetting to admit our mistakes and learn from them.  Remember design is messy; to make perfection you have to break a few things finding that perfection.

When this occurs you really do have to question if the organization really is considering a customer centric approach or are they just paying lip service to the process with meaningless words and reports.

The consideration should be focused on the customer not the tech. After all technology is what we can easily change, mold and manipulate to solve the problem. The same is not the case with people.

To often we get caught up in the “shiny” of the new tech. We fail to consider looking at the underlying need, the behavior, the problem and the resultant customer use.

This can even be reflected on the requirements of the project.

They need to be described in such a way that they highlight the customer and their intent and don’t reference anything to do with the interface they may use.

Description of their desired outcome and its use is a lot more helpful from a design viewpoint than the description of a solution or a specific tech interface.

Not making the technology to suite people is just being lazy.

After all isn’t tech here just to help and assist people.

Most of the time it’s a one way conversation.  Usually via a website, promotional material, email newsletter or social media.

Now this is fine, to a point.

It’s great for getting the message out, but it really doesn’t help in the longer term with building that client relationship or really understanding what the needs, wants, and desires of youe customers are.

At no point, in this one way conversation, do we find out what long term problems our customers really have.

Yes feedback is important.  Yes as a business you need to listen to it.   Often this feedback is from email or social media engagement these days.

Now it does tell us a good deal of information, and can be very helpful, allowing you to look at immediate issues on hand.

It’s this immediacy that is the problem.    Customer feedback tends to be focused on a major issue or the congratulations of an achievement.

Discovery and Engagement

There is an entire conversation that is missing.   The details, the background of the situation and the overall context.

All the minor problems, or missed opportunities for a customer, doesn’t come to light unless as a business owner you engage your customer one on one.

Talk to them.   Make it personal get to know them; even if they are just a order via an ecommerce site.

Having a real conversation with your customer will be enlightening as to how they use your services.

This is why I tend to spend a good deal of my time, if I’m engaged on the project with you, talking to your customers.

You know I wish we could, but unfortunately customers often don’t think the way information has been previously presented.

The problem is that customers will not have the same experiences and background as the internal staff, who often helped design the previous category system.  Therefore the way customers think will often not really be taken into account.

Interestingly, for specific customer segments, it’s often the influence of our education, personal and professional environments that make a difference.  We will all borrow terminology, ways of categorising, learned procedure and experiences and the like to form our own person categeorisation system.  This makes for an interesting mix.

With such a varied mix, every customer would be different?  Yes this is true, but there will be statistical averages and norms for any specific customer segment.  It is these that we work with.

Listen to the Customer Voice

Understanding and using the way customers think is what makes an app or website easier to use.

The more in tune any service is with the way customers think the easier it will be for them to access the desired information.

When a business listens to this voice of the customer and presents information inline with the experiences of the customer then there is a marked increase in the usability and use of the service.

Being Honest with Yourself

Implementing this can be sometimes difficult.

One of the biggest roadblocks that can occur in this area is a belief that we already understand our customers.

A belief that leads us to believe from our experience and customer education that we already know what they are thinking. That we already know how they categorise items and the terminology they use.

From my experience sometimes this is the case, but it’s usually the exception.

Most of the time we believe we have this knowledge, however in fact we often just have an outdated version from a past customer era.

This is where we need to be honest. We need to really cross examine if we do know our customers that well.

Do we know what the terms are that they use for our information categorisation structure.

Does the structure reflect our knowledge of our customers, and if so , what solid evidence do we have that our knowledge is correct.

Yes I know this is confronting, but to operate an innovative business successfully you have to be constantly questioning your processes and ideas.

Understanding Your Customers

Finding out how your customers think isn’t just a matter of asking them what is okay, it takes a little more than that.

What really needs to be done here is proper research of the customers language and terminology. Often this is where you call in a professional like us, who can expand upon the knowledge you already have of your customers.

Finding that customer voice and terminology is critical to business. It’s what separates a mediocre business from a great one.

You also want, for the most part, your customers to be unique to your business; with their own specialised requirements, only you can meet.

In the offline world this holds true, but not so online.

In the online world of the web, sadly there is a trend to just copy what your compeditors or other successful overseas businesses have done.

When you do this copy and paste without due consideration for how your audience interacts with you in the offline and online space then it can be a complete disaster.

Of late a good number of traditional retailers have been scrambling to improve their position on the web.  Unfortunately they are just copying the online retail models from overseas firms without any consideration for the distinct audience differences.

The reasons people shop online and offline in Australia is very different to some of the reasons for the UK, US or EU.   This type of information has to be taken into account when planning or reviewing any ecommerce facility.

You can’t just take another business’s strategy and implement it as your own.  

For a start there are differences in the regionalisation of your market as well general business alignment. You’re not going to know the issues, research, compromises and the jounrey that has been undertaken by the business to arrive at their strategy. This information is critical.

It’s like looking into building at night, you see the detail inside, but can’t see the structure on which the details are built.

The same can be said for off the shelf software and templates; that are often rolled out by small business.  

Too often these end up forcing you to take extreme compromises to your customers ease of use of your site, for the sake of an initially reduced startup budget.

In many cases you only get one chance to impress your potential customer during any transaction.  Getting this right is important.

If you are finding yourself going down this route, maybe you should consider talking to us.  

We specialise in ensuring that you get that level of customer engagement you are after.  We do this by using a series of specific research techniques to focus on your customers and show you how to measure success realistically.

Often they will admit that their customer service or web experience is very poor.

Yet they will preface it all with – “but my customers aren’t going anywhere, they are clearly very loyal and don’t mind the current experience”  – even if it is very bad, even abusive in parts.

What is happening here is very common.  To often the rule of “its not broken – don’t fix it” comes into play.

From a business perspective too much time is being focused on doing the same things from the past; often the cause of the bad customer experience in the first place.

The continue backwards looking for solutions to the problems of today has been demonstrated in management circles to be very shortsighted, and yet people still do it.  Still we hang onto the reactive approach, than the proactive.

Usually issues such as the customer experience are  also taken as a “nice to have” over general sales and marketing process, being pushed aside, year aftr year when it comes to assigning the budget.

It’s fairly simple what will happen if the customer experience isn’t improved.

Over time people will drift away to try other like services, even if they are as bad.

If there is a new player or someone that has optimised their customer experience (even a little bit) then suddenly all those “loyal” customers will be jumping ship to the new site or service.

Often just a small changes can make a major difference in the behaviour of customers and their overall experience.

The question is – “is it worth it to ignore a bad customer experience?”

Overall this time the way we (as a design industry/community) worked just didn’t seem that right to me.  It just seemed like we were not working with the client and their customers but just working for them.

Being involved with projects in the capacity as an independent consultant often means that I have to adapt and slot into the process as required.   And you know over all these years I have found that teams still seem to be doing it wrong.    Oh they say they are different, but at the end of day, the process is all the same.

Currently the process goes something like this:

• Gather requirements.   Research customer needs.  Define issues.
• Throw findings over the wall to the client.
• Design solutions to issues.  Test design.
• Throw solution over the wall to the client.
• Develop prototype or solution.
• Throw final product over the wall to the client.

Okay that may seem a little extreme.  But think about it for a moment.

Our process maybe centred around collaborative input from the customer of our client (as it should be), but we seem to have left the client with the same old “over the wall” approach of yesteryear.

This approach seems very much waterfall based, but even if we make it agile and iterate it, the issue still remains.

1. Gather requirements.   Research customer needs.  Define issues.
2. Throw findings over the wall to the client.
3. Research a little, Design a little.  Test design.   Prototype and develop.  Test.
4. Throw build of product over the wall to the client.
5. Iterate to 3.

I have done this sadly way too many times.  Luckily I have learnt from these mistakes.

The Solution

The solution is simple.   Make sure the first time the client sees the work you are doing is not when you send them final reports, designs, prototypes, post to basecamp and so on.

Send the client drafts, half finished ideas, get them involved, show them your sketches, let them collaborate in the process.  Bounce ideas off them, debrief with them every day.  Go work in their office with them (if you can), explain in writing and verbally what you have done and why.   The why bit is very important.

Just make yourself available during the process.  Yes this will interrupt your workflow.  But it will really help you build your client relationship.  Afterall the design and development process should be a joint affair, especially if you want people to own the final product.

The same should apply to any external resource you are working with.  They are not the enemy, sure they may challenge your decisions, process and ideas.  But isn’t that a good thing.

Lets take down these walls!

The journey for PetRescue started a few years ago, with a casual conversation at a Leederville coffee shop, slowly it became on an ongoing project that’s often been constrained by time and budgetary resources during the time period.

At the time the PetRescue website was operating on an aging code and design base that had been patched and “quick fixed” too many times in order to keep this extremely popular site operational.

Client:

PetRescue

Industry:

Not for Profit

Project Focus:

UX Design

PetRescue approached us with the aim to redesign the site the right way focusing on the audience but maintaining a level of learned experience.

After establishing an outline of the audience and their usage patterns it was discovered that using the PetRescue site was an extremely emotional journey as a would be adoptee decided on a pet and then dealt with the subsequent rescue group.

Overall the project delivered a design direction and solution for a responsively designed website via a series of wireframes, while promoting a distinct personality of the website to help ease the emotional journey.

We were not responsible for the final visual design that honour goes to the Frontier Group.

Processes and Techniques Used

• Web Analytics
• Survey Design and Analysis
• Persona Development
• User Journey Generation
• UX Solution Design
• Wireframing
• UX Consulting

The Department of Mines and Petroleum (DMP) approached radharc looking for a solid direction and confirmation of the user experience issues with the core of their website.

Together with the DMP we first off looked at the strategic level of the web communication platform. Focusing on the main reasons for use of the website. This in turn led to the scoping of the “who really was the audience”.

As with most government agencies the scope of the audience started with – “everyone”; however it become very evident early on using the available research and the knowledge from in-house domain experts that the audience was focused around 6 key personas.

Client:

Department of Mines and Petroleum

Industry:

Government

Project Focus:

Usability Review

With a good understanding the site’s audience the direction changed to gathering research to confirm and extend the knowledge base on “how the website was really used by the audience”. For this a bank of interviews were conducted with key experienced members of the audience, reflected by the personas.

This ux research material allowed for mapping of the journeys the audience were going through using the website, and the tasks that influenced and resulted from it’s use.   As expected the audience personas were also clarified at this point.

Now with a complete understanding the solid research to backup the decisions and subsequent testing scenarios, a series of accessibility and heuristic usability reviews set a base line for the final round of audience evaluations.

The final outcome was a very specific direction in the scope of the audience use with a clear direction for areas of improvement on the site with an overall clarity of the audience requirements.

Processes and Techniques Used

• Strategic Workshop
• Web Analytics
• Persona Development
• Audience Interviews
• User Journey Generation
• Accessibility Audit
• Heuristic Usability Review
• Usability Testing
• User Experience Analysis