The Agile Experience Strategist can be the new UX Team of One – Leah Buley mentions in her book "The User Experience Team of One". Integrating a hybrid version of Lean UX methodology and tradional user research processes will help Key Stakeholders and budget providers make better choices in how their products and software applications are designed and built.
What do all of these acronyms mean? More importantly, what do the words they stand for mean?
Most folks truly do not understand what these words mean when using them, yet many of us feel it necessary to turn them into acronyms. Typically, these acronyms are transformed into buzzwords that get completely lost in translation, and we lose sight of the original meaning of the terms. Well, I’m going to attempt to set the record straight.
‘UX is what something looks like, right? UX is really design… at least that’s what I heard! UX is User Interface design, right?’
As you probably know, UX stands for User Experience. To understand what User Experience is, let’s really define UI (User Interface) first. User Interface is a collection of interactions that a user may interact with to complete goals or a set of tasks. An interface design is critical to how a user interacts with a product. So, User Interface defines the vehicle that a user drives to perform tasks.
There is always this great debate about what makes a great leader vs "I have a great manager".By definition, a manager is 'a person who has control of an institution, business, etc., or of a part, division or phase of it' according to Dictionary.com. The word "control" really gets you thinking about this topic in a whole new light. When you think of a "great manager", do you think of this person as a person in control of you or your department or company? I have to be honest, I never thought of my current and former managers in control of me or our department or company. Control is such a harsh word and often times has a negative connotation. On the other hand, by definition, a leader is 'a person that leads; a guiding or directing head' according to Dictionary.com. The word "guiding" has more expectations in terms of value. I often thought of a particular former manager of mine as a true leader. Someone who was very secure with themself and was not at all afraid to stand up for what they believed in.
Well, I think there needs to be a balance that leans more toward having a great leader. However, there is something to be said for having a great manager who really brings a clear and strong control of his or her department. Great leaders, on the other hand, need much less control by empowering those around him or her to apply the necessary skills and techniques to become better more rounded individuals. So, are there any "leaders" among the managers in your organizations or former organizations?
Often times, it’s not the vision of the product you have trouble with, rather it’s the prioritizing and strategizing the execution to follow through on that vision. Product planning can be a daunting task to facilitate, manage, and execute. We, at Alliance, provide services that tackle these issues head on in a pragmatic approach that drives the success of your product. Our methodologies help your business get the ‘horses out of the gate’ to build great products and deliver to market on time.
You’ve spent several months developing a mission critical application that could really differentiate your company from the competition. You’ve spent countless hours working to ensure that it meets every last business requirement. And since you’ve extensively checked it for defects, you’re confident that users won’t find any bugs or performance issues.
But did you validate that it delivers the product experience you’re envisioning? If not, are you willing to take the risk of not testing how users will use your application before development?
Product experience validation, or usability testing, enables you to watch how real users interact with your application before its gets developed and consequently, before it gets released. When you consider that up to 70% of projects go wrong due to lack of user acceptance, this verification could likely signal the success, or failure, of your application.
What are the key factors in making a project successful? What has been preventing us from improving the quality of our application? What initiatives do we want to fund in 2015? What are the key requirements for the mobile and tablet versions of our product? These are just some of the critical strategic questions that fall on our shoulders, sometimes heavily, and that do require cat herding skills.
We’ve been using the KJ Method at Alliance Global Services during User Experience Jumpstart initiatives. It can certainly help to align a group around product road-mapping. In addition, it can be tremendously helpful in answering questions that require an organization to have a clear answer.
Businesses are increasingly prioritizing the user experience of their applications.
As up to 70% of software development projects fail due to poor UX, this should hardly come as a surprise. In today’s application-driven economy, there’s little room for failure if you wish to maintain a competitive edge.
Despite this increased focus on UX, we’re finding that many businesses don’t fully understand all that UX encompasses. In turn, they are unable to take full advantage of the potential that it could bring to their applications.
I’ve recently encountered a few experiences with products and services that I feel are worthy to point out. As a user experience professional, I tend to have a conscious mind when I purchase something, sign up for a service or have to make an insurance claim. The entire process of my experience will leave me with a feeling of ‘meh’ or ‘what in the world… never doing that again!’ or ‘that was really cool!’
Two months ago, I purchased an airline ticket online using my Gmail account for my uncle in South Carolina to come visit for a family reunion in Pennsylvania. The flight was scheduled to arrive at PHL airport. When picking him up from the airport, I wanted to see if the flight landed. I open Safari browser on my iPhone and type “phl,” and immediately information about my uncle’s flight number, status (landed), time it landed, and passenger (uncle’s name) comes up on Google’s search.
Since I used my Gmail account, Google knew that something important was happening and helped me find what I was looking for and more extremely fast. I sat in my car and said, “That’s awesome!” It unexpectedly fulfilled a need that delivered quicker than anticipated, when I was really expecting to have to do more. I thought to myself, 'that’s innovative.' It got me excited about using Google’s services. These innovative ideas encourage me to want to bring to this out in our customers at Alliance, helping them to think outside the box and set them apart from competition.
About a week ago, I reported an insurance claim regarding stolen items from my car. So, I called the insurance company and file a claim. The claim shows up in my online insurance account where I can manage the progress and artifacts. Everything sounds great so far. Then they call to tell me the insurance adjuster will not be able to come out to check the car for damage until 3-4 days later… 'Wait, what did you say? Are you kidding me?’ With different insurance companies, the adjuster comes out within 24 hours. Then, the adjuster comes out to look at the car and tells me I could have just taken it to the body shop they work with. It’s been over a week and the car is finally at the body shop only to wait in line to be fixed.
My experience started out great. No issues with the software, but the insurance company’s customer care dropped the ball and left me feeling irritated with the results. So, it didn’t matter that I had a good experience with the software. How they handled everything negated that experience. When I send the survey in, the software won’t even get mentioned.
User experience and product experience are more than just an interface that provides a means to navigate through a task. They encompass the overall experience from the moment I interact to the time I complete and/or receive goods and services. The user’s experience with a product or service has to be analyzed at all of the interact touch points, including, but not limited to, customer service.
Have any of you had similar experiences you’d like to share? Or maybe you had an experience you always tell your friends and family about? I would love to hear them.
Closed Feedback Loop at PointRoll