Sportsbet UCD Principle: Talk to Real Punters

Talking to customers helps us understand the not only what is important for our customers but also build empathy with them. Empathy helps us make the right decisions and come up with new ideas to make our customer’s lives better and Sportsbet their top choice.

‘Real Punters’ is an important part of this principle. Our customers have needs that can be quite specialist, so it is important to make sure we are identifying our target audience and talking to them. There is little point talking to one set of people if it actually a different set of people you are designing for.

As with many organisations, we have a lot of people internally who are users of our or competitor’s services. It is great that employees experience the experience of our customers and can draw on their own experiences. It doesn’t replace the need to talk to our actual customers to understand their experiences. We as employees have a different frame of mind when using our services because of our level of knowledge and skill sets.

Usage data is also great for understanding what our customers are doing and A/B testing will tell us what their preferences might be. But truly understanding why they are doing what they do requires a conversation. That conversation might be a simple survey driven conversation or an in depth interview. Conversations with punters are as much data as information on what button they are clicking on.

Here is a link to the other 9 Sportsbet User-Centred Design Principles