Less is more and creates more — experience design is driven by focus
Have you ever thought about having a look at a product — which is always the product of a designer — without having or feeling any experience?
If you start having a look at what experience exactly means — it’s a feeling or trigger of some memories we did in the past, missing expectations or performance. And if you break it down to the minimum viable point of view — experience is the way how we feel, express and interact or do not interact with a product, campaign or even an interface.
That means the primary factor in the relation of design and experience is the human factor.
The consumer and user is the center to create the experience.
That is the reason, why the future of success is based on the user needs, society trends and global changes. And out of this minimally viable point of view on experience, the research is often not part of the main work we are doing. The assumption is mostly the starting point we as experience strategists need to come up with.
Running with the assumption is the lack of focus.
Businesses from the past and now on are most of the time based on assumptions because of the former and current way of business thinking and the gap between the reality on the field.
We moved from economic driven business thinking to social businesses. We developed social strategies, global pages with local content and we managed to create dialogues between consumers and brands. This marked the first point of business aiming to listen to the customer.
There is even one more step to do to avoid working with assumptions and bringing faster and more focused business in the future.
Start listening from the inner and outer perspective of a company to set up the right focus. If you start listening and using the tools and channels that have been built up over the last 10 years, you can find and test quickly the focus of a product the user and consumer will accept. Design experience through lean and focused products to create the first business impact and use this momentum to grow based on acceptance and interaction user likes.
Why is transformation essential to develop focused products and the future experience from the inside perspective?
The transformation brings one more step we need to do, to create experience design, which is required to be successful in the future. And that is precisely the reason, why digital transformation was somehow a good movement. The influence of digital transformation changes the business thinking and enables companies and employees to understand, that value is the primary driver of business success in the future.
The inside perspective and understanding of the business in combination with value-thinking enables companies in the future to close the gap between business and the users. The evidence will be the change of the recruitment and growth of new departments within companies or start-ups. So focus is related to the internal enablement, which creates more sustainable business value user and consumer are willing to pay for.
Why is the focus so strongly connected to values and needs, you only get from the outside perspective?
User and customer are not willing to value a product or service with interaction or purchase when it’s not fulfilling the expectations and delivers a bad experience. The user and customer will purchase and re-purchase based on a good experience, and that is because you had a look at users values. The acceptance of paying a higher price is given when you bring the right value and take care of the experience.
The outside perspective is the user perspective. Digital and all different human-centered methodologies are made to identify the sweet spot — the focus, which brings value to the user.
So use the internal specialist and external power of understanding and listening, to creating focused products, which provide the sustainable business.
The customer will steer the car, the consumer will drink the milk, or the user will use the messaging service, that brings the most value to them.
We will talk, write and discuss in the next weeks about different methodologies you can use to sharpen use more and better the different perspectives to bring more focus and create the experience.
