Speaking the same language (when talking about user-centred design at BT)
Service designer John Anthony explains how we’re standardising the language of user-centred design at BT.
As service designers working on inclusive design within BT, we’re working to increase the wider Design Team’s understanding of - and capability around - user-centred design (UCD) so that we can create amazing services for our customers.
We’re starting with the words we use
Our first step in building strong foundations has been to create a set of working definitions for key terms we use in user-centred design. This will give us all a shared understanding and the ability to communicate effectively when we talk about UCD.
The terms are:
- User goal
- User need
- End-to-end journey
- Service
It’s important to remember that individually we attribute different meanings to these terms — and that some team members new to UCD may not want to admit they don’t understand some of the terms.
This all leads to many wasted hours though misunderstanding and poor communication.
Running remote workshops
To create our definitions, we ran a series of remote workshops with team members from across Consumer Digital: product owners, scrum masters, designers, capability team members, developers and strategists. We structured the space to help participants think about each term in detail.
In the workshop, we asked participants to:
- explain each term as they would to a friend or family member
- say what each term is not (an anti-definition)
- give an example of each term
- write down if they thought each term was jargon and if there was a better way to say the same thing
Then we had a follow-up discussion with affinity mapping and dot voting.
We’ve seen a huge benefit where these workshops have acted as a forum for conversations about user-centred design, and a safe space for the team to exchange thoughts and learn.
Slack channels created for the workshop have been home to an ongoing discussion by engaged team members, too.
Our definitions
We’ve created the following definitions (also shown in the posters above):
User goal = The user’s desired outcome or end state
User needs = Things that the service must satisfy in order for users to achieve their goal
End-to-end journey = Everything users do and experience to meet their goal (interacting with our service and elsewhere)
Service = Everything we do to help users meet their goal
We consider these to be working definitions, in that they may change and evolve over time as we learn more about these areas and our understanding of them.
The definitions are co-created by the team, for the team. They’re a useful tool for us to communicate with shared understanding, enabling us to create great experiences for our users.
Do you agree with our definitions? What other UCD terminology have you found it useful to pin down like this? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
