UX is only a piece of the pie
The digital solution is lookin’ mint. We have 3 high-fidelity prototypes ready for usability testing, users lined up and ready to go. However, something did not feel right. I was not convinced we were addressing the right problem…We had to stop and take it back to ideation — what was our persona and journey map telling us about the users motivations and pain points?
We had failed to recognise that the key problem identified in the users journey could not be solely rectified by UX/UI alone (as brilliant as it was), we needed to consider the whole service and touch points with other departments to make the true solution come to light.
In a way we had succumbed to the UX Designer paradox, and had got a little carried away and a little excited by the opportunity to delight that we lost track of the user need and business goal.
But what we learnt was something extremely valuable — UX does not sit solely on it’s own. It is a part of the bigger picture and we would need a broader user experience strategy to seek alignment across the digital platforms, service design, marketing and operations to make our digital solution truly valuable to the client.
We had, in a way, ‘discovered’ the need for Service Design methodologies. As such, I felt very in-tune with being able to identify the core issue and understanding the needs of our user. I look forward to taking this insight with me into our next project, and will make an effort to consider things holistically before diving in!
