Designing Tomorrow’s User Experience: The Three-Box Solution
In this fast-paced world, UX has become a critical factor in the success of products or services and it is our job to provide a sustainable solution which will help the organisation to lead not only today but also in future and to do that we need a UX Strategy.
Strategy is about leading the future and because an organisation is leading today we can not assume it will lead tomorrow.
Nokia was one of the leading mobile phone company a few years back. If I may ask which mobile phones you were using 15 years ago, There is a high chance that most of you would say Nokia. Nokia phones were largely used and loved by its consumers but now it is almost nowhere.
What is the reason behind Nokia’s downfall?
If we had asked this question to its users 15 years back then most of them would have said they love the phone and the build quality of it and it has been making their life easy.
So definitely User Experience of that time was not the reason behind Nokia’s downfall but the reason was that it failed to understand the weak signals of the future market. Nokia failed to adapt to the new technological shift coming into the market.
Nowadays when Businesses are putting their trust in UX Designers and Users look at us as their advocate it is very crucial for UX Designer to understand the weak signals in the market to provide sustainable solutions to the users and to the Business so that it will not only help an organisation to lead in the current market but also in the future market.
How do we achieve that?
Prof. Vijay Govindarajan’s “The Three Box Solution” showcases a guiding path for innovators, Entrepreneurs and designers to build future-ready solutions.
What is The Three Box Solution?
Most of the organisations give emphasis on innovations. We often conduct design thinking workshops but what is missing is managing today’s requirements and tomorrow’s Opportunities. The ability to achieve significant non-linear change starts with the realisation that time is a continuum. The Future is not located far off the horizon and you cannot postpone building it until tomorrow.
“Future is created today not tomorrow”
To get to the future, you must build it day by day. That means being able to selectively set aside certain beliefs, assumptions and practices created in and by the past that would otherwise become a rock wall between your business of today and its future potential. This base idea is behind what is called “The Three Box Solution”.
The Three Box Solution is a simple framework that recognises all three competing challenges organisations or individuals face when leading an innovation. It is a powerful guide for aligning organisations and teams on the critical but competing activities required to simultaneously create new businesses while optimising the current one. In 3 boxes Companies and individuals must do the following.
The Three-Box Solution:
“The Three-Box Solution” By balancing the three boxes, we can resolve the inherent tension of innovating a new business while running a high-performing business at the same time.
Box 1: Manage the present:
“Optimise the current Business”
This box includes projects which are about improvising the efficiency of current business. It is about the customers the organisation is serving today and The value the organisation offers to its customers. It includes innovation, Products and services which fit under the current business model.
Box 2: Selectively forget the Past:
“Let go of the values and practices that fuel the current business but fail the new one”
This box includes 2 criteria, first is to identify businesses which do not fit for the future and the second is selectively forgetting the ideas, practises or services which will not be relevant to the future or might interfere with a focus on the future.
Box 3: Create the Future
Invent the new business model
This box will include projects that will drive innovations to respond to new developments/non-linear shifts such as Technological Disruptions, Customer discontinuities, non-traditional competitors and Regulatory changes.
When Box 1 grows in dominance, Box 3 languishes and Box 2 barely Exist.
This is a strategic waste. Businesses achieve strategic fitness only when they thoroughly understand and carefully manage the business benefits and risks of each of the three boxes. The Three-box framework will help to deliver stronger overall performance and more innovative features which will help organisations survive not only from quarter to quarter but for generations.
How does it relate to UX Designers' work?
When I shared the details of the Box 3 Approach with fellow UX designers some of them had the above question: how does it relate to UX Designers' work? It might have seemingly looked like a business call to them but let me tell you it is not only a business call but UX Designer call as well to use the Box 3 Approach while providing different solutions to clients.
It is the UX designer's job to understand the user's needs and connect them with the product vision. We are responsible for user-centric innovations which will help the organization to grow.
UX Strategy is part of the UX designer job:
UX Design is not only about designing an experience on screen but there is more to it. UX Design requires a combination of hard and soft skills, such as business acumen, Strategic Thinking, Leadership, collaboration, creativity and innovation, these skills are required to understand the market, the competition, the Business model, to deliver solutions which are aligned with product vision and user needs.
The work of a UX Designer is about “Strategically Designing the Experience” hence The Three Box solution strategy plays a crucial role in designing an experience or solution.
How should a UX Designer use “The Three Box” approach?
1. Collaborations:
A great experience is created through the cumulative efforts of the entire team (Product manager, Architects, Engineers, copywriter, UI Designers and UX Designers) because of which it is always emphasised during design thinking workshops to involve the entire team.
To solve users' problems the most traditional route followed is doing UX Research to understand the user pain points, goals and needs and Using this understanding to deliver new features or to make application changes but we fail to understand the opportunity gap is greater than the performance gap.
During Research, we need to give equal importance to technological discontinuities, Customer Discontinuities, and Regulatory changes even though the signals are weak; because even if it is very low on quantitative measures as compared to other findings still it can be a major impacting factor in future.
UX Research is not about asking people what they want but it is about what they need!
The point is by understanding user needs we can innovate more to provide better solutions.
For designing tomorrow’s experience we need to understand the criteria to measure the results and the needs for Box 1 and Box 3 solutions will be different.
How do we find out the needs of the future while doing research in today’s environment?
We need to invest in research about the non-linear shifts that could potentially transform the industry in the future. We need to understand What are the weak signals that can become the basis to generate hypotheses about these nonlinear shifts.
By keeping an eye on Customer discontinuities, Technological Discontinuities, Non-traditional Competitors, New Distribution Channels and Regulatory changes if we invest 30% of our time/money and resources for creating the future-ready solution it will help organisations not only lead today’s world but also in the future.
We need to understand during our research that even though these signals are weak it need to be considered as critical while analysing it.
For Example, Today’s generation is now shifting to Neo-banking, but since the traditional banks still have their own customer base this is not getting highlighted as major customer discontinues to them in today’s world but if it gets ignored on the basis of quantitative measures in research then it might create a threat to traditional banking in future.
We need to invest 30% of the time, resources or money in Box 1 that is in present for Box 3 solutions. We need to understand the criteria to measure the results and the need for Box 1 and Box 3 solutions can not be the same.
Now different disruptive technologies are coming in industry 4.0 resolution such as AR/VR/MR, AI, ML, Bitcoins Cryptocurrency, and IOT hence the way we provide the solution to users may not be limited to traditional Screen Experience design (App, website, wearable design).
By leveraging the technological possibilities we can provide more useful solutions to users which can fulfill their needs and can be even more useful to them.
For that UX Designers of Industry 4.0 need to selectively forget the past (which is the current way of working) and collaborate with the technical team.
2. User-Centric Disruption:
You might feel using disruptive technology is more of a business and technical team’s call but here comes the main crucial aspect, while pursuing disruptive ideas we need to keep the user at the center of the process.
While creating Three Box solutions we need to understand not every user will showcase/have the adaptability to quickly shift /get acclimatised to new solutions but if we do not put effort into Three Box solutions then we may fall behind in the future.
Let’s take an example of Telemedicine.
Who would have thought we would get consultations from doctors online? If the same service had been offered to us a few years back we would have said no to it, instead of telemedicine people used to prefer to visit the doctor's clinic but after the COVID pandemic, this has been normalised patients prefer telemedicine as it offers quick service and patients need not need to go through the travelling hassle.
Let me give you another example of the banking sector:
As UX designer if we have to bring innovation in the sector we need to understand weak signals in the market. Weak signals can be the reason for the future disruption coming into the market. Nowadays Many lead users are involved in play-to-earn games. Different platforms such as Decentralland offer their own currencies to gamers. Gamers community and investors are finding it difficult to get banking services from their traditional banks on these platforms hence most of them are now shifting to neo-banks, some neo-banks have started using NFTs for Unique verifications as well. If Traditional banks ignore this weak signal even though they are leading at present they might lose their customers and may not be able to lead in future.
At the same time, a sudden shift to disruptive technologies may not be adaptable for every user hence it is our job to keep users at the center and strike the balance between the performance gap and the opportunity gap.
Banks can put 30% of investment ( Time, money and resources etc ) to tie up with different platforms such as Sandbox or decentraland to provide services to leading users while still having a presence on the traditional banking mediums. While doing user research we get an understanding of user needs, goals and problems; we should clearly communicate that to the stakeholders by not directly linking it to the solutions provided in Box 1.
While providing “The Three Box Solution” every UX Designer should ask the below generic questions and for that it is helpful to have cross-functional team’s involvement.
1. Have we correctly understood the customer’s problem, independent of the solution?
2. Whether the business model solution address the customer's problem?
3. Do we have the technologies that are required to find the solution?
4. What is our go-to-market approach?
5. Who are our competitors?
6. Who else will enter the market?
7. How Vigorously will the new entrants pursue the market?
8. How will our competitors’ actions affect demand for our products?
3. Embrace Experimentation:
The Three Box approach acknowledges that not all ideas will be successful immediately, but if we start today by putting 30% of our efforts, money and resources into it; it will help us to lead in future.
The success criteria for The Three Box solution should not be based on quantitative measures of Box 1 as there might be only leading users who are ready to adapt to it in Box 1/at the present time, but if we fail to start early we fail to leverage the time we have to lead in future.
Even if some of “The Three Box Solutions” do not work in future it doesn’t cost major loss to an organisation, as only 30% are invested in it at the present time and in return it also provides insights about what has worked and what hasn’t but if the organisation says they will start when the time comes that is when the weak signals become strong alarming signals then it can be reason of organisations strategic failure.
As UX designers we wear multiple hats during day-to-day work; It can be of a Designer, UX Researcher or Design thinking practitioner. We need to understand the importance of providing sustainable solutions which will help the organisation to lead in today’s market as well as in future markets. Providing such solutions will reduce the learning curve for customers as it provides a smooth shift based on customer adaptability and needs.
Key Takeaways:
- Box 1 and Box 3 must be pursued simultaneously, UX Researcher must give importance to weak signals even when it seems to be less in quantitative measures in Box 1.
- Weak signals can be found by understanding non-linear shifts such as Customer discontinuities, Technological Discontinuities, Regulatory changes, Non-Traditional Competitors and new distribution channels etc.
- UX Designers must understand the user's needs and weak signals independent of solutions available in BOX 1.
- It is always better to collaborate and involve a cross-functional team for ideation.
- UX designers must keep a user-centric approach while striking the balance between Box 1 and Box 3 solutions so that the sustainable solution will not only help the organisation to lead in future but also reduce the learning curve for users by providing smooth shifts based on their adaptability level and needs.
References :
My former education from Emeritus University and learnings from “The Three Box Solution Book” written by my Guru Prof. Vijay Govindarajan.
Prof. Vijay Govindarajan — known as VG, is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on strategy and innovation. VG, NYT and WSJ Best Selling author, is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and the Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School.
Disclaimer: The author’s thoughts and remarks are his or her own and are only meant for informational and educational purposes. They do not constitute investment, financial, or any other advice.
