Sportsbet UCD Principle: Create the Entire Experience
Understanding of what designing a user-experience involves is often misunderstood. There are many historical reasons for this and as the industry matures a better understanding of what designing a user-experience emerging.
The interface is not the experience, it is part of the experience. It is a really important part of the experience, but if we only look at the interface we are not actually looking at the experience. To understand the experience we need to look from the customer’s view point. What are they trying to achieve and what is the journey to achieve this. Understanding the customer goals helps understand where their experience starts and stops, as this is not always the same as where the business sees it.
It also requires understanding of the environmental factors of the customer. Trying to get a bet on quickly on the way to the game is a very different environment to design for than someone who has a newspaper form guide and is researching what s/he wants to bet on over the day.
Creating wireframe and hi-fi designs are great for documenting interface designs, but they aren’t so great for documenting experiences. Tools such as user-scenarios, journey mapping and service blueprints are our friends here. The challenge is that stakeholders want to see wireframes/designs, so helping them understand the value of designing the whole experience is the challenge of any designer. It also means working with areas of the business that a designer might not traditionally work with.
Often organisations create intuitive UIs but still fail, as their customers goals are only partly reached by an easy UI. Sportsbet’s aim is to Add Excitement To Life. Customer’s lives don’t start and stop when they go to a particular screen you are designing.
