Parachuting into Experience Design.
Let’s assume you’ve just decided to wander onto the magical world of Design and Experience. Perhaps without knowing, you’ve been already exploring this territory, unaware of certain key points that can finesse you onto the true potential of what this practice can do for you, or your business.
To figure out where you are and what design can do for you, I’ll try to break down this complex topic into an unreasonably short piece. With my apologies to fellow designers for the brutal (and perhaps dangerous) simplicity of my writing, here we go!
The term ‘experience design’ (XD) would seem to be somewhat self-explanatory, i.e. designing ‘anything’, be it a product, process, event or environment based on the quality and highly specific appropriateness of the user-experience.
While this is broad, it is founded upon particular and specific ideas and rules of thumb. Let’s take a look at a set of these, before going on to explain how that might actually adhere to your new application of XD, in whatever form is relevant to your business.
Storytelling
Conveying events through motion, words, or visuals; how something captivates.
What’s the story your business can tell me? Why is there a black curtain here? Why are there quotes on the ceiling? Who lived here before? Who ate in this table? How many candles have burned in this chandelier? What do others do with your product? What do they say about it? Your business, product or service, should be able to tell a story of ‘why’ things are the way they are. Your digital products should tell a story through content. Your physical business should tell a story through interior design and a thorough branding system. Your persona should tell a story through the way you speak, the way you dress, the way you move. Help people to understand your business vision through all of these components.
Simplicity
The lack of complexity; how something is perceived.
Simple things are straightforward and easily understood. Simplicity with recurrent and frequent ‘feedback loops’ can help your audience to build trust much faster. Life is already complex . While tempting to overload on pure information, always keep in mind how much better a simple idea performs.
Cleanliness
A design aesthetic; how something looks.
Clean designs are often sparse with ample whitespace. A well balanced cleanliness in your product or service results in people feeling more relaxed and comfortable. This is clearly not for everyone, and sometimes excessive cleanliness can lead to the opposite result.
Honesty
A strategy for your content; how something communicates.
Nothing hurts your business more than when a lie is uncovered in your product or service. Being honest with what you offer from the beginning of your customers’ journey will help you connect with them in more meaningful ways. You can choose to tell an incomplete truth, sure, but don’t lie to your customers. They deserve your respect, before you deserve their money.
Clarity
Simplicity in the language; how something reads.
Perhaps one of the most important principles of good Experience Design. Don’t bathe people with complex analogies or overly-dreamy phrases. Content strategy is slowly shifting in the market, but the ones that are spearheading this change are brave brands that speak in clear lingo, without embellishments.
Reliability
A precise, problem-solving offer; how something helps people.
A good business succeeds because it solves a problem for people. Surely, perhaps your first step is to make people aware of the problem itself (hello advertising!), but your ultimate mission is to expose a promise of what people can do upon understanding/acquiring/using your product or service.
Community
A sense of belonging; how something nurtures.
Particularly in China, feeling as part of something bigger than yourself, tends to be a very effective strategy for establishing products. People want to belong, to be ranked against, and ultimately, to be given the opportunity to show-off what they can achieve (through your product).
The list can go on for many pages (touching topics like Adaptability, Flexibility, Coordinating, Scaling, Managing, etc.). You would be surprised of how much these items “makes sense” as you read through it. After all, Experience Design is also about making sense of the complexity of our world, and helping to better define it. If you’re interested in learning more about that, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to write about these pillars.
If you’re in need of help, a well-seasoned Experience Designer will be able to understand your business and create interactive maps of your service, how it connects to people, how its emotional touch points can lead to improved growth on early stages, and revenue generation opportunities. That would be a good start for guiding your next steps. Perhaps a more specialized kind of talents you need to know are known as Service Designers, and they can help to organize people, infrastructure, communications and materials of a service, and help you to improve the quality of the interaction your business has with your audience. This is a much deeper and specialized task, and although costly, it’s a great investment of your time and resources.
We can next surmise the steps of Experience Design, while realizing that however this is explained, some specialized designers may feel that toes are being stepped upon or boundaries being blurred. So let’s just think of this as a rough template which needs fine-tuning for specific needs.
1. Frame your product
Figure out what you want to do for people. What problem is it resolving? Why is it worth solving? Who is your audience? How can you explain your product to them in the shortest form possible? Here is where you need Strategists. Business advisors. User Experience Researchers.
2. Execute like a pro
Get measurable results as early as you can. Branch out and explore all the possibilities before you think you ‘nailed it’. Never chase the obvious. Here is where you need Designers. UX, Visual, Interior and more can all play a key role.
3. Use evidence and data to grow
Every number tells a story. Find out a way to understand what your customers do, and how they do it. Figure out a way to measure your success and keep track of how your decisions on the service are affecting how people use it. Use the data at hand to establish new goals and objectives. Chase the sky but use solid ladders to get there. Rockets can wait until you grow a bit stronger and confident. Here is where you need Business Developers, Business Analysts, Data Scientists.
4. Always be inquisitive with new features
Don’t bloat your business. If you’re selling radios, don’t sell air purifiers. However, if you’re selling fans, then maybe you can bring in a purifier or two to the inventory to give it a try. Contextual growth of features can help you to stay focused and make your business more stable. Being adventurous isn’t a bad thing, but unless you can handle the risk of it, don’t do it. Here is where you need User Experience Researchers, Strategists, and people with solid ideas.
5. Build a kickass company culture
Don’t only design your business, product or service, but also design your company culture. Think of it as an ecosystem of attitudes, values, social expressions, and cultural views, that you can establish, define, and manage. Companies are simply groups of people that come together to build something the believe in. Give people the freedom to be who they are, but finesse them onto the area of stable workforce. Help your teams to fall in love with the problems you’re trying to resolve, rather than with the solution to it. Unresolved things and unanswered questions are more motivating than set-on-stone features and rulebooks. Here is where you need an excellent HR professional. Business Developers. Manager-minded people who also happens to be extrovert and fun.
6. Have fun
Work hard, but also live a life. Go home. Spend quality time with your loved ones. Any business research, books and data prove that time out is a valuable must.
Final recommendations
Assembling the right team, or the right creative practice can be difficult, and it always differs from case to case. Some projects require one UX designer (how is this product relevant, how does it work?), or one Interaction Designer (how do I interact with it?), or one Visual Designer (how does it look?). However, the complexities of some of these projects might require several talents at different stages of the product/service cycle. Some processes might take a few days, or a few weeks, and some others could take months. Truth is –and this is a word we (designers) try to avoid– It depends of what you want to do. There will always be a way, but it rarely is as simple as you may think.
With the basic rule of Experience Design in mind: to meet the exact needs for the usage or consumption of a product or service with zero fuzz, you will be able to apply the same clarity to your own life. Design goes beyond the graphic canvas, beyond how something looks, or how something feels. Design is a method of problem solving, and if your company, or yourself as a human, are currently facing troubles, perhaps the best way forward is to sit down with a designer and talk to them about what you’re up to, and what comes next.
Originally written for the printed version of Status Magazine, Summer 2016. This is an unedited version.
