Why you should define a purpose before you try solving problems
Addressing solutions from the intention of what we want can give us a more effective current and future approach.
Have you ever faced a scenario where we must repeatedly design the same solution over and over? or we come up with a revolutionary idea about a new feature or service, and it turns out to be the same as another previous existing solution within the same product? Have you ever thought about why this happens? In product design, there is a thin line between two instances; improving solutions (iterations) and damage control (rework). Both mean to touch something existing, but this last one represents a big waste of time, resources, and money for the company, not to mention an inevitable burnout. This adverse scenario may occur when we overlook (in my opinion) a basic definition in the early stages of creating a product: a broad experience purpose.
As a bad habit, we often solve things immediately without questioning or fully understanding the reasoning or motivation behind the product, users, or context (factory process mindset). Instead, sometimes we believe that improvement means adding complexity to something just because some competitor else did it, and we do not consider that these approaches may be less beneficial for our context and product. It is alarming to see how a product may base its innovation premise only on building features rather than user behavior.
So, what is an experience purpose?
Every company has a hierarchy of concepts or promises that shape a business idea. At the highest level, we find the company’s mission and vision. At a second level, the product value highlights customer benefits when using our product and pursues differentiation in the market. So far, so good, but is there any concept below those? Something that encourages a coherence between building a simple interface with the product value and the company’s mission and vision? That’s where what I call an experience purpose surfaces. In a definition, it is the coherent promise of behavior that users will find when interacting with an interface or entire solution that complements and revalidates the product value, therefore, the company’s main goals.
Here’s a quick example: we need to build a new performance dashboard page for our e-commerce company that allows users to track purchase performance. Acknowledging the company’s vision (e.g., to be the first online shop in the region in 2023) and the product value (e.g., we offer the simplest way to shop), we can approach this design challenge by creating an experience purpose that guides us into an accurate solution.
As a result, we can explore concepts like: “a performance dashboard should allow users to understand the most relevant metrics immediately, avoiding second guesses or extensive reinterpretations.” This simple statement will lead us to make design choices more accurately by discarding unnecessary interactions or elements.
In my experience, it has been a rare time that we have started a solution that includes this sort of statement, not to mention almost none. As a result, everything from here may be susceptible to mutating weirdly in the future (rework alert).
Is this experience purpose tied to product design only? No, and at this point, we can be more strategic with this simple statement before thinking about solving things without deeper thinking. The example above only refers to a part of the whole process, the design part. Here are some stages where we can apply creating an experience purpose to pursue better results:
A purpose in the planning stage.
One common mistake in the planning stage is confusing a good plan with only action items with no coherence toward a goal. Instead, in the early stages of thinking, it is more important to set a tone, a primary concept or expectation that summarizes and guides all efforts toward a common objective, e.g., “Being autonomous.” Unfortunately, every time we need to review a roadmap in leads meetings, it needs a more evident north; instead, we end up checking an extensive list of tasks to tackle, and that is it. “Being autonomous” provides an initial notion of what we want to accomplish in a given time.
Quick example using the two ideas above; the company’s vision: “to be the first online shop in the region in 2023.” Product value: “we offer the simplest way to shop.” The experience purpose for a planning stage may be something that works as a complement: “in quarter one of the year, we want our users to be autonomously using their data.” Once you have an idea, ask questions to revalidate. Is this experience purpose building to be a simple way to shop? (vision). Does this experience help to have a simple action in the shopping experience? (product value). If you have a solid yes, you have a reliable promise of a solution in the planning stage.
A purpose in the research stage
To define an experience’s purpose, we need to understand the context and needs besides the concepts or promises of the company. A common mistake in this stage is taking solutions from other competitors without knowing if they will work in our environment. Here it is crucial to identify trends vs. actual context.
Before searching for something, think about what you want to find that solves your company’s problem. For example, an approach of experience purpose may be: “we want to see in the market best practices of showing data for consumers.” After that, question yourself: is this experience’s purpose builds to have simple action in the shopping experience? (product value). Now, we can move to the next stage by having a north, an intention or promise of searching for a relevant answer.
A purpose in the design stage
Finally, we have reached to design stage; here, the experience purpose means everything because it defines the approach we need to follow to build a complete and proper solution. As mentioned above, the experience purpose is the promise of the behavior users will get in our product. For example, in this stage, and following the example of this lecture, we may create ideas like: “a performance dashboard should allow users to understand the most relevant metrics immediately, avoiding second guesses or extensive reinterpretations.” When you start thinking about design with this idea, it is way too easy to visualize what you need to build a good solution. Most of the time, this statement comes from the UX lead when translating requests to the team, but it is not something official to the process; it is just an approach, idea, or guidance.
Do we need this statement to be official? Yes! Besides enlightening a design path, it may be a valuable source of information when deciding on the overall product (planning).
The next level of having an experience purpose is to create a map to understand the whole behavior of a product. In this way, we can anticipate the issues I mentioned at the beginning of the article, such as designing something that already exists or innovating with the same previous idea. Another benefit of having an experience map is that we can broadly understand how our product makes promises of behavior; this artifact can be a powerful strategic tool to spark essential decisions.
Another positive outcome of developing this purpose is translating it into a design concept, a simple word that refines even more the statement of experience we already have. For the challenge of creating a dashboard page, we decided to apply “relevant,” that word gave us the shape of how to prompt users, the importance of data, the moment of consumption, and even the UI to use.
In my current position, we are redesigning a new product, and thinking about the experience purpose before solving anything has helped my team and me making better decisions. The most important thing here is that we’re making a difference this time, not just building another product in the market. After some reflection, I’ve learned much from declaring an idea I can use to create great solutions and even having strategic conversations with stakeholders. Sometimes we become problem-solver robots, and we miss the essence of things. A statement such as waving a flag on the road will lead us better to a goal.
As with other experiences, this is only one of the many #ShortStoriesOfMyLifeAsDesigner
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To write this article, I want to credit all the fantastic information sources and other authors who have had an excellent point of view, all from another exciting perspective.
