Building value solutions by understanding the user experience
Part 3 — Understanding Impacts and Communicating your change
Introduction
This is the third section of a three-part view of the world. In the first essay, we looked at building value by looking at developing an understanding of a business and its audience and part two focused on working on the right solution The change needed and possible solutions. In this final essay, we look at communicating the change.
This third essay, as with the second, is a little more detailed. We focus on the different ways in which journeys are interpreted by people from different backgrounds, how much common ground can be established and approaches to translate so everyone understands what the other is saying.
When it comes to communicating your changes nothing is better than bringing people on the journey with you — but it can be tough, including getting people to take that first step on the path.
Layers of change
The concept of ‘layers of change’ is intended to aid with the communication of change (internally and externally) by indicating where the impact of the change is within the organisation and the communications that you might need to utilise. This can be viewed both vertically and horizontally, (see below) the layers can have physical and/or virtual impacts and thought should be given to how these relate to infrastructure, technical or other aspects of the user experience, whether these are in the nature of interactions, observations or the human factors that need to be interpreted and understood by employees.
In the diagram below, communication is shown on the vertical while different disciplines take the horizontal. Using this approach you can cross-reference TOGAF, ITIL, Marketing and User Experience, whilst placing communication at the core.
Example: Meter Readings
Let's begin with the vertical. To illustrate how this works, let’s say we have a notification to try and get a meter read from a customer. This is a “virtual” activity as you don’t commonly send letters to get a monthly meter read. It’s an early part of the ‘meter read’ journey, leading onto a ‘bill payment’ journey later on.
The visible page for the customer is the email design, used to draw the eye towards completing the call to action or clicking the touchpoint. If they click the ‘call to action’, they go through the below the surface (-) stages — if they didn’t they jump straight to -10,000 as no action is still data.
From here we can see that until we get to 10,000, you could be talking about any utility company, there you should start to see the flavour of the brand applied, be that, in this case, that of a trusted supplier, or, maybe another would be the cheapest etc.
Helping User Researchers understand impacts
Most of us have a natural point where we think we can easily see the way a change happens at a particular level, and one or two levels up or down. But beyond that, we get confused and cannot easily follow the train of thought without training, reading or support. Given the majority of our audience (whoever your attempting to communicate with) will not have had this support, or the inclination to even try, we need to help them along the way.
If you can map solutions across the vertical, organisational disciplines of architecture and ITIL, can then be cross-referenced with Marketing and User Experience, creating a clear track of communication.
Cross disciplines and the layers of change
When you present change within your organisation you may find that other disciplines within your organisation don’t understand your point of view. We’ve found that as they have their own structure you can align them to the layers of change.
Whilst they don’t always line up to each layer perfectly it will give you an area of discussion where you can find symmetry in order to aid in the communication of the experience you’re trying to change and the effect you want it to have.
Layers of change method
Let's have a look at how you can create your own layers of change with a short description of each layer, this uses a student lifecycle as an example but it can be translated to any organisational construct.
32,000ft — Contextual
Starting at the top 32,000 feet, this is the point of view looking down from a plane and it is the contextual layer, it is the same across most organisations in a sector. Our proof point was it should be the level that someone in a pub could be asked to describe “the journey of a university student” with no prior knowledge and give a basic understanding. Starting with an undergraduate student, they go through a decision-making process about the course, location, social life etc before they then apply for the course and university, then they are a student, and then following a period of time, they graduate.
So, for an undergraduate student, your contextual layers are Decision making — Apply and enrol — being a student — graduating. This would be the same no matter which university you attended, be that physical, distance or international.
20,000ft — Functional
Next is 20,000 feet. This is the functional layer which, again, is the same or pretty similar in most organisations of the same type, but this is where the contextual elements are broken apart to the highest core elements required. This would be the highest level at which people who worked in the industry would agree. In our example, this shows that under decision making there would be some desk-based research, such as looking on university or review sites, followed by some face to face research such as speaking with alumni, career advisors, or attending an open day. Following this, they would perform course choice and planning where they would use the new information gained to identify the subject and course mix which they think is most appropriate before going onto enquiry and decision making where they select the universities to apply for.
Bringing these two layers together we can give a clear understanding to most people as to what the organisational purpose is and how customers go through the different stages whilst they engage with that company.
The 20,000 feet level is perfect for new starters to the industry but also a solid foundation to link your change to as it’s at a level above politics and the “how” it is done. There is just the united appreciation of the stage, not the detail which confuses things. We found that no matter the underpinning discipline (IT, Estates, Marketing, Academic etc.), this level was ideal to be able to talk about the flow without any disagreements.
10,000ft — Brand
The 10,000 feet layer is where the separation comes in; this is the secret sauce between industries; it’s the distinguishing factor that one company will apply compared to another performing a similar activity. This could be the highest quality, best facilities, cheapest price and the organisation’s unique selling point. Within Universities, this can be the best job prospects, best experiences, most prestigious qualifications etc.
5,000ft — Experience
The 5,000 feet layer is where you set the experience you want your audience to receive. I find it easiest to think of this as the principles which you would want to be applied to the brand such as exceptional customer service, ease of use or fixed first time. These principles are what you use to guide your experiences.
1,000ft — Variations (Physical/Virtual)
At this layer, interpretations need to be made for physical vs virtual interactions, and this can be a data point of observation such as seeing someone's approach to an environment/space or can be a virtual trigger such as a cookie or personalisation data. They are at the onset of the journey but are unique to the type of journey which is being undertaken.
100ft — Journey
The users' journey is captured at this layer, represented as the collection of touchpoints. This is the most common level which people understand as you can tell it as a story highlighting the elements of positivity or negativity and how they affect the next or previous stages of the journey.
10ft — Senses (Interaction/Page)
These are the physical views — the point when a touchpoint is shown, and these are commonly visual or auditory. The most common interpretation is the way in which the page or area is laid out and how the eye is being drawn to a touchpoint.
0 — Touchpoint
This is a contact point that a person can interact with which will cause a subsequent stage of the journey, be that by highlighting the opinion or progressing to another touchpoint.
-1ft — Behaviour
At -1ft foot we are looking at the activity from the other side, this is the actual, not hypothetical, activity of the target audience. At this stage, the audience has actually performed an action. On a web or application when they clicked a touchpoint did they go straight to it or was there scrolling around or hesitation in the activity. Did they take longer than expected on a page before clicking the call to action?
-100ft — Ethnographic
This is the observation of the behaviour as this may be telling, was there hesitation or determination in the commitment of the behaviour to interact with the touchpoint. Eye-tracking and observation are key to understanding a person’s behaviour as near to their natural situation as possible.
-1000ft — Response
This is the data that shows the touchpoints interacted with and this is best when coupled with the behaviour and ethnographic as someone may answer “Yes” to a question but, when observed, you notice a significant reluctance to that decision. This stage is best for showing the data above the simple click or absence of the click.
-10,000ft — Statistics
By the time we get to -10,000 feet, we have larger collections of data which, when aggregated and viewed at a larger scale, depicts an identifiable proportion of the target audience where they become statistically significant.
-20,000ft — Insights
This is when intelligence is applied to the statistics, such as coupling the statistical response with associated data number of purchases on an easter weekend when compared to the same easter weekend the previous year and a similar product set. This is when you understand how the mass responses equate to an audiences’ opinion.
Communicating with the layers of change
When the layers are considered within a journey modelling perspective, you can easily see the connections between activities at different levels which you would not have seen previously if you stayed at a single layer of change.
Within the visual below we can see the context, journey and touchpoint layers with the additions of the audience and the contributor. This allows us to see how different people’s journeys can come together to contribute to one another. But all have different touchpoints and their own journey with different activities before and after, but when we raise it up they are part of the same contextual positioning.
We can see here that a student who is in their decision-making phase of context is attending an open day talk. In order for that to be possible many things must have lined up most of which are invisible to the target (student) audience.
We have found that when modelling this at scale using tools like neo4j are best to add all the connections and identify everything which needs to occur for the target experience.
Summary
The journey we have been on has covered five key areas, ranging from understanding the business through creating solutions to communicating these with the business.
To build an understanding of the business we used red routes which now you can continue to populate with the additional lessons and approaches learnt from understanding the audience and from using the methods of ideation.
Understanding the value which is created varies from business to business and in some cases it may be the creation of wealth whereas in others, it is providing social value or community benefit. No matter the type of value created, the situation and motivation are key.
To get the most from the value we need to understand our audience — both who they are also the journey they are on. To understand the audience we create personas, to understand how to target them we build profiles, and to understand the journey they are on we create a journey map that shows us the experiences people are going through at different stages.
We understand how to work the problem using different approaches to ideate and identify how we can experiment and what is the most important element to experiment with, but then we consider how to communicate this with all levels through the business and most associated disciplines.
As a result, we can build cases for change that truly drive results and deliver change at the organisational level — building the experience for our audiences to make us the place they want to come to when they need what we have on offer.
Whilst we haven’t gone into great depth in many areas, we hope that this will help build an appreciation of different areas so we can gather the support we need to make these a reality and transform the way in which we operate.
Essay 1 — Understanding the Business and Audience.
Essay 2 — Working the Problem
Author Bio
Throughout the last 20 years, I have been designing and implementing experiences for people, from a family partnership running a children’s farm and hedgehog hospital in Devon to both of the universities in Nottingham — the latter working on a global solution in China and Malaysia — to British Gas and now at a leading consultancy. I have worked on IT service models, designed a superlab implemented product delivery models and performed countless art of the possible workshops to simulate free-thinking to break free of what we “know” to be true.
But I would say for the first 10 years of my work supporting the user experience, I didn’t know this is what I was doing. It just felt like the right thing to do for a good quality of service. Through my varied experience, I have found that you can focus on the experience but, if that is the only point of focus, you won’t be able to make it a reality.
A Special thanks to Jo Herlihy for her relentless support and determination in exploring the thoughts and ideas through discussion and debate, without your support, we would not be reading this today.
