Does UX work? A simple method to justifying the UX process
Working in UX design I often run into the same question with stakeholders, “can you validate this implementation worked”? It’s often frustrating to have to prove a business need when intuitively as a UX practitioner a product is in obvious need. It does bring up a wonderful challenge though that can be built into your process (if it’s not already).
Introduction
Lets look onto the process of developing measures of effectiveness early in the process to shape user centered designs that meet business needs and can be justified implementations.
Current process
Before we begin let’s review the basic design process often used. UXMastry.com has a wonderful overview of the UX design process and breaks each phase down into a process we have all seen and likely use (or some variation of).
We start with a problem or strategy, research, perform analysis of the problem constraints and research to begin designing, go through a few revisions, then move into production. Generally this starts the process over as iterations of design and change are shaped and progressed. The one thing this doesn’t cover and often is left out of the process is understating when to continue on iterations or move the product to QA or close out the UX contribution portion. There have been many studies like this one that go in-depth on strategies and how to justify the process for UX and design implementations.
Making sense of it all
At what point does it make sense to perform research and measure the effectiveness of the solution? Can we use BI (Business Intelligence) or BA (Business Analytics) units to justify design implementations? They are often viable options but do take more resources and a predetermined metric to digest the data in a way that would make sense. So back to the question at hand, what do we as UX designers do, and how do we build this into our process?
When working with a client or stakeholder make sure you are understanding the problem at hand enough to know if you were able to answer with your solution. Sadly this isn’t always common practice. More often than not the stakeholder won’t have this answer, and it may take some work and many questions to quantify a way to understand the problem as been solved. Let’s put this into a situation to better review how to accomplish this.
The challenge
A client is asking to have you help implement a product flow change to increase productivity in a call center. They notify you they have a process in place that no one seems to use and they want to unify the flows that employees are using. There are a number of ways to tackle this and many solutions that could be implemented but we will limit this to behavior flow tracking, and designing a process flow that would bring in account the business direction and average user flow that makes the most sense with the lowest training/learning curve as possible. In working with this from the get go it would be important to understand where the slowest points in the process are for the user. How can productivity be increased in this area, and more importantly is this the productivity metric that is being tracked?
Wanting to advocate for the user is important and helping to bridge the gap of business needs and user needs in this situation may be important. Let’s presume the productivity is not directly connected to the user problems at hand. The importance of tracking measures of effectiveness are even greater. It would be important to communicate the noted difference, and find a format that meets user needs and driving factors. Connecting with business intelligence to understand current metrics and trends enough to know if your team was effective. By having a goal it validates your process, and helps you to be a better advocate for the user.
Where to go from here?
It won’t happen overnight and there is not a golden formula for each possible scenario. It is important to ask questions, understand the business need and how to measure your designs (beyond how beautifully captivating and easy to use they are). Being a greater asset to your stakeholder will help you in the end to enter advocate for the users we represent. The most important thing that can be done is to underhand the business need, now is success being measured. Keeping that understanding forefront in the process. Big businesses are devoting larger amounts each year to UX research and design. Being able to quickly validate a process or implementation will help your team to stand out and quickly validate the business decision to have you in the process.
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