UX as a business strategy
What makes a successful business model? You will likely have pictured guys with suits making decision based in market growth, innovation, and secure investments. Everything comes down to ROI (return on investment), what is the monetary gain of this input.
Where does the user fit in this process?
The idea that users should sit in the boardroom is something that seems to transcend many business models; however, we don’t often see the voice of a user in any business planning or vision meetings. It’s often a room full of business analysts and financial planners, and people managers.
Making a change
When talking about change we hardly have a view of change in mind. We (as people) likely want a different outcome but are unsure of the input or work required to get there. We also need to take a look at the domino effect, who does this call for action effect?
We have arrived at a place in society where business is focused on RPV (revenue per visit)in just about any industry. Want to buy a car, how can we better use analytics to find the car that sells to you and makes us the most profit. Would you like to visit a Shopify store? Come on in it’s curated with products that are designed to give me the highest revenue per visiter. Nothing is wrong with this concept, we all work to make money. If you don’t believe that you are lying to yourself or should volunteer for the rest of your life to give back.
But how do we provide users what they want and still position business to make money?
User Experience should be every business model, I know that sounds crazy. We are seeing a dramatic change in the software industry to have designers on just about every project. Building an API? Ensure a product designer is involved, not because design has all the answers or will take over the word. Simply since understanding the user (consumer) makes the process faster and easier in development. If we take a look at Pivotal and Pivotal Labs their process takes longer to get a line of code written (when starting a project). Their process of discovery and ensuring the user is understood, leveling with business and stakeholders, enables CI/CD (Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery) and code to be written in production since the iteration cycles are able to happen much faster with a solid base to start the project.
Invest now, reward later
Many of the business financial types (who would be in board meetings) are able to take a look at a startup or market trend and choose to invest early with an understanding some work will take place prior to seeing the reward. The ROI (return on investment) is sound since the level of return far out-weights the risk (in this case risk is time). Why don’t we have the same approach to business? We expect our investment in business to move the dial instantaneous, we often think “UX” will do that. The issue with this current model is “UX” is a low level consult that is often limited in strategy and thus unable to effect any of the models, rather do their best to help the product.
The change!
How do we adjust this? Or better, the item I have yet to talk about is why… why take the time, the investment, work with a group like Pivotal? The answer is clear, if we continue to do the same thing and see the same (or very similar) outcome shouldn’t we presume it’s time to make a change?
By putting users in the senior (I’m talking C-Suite) leader meetings, not as a consult, or a bystander. User Experience (CXO or similar) would be engaging as a partner who has equal share in the stakes of the company, we enable a new view, the users view. The gain to this can be seen at just about any startup, the culture as business we all want so badly to embrace. Startups do one thing better than anyone (likely due to the size), but everyone in the company knows and understands the customer. They have no choice but to have the founder talking to users and listening to their experience design teams. The adaptation by users is the success of the company. Large companies lose sight of this due to size, that bleeds its way into the boardroom and thus over time removes users from the picture. It becomes about having an experience users must deal with since the company has become a dependency for users. The greatest risk for big business today, is someone will do it better or cheaper. By having a voice for users in strategy, it empowers and enables teams to build product, write code, design, produce a shopping experience, build a home or office space, just about anything that would have an end user or buyer (cough* cough* EVERYTHING) will drive forward to user delight that will have dividends follow.
It’s not easy, it’s not quick
This is not a simple task, it’s not a fast one either. Enablement in changing “old” business now will ensure success in the future. Investing the time to make a change now will save from even larger change later. If you know you will eventually have to pivot your process or adapt your boardroom to a new way of thinking to ensure success in the longterm, why would you wast the time or money to not do that immediately?
Be honest with yourself for one moment, do you actually think all business won’t change with time? Now ask yourself, will your business model survive the user innovations and experience expectations of tomorrow?
