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Delivering the user experience promise

By Mike Gough, 21st December 2010

With HeathWallace Hong Kong sponsoring UXHK in February there has been lots of discussion around general user experience (UX) issues lately, much of which we are distilling and posting here. When I was asked to make a contribution I spent some time thinking about my perspective of the whole topic of UX and what would be a valuable opinion to give. The answer was delivery.

I come from a project/account management background rather than studying UX in its purest form, so while I fully understand and wholeheartedly agree with the concepts and key principles, I find that UX (as with many things) only adds value if you can deliver on the promises. It’s the same with anything, you can talk all you like but if you can’t deliver, what have you got?

So I felt a discussion of the key elements you need to consider to truly deliver on the UX promise would be valuable, and it would be interesting to see people’s opinions on the topic, (@HeathWallace for comment).

Clear goals

You need a clearly communicated and defined set of goals that you can measure success against. Let’s be honest, these often change during a project but if you don’t start with a clear aim then you are destined to spend the project chasing an intangible goal and not getting very far. A good UX team will push for this direction, and will also be on hand to advise on what the potential goals of a given project should be.

Client support

It’s an obvious one but really, if you don’t have support to deliver a piece of work using UX principles right from the start then you are always going to be fighting a losing battle. This boils down to working in partnership – most successful UX projects break the mould of the typical client/agency engagement model and have a high degree of collaboration.

Respect for your opinion

Very closely tied to the requirement for basic support, but subtly different. You have to balance educating the clients who aren’t familiar with UX principles without alienating them and if you get that balance right, you will get respect for your opinion and a greater level of support for your work. Again, this is a 2-way street and respect is required on all sides. The UX team will be championing the user, whilst the business might have a different but equally valid perspective. If you decide at the outset who the “subject matter experts” will be on a project, this helps to ensure decisions are reached quickly and the project can proceed.

Good metrics to measure performance post live

How will you actually know what you have delivered met the business as well as the UX goals you set at the start? Metrics - with good metrics you can demonstrate the success and identify and fix the parts of the solution that haven’t worked as you planned. These metrics, together with a strategy for evaluation via analytics & other means are often forgotten or disregarded. UX projects can get stuck in the mire of seeking absolute perfection before go-live, which will never be attainable. A smart approach to analytics affords you a faster time-to-market and the ability to optimise the experience based on real data.

A flexible approach

Having a flexible approach is possibly the most important point of all. We need to be able to work within inevitable constraints while still delivering a solution that stays true to UX principles and delivers results for the client.

I have also deliberately left out ‘time’ as one of the things you need to deliver a good UX based project because for the most part it is the one thing you have the least of! So being able to balance UX practices & principles with limited time and budget is the real trick - not easy, but possible and great if you can get it right.

You might not be able to get everything you want in, you may well come up against one of the JFDI (Just Flippin Do It) moments, but if you can navigate all that and deliver something that has UX at its heart then it is a big step in the right direction. With every project we deliver in the right way we raise the level of knowledge & understanding of UX and improve things for the online community.

As discussed in our last article (Investing in User Experience – A Developing Competency in Asia), this approach is particularly valuable in the emerging markets of Asia where knowledge & understanding of UX is growing all the time but still has a long way to go.

Join us at UXHK in February to find out more.