This often reveals most of the problems that we will face going forward. The legal department are involved to make sure everything is legal, the brand department to make sure it’s all on-brand and the product team to deliver a business goal that they have been tasked with. Everyone around the table has different objectives for us to meet. It’s then our job to either make sure we deliver to all parties exactly what they want, or start prioritising these objectives.
User Centred Design
The industry standard way to start to prioritise these objectives is to start thinking about the end user or customer. We would start to think about what the end user would want from the solution, what their problems are and how the solution can meet these needs. We employ a ‘User Centred Design’ approach (UCD).
UCD has been around for many years now, having really taken off with the rise of the new digital age in the last 10 years. It’s easy to measure by simply testing on users and asking their opinion on the experience. It’s also hard for the client to disagree with the results of our work or apply their own opinions. You can’t disagree with feedback from the real user, right?
Are we missing something?
UCD is a really valid approach however it’s not perfect, and I believe it’s missing a very important ingredient. Coming back to that initial question we asked at the start of the project, not one person in that first meeting answered the question from a users point of view. The answers ranged from complying with rules to business goals such as improving retention, or simply selling more products. We are not employed by users, we are employed by businesses to solve a specific set of business problems. We’ve made an enormous assumption that improving the users experience will solve these problems, and we use a system of measurement based on end users opinions which can never actually prove this assumption correct.
A different approach
Is there a new way of working, one that addresses the business goal and relies on a different set of metrics to measure success? Lets call it ‘Results Focused Design’ (RFD). This new approach takes its lead from the Lean Startup movement, where we work towards designing ‘Minimal Viable Products’ (MVPs) rather than the traditional ‘Big Design Up Front’ (BDUF) proving value along the way to ensure we are actually solving the real business problems. This approach is data led, we continuously gather feedback based how our users actual use the solution, we collect facts not opinions.
What about the user? At the very heart of RFD and the lean approach is the user story, this help us define the MVPs by revealing what the user needs and why, but these are prioritised and measured by how these stories address the business goal we are trying to achieve. Rapid design and prototyping is then heavily used to learn how to successfully achieve this goal.
A new answer
Coming back to that initial question ‘Why are we here?’ I believe RFD gives everyone around the table a new answer. Everyone working on the project is there for one simple reason, to solve the business goal that has been set, or to put it really bluntly, we are here to make the business more money.