Column: Selling UX

At networking and business events, I often get asked about where I think user experience is going. A common theme that has emerged during these conversations is the sense that some of the latest trends in software—such as robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence—may do away with the need for UX design. While I understand the overarching fear of this perceived threat to UX designers’ livelihood, I find this very human fear ironic given what the worry is about. People often fear what they don’t quite understand and, certainly, the general hoopla about robots taking over human’s jobs breeds much fear and misunderstanding.

However, our guiding principle should always be: When we, as humans, use a product, we should not have to adapt to the technology. Instead, technology should adapt to us. A product that does this successfully is well designed. To create such well-crafted experiences, companies will need UX designers more than ever. Good design does not just happen. In actuality, the introduction of a new technology has no bearing on the validity and continued value of a mature design process. Read More

If you give users what they ask for, they’ll continue to ask for more. As I sat reading the children’s book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie to my son one evening, I started thinking about its applicability to our consulting for clients. If you do not know Laura Numeroff’s story, it is what some might describe as a circular tale. The plot centers around a little boy and a mouse. The mouse asks for various items and, when the little boy gives the mouse what he wants, the mouse asks for something else. If you give a mouse a cookie, it will want a glass of milk to go with it. If you give it some milk, it will eventually want something else—until you get to the very end of the story, when the mouse wants just one more cookie. So, the tale could conceivably go on forever.

My children love this book. They think it is very funny and ask me to read it again and again. It was during one of these countless readings that I realized this story holds some great messages about how I find myself interacting with clients every day. How many times have we gone through multiple iterations of designs, only to come back to our original design? How many times have we given the users what they want, only to find out the solution tests poorly and user adoption is low? Sometimes, during an engagement with a client, I feel as though the biggest impact of a request I’ve granted is simply that it begets yet another request. Read More

Much has been written on the difference between innovation and invention. This makes some sense because it seems every company in the world, big or small, is striving for an innovative approach to solving existing problems. However, there is mass confusion about what innovation actually is—especially in the enterprise-software space.

It seems that every consultancy is frothing at the mouth to win the very lucrative opportunities to help organizations solve their digital-transformation problems. And they’re employing our experience-design playbook to do this.

How? In a word: empathy. Hearing and reading about all the latest approaches in technology and sales, empathy is the best new thing—the secret skill that can enable us to reach dizzying, new heights. Empathy could solve world hunger and make us all better people. But the fact that empathy does actually make us better people is lost on most. Empathy can help us innovate more quickly and, ultimately, sell more products, satisfy more customers, and generate greater revenues. Read More