UX Design to WIN in Business

Nils (00:00)
Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. My name is Nils. I'm a UX designer and co -founder at Dinghy and have 10 plus years experience in working as a UX designer, as a front -end developer, as a sometimes even a copywriter or a usability tester. So we're here on the podcast, UX Design to Win in Business to talk about...

what is user experience and how does it actually help your business? How can you apply user experience in a way that your business will actually profit from all of these activities? And we're here to talk about user experience because it's a complicated topic. As a business owner, you probably get in touch with

topics like branding before. And I made this connection in the last three episodes every once in a while already, because branding is a similar topic that has, I think, just been around longer. So the term branding is a very interesting one because it's...

Nobody talks about user experience design as long as people have been talking about the importance of branding, but they both are a relatively vague topic. So you probably had this experience that you talked to one person who might be a designer about what is user experience and how do we design for it. And you got this one answer. And then you talk to somebody else.

maybe from marketing and got a totally different answer. And I think a similar thing is the case with branding as well. And so last episode, I went into this example of a project we did last summer where this one aspect to get to a good user experience.

or to design for a good user experience is to actually talk to your users in the form of usability testing, for example. That's one activity we did which had a direct outcome on the product, which made sure that it was much more useful to the target group. And if something is more useful to the target group,

the target group is your users, then they have a better experience with it. And this is the entire point of user experience design. And when it comes to what makes a good user experience and who to ask for it, then...

then I think we have to look at the individual disciplines a little bit more. And before we jump into the next concrete example from our agency work, I wanted to take the opportunity today on the episode to talk a little bit more about how different businesses approach user experience, where it is like...

is user experience in a specific department in your company or, you know, like what makes up user experience? And I want to delve into that topic a little bit deeper because it's just a very complicated thing to understand if you don't come from a design background. So user experience is, as we already established, is not

one single discipline, which is, I think also from a business owner's perspective or from generally from a leadership's perspective, it's kind of confusing because you can hire people who claim to be a UX designer. And that is for sure, that is in fact a role. But since it's called UX designer, I think the role is often...

put way too close to somebody who's a UI designer, for example. And so user interface designer and user experience designer, they, especially since the term of you as an experience designer is being established, those two were always put into one cup, that's what I say. Like they were always kind of,

and put very close together. And I think the reason for that is, first of all, because it's both, it's kind of a designer, like both seem to be designers. And the same way as there's front end developers and there's backend developers and there's like performance marketers and there's go to market strategists. And so,

Like the specific field and the specific term, like the word designer, lends itself to being put into the same bucket. So I think to get a better understanding of what a UX designer in fact does and what their role should be in your company, let's look a little bit or let's untangle how different businesses approach user experience design. So.

historically where user experience design came from is the realization that building a product can't be subdivided into different departments, at least not ultimately when it comes together as one product. So let's look at,

Probably one of the most prominent examples when it comes to something like this, and also an example that we discussed many times with our clients in our agency, is of course Apple. And I'm laughing a little bit about because it, so Apple is this gigantic company that we all know and love of course, that,

always had a very specific approach to how they design their products and how they market their products. And they always stood out as this. And so much even that I think they totally, they polarize even a little bit. Like there's the well -known Apple fan boy or girl who are just in the camp and buy every product that Apple has to offer. We all know the...

infamous standing in lines for the new iPhone to slam cash on their table. And there's always this question of our clients, of course, like how can we be more like Apple? Like, can you make the website look a little bit more like Apple? Can we, you know, be a little bit more like Apple in any way? Because I think nobody can really describe.

why they are requesting this, but it's of course a melange of Apple is very successful. They sell a lot of products. That's totally obvious. But then there's also, I think this angle in the mix of how people like, like whoever is requesting it, also likes Apple products and they have a good association with their products. And that means,

that they had a good user experience with Apple and even like one layer above. They have a good experience with the product. And so they remember when they think about Apple, they remember good moments and tie that together to a good brand experience. Like that is why Apple as a brand is so insanely valuable.

because they managed to have lots more good memories of touch points with their product, which come together as an overall warm and good and fuzzy feeling about Apple in consumers' brains than bad experiences. And so user experience, the way that Apple does it, is a top -down approach. So...

You have all of these different departments and skills and different people in your company who can work in different things. So in, let's keep it a little bit simple. Maybe if you have like a tech company, you have a bunch of programmers, you have a bunch of sys admins, you have a bunch of designers. You probably have marketing people, sales, business. You have all of these different disciplines and everyone.

contributes a very valuable part, of course. Like that's why you hired all of them. That's why they're all there. And as you probably also know or experienced previously is when the company grows bigger, it's much harder to stay on target with everyone at the same time. Because if you have a lot of people, there's a lot of communication that has to happen between the different departments. And...

Usually, I think, or the old way, and to close the loop of how did user experience as a term even come to existence. So what happens if you're not like Apple, if you don't manage user experience design in a uniform way, then one department works on the product, another one works maybe

on one app, the other one works on the Android app. The third, they set up all of the marketing campaigns and they work with the website team. And so everything is a little bit clustered left and right. What Apple does is they literally design the user experience on paper like a huge blueprint. And that entails looking at every single bit.

of digital touch point of any touch point, in fact, with your company and with your product that can happen with all of your users. And that begins at discovering your brand and your products in an ad in by, I don't know, by Googling for it. But so discovery of your product all the way to signing up for it.

to signing up for it or to buy it, then the first engagement with your product, and then also your long -term relationship with the product. So all of this is one customer lifecycle. And user experience design is not just one part of it. User experience design applies to the entire journey.

And you probably heard of like an entire customer lifecycle from a marketing and sales perspective where you think about the financial aspects of one user and their entire lifecycle with your product. Like how long are they staying on? How...

How happy are they? How likely are they to buy the next product? How likely are they to stay on for another six months to buy your subscription? All of this. And the way that user experience designers at Apple, but generally user experience designers, go about their job is to not only look at the visual appearance of your digital product or of your copywriting.

or of the price or of the campaign or of so. If the user experience is basically every time that you sort of as a customer, as a user, touch with your product, then user experience already begins with the onboarding funnel, for example. So you can have a good experience buying the product if you see an ad, it's relevant to you, it mentions.

a problem that you would like to alleviate or it does anything that appeals to you. You click on the ad, you go to a landing page, it informs you very well and very transparently what's the product, how much does it cost. If you're convinced, here's a way to sign up for it. Everything goes flawlessly, like there's no hiccups in the sign up flow. There's no, your phone number is too short or too long. And...

Then you receive the product in a timely fashion and it doesn't get lost somewhere in the mail. And then you unpack it. And if the first time you open it, it actually works right off the box and it keeps working for the time that you expect it to do. And like, this is the ideal scenario. And so UX designer works with the marketing team to build a good user onboarding funnel.

then they work with the website team to make sure that all of the information you get upfront about the product that you're about to buy are in a way that users understand this. And so the UX designer might advise to do usability testing. And then the UX designer works with the hardware department if you have any sort of hardware product, maybe this, right?

that when you touch the product for the first time, that it feels good and you know what to do and you can understand what you're doing. Then they also work with the customer support team to understand if the touch points that customer support has with the users in different stages. So I have trouble signing up, I lost my password, the Bluetooth is not connecting, du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -du -

the way that customer support talks to the users fits into the user experience design. And so that UX designers and UI designers get thrown into one bucket is, again, I think it's because it's a hard to understand concept that there's a new role that emerged out of the realization that

working in the individual departments, each of those departments do great work, but put together, it doesn't necessarily always come out to a great user experience. And so that there's this role that emerged that is sort of a cross -department functionality. So a UX designer is a complicated role because...

It's like a meta thing. They have to work with your entire company in different touch points. And I think that is something that just throws how businesses are historically structured that kind of crosses through this diagram. Like it kind of doesn't work. You ex designer, if they even report to anyone, they probably report to you as the business owner.

I'm not sure how these things work, to be honest, but so your ex designer isn't someone who's just in one department and works on their own. They work with everyone and they advise how every team has to progress to make sure that in the end, all these activities come together to form a very good user experience. Woof. I hope this made sense.

I know and I realize while talking about it as someone who is a user experience designer that it's really, it's a topic that has to be untangled. And I'm very happy that I made the decision to put on this podcast. I hope it's useful to someone out there. I'm already gathering a list of people I would love to invite to come onto the podcast. From...

the mentioned different departments to talk to them about how they go about creating a good user experience and how they work together with user experience designers. Because I think that is something that would make the whole topic much more relatable. So you can find these people in your organization and talk to them as well.

Perfect. This was episode four. I'm already looking forward to the next one. See you soon.