Making the case for investment in UX

A recent experience has led me to believe that there are some who still think that UX is something that is just done at the beginning of a project. How then can I encourage others to see that it is something that evolves and not just an exercise to be done once. I think that there is a tendancy by others to assume that UX design is a precursor to kicking off creative, starting the tech team off in the right direction, or to specify which systems they are going to use. If that is the case, I think that we must have failed somewhere. Where did it all go wrong?

Others do see the value of UX is where it is obvious – be it a contribution to a profitable or efficient production of a design and build project. Where is is not so obvious becomes difficult to pin-point – I think because in future projects there might be a tendancy that project members may now assume to know about UX; reapplying conventions and ideas or applying best practices without thinking about what it is that they are trying to achieve.

UX is not purely about copying what others are doing well or applying a single best practice. Although this is a part of the UX tool kit and this approach can certainly contribute to the overall usability of a project, it is about ensuring that what we create is fit for purpose. UX is about designing for the experience of several different kinds of users each in their own circumstance wanting to satisfy their own motivations and expectations. Where this gets more interesting is when, as senior UX professionals and managers, it is more about understanding and defining the ongoing strategy in regards of tangible results. All of this has to happen in the context of constraints, business strategies, and budgets whilst also managing processses.

Where we need to shift our focus to is on the implementation of the hypothetical that benefits the business and the user – perferably both incrementally at the same time. This also brings with it more difficulties in convincing others because that experience is intangible and unfathomable.  We therefore often default to a numerical value (profit) that is.

Valuable UX takes an investment over time. It’s not something that can just be put down and picked up again when things start to go wrong or when things change. It is definitively evolutionary.

We need to create things that have a lifespan. Something to which we can refer to when we want to change things or – if you take anything away from this article – when we learn something new. This provides us with a context within which we can to understand how we are performing against the objectives or criteria that we set. Without undertanding and documenting how users or customers interact with what we make, we can’t begin to understand how their behaviours effect what we are seeking to achieve or how they feel about any experience.

And that’s all that testing is – it is about seeking to learn new things – it is not about understanding what is wrong or what has not been done right. There comes a time when you can optimise what you have to the nth degree so that tests start to show negative impacts or results. What then? Well only by understanding the way in which customers engage and the undertaking that has gone before can you start to speculate and hypothesise what users actually attribute value to through behavioural attachment and cognition.

In light of this, we need to start validating the experience that exists now through audience research, customer engagement, user testing and A/B or multivariate testing to get ahead of your competition or maintain a competitive advantage. Only by expressing this in terms of UX can you actually get closer to your users, build loyalty and continue to develop your offering into something useful, valuable and engaging.

Convincing clients and stakeholders that this is the case is the real challenge for UX practitioners – and helping them to see the long term value of UX rather than in short term fixes and quick wins. I think that this is the new challenge, especially in an agile way of working we should be focusing on.