Q: So when during the process should you bring in User Experience?
A: As early and as often!
User Insight Management – applying a user centered design process to the creation of new ideas. Using research and discovery methods, determine the landscape of your user and provide recommendations for innovation.
User Experience Planning – taking that insight and crafting a vision for the end user’s experience. Moving from general to specific, take the ideas and formulate a plan for research and execution.
User Experience Architecture – putting it all into effect. With a clear vision in mind for revolutionary consumer experiences, start putting this theory into practice by testing and evolving a range of fidelity prototypes with their target audience.
Usability – once it’s complete, does it weigh up to the challenge? After the design is complete, or when reviewing existing initiatives, evaluate the system’s performance based upon heuristics, conventions and industry best-practices.
Now, user centered design isn’t an exact science nor a rigid process. Leverage one phase or follow a combination, but the sooner you include user insight, the better chance your project’s have for success!
To explain User Insight Management (UIM), start by picturing a great symphony. For this you need to envision the best of everything…
The best venue, the best stage crew, the best conductor, and the best musicians – the performance is perfect, everyone plays beautifully and nothing went wrong. At the end of the show, there’s silence, everyone sits there and does nothing… well, turns out no one liked orchestra music.
UIM doesn’t claim to run the show, or try to conduct where and when everything happens, nor execute the music – User Insight Management does discover what your audience wants.
This doesn’t replace any of your existing roles and you may still make an amazing product, create an exceptional experience or speak the most powerful message, but if it doesn’t reach whom it’s supposed to when they’re ready, your effort is lost.
You know your business and are the expert of your domain – my expertise is process and offer the methods and insight to identify your audience, understand their context and set a direction toward their requests.
