USER EXPERIENCE

IS EVERYONE’S

RESPONSIBILITY

Simon Norris

Hi, I’m Simon from Nomensa.

This is my presentation User experience is everyone’s

responsibility from Interact London 2014.

More and more organisations are realising the importance

of user experience (UX) and the value it can leverage in

delivering more engaging, personalised and meaningful

interactions.

However, many of the most successful companies do not

place enough importance on UX and much more needs to

be done. UX is not the responsibility of the online team or

marketing department alone - it should be considered an

organisational effort.

The presentation will explore the thinking, governance and

tools that can be used to culturally embed UX into an

organisation. In a nutshell, learn how to create a 'Digital

First' strategy and philosophy.

Simon Norris

It’s not just the digital department, the whole world is

becoming increasingly digital and organisations need to

adopt a digital first philosophy.

The products we use are part of our lives. We use them to

find our way, to talk with our friends and family and to

share our thoughts. Separating the product from the

experience can be very difficult when the user experience

has been well crafted.

Simon Norris

The digital world can hard to separate from the physical

world. If I ask the question “where is the store”?, is it out

there on the high street or on my phone or is it in my

head?

It’s in all of these places and devices…and more yet to be

designed and therefore realised. Experience is literally

everything…and everywhere!

User experience can be deceivingly complex! If we take

Google and type in ‘User Experience’ we get 110 million

results - now that result is not simple, not by any measure.

Yes the search is simple but the result well, I question the

value of presenting such an unfathomable number as a

good user experience!

Simon Norris

The Iceberg Model of Meaning.

At one end of the meaning continuum you have surface

meaning and the other end the deeper meaning. As

designer we are shaping the surface meaning, the code,

visual patterns and composition.

If we get that right we can influence the deeper meaning

we experience. The surface meaning is the path to create

more engaging and meaningful experiences.

Simon Norris

The experiences we are designing or shaping to be more

specific are becoming incredibly more sophisticated. How

far can we take it? Let’s take a glimpse at a possible near

future from Microsoft.

Experience, our actual day to day, moment to moment

experience is composed of many moments of average, we

could even say mundane.

Yet our experience can also be punctuated by the

sublime.

Sometimes the sublime moments are obvious, however sometimes they can just strike - that’s what

makes experience and trying to shape (design) it so very interesting. Doing email can be mundane yet

it can also be sublime if the email is to learn you have a new job at Nomensa for example.

A heavyweight German philosopher with some interesting ideas we can apply to frame how we shape

(design) user experience. We can often think or talk about user experience in very broad and almost

vague ways. We need to be able to deconstruct user experience.

Two of Heidegger’s ideas are ‘Ready to

hand’ and ‘Present at hand’. We can

deconstruct experience even further by

representing ‘Ready to hand’ and

‘Present at hand’ as poles on a

continuum.

• Crossing thresholds

• Testing the boundaries

• Managing crises

Moments of truth: require us to make an

active choice, e.g. paying for something

online which we may want the user to

consider.

SIGNATURE

MOMENTS

Personality Difference

Signature moments: the moments that

allow you to show off your brand or a

little interaction magic that allows you to

stand out!

SIGNATURE

MOMENTS

DELIGHTFUL

MOMENTS

• Anticipating needs

• Unexpected extras

• Cool Factor

Delightful moments: unexpected

moments that add a little cool factor to

your user experience.

SIGNATURE

MOMENTS

DELIGHTFUL

MOMENTS

1000’s of micro

interactions

INVISIBLE

MOMENTS

Invisible moments: the flow of invisible

(micro) interactions that happen when

we use a product.

EXPERIENTIAL

GESTALT

Simon Norris

All the moments described create the user experience. Yet, they are more than the sum

of their parts and we should think of them as an Experiential Gestalt.

Simon Norris

To understand user experience we have to think in terms

of ‘the micro-macro’. Many individual Lego pieces are just

a collection of Lego pieces.

However, the Lego pieces can be made into something

more than the sum of their pieces. In this case a Lego

model of the Sydney Opera House. Understanding the

relationship between the micro-macro is understanding the

importance of Experiential Gestalts.

MOUNTAIN

Simon Norris

User experience is not just that amazing moment or ‘view

from the top of the mountain’. I call this the fallacy of the

immediate - we are not just designing moments of the

sublime - we also design average and mundane moments.

The moments of the sublime have to punctuate and

compliment the mundane moments so that we can craft a

user experience that is meaningful and reflects our

cognitive and emotional capabilities.

Simon Norris

Every experience we feel is connected in the past.

Experience is a journey.

Simon Norris

The journey to the top of the mountain can be long and

composed of many different journeys.

Simon Norris

The journey to the top of the mountain may even start

looking at the mountain range on a laptop.

FLYING AT THE

RIGHT HEIGHT

Simon Norris

To understand user experience we need to fly at the right

height. If we fly too high we’ll miss all the detail and if we

fly too low we’ll lose perspective.

Experiences can be micro.

Experience can also be macro. To understand user

experience we have to understand the elements and how

those elements are composed.

Simon Norris

Part of the Amazon river looks curvy from a certain

perspective.

Simon Norris

However, when we zoom out even further the

river can look an arcing line even though it

has many curves. Different perspectives can

change what we think.

Shaping (designing) user experience is no

different. We need to fly at the right height to

understand the relationship between the

micro-macro elements.

DIGITAL

OPS SALES MARKETING I.T. HR

In the very beginning of the digital era ‘digital’ typically sat underneath IT

or marketing.

DIGITAL OPS SALES MARKETING I.T. HR

As digital became more significant it became a ‘silo’ in its own right.

OPS SALES MARKETING I.T. HR

DIGITAL

In a digital first organisation digital runs through the whole organisation

with every department having a say in how they apply digital.

Simon Norris

Buying a car is more than merely looking on a

website. We may look on a website and we

may visit a showroom as well. Yet the whole

experience from website to factory and the

finishing product (driving experience) is more

than one type of experience.

They are many experiences - we don’t even

have language for this design-stuff yet it’s real -

it’s why digital, UX and IA are hard or as I like to

say complex, interesting and fun.

We have to understand all the moments and find

meaningful patterns that links them together.

From user journeys (services) we need to join

the dots to understand the journeys we want our

customers to experience.

However, it is not enough to think in terms of

user journeys or service design. We have to

develop Ecological Thinking. Organisations are

providing ecosystems. Here’s Apple’s.

Here’s Netflix. Ecological thinking is where we

need to be headed as designers.

Ecological design recognises many journeys

criss-crossing, so the idea of a start or a finish

becomes less important and the user

experience becomes The Thing and not just the

journey or the service.

My colleague, Jon Fisher developed Meaning

maps to helps us understand the interactions

between channels within an ecology.

User experience is a journey that everyone takes

whether they are users or employees.

Everyone, has a part to play in

the shaping of experience.

In fact, in a digital first organisation

everyone has a part to play.

Simon Norris

User experience is a journey that everyone

takes whether they are users or employees.

Everyone, has a part to play in the shaping of

experience.

In fact, in a digital first organisation everyone

has a part to play.

EXPERIENTIAL GESTALT

To recap we have to:

- Think in terms of gestalts

(see the bigger picture / be strategic)

Join the dots (understand the many journeys

customers/people can take)

- Appreciate the micro-macro nature of

experience/ behaviour /nature

- Map meaning and interactions across

channels, services, and devices

These are the tools we need to use to become

digital-first. To appreciate the role and importance

of experience as a company activity. The

designing of user experience requires everyone,

and it more than just understanding the customer.

That was stage 1. Digital First is the next stage,

stage 2.

One of my hero’s Sir Henry Royce.

“Strive for perfection in everything we do. Take

the best that exists and make it better. When it

doesn’t exist design it”.

THANK YOU