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User Experience (UX) is a domain that goes beyond the visual. It's more than just how something looks. At its core, UX develops empathy for end-users. UX designers leverage a methodology to build digital solutions that are easy to use and bring joy. UX can also be used in various facets to drive business adoption. In this post, I'll talk about five scenarios that help identify UX opportunities to drive new business and increase software adoption.
5 Ways UX Drives Business Adoption
Scenario 1: Improve Processes within Organizations
Have you ever worked on a project that required sharing an Excel sheet? Do you remember how difficult it was to ensure it remained up to date? Many of the world’s largest organizations manage elaborate and complex processes through Excel. The main problem here is a lack of digitization and a central source of truth. UX designers can help bring together stakeholders and guide them through exercises and workshops to gain a high-level view of the processes at hand. We’re experts at facilitating and identifying areas in a business that need process improvement. We then guide customers towards digitization.
Scenario 2: Get Started with Innovation
Have you ever been on the brink of a new idea but struggled to articulate it? Maybe there’s a new sector or technology that you’re passionate about but remain unsure on how to get started. UX designers bring new ideas to reality. A designer can sit with a product owner to translate their ideas into user flows (steps of a process), wireframes and user interface screens. We iterate until we end up with a workable and clickable prototype. Suddenly, you’ve gone from a concept to a real-world solution (a product). UX design is a low cost and low risk way to get started with innovation.
Scenario 3: Digital Transformation and Brand Recognition
In addition to helping companies overcome the challenges of manual processes, UX designers can steer organizations toward adopting new technologies and digital transformation (like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, etc.). Working with functional and technical consultants, designers walk customers through different business canvases (templates) to identify areas for transformation. In terms of brand recognition, UX designers focus on improving the usability of a company’s products, thus increasing positive brand sentiment. Consider a company like Apple, that has a tremendous amount of brand recognition for its easy-to-use products.
Scenario 4: Get to Market Quickly
Have you ever been involved in the development of software that didn’t go as planned? Perhaps the solution was difficult to use, or it didn’t meet the needs of your customer. You may have had to go back to the development phase with change requests that were costly and took time (while missing deadlines). UX design avoids these pitfalls by addressing them at the beginning of the software development cycle. Through our design methodology, including user research, wireframing and prototyping, we take an iterative approach that captures the customers feedback throughout. This results in fewer change requests and streamlines the development process, which ultimately means you’ll go to maker quicker. Not to mention, by involving the customer earlier, they are left with few surprises.
Scenario 5: Adoption and Usability
Have you ever developed a piece of software that took months to coordinate, plan and build, only to find that none of the end-users have adopted the solution? Or have you ever built a piece of software and found that for most users it was difficult to use, or even confusing? These are examples of low adoption and bad usability. Apple is famous for creating products that are easy to use and highly adopted. Ultimately the role of a designer is to use their toolkit to create world-class experiences for end-users of software. This means going through our methodology and ensuring that the real needs of an end-user are met.
Summary:
Keeping an eye out for the above five scenarios is an excellent way to drive new business with UX. Design is more than what something looks like. It’s an entire methodology that when applied correctly can drive results and increase business. Use the hints above and keep this list top of mind so that you can help your customers drive new business, improve their brand, and become design centric.
