Tag: UX

Levels of UX strategies

Posted on by David in Business, User Experience, UX Strategy

UX strategies exist in many different levels and here I have tried to break it down to a framework that I find useful. Even if some of the levels overlap to some degree, there are the five main levels: Global, Industry, Company, UX Division, and Project.

Graphic representation of the 5 levels of US strategy. The 5 levels has layers similar to an onion. The furthest out is the Global level, followed by the Industry level, thereafter comes the Company level and the UX division level. Finally the furthest in is the project level.

UX strategy at the global level

On this level we need to consider how UX can impact the entire industry by interacting with other industries. For example, if the grocery store industry makes it easier for farmers to sell their crops to stores through some online system, will more farmers sell to the grocery stores instead of going to the farmers markets? This type of change would most likely increase the number of suppliers and thereby also increase the competition among suppliers, which in turn would benefit the grocery store industry. On the other hand, if all grocery stores provide this system, large farmers may start to use the tool to compare which grocery store would pay the highest price. This will result in unwanted competition in the industry that benefits the farm industry instead.

It is therefore important to understand how your company’s initiatives might change the entire industry if competitors implement the same system. If you don’t consider this level, you might unintentionally make the industry worse off in the long run. It is perfectly fine to make this type of decision that makes the industry worse off, as long as it is a part of the overall strategy and has been planned for.

UX strategy at the industry level

At this level it is important to analyze the competitor landscape and how your company stands in comparison to them. Are you providing a premium product or are you primarily going for lower costs? For example, if you manufacture Mercedes, you might need to spend more on the infotainment system than Dodge. Another important factor here is also to understand if UX is really a differentiating factor. For example, in the coal manufacturing industry, will a better experience on the website really be beneficial?

The reason you need to think about UX strategies on this level is that you don’t want to waste your company’s resources on UX when it actually isn’t that important. What if one of the coal companies would spend a lot of resources to improve their website, when sales primarily is generated through representatives? Would it not have been better to invest in providing training for their representatives or alternatively hire another representative?

UX strategies on the company level

After understanding external factors such as industry effects and your position in the competitive landscape, you are now able to start looking inside your company. At this level, you would be looking at the company’s structure. For example, should the company have an internal UX division or primarily outsource the UX activities?

This is important because you want to make sure the structure inside the company is set up to support the overarching goals. If the UX is critical for the company’s success, but the website design was outsourced. It will be hard to make smaller tweaks and continuous improvements.

UX strategies on the UX division level

The UX division level can be referred to as a functional level in other strategic frameworks. Since we are focusing on UX, I am only looking at that specific function in the company therefore labeled the UX division. At this level you need to analyze things such as processes. For example, should the researchers only be included in the end to test the design? If you have an outsource strategy, this might be enough since the company you outsource the design to should do the upfront research. Another area of consideration should be your staffing. Do you have the right people to fulfill the planned strategy?

The reason this is important is because you need to be able to execute the strategies that you set up. If the company’s direction is to be the UX leader in the industry and you only have designers or only have researchers on your team, this may present great challenges for your strategy.

UX strategy at the project level

In this model, the lowest level is the project level. Sometimes the projects are linked together into a larger project and sometime they are stand alone. This is how UX practitioner traditionally thinks about UX strategy. We try to understand the business goals and the users’ goals, and then create a UX road map. Many times the roadmap needs to be flexible, within limitations, since the project is rarely as linear as you might want. For example, you may do some initial information architecture research and you struggle to get it right (users can’t find information for a critical business goal). This might force the team to spend more time on the information architecture. In turn, this results in not being able to fit the four planned moderated usability tests due to time and/or budget. This could lead to either cuting it down to three moderated tests or conducting two unmoderated tests and two moderated.

It is important to understand UX at this level in order to maximize the UX for each project even though there are constraints (budget, time, resources, etc.). If the company can excel at this level they are off to a good start. They will be able to produce a better UX than expected of a company with similar UX spending.

© David Juhlin and www.davidjuhlin.com, 2016

When should participants consist of a mix between genders?

Posted on by David in User Experience

People with a marketing background have been drilled to make sure there is a perfect mix of participants in the test sample to represent the larger user population they are interested in. In user experience, however, it is often possible to get by with a more lenient recruitment strategy. One of the criteria that can often be relaxed is gender.

Man-and-woman-icon

Men and women can have different perceptions of a brand, different behaviors in their morning routines, different attitudes towards certain sports, etc., but they typically interact with technology in the same way. For example, if men struggle to understand the available balance in their checking account, we can be fairly sure that women would also have issues with this task. Similarly, if females are successful in making an purchase online, men are likely to succeed as well.

Nevertheless, there are some exceptions to this ‘rule’. I have conducted many usability tests and the only time I encountered variations in performance between genders was when we tested a setup of a hardware similar to a printer. Participants were instructed to unpack it from a box and set it up so that they could control it from their smartphone. The box contained an Ethernet cable that was not required for the set up (it was in the box because there may have been some odd cases when it might have been needed). We observed that women read the instructions before they started to plug in all the cables, and realized that the Ethernet cable was not necessary. Around half of the men ignored the instructions and immediately started to plug in all of the available cables, including the unnecessary Ethernet cable.

Some of the men just left the cable hanging from the printer like a tail, while others were determined to plug it in somewhere. One participant found our router (our lab equipment had been moved off to the side in the lab) and plugged it in there. To make sure it did not happen again, we had to hide the router. Another participant saw an Ethernet outlet on the wall and plugged it in there. We had to place a ‘post it’ note on the outlet to hide it. Another male participant plugged the Ethernet cable into the computer we had moved off to the side. We tried to block all of these inputs with cables. Another male came in with his own laptop (he just randomly had it with him) and plugged it into his own laptop. This kept on happening throughout testing and it seemed as nothing we did could prevent the male participants’ from trying to plug in the cable somewhere. We also tried to get the point across by wrapping a tag around the Ethernet cable that said “optional”. Unfortunately, even this was unsuccessful, and the tag ended up being torn off and tossed in the trash before the male participants even read it.

Another example of where gender may have an impact is with fashion or gender-specific items. For example, men probably don’t categorize shoes in as many narrow categories as women might. A man may look at a shoe and say it’s a “flat” or a “heel”, whereas some women can readily categorize a “heel” into “wedge”, “peep toe”, “espadrille”, “pump”, etc.

When recruiting users for testing, always try to get a mix of genders, but don’t put too much emphasis on it unless it is expected that there will be a difference in interaction style between the genders. There are often other criteria that are much more important such as technical expertise and domain expertise. In the shoe example, for instance, women are more likely to have more domain expertise, but there may still be some men who have equal expertise and would have the same type of interaction with the website.

© David Juhlin and www.davidjuhlin.com, 2015