The Jordan Rules

(I originally published this post on UXmag.com)

Over the past few years there’s been a lot of discussion around whether an experience can be designed. But it seems like everyone’s just getting hung up on semantics; an experience can be designed, but the user will always have the opportunity to experience it in a unique way. The reason every experience has the potential to be unique to the user is, in part, because cognition is unique to each user.

Cognition is about knowledge and understanding, so there’s a ton of psychological principles that fall under the umbrella of cognition. I’ll focus on two principles that, once understood, will elevate a UX practitioner’s designs to a whole new level.

Even when experiencing the same stimulus at the same time, many users will have completely unique experiences. That doesn’t mean an experience can’t be architected that utilizes knowledge about cognition to increase goal conversion. We create experiences to elicit a response from users; those users’ responses are either extrinsic (e.g., subscribing to a newsletter) or intrinsic (e.g., developing brand loyalty).

Some of the most important decisions UX designers make are those they don’t even think about. It’s generally understood that creating an intuitive interface is important, but few people are really good at articulating what makes an interface intuitive. This is where the concepts cognitive load and cognitive barriers play a huge role.

When dealing with web and software development, principles associated with cognition can be distilled into six distinct categories: three related to cognitive barriers, and three related to cognitive load.

Cognitive Barriers

A cognitive barrier is something that prevents a user from performing the action required to complete his goal. Most cognitive barriers are temporary in the sense that they can be overcome just through information processing. For example: John begins to fill out a credit card application online and is met with a series of open form fields asking for his name, address, phone number, etc. He’s able to quickly move from field to field using the Tab key on his keyboard. The last question on the form asks him to select his interests and provides him with an array of checkboxes. The momentary pause required to process that he needs to shift from keyboard input to mouse input is a cognitive barrier, but only requires that he understand what to do in order to resolve the barrier. That said, this still represents a potential abandonment point if John isn’t able to figure out what to do.

Barrier #1: Number of steps

Everyone has known about this barrier since the beginning of the Internet, and long before then. Why take three clicks when we can get it done in two?

Despite being the most well known barrier, it’s probably also the most misinterpreted because many people don’t understand that all three major cognitive barriers to have to be balanced. User testing and ongoing multivariate testing are two very good options for striking the right balance between number, length, and difficulty of steps in a user journey.

The takeaway: Understand that it’s equally important to know when to add steps as it is when to remove them. Five easy, short steps often impose a lower cognitive barrier than one long, difficult step.

Barrier #2: Length of steps

Just like barrier #1, the length of each step needs to be appropriate for a given experience. We can’t adopt a blanket rule that shorter steps make better experiences. In some cases, a longer step upfront could provide a substantially better experience as a whole.

There are two major considerations when examining length-of-step barriers: users expectations, and cognitive load. A user might expect to spend ten minutes applying for a credit card online, but might only expect to spend one minute finding show times for a movie. Additionally, users will only interact with systems they understand. Understanding the principles of decision-making, cognitive recognition, andcognitive recall will ensure users are not overwhelmed, while providing affordances for a complete experience.

The takeaway: Design pragmatic step lengths based on how motivated the user is to achieve his goal. Users will spend longer with sites, tools, apps, and products they enjoy than they will with ones they’re simply required to interact with. Users tend to prefer short steps that only ask them to resolve the immediate issue they’re faced with. For example, when a user lands on the Wikipedia page for the first time, he’s faced with the issue of selecting a language. It’s better to get him to select his language as one step and then get him to enter his search term as a second step rather than requiring him to fill out a series of questions that could be used to personalize his experience.

Barrier #3: Difficulty of steps

The difficulty of a given step is subjective, and is a main concern of UX professionals. Generally, it’s better to have easy steps; however, there are a couple of downsides to making things easy. Users tend to develop a greater sense of loyalty toward experiences that they’ve invested time in. Conversely, users tend to be fickle about experiences they’ve not invested much time in.

It’s important to understand that users tend to make quick decisions based on previously experienced conventions. This means that when steps of a process are considered important (e.g., selecting a payee, making a purchase, entering a contest) they need to make use of special design patterns that cause users to slow down. This type of slowdown often involves making steps more difficult to process, but result in less user error.

The takeaway: Don’t create unnecessarily difficult steps, but don’t immediately discount adding difficulty to limit conversion and increase the quality of the converted. Remember, users will be more likely to complete difficult steps if they understand why the step needs to be so difficult.

Cognitive Load

Cognitive load is the amount of working memory required to achieve the user’s goal. This principle forms the basis for Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think. The less a user has to think about what he needs to do to achieve his goal, the more likely he’ll be to achieve it.

Attribute #1: Number of choices

Choice/decision architecture is becoming one of the biggest and most important specialties within the UX field. Understanding natural decision pivot points and how to manipulate the saliency of decision-making elements is key to ensuring users are quickly able to make the right choice.

For example, the most effective e-commerce sites focus on getting users to the product they’re looking for as quickly as possible before hitting them with related products/up-sells. These sites make great use of natural decision pivot points. Once a user has found what he’s looking for, there will be a natural point at which he’ll be receptive to additional offers. If there are related products, up-sells, or related promotions, capitalizing on these pivot points is important.

The takeaway: Human working memory is limited. Users are more likely to move around a site with a simple structure than one with a very wide or very deep structure. George A. Miller published a paper in 1956 calledThe Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on our Capacity for Processing Information is the quintessential guide to avoiding choice paralysis. It essentially stipulates that the majority of people have the capacity to remember 5–9 things. So if you’re creating a taxonomy, it would be ideal if it were somewhere in that Goldilocks zone. That said, a more recent study suggests that working memory limits are likely lower, possibly as low as four things.

Attribute #2: Amount of thought

The most important part of understanding cognitive load is understanding how much a person needs to think about a decision prior to making it. Thought processing is somewhat of an abstract concept because is varies substantially from person to person and doesn’t directly relate to real-world time. This means that it’s possible to create a longer experience that has a lower cognitive load, and conversely, to create a shorter experience that has a higher cognitive load.

Each experience has to be evaluated individually to determine whether people would:

1. understand that they need to take the time to make the desired decision, and
2. are willing to spend the time required to make the decision.

These are two distinct considerations. Many people are used to making hasty decisions online because they rely on their own experience to interpret design patterns. If they are asked to take the time to make the optimal decision, even if it only requires one second longer than it would to make a satisfactory decision, users will need special design patterns to recognize they’re being asked to do this.

Take the current incarnation of fox.com, for example. The primary navigation has little downward-facing arrows next to each element. Here’s a great example of a design pattern intended to slow users down and make an optimal decision. These arrows indicate that users should not simply select a section, but should expect to see a mega-dropdown with sub-categories.

Although this is a valuable design pattern, Fox has failed to use the appropriate interaction design pattern. They’ve decided to expand the mega-nav on click, which is fine, but rather than closing the mega-nav if the user clicks again (i.e., making each navigation element a toggle), Fox takes the user to that category landing page if the user clicks again.

The takeaway: Users rely on their own experience interacting with digital, and non-digital, products. Therefore, users will make decisions they understand first, and will only stop to consider their decision if they don’t understand what to do. If you use standard conventions, you’ll ensure users don’t have to think too hard to use your site, app, or product.

Don’t ask users to select between too many options. Again, the 7±2 rule is a great guideline to adhere to. Don’t have more than 5–9 calls-to-action, categories, or menu items displayed at any given time. This can be achieved by hiding additional options off-screen, or though a well-thought-out taxonomy. Hiding elements should be done using standard conventions, e.g., standard vertical scrolling, “Advanced” buttons, split buttons, collapsible areas, ”Show more” buttons, etc. Avoid hiding list items that need to be evaluated together.

Attribute #3: Confusion and choice

How would you log into an investment account with your online bank if your bank has two options: “Online Banking” and “Credit Cards”? Most people would use process of elimination to select “Online Banking,” but some users may abandon their goal if the don’t understand the choice. It’s kind of like asking people if they want a fork or a knife to eat their soup.

Many UX professionals get caught in this pitfall by not allowing users to evaluate a complete set of options at a glance. Remember the 7±2 rule? Well, this is where it starts to get slippery. If you’re unable to reduce the breadth of a site to 5–9 top-level categories, it’s better to display all of them than to display a subset of them. For example: John is looking for a set of work gloves and visits the Canadian Tire website. There are eight top-level categories that appear in the primary navigation. John begins to look for which category he thinks might contain work gloves. He doesn’t see a category that makes sense but knows that Canadian Tire sells them. The issue is that the canadiantire.ca only displays a subset of the total number of departments within its primary nav. Along the left rail, there’s local navigation that includes all of the departments, one of which is apparel. Apparel does not appear in the primary nav. It’s okay to show a subset or summary of options upfront if it’s clear that it’s only a subset, and if there’s an option to show all options.

There should never, or rarely ever, be a need to hide a selection of navigational options. It’s fine to hide the navigation as long as there’s a clear way to access it again; but it’s important to show all of the options when the navigation control is displayed.

The takeaway: Users often mistake a selection of options for the complete set of options. It’s easier for a user to understand which option to select when he can see the alternatives. If only five options of a 20-option set are visible at a time, it will be more difficult for the user to decide which option to select.

Conclusion

UX has a lot to do with how users find and consume content. Understanding the cognitive processes and nuances people go through when finding and consuming content is important to architecting an ideal experience or, at least, to architecting a set of conventions that support a user having an ideal experience.

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I’ve been working with CPG’s for years and have figured out why so many have trouble staying relevant online. These insights come from examining internal documentation, and conducting ethnographic studies, from four different global CPG’s and finding correlations. 

The synthesis of this work has cumulated into “The Ecosystem of Understanding”, a framework for keeping CPG’s (and everyone else) relevant online.

(View Full Size)

Although this framework was created specifically with CPG’s in mind, it applies to many other industries. 

I’ve been able to extract 5 insights common to every CPG I’ve worked with; even the most innovative.

1. We don’t know who we’re talking to, but we like to pretend like we do.

2. We don’t know why we’re talking to them, but we know we should be.

3. We suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome.

4. We’re inconsistent, but we’re learning.

5. We’re old, scared, and angry; but its only a matter of time before we’re phased out.

THE SOLUTION: THE ECOSYSTEM OF UNDERSTANDING

The Ecosystem of Understanding was produced out of necessity. It began approximately a year ago, when the biggest of the CPG’s I’ve been working with began asking some interesting questions. They asked things like: “Why are we spending so much time managing our vendors?”, “Why are we the last to hear about emerging digital trends?”, “What digital tools do we need to measure ROI more effectively?”, “Why aren’t our customers getting more excited about our products?”.

After expanding my consulting contract beyond simple user experience, to include all aspects of the customer experience, I began a the long process of identifying issues, insights and eventually solutions.

A version of this ecosystem has been blown-up and pasted on the wall of several global CPG’s brands walls. I was actually engaged by one to extract each element, and export each to allow them to print the ecosystem as a series of magnets.

For those of you who find the entire ecosystem overwhelming, here’s a breakdown of each element.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY AREAS OF USER INTEREST

CPG’s are generally very accepting of performing user research, if there’s a good reason to do so. Many times, existing persona research is repurposed from print/ broadcast to be used to inform digital marketing/ communications. This tends to provide exactly the WRONG information digital strategists need.

Here’s the process I like to go through, and recommend to the clients I work with:

1. Begin a social-listening campaign: This campaign should be run like any other social campaign. A social monitoring tool should be utilized to help identify authorities within your industry, use those authorities as hubs to identify related topics of conversation. Map those topics back to your original audience pool and expand each topic-pool by identifying all users who frequently discuss both topics related to your industry and topics from the related industry. Mapping these using a modified binned analysis will clearly indicate which topics you should be including in your communications strategy.

2. Within the selected topics, identify sub-groups (or Cohorts) who have similar traits. Each cohort grouping should have a clear authority (or hub) individual.

3. Within each cohort, identify common online activities every user participates in. Also identify what motivates each user to perform each activity. (i.e. Entertainment, Necessity, Security, Convenience.)

STEP 2: CREATE AUTHORITIES

Although this step can work on a departmental, or brand level; it works best when an entire organization has committed to the process of creating authorities. 

In it’s simplest terms, a corporation can create authorities or ‘centres of excellence’ who’ll be mandated to stay up-to-date on a particular channel, or topic. These authorities might work for a particular brand, but will operate like a consultant for all brands within the corporation. 

These authorities will need to be tapped into the collective wisdom of both internal teams, as well as all vendors. The easiest way I’ve been able to establish this type of collaboration, is through a micro-blog. In different circumstances, I’ve recommended both Tumblr, and Posterous to support collaboration.

Essentially, anyone from any department internally, and anyone from any vendors department can contribute to the micro-blog. The authority will curate what actually gets published, but will be notified anytime someone wants to contribute. 

Ideally, everyone from the authority team will subscribe to the micro-blog using an RSS reader, and will keep the RSS reader open in the background throughout the day. If a team member is often out of the office, a mobile RSS reader would work just as well. 

STEP 3: IDENTIFY COHORT COMMUNITIES & COMMUNITY HUBS

Micro-segment and automate social signal response assessment: At this point, I think everyone knows how to set up Google Alerts, Sysomos, or HootSuite to help with brand monitoring. These tools (combined with a governance document) can help determine when & how to respond to any given social signal. Many tools can take it one step further and establish a triggered workflow, alerting authorities based on pre-defined triggers. (i.e. If someone mentions the brand name with a negative sentiment AND mentions a competitor, that conversation can be automatically distributed to the most relevant set of authorities with a recommendation on how to respond.)

Create experience map to illustrate campaign, program, platform, and account user journeys: For any digital project, a large experience map (ideally printed on large format 3’x20’ paper) that utilizes swim lanes to organize multiple user journeys across all digital channels. (Ideally, these user journeys will include all mediums, digital and non-digital.)

STEP 4: UTILIZE AUTHORITIES TO LEARN AND TEST

Utilize collaboration principles established in step 2 to organize learnings and establish ongoing testing. Here’s one of the processes I’ve helped establish:

A. Each authority is responsible for managing their own test schedule, and test budget.

B. Each test (and the test parameters) will be posted within the respective category on the micro-blog and will automatically alert every other authority.

C. Each authority will have at least 2 business days to add comments to the post (test plan).

D. The test will be recorded and results will be shared in their raw format immediately upon receiving the results.

E. Each authority will have the option to analyze the results independently

F. The authority conducting the test will upload the results as an EDIT to the original post.

G. Anyone subscribing to the authorities collaboration RSS feed will be alerted to the final post.

H. 30 days after the publication of the test results, all users will be asked to rate the test & results and comment on how the information has been helpful or comment on how the information needs to be expanded upon.

Obviously, this framework doesn’t work for every industry, but it does apply to many different industries outside of CPG’s. I’d like to provide everyone with an editable PDF of the full ecosystem: this can be downloaded and edited in any vector editor like Adobe Illustrator. 

If you have any comments, questions, or thoughts about this; please leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve, and expand. If you want a quick response, message me directly on Twitter. (@thejordanrules)

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Did anyone else else grow-up on stories about the old automotive pioneers? Stories about how every innovation pushed the industry forward. I’m not sure what happened, but let me outline a 5 point plan to re-energize the automotive industry.

1. THE CAR API

Let’s assume the constantly connected car is already here. I think there can be 4G syncing for the short-term, and think wireless networking will become available globally within 5 years. 

If the possibly of having a connected car is already here, why isn’t every car connected and transmitting data? We should have bidirectional communication between the cloud and any vehicle. This communication & data can be built on, and monitored by developers. 

I think this should become standardized, and mandatory for all new vehicles. This could revolutionize traffic reporting, toll roads, parking, law enforcement, driving, emergency response; as well as the automotive aftermarket, and automotive retail.

Automotive manufacturers: Imagine having access to data from every vehicle you have on the road, and imagine offering that data in a smart system to every owner. Imagine those owners monitoring their data through your site & apps. You’ll have the attention of millions, and will have enough data & infrastructure to communicate real-time hyper-targeted notifications to anyone. From traffic alerts, to law enforcement alerts, and from marketing alerts to  alerts based on bio-sensor data; the potential of the CAR API is only limited by what we can imagine.

2. TAP THE CROWD

Understand the value of long-tail innovation. Essentially, there are lots of people who have lots of ideas. They don’t always have good ideas, but establishing a listening & curation team can help utilize the power of the crowd.

Try using the opposite of the long-tail graph to outline how much listening you need to do in order to get the most value from the long-tail.

Some of this is already appearing in social media governance and organizational structure for supporting social business practices. I think the science and art of LISTENING is still in its infancy. Everyone needs to understand that listening isn’t just a passive activity, but deserving of a department, and deserving of active analysis and testing.

3. BECOME MOTION FACILITATORS

I don’t want to get too abstract, but the original requirements for cars were, at one time, fulfilled by horses. The world was getting bigger, and people were living further away. The further we live from each other, the more we rely on vehicles. 

So, now that we live all over the place, and have roads connecting us; why would we want to move in any other way than by car?

This is actually a big issue. Why would any industry work towards its own demise? Because it’s them or us. Either we phase out petroleum reliant vehicles, or we won’t be able to curb climate change enough to continue our way of life. The automotive industry isn’t ignorant to this fact anymore. The overwhelming move to electric & hybrid technology is testament to the shift in thinking. 

Although electric vehicles is a great first-step; we can’t stop there. Clean efficient mass transit for short, medium, and long distances is ideal solution. I think the automotive industry needs to lead this transition, and I believe a CAR API may be a great first step. Complete automation & logistic management over fleets of clean vehicles would allow us to:

A. Reduce/ eliminate roads & associated costs: Creating roads took a long time, and costs a lot of money. Replacing them with anything will take a long time, and will cost a lot of money. If we believe its worth it, we should start immediately diverting funds associated with building new roads to building a new infrastructure of mag-lev rails or something. I’m not staying we have to move to rail transportation, but we can definitely come up with something with a smaller physical and economic footprint than roads.

B. Reduce/ eliminate vehicular crashes: If we’re building new infrastructure anyway, lets build it with automation controls to avoid people from having the ability to get into accidents, or drink and drive, or purposely run someone down.

C. Improve planet health: Obviously reducing emissions associated with vehicles will help curb climate change, it can’t be the only effort. 

D. Improve human health: Again, it’s obvious that making people walk a little bit, and bike a little bit, will make people a little bit more healthy. A side effect of shifting people away from cars, and building facilities to accommodate more bikes & people on-foot, is that more people will feel safe and encouraged to take healthier alternatives. I mean, I’d bike if I didn’t see at least one bike accident each day. There are also psychological benefits associated with being more social and spending time around others.

4. THE NEW ROADS

By now, I’m sure everyone’s seen Transcendent Man, and understands the idea behind the Singularity premise. For those who don’t know: Transcendent Man is about a guy who thinks technology will merge with biology enough to allow us to live forever and connect in a way never thought possible. No one’s really sure what it’ll look like, but I’m thinking it’ll start like the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution; with technological enhancements. 

Anyway, roads were always meant to be a way to connect people. They helped make the world smaller and more accessible. I think the internet represents the foundation for new roads. If vehicle automation is going to work, we need to have a network that can support that kind of traffic without losing connection. Essentially, we’ll need to have access to the network from anywhere. There are several technologies that could provide us with global coverage. 

Once we have access to the network from anywhere, we’ll need to improve bandwidth - or data compression. We’ll need to prepare the network for improved interfaces. Now, when you think about it, our current interfaces rely on human physiology to interface with machines. (i.e. we have gestural interfaces because we have fingers, we have vocal interfaces because we can speak.)

So, once we have an omnipresent network that can transfer huge amounts of data, we can take advantage of biological & cognitive interfaces. We’ll essentially be able to move from an age of sharing knowledge to an age of sharing understanding.

5. THE CORN OF THE MODERN WORLD

I think, at this point, everyone knows that corn is the most pervasive ingredient in the North American food industry. Corn starch, corn glutton, corn syrup, and a host of other corn byproducts make it directly into our foods and corn feed is often given to farm animals. 

Cars have become the corn of the modern world. Cars gave way to roads, roads shaped cities, and cities shape the world. I think the oil industry got a bad rap - I think the oil industry scaled up to meet the demands the automotive industry put on it.

What kind of world to we want to live in? Why don’t we work backwards from there? Let’s say we want to live in the world of 1000 years ago, with all of the conveniences of today. What would it take to get that done? 

1. Landscape

Ideal: Remove all the roads.

Problem: How will we be able to connect with one another?

Solutions: Either live closer together or find a way to travel long distances without roads.

2. Unite & Understand

Ideal: Reduce Population.

Problem: No one likes regulations, especially not on life.

Solution: International support of community planning initiatives. At one point in time, the automotive industry united communities. We need that sense of community again, this time on a global level. Individuals tend to do what’s best for their community when community planning works.

3. Connect

Ideal: Wireless Innovation

Problem: Infrastructure 

Solution: WIthout diving too deeply into the technology, I believe wireless networking technology can encompass the world. This would essentially provide connectivity to anyone anywhere on the planet. I also, believe this same solution can be applied to power distribution. Allowing devices to access power anywhere.

4. Move Forward

Ideal: Learn from the Past

Problem: Mediocrity & Survival. People don’t all like things the way they are, but are all used to them. It’s hard enough to survive in the world we live in. Many people just want to get by.

Solution: Revolutionize the education system. Stop focusing on teaching every child the same stuff, in the same way. Start bringing psychology and anthropology into teaching by observing and listening to children in the early grades. Use empathy and sociological experimentation to determine what each student likes to do. Allow their interests to guide their educational experience. 

OK, so I’m not saying all of my ideas warrant exploration; but if you’re reading this, I’m sure you have your own ideas that are worth exploring. Don’t wait for the automotive industry, start exploring your ideas on your own. Explore them, and find a way to share them. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m alright with things changing if they change for the better. I’m even ok with things changing for the worse, if we’re striving for a long-term improvement. 

All I’m saying is, if we know we need to change the automotive industry - can someone please figure out how; and how we’re going to get there? 

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Introduction: How digital ecosystems have evolved.

Over the past two decades, the world watched as brand-ecosystems evolved online. Where once, brands merely wanted to establish an online presence; now, they want to engage their customers through transmedia ecosystems.

This shows an evolutionary leap forward in terms of digital thinking. Many marketers and agencies have been slow (VERY SLOW) to react to the nature of this paradigm shift. It’s hard to say who’s catering to whom, but it’s distructive. I believe education is the only way to move the industry forward, which is why I’m still committed to giving away my knowledge, templates, diagrams, and any other assets necessary to help encourage user-centric projects.

The two biggest problems & opportunities: design-centric projects & technology-centric projects. First, let me be clear about what I mean when I say design-centric or technology-centric. I simply mean, the driving-force behind the project is design or technology focused. (i.e. Starting with a CMS and designing templates that fit, or starting with photoshop and presenting a sleek set of mock-ups.) If you don’t begin a project by engaging a UX strategist (or some similarly titled person) you risk running a project that isn’t user-centric. I’m more convinced now than ever, that ALL digital projects should engage a UX strategist at some level.

A simple exercise I call Prioritization Scaling allows a project team and client to align quickly on what’s most important.

(Download PDF Copy)

The scale is divided into two sections, top & bottom. The top section is intended to define what type of project we’re working on. Is it: experiential, informational or usable. Obviously, these aren’t mutually exclusive, but should be prioritized. The above example is for a usability-driven project, where content consumption is the biggest goal, and design takes a back-seat.

The bottom section is intended to determine the implementation priorities. What elements are most important: Accessibility/ Responsiveness, Visual Appeal, Utility/ Content, or Navigation. Again, this is just trying to strike the right balance.

Once the two sections have been arranged, they should be compared against each other. If there are inconsistencies, they should be discussed and the sections should be reordered if necessary.

Process: Standard project management methodologies lend themselves to user-centricity

There’s a standard project framework that I refer to anytime I’m engaged to work on a project. Whether it be run in an agile or waterfall methodology. 

Essentially there are 4 phases, that are sometimes combined, or split-up. There’s some level of research done, whether we actually conduct the research or it’s given to us for analysis. We’re looking for key user insights. When we’ve found them we need to synthesize a project roadmap that outlines how we plan on using the insights. This could be a BRD, brief, user stories, or sketches. The goal is to put some boundaries on the scope of the project. The end of the planning phase should produce a set of detailed wireframes or a prototype; ideally with a working design specification document (DSD). 

Baselining a set of wireframes or a prototype will allow the creative team to begin brainstorming on how to interpret them. Personally, I like to be involved with this process to help the team understand the underlying principles and intention of flows etc. By the end of the creative phase we should have a baselined design specification document. This can often serve as the online style guide.

The DSD and wireframes/prototype will be used concurrently by the development team to build the final deliverable. By the time the build phase is finished, we should begin to get data back so that we can begin to determine new user insights.

Now, the reason I don’t think this process works as well with a design-centric project is that they tend to begin with creative and ‘post-rationalize’ planning and research. It might not sound like this is a big deal, but starting with creative doesn’t always take users needs into account. This could lead to usability, business, or conversion issues down the road.

90% of the creative directors that I’ve worked with understand that this isn’t the most ideal way to work and participate in the research and planning phases to understand and help guide certain key decisions. 

Benefits: How it benefits the WHOLE team

Understanding the user and what they need is a key aspect of any strategy department. A user-centric project gives the strategy department the time they need to do a proper discovery with users and the client.

Having key user insights and a framework for best practices with regards to IA & UX allows the creative department the freedom to focus on being really creative and innovative. The biggest hurdle I’ve experienced is the unwillingness to deviate from the wireframes. Including your experience strategist in brainstorming will allow you to blue-sky the interpretation while using the wireframes to stay grounded in reality.

Since users are the people who’ll actually be using the end product, developers like user-centric projects because they take the time to figure out how everything will work. 

Project managers tend to like user-centric projects because they follow an easy-to-understand process. They also don’t require that people take responsibility for aspects of the project that are outside of their expertise. (i.e. developers figuring out how creative should function)

It’s easy to sell user experience and user-centric projects. It’s been my experience that user-centric projects make clients happier, and keep them coming back, longer than design-centric projects.

Long-Term Revenue Model: Why user centric projects will keep the lights on.

I’m a strong believer in iterative improvement, even on a campaign-basis. This means you do something, measure it, analyze the findings, and improve it. The more you improve it, the better the experience will be for the user, the better the ROI will be for the client, and the more the client will want to invest with you.

Conclusion

Why wouldn’t you want to have a user-centric project? The only reason I could think of: We don’t have a seasoned UX professional to guide us. I actually think this might be a more pervasive reason that you might think. Many agencies make their name on their creative, and think they should lead projects because they’ve had success in the past. This kind of thinking is great for agencies who want one big campaign to sweep the awards shows, and make a big name for themselves - but one ‘hot-spot’ for a client doesn’t mean as much as consistently delivering quality. So, it’s not only that you might not have a UX person to guide you; it might be that you don’t even know you need one. UX people only help the creative process when they’re used properly. If you’re not sure how to integrate UX into your practice, let me know, I can give you some tips in 15 mins.

Note: Next article will focus on user-centric pitches

Follow me on Twitter @thejordanrules

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