The Jordan Rules

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.

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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

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