UX Paradise: A Day in UX Paradise

This talk describes what lies behind the Gateway to UX Paradise.
 

Short summary: I’ll tell the story of an ordinary day in the life of Huxley, the UX manager at Delta Market. Delta Market is a fictitious chain of supermarkets that has reached the highest UX maturity level (“UX Paradise”). I’ll also describe how Eva, a customer at Delta Market, experiences the high UX maturity in her interactions with Delta Market.

Length: 30 to 45 minutes.

Summary:  The talk helps organizations define visions and set goals for their UX development, The talk focuses on the UX activities that set Delta Market apart from organizations at lower UX maturity levels:

  • Overall direction and priorities: Delta employs user research, in particular many short interviews of motivated users, regular workshops with exceptional users and “Talk to Us!” to collect and vet ideas that determine its overall direction and priorities.
  • Continuous involvement of users: Users, in particular the exceptional users, are continuously involved throughout a project, starting from project conception through user research and user experience testing of prototypes, to improvement of operational systems based on user feedback. All major decisions regarding the user experience rely on user experience testing or feedback from relevant users.
  • Talk to us!: Through campaigns, booths in stores, ads and incentives, Delta Market actively encourages users to provide feedback and ideas.
  • Meet our users: All employees regularly work in the stores where they meet random, real users in a real context of use to better understand users’ needs and pains. For the same reasons, UX professionals regularly work in support.
  • Support: There is continuous feedback from support. Support follows up on suggestions until they are either implemented or rejected with a reasonable explanation. Sales associates and other users report friction in user interfaces.
  • Constant care: Delta minimizes friction in its user interfaces by genuinely caring about UX details, even when they are inconvenient and cause a lot of work.
  • Quality assurance of UX activities: At Delta, the suggestions from UX often lead to massive investments. To ensure that decisions are made on a sound basis, Delta carries out independent quality assurance of UX activities.

The talk  emphasizes that Delta combines freedom with accountability. Through KPIs, Huxley can justify the relevance of his employees and his department to executives at any time and make timely, appropriate corrections.

The talk also describes how Eva, a customer, experiences Delta’s high maturity level. Eva’s scenario shows the substantial benefits that justify the costs required to maintain the highest UX maturity level.

Target group: The talk is aimed at UX professionals who are interested in UX strategy.

More information: The talk is based on two articles:

  • UX Paradise, Part 3: A Day in UX Paradise (accepted for publication on UXMatters.com in late July 2021)
  • UX Paradise, Part 4: The Customer Experience (accepted for publication on UXMatters.com in late August 2021).

Related talk: UX Paradise: Draining the UX Swamp