Building an Experience Culture

transcript

@mikeatherton

POLISH IA SUMMIT 2012 #IASW

BUILDING AN EXPERIENCE

CULTURE

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Technology lifecycle

Don Norman, The Invisible Computer, 1998

The life of a technology product begins with meeting an unfulfilled need.

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Feature wars

As the product matures, more features get added to remain competitive.

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Feature wars

The tipping point comes when features detriment the overall experience.

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Feature wars

Experience wars

Beyond there, the product with the best experience wins.

This is the company I work for. We make software for big business.

People use Huddle to store documents, manage tasks, and talk to colleagues.

Sharepoint sucks donkey balls. Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin (possibly paraphrased)

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B2B DESIGN CHALLENGES Our customers are not our users People have this stuff forced on them User testing is hard Clients want us to dance to their tune

Huddle is diverse, so we compete in diverse spaces...

...yet most people use Huddle to store and share files.

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COMPETING ON EXPERIENCE 1. Building acceptance 2. Building brand 3. Building process

@mikeatherton

1. BUILDING ACCEPTANCE

BUILDING AN EXPERIENCE CULTURE

WHAT WE SAY “Huddle is the simplest and most intuitive way for people to work together everywhere across teams, companies, locations, languages and devices, through an experience that feels magical, responsive and loved.”

I evangelised to Huddle on the value of experience...

SIMPLE, INTUITIVE, PERSONAL, EVERYWHERE, MAGICAL,

RESPONSIVE, LOVED These are potent words.

Our user experience must deliver our vision.

SIMPLE Simple things do less. They minimise distraction and focus on the core. They are for the masses, not the experts. Simple is confident. It replaces choice with intelligent defaults.

INTUITIVE Intuitive things are instantly familiar, so feel less stressful to use. We don't learn how to them, we just know. They take cues we have learned from elsewhere and apply them to new contexts.

PERSONAL Personal things are people-centered and empower the individual. They extend our identity, because we align their character to our own. Personal things can be interpersonal, allowing us to connect with other, similar people.

7% reduction in deactivations (that’s over 1 million accounts!)

EVERYWHERE Everywhere things are mercurial. Ubiquitous access that adapts to suit our daily shifts between devices, locations and needs through an ecosystem of experiential touchpoints.

RESPONSIVE Responsive things move as quickly as we do. They feel higher quality and put us in control. Unresponsive things frustrate us when we think faster than we can act. Tools extend us and should work at the speed of thought.

MAGICAL Magical things seem impossible. They confound our expectations. They read our minds and give us magic moments of delight. They conceal their methods and show us only the prestige.

LOVED Love takes time. Love transcends utility. The things we love have character that reaches our emotional core. They are joyous. We will always prefer the things we love over those we merely respect.

LOVED… is our ultimate ambition. When we are loved, customers will sell for us. Love swells from admiration and respect. It creates preference and feelings of belonging. Love is a many splendored thing.

RESPONSIVE, LOVED This is our user experience ambition.

It guides everything we make.

RESPONSIVE, LOVED It’s a lot to remember.

But we could make it simpler.

SIMPLER Simple, Intuitive, Magical, Personal,

Loved, Everywhere, Responsive (gotta love recursive acronyms!)

We strive always to make things

The feature wars are an arms race, and no-one wins.

@mikeatherton

2: BUILDING BRAND

Huddle is made of funny, smart people who love their job.

Yet B2B companies struggle to bring their culture to the product.

Meanwhile, consumer web products are full of happy happy joy joy!

But have you ever noticed how these things all end up looking the same?

Admittedly art and design has always had movements...

...but so much imitation and reliance on trends limits differentiation.

Brand theory can teach us some things about differentiation.

Every time you think branding is logo design, a kitten gets its wings pulled off.

Brand positioning exists only in the mind of the consumer.

Positioning tells everybody what you stand for.

Your brand personality must come from who you really are.

Unique

Authentic

Talkable

Personality

Rohit Bhargava Personality Not Included, 2010

Brand voice must be unique, authentic and talkable.

Friendly Professional

When you stand for something, you stand against the opposite thing.

Calm Passionate

Polite Cheeky

British Global

Even negative qualities can be positively distinctive...

How much mail would a MailChimp chimp if a MailChimp could chimp mail?

Freddie adds character, but never, ever gets in the way.

MailChimp uses delighters to support the distinctive brand voice.

A brand voice is a powerful ally in the battle for the customer mind.

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3: BUILDING PROCESS

Lean UX is an attempt to integrate design into the Agile workflow.

If design is on the periphery, it will always be peripheral.

Agile development assembles the pieces, but UX design is the big picture.

Domain modelling is the mental modelling of subject domains.

Domain model

The domain model informs the higher-order pages, aggregations and interactions.

Domain model

Object and Aggregation Views

Domain model

Navigation model

Domain model

Navigation model

Task interaction model

Domain model

Navigation model

Delighters

Domain model

Navigation model

Delighters

Brand is wrapped around and infuses all the implementation layers.

Process builds the what. Brand builds the why.

Acceptance builds the will.

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WILL IT WORK?

We still have a long way to go.

Pure function

Feature wars

Experience wars

Commodities Technology lifecycle

Say hello! @mikeatherton reduxd.com slideshare.net/reduxd

A debt of thanks to

Simple and Usable by Giles Colborne (buy your own damn copy)

...and the shoulders of many UX giants.

Building an Experience Culture

Entertainment & Humor