I remember learning about Joseph Campbell’s breakdown of the Hero’s Journey in my AP English class in high school. Campbell’s 17-part approach addresses the process protagonists in mythology and adventure stories go through in order to reach the end goal. Some of these steps include a call to adventure, refusing said call, acquiring a supernatural aid or mentor, facing trials and temptation, atonement, understanding, victory, and then finally, the return home.
Though perhaps to a less dramatic degree, most of us will encounter journeys of our own as customers, whether we’re downloading an app, buying a first home, or deciding what smoothie to order from Jamba Juice. What each of these examples has in common is the elements of appealing to a customer and compelling him/her to buy a product or service. One way designers and marketers may strategize the moves customers will make that will guide them towards a purchase is through a customer journey map. Paul Boag, author of SAILTHRU’s article, “Customer Journey Mapping: Everything You Need to Know,” describes a customer journey map as a visual tool that “tells the story of the customer’s experience, from initial contact, through the process of engagement and into a long-term relationship.” Boag continues, “It often provides a sense of the customer’s greater motivation … It encourages people across the organization to consider the user’s feelings, questions and needs.” Boag writes of two types of research many product designers and marketers use to identify common user behaviors (i.e. why customers may abandon their online shopping cart before a transaction is made, when customers feel most motivated to make a purchase, etc.). Analytical research, specifically website and social media analytics, aren’t always accurate but can give strong indications about what customers are looking for in a product and if their views on a business are largely positive, negative, or neutral. Anecdotal research, on the other hand, relies on asking customers directly how their experience has been with a certain product or service. A customer journey map can come in a variety of formats - a cycle, a series of line and bar graphs, a pictorial diagram, and so forth. But authors Phil Goddard, Ph.D. and Kathleen Hoski share what crucial components a customer journey map must include: 1) a customer’s point of view (versus the business’s perspective), 2) a customer’s perceptions related to their needs and desires, 3) identification of potential gaps in the customer journey and solutions to those problems, 4) performance indicators, and 5) visual elements. Goddard and Hoski write: “The bottom line is that [customer journey maps] should help stakeholders deepen their understanding of their customers’ behaviors, thoughts, and feelings across touchpoints in their journey and they should be actionable.” Whether you’re a product designer, marketer, public relations specialist, or salesperson, the core idea of the customer journey map ties into the concept of user empathy that we learned in earlier modules. It forces the people behind a product, service, or app to consider what challenges a user/customer may face, what their true desires are, and factors that will make it or break it when it comes to pushing the “Purchase Now” button. Perhaps someone feels most motivated to purchase a pair of Nike running shoes following the realization that he/she needs to get more exercise. But what may ultimately prevent that person from clicking the purchase button is too many pop-up ads, a slow website, or a faulty promo code. Much like a road map, customers can choose to make certain stops while ignoring other ones. They may end up at the final destination or find themselves going a different route entirely. It’s important to acknowledge the customer’s feelings in the entire purchase process, whether or not a transaction is actually made. While one might see the purchase of a product as a no-brainer, it may not be as simple for a prospective customer. No matter what field one works in, it benefits everyone to step outside ourselves and see our product, business, or brand from the perspective of an outsider - the person we want to appeal to most.
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Fewer things are more stressful than being pressured to generate great, creative ideas on the spot. It can often seem that the more you try to force creativity, the more often you come up short.
As a creative person, this is something I struggle with. More often than not, I find that my best ideas come to me when I’m not trying to think of them – they’ll formulate when I’m doing ordinary, everyday tasks like taking a shower, driving, or walking to the mailbox. I’ve heard it said that the reason why epiphanies can occur during these mundane moments is because our brains are in a somewhat relaxed state. Because the everyday tasks we do don’t require much brainpower, our brains have the opportunity to passively generate insights and ideas even while we’re engaged in other activities. But we can’t always schedule boring (yet apparently brain-stimulating) activities into our daily work lives. More often, we’re responsible for actively ideating at the drop of a hat – not to mention, making sure those ideas are top-notch. Fortunately, the act of ideating comes in a variety of flavors. There’s no need to fret about staring blankly at a pad of paper, waiting for brilliant ideas to manifest. Rikke Dam and Teo Siang, authors for the Interaction Design Foundation, share some creative ways to creatively ideate in their article “Introduction to the Essential Ideation Techniques which are the Heart of Design Thinking.” Among my favorite include “brain-dumping,” brainwriting, storyboarding, and mind-mapping. General brainstorming involves “leverage[ing] the synergy of the group to reach new ideas by building on others’ ideas,” Dam and Siang write. Brain-dumping is a form of brainstorming, however, it is done in a solitary setting before the ideas are shared with the rest of the group. Brainwriting goes back to the group aspect of brainstorming; it involves each person writing down their ideas that are then passed along to the next group member, who will expand on the first person’s idea(s). Storyboarding fleshes out ideas from start to finish, using illustrations and other visual elements to bring an idea to life. Lastly, mind-mapping explores the relationships between ideas. Whether you’re brainstorming, brain-dumping, storyboarding, or going on a jog to get the creative juices flowing, Aurora Harley writes in her commentary, “Ideation for Everyday Design Challenges” that what all the above ideation methods have in common is three specific criteria:
Harley defines the ideation process as “generating a broad set of ideas on a given topic, with no attempt to judge or evaluate them.” “Evaluation stifles creativity,” Harley continues, and that “working with a group often generates a greater number and variety of ideas.” She believes that too much emphasis is placed on quality over quantity, however when it comes to ideation, more importance should be placed on the number of ideas created. After all, it’s far easier to work with several ideas that may contain some golden nuggets than to be limited to one or two ideas that may ultimately be unusable. A certain analogy springs to mind as I muse the topic of ideation. Normally, the phrase “throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks” isn’t used in positive contexts. However, that’s exactly how I envision the ideation process. It’s a tall order to expect the first or even the first several ideas we come up with to be winners. Ideation entails throwing out every idea we have until something lands. It’s important for designers to remember this and to not get hung up on the idea that only logical/perfect/fleshed out ideas are allowed in the ideation process. There’s an old adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I not only find this sentence structure problematic, but the mentality behind it as well. In terms of User Experience Design, this attitude is the complete opposite of the goals of the design process. Designers should instead be challenged to ask themselves, “Why not fix something good that could break down?”
In Aaron Benjamin’s article “Design: How to define the problem,” he simplifies the design process into three steps: 1) Problem Definition, 2) Goal Definition, and 3) Solution Definition. He also addresses the importance of identifying problems early on, even for projects that appear to have no holes in them. While it might seem counterintuitive to “go looking for problems” as Benjamin states, it’s a necessary part of User Experience Design: “The greatest challenge in creating something is balancing how it looks and feels with how useful it is,” he writes. “A problem exists if you can find a complaint and a cause.” In looking for problems, one will likely discover that users can see beyond the aesthetics of a product or service. Just because something might be hip, slick, and cool and even useful doesn’t necessarily mean that it won’t face issues. Likewise, Rikke Dam and Teo Siang believe in a comprehensive (but non-linear) design thinking process, a process that involves Empathizing, Defining, Ideating, Prototyping, and Testing a project. The authors state that empathizing with a user will help designers better understand and define what problems could arise with the product they’ve created. Generating ideas for a solution, creating a prototype that offers a solution, and testing the prototype comprise the process of developing a fix for the original design’s problems. Being a non-linear process, it is likely that designers will need to revert back to the Empathizing and Problem-Defining steps to continue improving the new prototype. An effective way of addressing potential user issues is to develop a “meaningful and actionable problem statement,” Dam and Siang write, by utilizing information about the user, his or her needs, and insight. A great question that designers might ask themselves, is “How Might We.” For example, a law firm might ask, “How Might We utilize social media marketing to boost business?” A smoothie shop might say, “What food fads are currently trending and How Might We incorporate them into our smoothie menu?” And major tech companies like Apple probably regularly do ask, “How Might We design our next iPhone model to fit with our users’ lifestyles while also maintaining its aesthetic and edgy appeal?” Another popular tech company that has experienced rapid growth over the last few years (in large part thanks to the designers behind the product) is Uber. Founded in 2009, the Uber app is used in more than 60 countries and 600 cities around the world, with 15 million Uber rides taking place every day. As of 2018, Uber has generated $11 billion in revenue. Although Uber is banned in some cities due to the economic impact on those cities’ local taxi companies, it’s safe to say that Uber is thriving overall and won’t be going away anytime soon. All that being said, Uber is far from a perfect app. Uber has made news headlines numerous times for more than just being an innovative app. Lawsuits have been filed against the company for misleading drivers into believing that they would earn minimum wage or more for driving for Uber. Even in cities where Uber is banned, the company has disregarded the law and continued to operate anyway. Uber’s use of peak pricing has also been criticized. Additionally, Uber was forced to pay out millions for covering up a data breach in 2016. And let’s not forget about the handful of crimes that have happened against passengers during Uber rides because the company failed to conduct proper background checks on the Uber drivers involved. All these poor decisions might’ve been avoided had the key decision makers behind Uber adopted the “How Might We” mindset. Important questions that could’ve been asked include “How Might We create a background check system on our drivers to ensure the safety of passengers?” or “How Might We incorporate fair pricing that is both profitable for the company and reasonable for customers?” or the big-ticket question, “How Might We better practice the philosophy that profitability and a positive user experience are not mutually exclusive?” Writing and creativity tie into some of the hobbies that I have - reading, listening to music, dancing, and drafting short stories. You’d think that as someone who enjoys creating characters and worlds in which these characters reside, I’d be a pro at creating user personas as part of the User Experience Design process. In reality, creating a user persona - assuming that the outcome will benefit me or my business in some way - is a challenging process but is a useful tool that helps designers identify who their customer base is, what is most important to these consumers, and what needs are/are not currently being met.
In his “A Guide to Personas,” Ben Ralph shares on the value of creating user personas as a way of a) getting into users’ heads in order to create a product that caters directly to them, and b) instilling a sense of empathy among those who create that product. As I shared in last week’s blog, empathy as a designer is important because it forces creators to think about what a well-designed product should look like -- and hopefully keeps said designers motivated and eager to make the lives of their products’ users easier. A a creator of products (a.k.a. marketing collateral) and a consumer of products, my initial instinct is to think that making money is the number-one objective of most companies. But to get the green, companies must ensure that the people paying them are happy. Ben Ralph says something that made me go back and read the sentence again: “[Creating personas] can be difficult to do: out of sight, out of mind. We are busy, we are in offices, we have deadlines, and our users are somewhere we are not...Your users don’t go away just because you decide not to look at them.” It sounds so simple but not every designer decides to take the necessary steps to get in the mindset of the customer. After all, time is money. With approximately 65% of user designers using customer personas as part of their UX research, according to Jeff Sauro, Ph.D. and author of Measuring U’s “7 Core Ideas About Personas and the User Experience,” it’s clear that many businesses do see the value in taking the time to connect to their target audience and their desires. In short, Sauro believes that creating a customer personas can answer questions that go beyond a simple market research interview, such as what aspects of a product a user found useful and when, how frequently that person uses the product, what his or her motivators are, and what drew the person to the product in the first place. The most recent example I can think of where I wish the company behind a product would’ve exercised more empathy for its users was when I was using the social media scheduling platform Hootsuite. One of my ‘side gigs’ is social media coordination for a local coffee roastery that my friend operates. While pre-scheduling some coffee posts for Instagram, I wanted to incorporate a multi-photo (or ‘carousel’ post). I also wanted to create images that weren’t square. Unfortunately, Hootsuite allowed me to do neither of these things. While carousel posts and non-square images can be posted directly through the Instagram app, Hootsuite doesn’t allow users to pre-schedule these types of posts. While going through Hootsuite’s FAQ forum to see how many other people had encountered this same problem, I hoped to find a solution but as it turned out, this had been an ongoing issue with Hootsuite for years that had not been addressed. I ended up abandoning Hootsuite altogether and signing up for a different (and better!) social media scheduling service. My point being, if Hootsuite’s designers had empathized with its users’ challenges and offered a solution instead of giving the canned response of “This has been an ongoing logistical problem that our developers are working on,” the company wouldn’t have lost me as a customer, and probably several others, too. I like the way this module’s Usability.gov article defines the process of creating user personas: “Personas help to focus decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation...Personas development belongs at the beginning of the project, as personas can inform site functionality, help uncover gaps, or highlight new opportunities.” Creating a user persona from the get-go might’ve helped make Hootsuite’s customers happier, perhaps not. But at the very least, finding the means to view one’s own product from a third-party perspective is a crucial component in creating a successful user experience. At the risk of sounding incredibly nerdy, this week’s focus on empathy as it pertains to User Experience Design compelled me to think of a character on “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (the series with Patrick Stewart, not William Shatner). There is a character, Deanna Troi, who serves as the U.S.S. Enterprise’s ship counselor - essentially a therapist and source of guidance for the ship’s leaders. What makes her particularly strong in this counselor role is the fact that Troi is an empath; a semi-telepathic being who is able to use her empathic abilities to better understand and even take on the emotions of another person. Troi’s empathic abilities are not only used to benefit her ‘patients’ but are occasionally used to put the crew into the mindset of its enemies leading up to a space battle.
Beyond the fictional world, the concept of empathy is something I think about often in almost any environment I’m in (unlike Troi though, I don’t have the advantage of telepathy to make the job of exercising empathy easier). As a marketer, I am constantly thinking about what imaging and content will most resonate with my target audiences; as a writer, I must put myself in the shoes of my readers to ensure that what I’m saying is clear, concise, yet engaging at the same time; as a job hunter, I’ve had to put myself in the mindset of a professional whose skills and expertise the company simply can’t go without; and as an occasional performer, I try to think about the truths I want to convey to my audience and how to best express those truths in a compelling way. In his short video “The Power of Outrospection,” author and philosopher Roman Krznaric breaks down how the practice of empathy has shifted over the last few generations and why it is a valuable artform today. In the 20th century, Krznaric says, there was the notion that “The best way to discover who we are and what to do with our lives was to look inside ourselves.” But in the 21st century, he feels that that mentality has shifted; rather than introspection, the “ultimate artform” was become empathy, or outrospection. Kznaric identifies two definitions that psychologists have given empathy. The first is affective empathy, which is a shared or mirrored emotional response. For example, an image of a desolate-looking refugee camp would most likely make the view feel devastated, a feeling those enduring the war are all-too familiar with. Cognitive empathy, on the other hand, involves stepping into another person’s worldview to see and feel things the way that person does - even if the one practicing cognitive empathy cannot fully resonate with those viewpoints and feelings. In short, Kznaric’s definition of cognitive empathy is being able to “Know thyself … [which] can be achieved by stepping outside of oneself.” In their article “Empathy on the Edge,” authors Katja Battarbee, Jane Fulton Suri, and Suzanne Gibbs Howard similarly discuss the importance of empathy as it pertains to design. They write: “Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes—a part of our subconscious behavior—causes measurable changes in our cognitive style, increasing our so-called field-dependent thinking. This type of thinking helps us put information in context and pick up contextual cues from the environment, which is essential when we’re seeking to understand how things relate to one another, literally and figuratively ... this empathetic behavior personally motivates us to solve design challenges.” In other words, the art of putting oneself into another person’s shoes challenges the designer to think more critically and logically about what problems a user may encounter, empathize with that user, and embody both compassion and motivation to solve those issues. Although the article’s authors say that empathy is something that may come naturally to most people, it can be difficult for people who hold certain roles (specifically in the corporate sector) to resonate with the challenges their intended customers face. What designers, CEOs, and the like may find game-changing is connecting the data that they observe with their products to the experiences of their users. Essentially, putting a name and face to data. With consistent practice, empathy is something that can, as cheesy as it sounds, change the world. Many of us work in creative fields that require diving into the user mindset to predict and solve problems before they happen, create a positive user experience, and change the user’s behaviors for the better. Empathy is more than simply acknowledging another’s perspective; it compels us to think about how we can make an environment easier to live in, more sustainable, and more enjoyable for someone else for the long-term. Who knows; if every professional environment (design-focused or not, human resources or management roles, the medical field or the creative arts) employed more empathy both in its relationships with consumers and the people who create products, these businesses might boldly go where no man (or few businesses) has gone before. When I think about my own habits while browsing a website or when trying out a new service or product, I am putting myself in the user experience designer mindset to some degree. In these moments, I consider why I feel a site may not be worth more of my time or why I feel like deleting certain apps from my phone. Take the LinkedIn website, for example. While undoubtedly useful (and I plan on continuing to use it forever), I dislike how LinkedIn doesn’t allow visitors to accept connection requests by right-clicking and opening a different tab. Instead, I must navigate away from the page I already have open when all I want to do is click “Accept.” I’ve found various other apps to be a waste of my phone space, such as apps that are ‘free,’ but all the services the app company touts come with fees.
As someone who works in digital marketing, I can empathize with how many different problems a product designer must solve as well as predict, ideally well before a user points out potential flaws. This is why it was fascinating to dive deep into Susan M. Weinschenk’s article “100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.” Through her commentary and takeaways about what design strategies do and don’t work, we learn why a product user resonates with certain design features – some more so than others. Much of predicting what a user of one’s website, product, or service actions will be involves being able to gauge his or her emotions. There are seven universal ones, Weinschenk writes: joy, sadness, contempt, fear, disgust, surprise, and anger (Weinschenk, 2011, 165). As with marketing, selling products requires zeroing in on the positive emotions a user does want to feel when using a product. That means eliminating any visuals or verbiage that evoke any negative images, along with any frustrations a user may experience while using a product. What I found most interesting in this week’s readings was psychologist and user experience design expert Nadine Kintscher’s commentary on the art – or rather, the psychology – of persuasion. In her essay “Combining UX Design And Psychology To Change User Behavior,” Kintscher identifies two types of motivations that compel consumers to repeatedly use a product or return to a particular brand; extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation may include material rewards, such as money, while intrinsic motivation comes from an inherent enjoyment of an activity. However, Kintscher believes that such extrinsically-motivated rewards should be used strategically and perhaps sparingly. “Rewarding someone for an activity they already inherently enjoy might lead to a short-term increase in this behavior,” she writes. “But as soon as the reward is taken away, the activity is often pursued less than before the reward was given. Because rewards are a powerful way to get people to change behavior in the short-term, including them is tempting…the reward [that is] linked to performance…has shown to be very effective and not as prone to the over-justification effect” (Kintscher, 2019). Additionally, a product designer must be able to motivate a consumer to take action when the following three factors all line up: motivation, ability, and triggers (Kintscher, 2019). They key is being able to identify why and when a person wants to make a change (by using a certain product or service), whether they are motivated intrinsically versus extrinsically, and what challenges they may face. All this said, let me circle back to my earlier example about LinkedIn’s interface. LinkedIn is a powerful network, perhaps the most prolific virtual professional networking platform in the game. It’s functional, whether you’re a job seeker, headhunter, or industry thought leader, it’s aesthetically pleasing, it’s well-designed and relatively easy to navigate. While I may have some minor grievances with the site, it’s not enough to make me abandon LinkedIn. The rest of the platform is functional and user-friendly enough to make me stick around. The intrinsic rewards that come with using LinkedIn include the connections I make with other working professionals while the extrinsic reward would be nailing a dream job thanks to the connections I was able to make. In a perfect world, product designers would be able to more easily anticipate the functional and aesthetic needs of prospective consumers without too much trial and error. But of course, real life doesn’t quite work that way. In the meantime, designers must continue to delve into user psychology to create user-friendly spaces with interfaces that tap directly into consumers’ needs. Sources: Kintscher, N. (2019). Combining UX Design And Psychology To Change User Behavior. Retrieved March 27, 2019 from https://www.ceros.com/resources/combining-ux-design-psychology-change-user-behavior/ Weinschenk, S.M. (2011). 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (1st ed., pp. 165). Berkeley: New Riders. Most people have heard the classic phrase, “It’s about the journey, not the destination.” The same can be said for those who work in the User Experience field. When it comes to the word “design,” most people tend to view the concept of design as an end product rather than a process. In Fast Company’s 2006 article “Design Thinking...What is That?”, the authors address the misidentification of design as an end objective: “...Design in its most effective form is a process, an action, a verb, not a noun...A protocol for solving problems and discovering new opportunities.” The Fast Company article goes on to list the four elements that comprise design thinking; 1. Identifying the problem, 2. Creating multiple possible solutions, 3. Refining one or a few solutions through a series of trials and errors, and 4. Choosing the overall best solution to the problem. All of these elements may lead to the end result but again, are not themselves the end result. These things - identifying, defining, idea-creating, and problem-solving - define the User Experience Design experience. SAP’s User Experience Community takes it a step further. While the technical aspects of User Experience Design require analytical thinking, SAP argues that the type of thought required of designers “builds up” or builds upon ideas rather than “breaks down” ideas. The SAP authors identify the analytical approach as one that “focus(es) on narrowing the design choices, while Design Thinking focuses on going broad, at least during the early stages of the process.” Design Thinkers not only encounter the challenge of putting themselves in the users’ brains to identify both problems and solutions, but the added hurdle of ensuring that their solutions benefit the businesses for whom they work. Designers must wear multiple hats at once - they must be creative, open-minded, empathetic, intelligent, and out-of-the-box thinkers. Innovative as they must be, designers still have a job to do; making the work that goes into fine-tuning products and services worthwhile for a business to invest in. The SAP authors expand on this idea: “Design Thinking has been characterized as a discipline in which the designer’s sensibility and methods match people’s needs, by applying what is technically feasible and by contemplating what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.” As much as User Experience Design is about the user, it is also about the benefit of businesses. So what is Design Thinking? There’s not just one answer. All the characteristics required of a designer that I’ve listed above are what help define the design process and not only make the usability of a product more user-friendly, but also predict and answer the questions a user and business will have along the way. Sources: Design Thinking...What is That? Retrieved March 20, 2019, from https://www.fastcompany.com/919258/design-thinking-what Introduction to Design Thinking. Retrieved March 20, 2019, from https://experience.sap.com/skillup/introduction-to-design-thinking/ My name is Caitlin; I currently work as a digital copywriter/content creator/marketing specialist for a small marketing firm in SoCal. Prior to this role, I worked as a writer for a newspaper for about two years before moving on to public relations for one year. Going further back to 2015, I graduated with a B.A. in English and Journalism minor from Azusa Pacific University.
The answer “I’ve just always wanted a master’s degree” probably doesn’t suffice as a “real” answer as to why I’ve embarked through half of the Quinnipiac M.S. Interactive Media and Communication degree program but it’s somewhat true. But more importantly, I hope to directly apply the skills I’ve learned through this program’s courses (social media analytics, design basics, etc.) to the job market. I currently reside in Santa Barbara County and love living here. When I’m not in the office or at my desk working on classes, I enjoy reading books/listening to audiobooks, traveling to new cities, skiing, coffee-ing, dancing, and trying out new activities (i.e. different recipes, skydiving, paddle-boarding, aerial, etc.). |