![understanding of what it feels like to
be one of the 1.5 billion people using
Facebook around the world. We
encourage those people who speak a
second language to use our products in
that language to help us ensure that our
translations are intuitive and accurate.
We encourage teams to participate in
international research for the many
countries around the world where the
Facebook community exists. It¡¯s all about
seeing our products through other
people¡¯s eyes, as best we can, so we can
design the best possible experiences for
everyone around the world.¡±
Ten years ago, it was hard to imagine
everyone would be interacting with their
mobile phones every few minutes. Yet,
the length and frequency with which
we engage with them is increasing, and
advanced portable connected technology
is permeating almost all aspects of life.
The fact we spend more and more time
with our electronic gadgets shows
design¡¯s vast impact on our lives, as digital
architectures and layouts pervasively
influence behaviours and habits.
But this trend has meant we have
fewer direct personal interactions and
has left people feeling less connected to
the world around them. Material Design
is Google¡¯s new project to make the user
experience across its services more
consistent. It studies what happens across
Google screens and apps, and brings
digital interaction into our analogue world
by attempting to imbue the digital
products of UX design with the intuitive
feeling of physical objects.
¡°We wanted to focus and unify
interface design, especially for mobile
screens, where space is constrained. We
started wondering what our software
products would look like if they were
made under real-world conditions of
light and shadow. We realised the layers
of an interface are a lot like sheets of
paper,¡± says Giampietro.
Using the natural world as a point
of reference for designing the digital one,
Material Design translates solutions from
mid-century graphic design for print into
a visual design and facilitates interactions
that, at their best, can feel as natural as
gravity. The aim is to create a more
unified experience across all platforms.
ce esign
Service
Design
Becomes
The Next
Design
Imperative
If the past decade moved from focusing on product design
to experience design, then what¡¯s next? As more enlightened
brands strive to craft the entire user experience both on and
offline, from innovating and branding to measuring outcomes,
the focus of design is going beyond discrete products to a
holistic redesign of the entire customer journey. That means
¡®service design¡¯ becomes the new discipline to facilitate
a customer experience that is both engaging for users and
rewarding for companies.
¡°At Capital One we¡¯re shifting away from experience design,
which generally comes with an emphasis on individual digital
touch points, and exclusively working on service design,¡± says
Sullivan. ¡°Working in service design is advantageous for a
number of reasons, my favourite being that we have access
to end-to-end experiences and more freedom to dig into the
roots of products and services without being [restricted to]
screens and applications.¡±
As UX aspires to mimic the material feel and emotional
heft of real objects, and informs ¡ª and increasingly becomes
¡ª the essence of its brand, service design will push experience
design to live outside our digital screens, potentially leading
to a new standard for the success of businesses.
134 V I R G I N A U S T R A L I A M A R C H 2 0 1 6](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/020db5ca-aefa-4e50-a503-5436ceb69f9c-160315151642/85/Lillian-Tong_The-UX-Factor_Voyeur-4-320.jpg)
Lillian Tong_The UX Factor_Voyeur
- 1. The UX Factor User experience design, or UX, is changing the way brands connect with customers, and is increasingly becoming the difference between success and failure. Words LILLIAN TONG Illustrations EUNYOUNG LIM/THE ILLUSTRATION ROOM
- 2. Good UX Makes Good Business In 1988, systems engineer and consultant Tom Gilb wrote in his book, Principles of Software Engineering Management, that every dollar invested in UX yields a return of between $2 and $100. This observation has never been more relevant. ¡°Good design is good business,¡± says Margaret Gould Stewart, director of product design at Facebook. ¡°Brands are looking to create long-term relationships with customers. Strong brands understand that the experiences people have discovering, purchasing and using their products or services are the critical foundation to those relationships. Companies that invest in designing great experiences will be much better positioned to attract and retain loyal customers.¡± Once, a company¡¯s online presence might just have been a channel for connecting customers to the products. Now, the user¡¯s digital experience of a brand itself often becomes a key i t wasn¡¯t so long ago that design meant logos, posters and furniture ¡ª things visually pleasant and?functionally useful. But over the past 10 years, we¡¯ve witnessed the rise of a new kind of design, one that shifts the focus from ¡®products¡¯ to the space between users and products or, in?other words, users¡¯ interactions with products. We can thank Apple for that shift. Following the staggering success of iPhone (which helped?make Apple the world¡¯s most valuable company), ¡®user experience design¡¯, or UX, has become increasingly important, especially as companies compete to discern, imitate and hopefully surpass the design elements that have made Apple¡¯s products so successful. Fusing hardware and?software, the iPhone¡¯s touchscreen was revolutionary, fostering an ever-closer relationship between users and product, and creating an intuitive experience that had never existed before. Simply put, its success?made explicit the power of design and, more specifically, UX. Thiswasreinforcedrecentlywhentheworld¡¯snumberonejobsite,Indeed.com,receivedmorethan6000 UXjobpostingsinatwo-weekperiod,andwhenMarkRolston,thegame-changingchiefcreativeofficerof leadingdesignfirmFrog,leftthecompanyafter19yearstostarthisownUXventure,Argodesign.Andthen there¡¯sthepurchaseofoneofthefirstUSUXdesignagencies,AdaptivePath,byUSbankCapitalOne,making peoplewonderwhyafinancialinstitutionwouldbeinterestedinaUX-focuseddesignfirm.Whatdoesitmean? ¡°Itmeanswemadeit¡ª¡®we¡¯beingtheuserexperienceindustry,¡±saysScottSullivan,AdaptivePath¡¯s experiencedesigner.¡°Itwasn¡¯tthatlongagothatIwasgrovellingforclientsandtryingtoexplainwhatUXwas andwhytheyshouldpayustodoit.Codeissomethingyoucanseeandtouch,visualdesignissomethingyou canseeandtouch,hell,evenusabilityissomethingthat¡¯salotmoretangiblethantheproductstrategywork weweretryingtosell.Butit¡¯sdifferentnow.We¡¯vecomeupintheworldandgotourselvesaseatatthetable, provingthatexperiencedesignisimportantenoughtoheavilyinvestinandrelyonasakeydifferentiator.¡± 130 V I R G I N A U S T R A L I A M A R C H 2 0 1 6
- 3. value of a service or product and also informs a company¡¯s core business model. One compelling example is Uber, a technology company that connects users with available drivers. The idea of paying a stranger for a ride isn¡¯t anything new but, through the app, Uber offers users an integrated experience, which is precisely the core value of the product. From finding a driver, to paying the fee, to rating the service, each touch point of the experience is purposefully designed to deliver what users need at each moment. As a result, customers rapidly adopted this innovative model in their daily life ¡ª for securing a car service, of course, but also to the extent that Uber¡¯s UX design helped shape consumer demand for similar experience design in other industries. According to a report from Walker, a customer intelligence consulting firm, by 2020 user experience may well overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator and one of the most valuable competitive advantages of a business. From users browsing the site, to physically visiting a store, to commenting on the customer service on Twitter, every interaction between a brand and its customers is an opportunity for UX to better communicate that brand¡¯s value to its audience. But these opportunities also create great challenges. Sarah Morris, user experience director at brand consultancy Wolff Olins, points out: ¡°User experience is the mix of content, functionality, behaviour and visual design. Brand needs to influence all of these components, but it doesn¡¯t currently. There¡¯s still the leftover behaviour of treating a brand as the visual layer that gets applied at the end. At Wolff Olins we endeavour to make it a critical influencer right from the start. We have tools and we create content that helps our clients and designers get to the strategic heart of the brand. We also help our clients identify the moments along a customer¡¯s journey where it¡¯s most appropriate for the brand to come to life.¡± In the future, branding will become less about corporate identity and more about the user experience delivered by products and services. User experience, indeed, becomes the brand, while users, through their choices and opinions (communicated via social media or in person), will take an ever more prominent role in marketing a brand¡¯s offerings. As Rob Giampietro, creative lead at Google Design New York, notes: ¡°A website or app is often the most expansive use of a brand system. I think down the line it¡¯ll be impossible to think of one without the other. UX is part of brand and brand is part of UX.¡± We can see this with Twitter. Its web and mobile app rewires users¡¯ daily habits of reading news and becomes a marketing tool that is indispensable for most companies. By empowering users with a new channel of communication, Twitter¡¯s user experience quite simply defines the essence of its brand. The only issue is that a company¡¯s mission and brand purpose, which are often big and abstract, can be difficult to incorporate into user experience design. It requires not only a great design team, but also tools and guidance for designers to engage with the brand¡¯s core values. When asked how Facebook helps its employees understand and connect more with the people using its product, Stewart says: ¡°We invest in a variety of ways to cultivate a deeper ItAll Starts From The Cultural Level 133M A R C H 2 0 1 6 V I R G I N A U S T R A L I A
- 4. understanding of what it feels like to be one of the 1.5 billion people using Facebook around the world. We encourage those people who speak a second language to use our products in that language to help us ensure that our translations are intuitive and accurate. We encourage teams to participate in international research for the many countries around the world where the Facebook community exists. It¡¯s all about seeing our products through other people¡¯s eyes, as best we can, so we can design the best possible experiences for everyone around the world.¡± Ten years ago, it was hard to imagine everyone would be interacting with their mobile phones every few minutes. Yet, the length and frequency with which we engage with them is increasing, and advanced portable connected technology is permeating almost all aspects of life. The fact we spend more and more time with our electronic gadgets shows design¡¯s vast impact on our lives, as digital architectures and layouts pervasively influence behaviours and habits. But this trend has meant we have fewer direct personal interactions and has left people feeling less connected to the world around them. Material Design is Google¡¯s new project to make the user experience across its services more consistent. It studies what happens across Google screens and apps, and brings digital interaction into our analogue world by attempting to imbue the digital products of UX design with the intuitive feeling of physical objects. ¡°We wanted to focus and unify interface design, especially for mobile screens, where space is constrained. We started wondering what our software products would look like if they were made under real-world conditions of light and shadow. We realised the layers of an interface are a lot like sheets of paper,¡± says Giampietro. Using the natural world as a point of reference for designing the digital one, Material Design translates solutions from mid-century graphic design for print into a visual design and facilitates interactions that, at their best, can feel as natural as gravity. The aim is to create a more unified experience across all platforms. ce esign Service Design Becomes The Next Design Imperative If the past decade moved from focusing on product design to experience design, then what¡¯s next? As more enlightened brands strive to craft the entire user experience both on and offline, from innovating and branding to measuring outcomes, the focus of design is going beyond discrete products to a holistic redesign of the entire customer journey. That means ¡®service design¡¯ becomes the new discipline to facilitate a customer experience that is both engaging for users and rewarding for companies. ¡°At Capital One we¡¯re shifting away from experience design, which generally comes with an emphasis on individual digital touch points, and exclusively working on service design,¡± says Sullivan. ¡°Working in service design is advantageous for a number of reasons, my favourite being that we have access to end-to-end experiences and more freedom to dig into the roots of products and services without being [restricted to] screens and applications.¡± As UX aspires to mimic the material feel and emotional heft of real objects, and informs ¡ª and increasingly becomes ¡ª the essence of its brand, service design will push experience design to live outside our digital screens, potentially leading to a new standard for the success of businesses. 134 V I R G I N A U S T R A L I A M A R C H 2 0 1 6