Customer/User Experience @ the Digital Academy

USEFUL & VALUABLE

For an experience to be useful and valuable, we need to understand why we’re offering the experience (business) and why someone is interacting with it (user).

The experience needs to solve real, whole problems and have measurable impact.

• If it doesn’t serve a clear purpose, it isn’t useful.

• If it doesn’t deliver clear value to the business and the customer/user, it isn’t valuable.

What it entails:

• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-basics-study-guide/

• Business and User focus

• Design is about context

• Discovery and problem clarity

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/discovery-phase/

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/tracking-questions-assumptions-facts-agile/

• Design Research

  • https://www.userinterviews.com/ux-research-field-guide-module/ux-research-basics ⭐

  • BCPS Design Research Guide

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/context-methods-study-guide/

• Understanding humans and how our brains work, incl. cognitive bias

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/psychology-study-guide/

• Strategic thinking and measurement

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/strategy-study-guide/

• Delivering value with agility

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/lean-ux-agile-study-guide/

DESIRABLE

CREDIBLE

Often framed in terms of ‘visual aesthetics’, but can be so much more:

For someone to want, enjoy using, return to a product/service, and hopefully recommend it to others: we can layer in an understanding of how emotions impact the brain (e.g. stress and decision making, emotions and memory). The emotional ‘tone’ of our experience needs to match the context.

What it entails:

• Emotional Design

• Desirable MVPs

• Persuasive and Emotional Design (NN/g course $$$ - leverage topic list for self-directed learning)

‘Desirable’ experiences involve almost everything in this table

Broadly, trust in government is a hot topic these days. For the Academy, we’ll be building trust with IM/IT folks looking for us to provide credible support for the very difficult work they’re often asked to do.

What it entails:

• Pyramid of trust

• Trustworthiness in (web) design: 4 credibility factors (extrapolate beyond web contexts)

  • Measuring trust and credibility (video)

• Designing for Safety (how can our work cause harm)

• Life & Death Design (relevant to many services/products @ BCPS, Academy should be aware as we support those IM/IT folk often doing high-stakes work, e.g. social services, emergency response)

• Ethics:

  • Power in design

  • Technically Wrong & Design for Real Life: Sara Wachter-Boettcher

  • https://cennydd.com/future-ethics

  • https://www.ruinedby.design/

• Considering the environmental costs of digital in context of the escalating climate crisis

FINDABLE

ACCESSIBLE

USABLE

What it entails:

• Information Architecture

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ia-study-guide/

• Content Strategy

  • https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-strategy/

Accessibility vs

Inclusive Design vs

Universal Design

What it entails:

• WCAG Accessibility

• Inclusive Design Toolkit (Microsoft)

• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/accessibility-inclusivity-study-guide/

What it entails:

• Usability Heuristics

• Interaction Design

• Laws of UX (psychology heuristics)

• Visual Design principles including Gestalt psychology