I speak to a lot of different groups about user experience and I often start with a pair of slides called “UX is NOT UI.” http://www.uxisnotui.com/ In the first, you see a description of how UX is typically seen. In the second graphic, you see a list of factors describing how UX WANTS to be seen.
These address that pesky common misconception that user experience is all about what a product looks like.
I follow up the two slides with a quote from Steve Jobs: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
So you might say, “Wait a minute, in one place you refer to Design and in the other User Experience, what’s the difference?”
Jesse James Garrett explains this in the introduction to his book the Elements of User Experience after describing a string of mishaps that lead to an auto accident. His conclusion, “…every one of the previous incidents of ‘bad luck’ could have been avoided had someone taken more care in designing a product. These examples all demonstrate a lack of attention to the user experience: how the product behaves and is used in the real world.”
The design process includes an understanding of the user and his environment, validation of prototypes by the users, and a workflow that accommodates the user, not the other way around. The quality of the experience we deliver is the outcome of that design process. When we talk about user experience (UX) at CA, we are referring to what our customers think, feel and do while using our software. If they are at work cursing our software, then we have not done a very good job designing the software itself.
Over the last three-to-five years, CA has started to recognize that being successful means more than building software that provides utility—the ability of our customers to complete their work tasks. While still an engineering company, CA is moving towards a user-centered design process, where the users’ needs are considered as we build new software and update older products.
So what does it mean, to become a user-centered company? At its most basic, it means that we create software that solves users’ problems.
At its most complex, it means that we take the time to get to know our customers and their pain points. We conduct interviews and observations to learn how users work and where the CA software helps or hinders that process. Is the workflow clear? Is the information needed to make decisions or complete tasks available when and where it is needed? Then we design solutions help our customers do their work efficiently, effectively and without headache. If we can delight our customers through the process, so much the better.
To improve our products, CA has hired a group of user experience professionals who employ skills from a variety of fields such as information science, computer science, education, art and design, psychology, anthropology, business and liberal arts. These perspectives provide insight into how users do their work and how computers can actively inhibit or enhance the experience—something that we call human-computer interaction.
Most of the product teams at CA have UX pros who are responsible for conducting UX research and usability testing, designing interfaces and prototypes, creating engaging visual designs, and facilitating the design process as a part of product development.
Additionally, we have a Central UX team that is responsible for developing design guidelines and best practices that are used by all of the UX designers in the company. Here again, I use the word designer—not as visual designers—but as problem solvers, which is what we are.
Next month, I’ll start to detail the roles and skills of the UX practitioners at CA