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The ‘Make or Break’ Factor with UX Project Success

Many business managers seeking improved revenue, reputation and customer relationships have asked the question, “How can we raise the IQ of our organisation?” This question can be answered with two letters; UX. User Experience (UX) is a human first way of designing products and encompasses all aspects of the end user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. UX is essentially a process which aims to achieve enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately leading to an upturn in company profits.

While UX presents itself as a perfect means to an end in achieving improved efficiency and performance, this change process requires effective management in order to be successful. As with any change process, it is difficult to shift business processes, culture and employee opinion to be favourable toward the change. Without all of these factors in alignment, an organisation’s UX will not achieve its goals and instead be a demotivating drain on time and resources.

Change management is, therefore, a necessary requirement for UX implementation and success. After all, no effective change can occur without procedures and processes in place to motivate, monitor and evaluate the change. On a human level, effective change drivers and champions are needed to inspire and provide examples of the change behaviours that the organisation is seeking. Emotion is a far more powerful motivator than cognition and thus appealing to employee’s emotions through inspiration and emphasising the need for change is a crucial first step for any change project.

UX change agents can implement the following steps in order to ensure effective program implementation:

Step One:

Establish a sense of urgency

Step Two:

Form a powerful coalition

Step Three:

Create a vision for change

Step Four:

Communicate the vision

Step Five:

Empower others to act on the vision

Step Six:

Create short-term wins

Step Seven:

Build on the change

Step Eight:

Anchor the changes in corporate culture

 

Any change agent must also possess empathy in order to effectively implement UX redesign. Empathy is necessary in all aspects of UX, from accurately understanding the user’s perspective on the product or service, to realising the causes of resistance and creating mutual understanding about the need for change. Thus empathy is critical to not only effectively defining the problem for redesign, but also ensuring its effective and sustainable implementation.

Clearly, UX is a process that goes hand in hand with change management. In fact, change management is the ‘make or break’ factor in the success of any UX project. Any organisation looking to invest in UX must place as much focus on their change management processes as is placed on UX processes, as without both UX implementation will be ineffective and irrelevant.

 

If your organisation is looking for effective change management solutions, please contact TMS Consulting on solutions@tmsconsulting.com.au

 

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TMS Consulting