User experience encompasses all aspects of users’ interactions with a company, its services, and its products. Prioritizing user advocacy from the beginning of a product design process puts users at the center of the process and ensures their needs are foremost in all UX design decisions.
To meet your customers’ real needs and deliver simple, elegant solutions that are a joy to use, you must do much more than merely giving them what they say they want or fulfilling a checklist of features. You must have a deep understanding of your product’s market and the needs of its target users. Plus, your business objectives should provide clear metrics for the success of your product’s user experience design. You must develop an understanding of what motivates your users and manage their expectations, while consistently representing your organization’s brand and message.
In today’s marketplace, solutions need to be easy to use. Customers have come to expect this. Good technology is ubiquitous or invisible. Easy-to-use solutions increase customer effectiveness and efficiency and reduce the need for training and support. Ultimately, they increase customer adoption and retention and, thus, result in increased market share and revenue.
But how much market and user research, UX design, prototyping, and usability testing does it take to ensure your product wins in the marketplace and meets your business objectives? Every company has different needs, depending on its size, the maturity of its market, and the lifecycles of particular products.
This blog series is based on the article Winning in the Marketplace: How Much User Experience Effort Does It Take?