First conference UX Masterclass 2010: When the user experience is no longer just on your website.

At the beginning of the year I attended the  Intracom conference  and it emerged that the web was tending to leave computers and offices to follow users wherever they go. During the first  UX Masterclass conference , which took place yesterday at

Montreal, I was able to see that this vision of a portable and mobile web has changed the notion of user experience and more particularly the way of designing an optimal experience.

It will be necessary to move away from an atomic vision in which the user experience is designed on a case-by-case basis, for particular media (web, telephone, interactive terminals, etc.), to obtain a more global vision and take into account, from the design, the set of user interactions with a company. This is called service design.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty, let's start with a quick look at what the future of online user experience may be and how to measure it.

The future of online customer experience

In his conference “  The Future of Online Customer Experience  ” Vidya Drego of Forrester Research, presented the concept of the “CARS” experience, i.e. “Customizable”, “Aggregated”, “Relevant” and “Social”.  

• Customizable, because users will increasingly be able to personalize their experience on a site.
• Aggregated, in the sense that the content of a particular site may come from different suppliers. Everything will be aggregated in one place at the information access point.
• Relevant (Relevant), depending on the material and when the information is accessed.
• Social (Social), simply by sharing and interacting with a community.

The last three points clearly illustrate the fact that the user experience will no longer be limited to a single place or a single medium, to optimize it all these aspects will therefore have to be considered.

Measure user experience

In the conference “  Measuring user experience  ” by Tom Tullis (fidelity investment) there was also a new approach to measuring experience which, in my opinion, is in line with Vidya Drego's “CARS”. That is to say, we will move from a measure centered on the problems to a measure centered on the well-being of the visitors. We are currently spending a lot of energy wanting to identify all the problems of such and such an interface whereas we can, through micro tests (A/B tests, multivariate tests, user tests on micro modifications) quickly determine, and at lower costs, simple changes that will improve the lives of users.  

The following two conferences, "  Service Design, creating a user experience beyond tools and screens  " by Ilana Kaplan  (Optimal experience) and "  Virtual Casting  " by Simon Francès (Cirque du Soleil) go even further in idea of ​​service design.  

Service Design, creating a user experience beyond tools and screens

Ilana Kaplan explains to us that, in industries for which the products are very similar, it is the services that make all the difference. However, to ensure the best user experience through all of its services, it is necessary to ensure that you have a global vision when setting them up. Unfortunately, most of the time, a complete user experience is not built because of the limitations imposed by the technological or procedural constraints of an organization. We must therefore rather take the problem upside down by identifying the experience we want to provide and by equipping ourselves with the procedures and technologies that will allow us to achieve it.

The design cycle of service design is very similar to that of user-centered design. The differences are in the techniques used to model user touchpoints and the interactions between them.

Virtual Cast

In “  Virtual Casting », Simon Francès gives us a concrete example of what good service design can produce. Virtual Casting is part of a comprehensive project aimed at facilitating the recruitment of artists within Cirque du Soleil. The users are therefore artists from a wide variety of fields and from different cultures. The recruitment website is only a small part of the experience offered to these users. It is a point of contact through which users enter a CRM type system and can be supervised until their potential hiring. But the experience doesn't stop there. The artists are also supervised throughout their life within Cirque du Soleil and even beyond, by offering them support services for retraining after their artistic career.

Conclusion

Of course, to be able to reach such a degree of experience, the approval of the decision-makers is absolutely necessary. In his conference "  In the next decade, we adapt or we disappear  ", Kuldeep Kelkar (paypal) focused on how to present the results of ergonomic studies, by telling "a story" that affects decision-makers, that is to say by providing them with figures that speak and not just ergonomic statistics that are sometimes a little cumbersome. In “  User research that is easy to implement ”, Frédéric Gaillard (axance) advocated the involvement of decision-makers as observers during the user research stage.     

Finally, this first UX Masterclass also reminds us that the methods of designing and evaluating the user experience are constantly evolving. Kuldeep Kelkar explained to us that he never makes decisions without triangulating user analytics data from multiple sources, such as customer service data, user testing, A/B testing, etc. . Similarly, Tjeerd de Boer (user intelligence) presented the combined use of web analytics and user testing to facilitate the optimization of the experience. Not to mention the constant development of ergonomic tools such as online card sorting tools or even remote user tests.  

UX Masterclass was therefore a conference rich in learning that I recommend to everyone.