UX And CX (yeah, again)

Reflections on the current state of UX Three days at UX Cambridge always sets my brain on fire. I have trouble sleeping at night for a day or two — and no, it’s not the cocktails. My head gets crowded with thoughts flying around like some huge wordle; thoughts that are all trying to come together and make sense. One big kuddelmuddel. In the presence of so much new information, so much inspiration and so many things to try, the prolonged deviation from ‘normal’ life makes me feel I want to change the world! Returning to the humdrum of mowing the grass, emptying the bins, and tidying up after the kids is a harsh reality. These words are my release; my attempt to get closure on that sense-making process, and this article is my way of letting that happen, and of getting my sleep back! A few years ago questions about the difference between the fields of user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) kept cropping up, and have occasionally done so ever since. In brief, customer experience covers the complete experience of the customer, from their first interaction with the business or brand, through every subsequent touch-point and across any channel. Customer experiences can be direct or indirect, for example imagine you buy a product and find it cheaper elsewhere — how might you feel about the first company? A (and I use the indefinite article deliberately) user experience is different. There isn’t just one granularity at which the user has an experience. The user’s experience might be considered as a connected set of sequential interactions or equally as a hierarchical set of interactions and micro-interactions. The distinctions can be debated until the cows come home — and benefit no one. UX is a subset of CX. We don’t need to mark out the precise walls of the customer experience box and the user experience box. Another way to compare the two is to think about how they might be created. User experiences can be designed. Whether it’s a micro interaction or a complete workflow, the user experience has been designed intentionally. That’s not to say we design each individual user’s own experience. The user themselves, their mindset, and their personal environment create an experience unique to that user and no-one can design that. We can’t do better than design for an intended experience. On the other hand, we can’t really talk about designing an intended customer experience. The business manages (if at all) the customer experience with strategies, processes, and people. The tangible product, whether physical or digital, is where user experience design occurs. So now we have some idea of how and where UX lies within CX. UX lies interspersed across those tangible product interaction touchpoints of CX, like the teeth along the serrated edge of a bread-knife. In other words you might say that UX is the cutting edge of CX. You can probably take that analogy and run with it — for example, if a business has poor investment in user experience, the teeth of the CX knife are ineffective, failing to match that of their competitors, and customers will likely find a different knife (brand) to interact with. There’s probably a German word for pushing an analogy too far (Zuweitanalogiedrückt?). UX is booming and blooming Something has been happening to the field of UX. Not only is it booming, it’s changing, perhaps so subtly that for those already invested within the field, we don’t see it. The reach of UX is getting bigger. It’s no longer in it’s own silo where UX work is done by UX people. More and more people are doing UX activities. I mean deliberately, knowingly, intentionally trying to improve the user experience. People who don’t have UX in their title; product managers, product owners, developers, testers, technical authors, on-boarding specialists, etc. Whether it’s the increased exposure of UX, the evangelism of the increasing headcount of people in the UX field, or because of a combination of any number of other reasons, it’s increasingly apparent to those in any organisation, that UX is not just the role of the UX team. The onus is on everyone in the organisation to go about their business with a user-centered mindset. UX designers are actually doing more as well. The field is getting richer. The tools are more numerous, more productive, and better enabling. The processes are more defined and better able to approach complex problems. The resources are more plentiful with more publications, more books, more courses, more events. It’s becoming increasingly hard to stay abreast of everything. It’s harder to be the generalist. The generalist used to be a great UX option, but the risk of being the jack of all trades is always that you are master of none. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more people in the UX field moving from generalist to specialist, or at least specialist in a few key areas. It’s a bit like a double diamond of UX career progression. Start off broadening, exploring and discovering as a generalist, then narrow to a specialist. This avoids becoming a compartmentalist — the swiss cheese of UX practitioners. Then in the second diamond, expand again by ideating and experimenting in your core areas, whilst keeping abreast of other areas tp prevent stagnation and typecasting. This improves you as a UX person, continuing to develop the soft skills before perhaps narrowing focus again to finally deliver back all this experience and expertise as a design leader, guiding and mentoring others. Communicating UX is a two way process Leadership through design and UX is increasingly prevalent thanks to a confluence of many of the elements I’ve mentioned. But for those fresh into the field of UX, it’s undeniably tough, especially when so many companies have still yet to fully incorporate a UX role into their organisation. It can feel like a daily grind to respond to the constant need to be convinced; the need to be sold the idea and the benefits of UX; the need to get buy in from C-suite and management. UX networks, IxDA chapters, industry Slack groups, and meetups can provide help, advice and promote knowledge sharing. Mentors can be a rock to those taking early steps. But this shouldn’t imply a one way relationship between professional and graduate, teacher and student, mentor and mentee. Like any young field, UX has always been in a state of flux. At first when it became ‘a thing’ (or at least got given a new name) and everyone was trying to find words to define it; to encapsulate it as if it were some package that fit neatly in a box. (What is it with trying to put things in a box? Leave that to Amazon and just move on!). UX continued to change during its growth phase while trying to gain acknowledgement and acceptance, and now the transformation is in a different dimension as it gains an even richer and more purposeful depth. I’m always fascinated by the routes via which people come to UX — from being a boat builder was one I heard this week! We’re always learning, trying to push the peripherals of our knowledge in ways that may help us improve our work and consider our users better. It’s common for parallels, and more importantly insights, to be drawn not from within the same field but from other industries, from people uninhibited by the same things we might be. Now, more than ever, those practitioners already established in the UX industry have so much to learn from those coming into the field. My only fear here is that universities and academies might churn out identical graduate clones year after year. After all, who better for UX professionals to learn from, than the new users of UX itself! Header image by Melinda Stuart on Flickr (some rights reserved)