I was never a great fan of full-fledged detailed plans… maybe because I can die today. Not today It’s my birthday -:)

Gantt charts (and its cousins) make me sick as well as the task management planning industrial-age approach to managing uncertainty.

A few months ago someone told me:  “...We are not able to buy that software since you are not going to install anything on your computer…“. Oh, boy. Now, what do I do?

This made me think of how companies that produce digital products are (some, aren’t, by the looks of it), escaping this manufacturing mindset. It reminded me that we are no longer distributing software onto CD or DVD.

From the customer/user experience perspective, this changed the conversation with customers. We no longer have to convince them to buy and install new versions, we just push it to the server. They will see it when they log in.

On top of this, companies like Amazon release updates every 11.6 sec, apart from the lean continuous development process that allows this, there is a fundamental change:

There is no longer any manufacturing in digital products

In the manufacturing world mindset…

  • The cost of change is high, so there is an incentive to limit change.

Removing this constraint presents other challenges:

  • How much change can a customer/user tolerate?
  • How much change we can make without reducing quality?
  • How much change we can make without increasing other costs?

In this world of digital uncertainty, how can User Experience Research initiatives bring value to the product?

  • Finding value in managing uncertainty is critical for having a serious User Experience Research initiate;
  • User Experience Researchers play a key role in sensing the market, in sensing what users need and how their needs evolve;
  • Having fast cycles of sensing allows product teams to make sense of complexity and break the product into manageable chunks;
  • The passion that drives User Experience Researchers and their love for the problem, not for the solution, allows product teams to reduce uncertainty and continuously adapt solutions;
  • Drive data-driven decisions based on research findings, not the hunches and personal experience of the HiPPO (highest-paid person opinion);
  • Sense and respond cycles with users keeps product teams continuously questioning and finding empirical evidence to the question: Are we doing the right thing?;
  • Reduces surprises on product rollout.

All is good… From my experience, sensing users and responding to user needs by quickly and continuously adapting digital products poses 2 major questions:

How “soft” are the digital products we are delivering?

If we are delivering inflexible software, we are missing the point of delivering services that are simply supported by software. The other option is not rolling it out and be stuck with it for months… waiting for that perfection that never arrives.

A sense and respond approach gives us the ability to roll it out and continuously adjust it. Why? We are continuously sensing and having conversations with users and costumers, bringing feedback to product teams. User Experience Researchers can help advance this cause a lot.

How good are we at reducing risk?

Traditional IT projects love big bang projects (do they?).

It’s like building a car. What’s a car worth without wheels? Maybe building digital products is different from building cars… just maybe. The Standish Group (they study IT project outcomes) put IT failure rates at 70%.

The risk of not knowing if what we are building is on the right track until you deploy it is awkward and very risky. Unless we have the ostrich syndrome, the value of our product is useless.

Sensing users continuously creates transparency and drives product value and user satisfaction. User Experience Research plays a key role here. Trust me!

PS: If you are focused on the return of investment for User Experience Research initiatives, don’t worry, meaningful products drive customer satisfaction and engagement. Happy costumers are usually paying costumers.