How Working Culture impacts UX at Your Company
By: Katarzyna Adamczyk
Tags: UX, Usability, A B Testing, Usability Testing, UX Research

Have you ever been frustrated with long hours spent on the project that eventually turned out to be discarded? Have you ever felt guilty for wasted kilograms of post-it cards? Yeah, this is how our real-life looks like. We always could do something better. These days perfect UX should be done by yesterday, and the dissatisfaction of users shouldn’t exist at all. Since we all know it’s impossible, then how can we effectively improve our existing artifact without wasting time?

Firstly, meet the collaborative design

A key to building right solutions is to understand users’ needs and know everything about them. As UX researchers, our goal is to find those deepest needs and burning issues. Usually, we’re focused on working in specific research methodologies like usability tests, surveys, design sprints, and so on. Our work absorbs us so much that we forget about other valuable resources we have. In other words — we lock ourselves in the silo of our team, and this is a fundamental mistake.

Don’t look inwards. Remember that every person who has some knowledge about the users is valuable. Go beyond your product team. There are people in your company who can bring more insights than you can imagine. When trying to find the best solution, remember about your peers from other departments that aren’t directly related to product development. Invite them to meaningful meetings that end up with the specific outcomes or artifacts. Engage them, so they know their role in the project and value they can bring, like broadening the perspective with their point of view. Stay in touch. Share your insights. We’re jointly responsible for the things we create.

At Docplanner, we have various methods for solving specific problems. But there’s one thing in common for all these methods — we do it all together. Product managers, data analysts, product designers, developers, marketing people, researchers, we’re all engaged. You’re probably thinking, why is it worth involving all these people? You never know how they can surprise you. People from different areas of expertise can bring fresh ideas and conclusions. It makes your work much easier and together you can be more confident that you won’t miss anything. Let’s start right away — I dare you to grab a coffee with a random buddy and talk about the challenges you have at the moment. I’m sure it is going to be an amazing conversation.

What surprised me positively at Docplanner? You don’t have to persuade anyone to take part in long, time-consuming workshops. People are eager to participate in such events because they see it as something of great value and an opportunity for making an impact on our product. And that’s one of the things I love the most here — engagement.

“Every problem is an opportunity in disguise” — John Adams

Secondly, leave your gut feeling aside and believe in facts

Let’s imagine that you had 3 days of hard work with the whole team. You worked out together a great solution, but it wasn’t the best option for the users. Sounds familiar? Not always things that we designed are met with users’ approval. Such a polarity happens very often, I’d say. Users always surprise us. When we perform usability tests or A/B tests, we can discover unexpected results, not always positive. It’s really tough, spending long hours on a project that eventually turns out to be a failure. Well, it’s not a failure, because knowing that something isn’t working is actually a win! Being this one step ahead protects us from wasting time on coding or gathering results from A/B tests.

I can recall one situation that happened to us a while ago. We’ve been struggling with our online calendar that gives you the possibility to book a visit with a doctor. We knew that our users didn’t find it reliable. So it was the time when we started to think about how we can assure them that our feature is trustworthy. After hours spent on research on how the big shots solve this kind of problems, we met all together for brainstorming. It was quite fast. The idea for the solution came to us quickly. Someone just said, “Hey, maybe we could add the label — Verified?” We all agreed to this solution, which was supposed to resolve users’ doubts and trust issues. Creating a new design was just a formality. Finally, we’ve taken our mockup and went for some guerilla testing. Guess what happened. This label was confusing and causing more doubts. Every next user has only proved to us that our solution was counterproductive. It was a fantastic lesson for us.

We faced the facts and moved on. We had to get back on this roller coaster once again. That’s the point of this entire process — finding out what’s wrong before the implementation.

It’s in our nature to defend our rights, but we need to remember — we do it for the others, not for ourselves. At this point, data analysts enter on their white horses. It’s what they do — face the truth. The cooperation between UX researchers and data analysts is crucial. Pure data is just a statistic, but well interpreted makes a huge impact. At Docplanner, we work closely together — we have our weekly meetings just to be updated. It’s also a part of getting out of our silos, but here’s something more at stake — users’ experience. Even the most experienced UX researchers can misinterpret insights. Luckily, data analysts come with help. We all know that not always what we say is what we think or feel — and that’s the most dangerous part of being a researcher. You never know when there is hiding something more, but I assure you, the number freaks know it. The truth always comes out.

Thirdly, enjoy common and meaningful mission

Imagine that feeling when on Monday morning the sun wakes you up, and you know that it’s another day of doing amazing things. Well, I hope that’s how your reality looks like.

At Docplanner, we treat our work as our shared mission. We all want to do something good, and business is just a tool to achieve our goals. We use our product as an opportunity to support healthcare experience. We’re far from perfect, but each day we try to be better selves than yesterday, because goals that are hard to reach, motivate us constantly.

At this point, some of you might think, “we don’t have any specific mission in our company.” Don’t worry, Rome wasn’t built in a day. No matter what industry do you work for, your product always makes an impact on someone’s life. People indeed use these things. Think about how it makes you feel. Think about how you want the users to feel. For me, that’s already kind of a mission — being responsible and aware of this enormous power that we have. There might not be one and clear mission, but our actions give our creations a deeper meaning.

It’s really easy to burn yourself out if you keep doing the same things every day, without any purpose or results. Our motto is quite simple.

We’re all humans. We all have the same issues. We all deserve proper care. We’re all users. Let’s remember for whom we create our products. It should always start and end with the user’s needs because the most beautiful designs aren’t visible. So does the user experience is.

Fourthly, you’re home

In my opinion, these 3 things are the foundation of the effective process of creating a product. Every day we hide behind our positions, while we should look at them in a big picture. Some people say that you become what you eat, and I think that the product we create should be a reflection of ourselves. Ourselves, as humans filled with empathy, understanding, and patience.