How Do You See UX Consultants?
By: Carl Joseph
Tags: UX Design, Doctors, Consulting, Design

How Do You See UX Consultants?

Medicine is one of the oldest professions around and the role doctors play in it is the most relied on for the training, expertise, and mastery of their practice.

Because we understand the impact that doctors have in our lives we tend to regard their authority with either reverence or reserve — and often to either extreme. There’s reverence for what doctors know, the training, expertise, and mastery. Adherence here leads to treatments, cures, and often doctor’s orders. And then there’s reserve for fear of what they know and influence, often met with skepticism and animosity. This goes for people who consultants in other crafts as well.

Interactions between clients and consultants are much like the special relationship that occurs between that of a patient and a doctor. A doctor is sought out by a patient for some symptom or malady — perceived or otherwise.

Generally, the doctor evaluates their situation through various exercises and activities.

Questions about their experience,

inspect symptoms; what they are noticing and feeling,

orders more information gathering such: tests, refers to a specialist, another visit, etc.

Then treatments and/or therapies:

Prescriptions ordered

new habits are encouraged

Other help is sought.

Like Good Doctors

In a sense, we are regarded as experts of our crafts, and we needed to for our perspective on a problem. We are entrusted to fix it or give direction on how improvements can be made. We consult based on what we see and what we know.

I am an experience designer, otherwise known as a USER experience designer. I currently work at a consultancy that creates solutions for several technologies and brands. We operate in the commercial space where we design and build websites, applications, software, and solve complex problems driven by digital tools. We employ many methods like RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed), to ensure that we’re competently and keenly addressing issues that are put before us.

As consultants, we must partner with other disciplines who think differently and approach problem solving just as differently. Like a good doctor, we must partner with our clients to help resolve their problems.

Making the Relationship Work

That special relationship between a patient and doctor is one that requires communication, humility on either side and a genuine desire for improvement — for process and product. If all of these are in check the relationship will be fruitful and impactful.

Making things gel is not always easy. It can be incredibly difficult. And demonstrating integrity and working through the items listed can help.

Communication

Communication should be a priority for any relationship and with consulting it should be the beginning and the end of any challenge or success between a client and doctor. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the differences between doctors who are likely to be sued for malpractice versus the ones who may never be sued. Guess what, apparently it has little to do with their competence than how they interact with and treat their patients. So talk to your clients and show genuine care through a holistic approach to problem-solving. Here are a few observations I’ve made that have helped me.

Transparency & Thoroughness

Honesty, openness to hear and share hard truths from either party. There’s often a lot of pressure and scrutiny brought into a relationship with your clients. Baggage if you will. Try to understand what the core issue is, because you may only be applying bandages if you are only tackling what you see.

Ask hard questions

Clarify, reiterate needs

Be the first to address an issue

Be Confident

This goes a long way. If a consultant (or a doctor) knows what they are doing, they should not only act like it but they sound like it too. There is a reason you or your agency was selected to do this work. You either know what to do or how to find the answer.

Have Certainty

Similar to having confidence, certainty applies more to the definition of a problem from a client’s (patient) perspective. Clients should provide as much detail as possible about their condition and concerns. Is a patient does not describe the issue thoroughly or all the issues they’re experiencing, the doctor will not have enough information to treat them. This will help everyone understand the symptoms so they can piece together other ideas or red flags that may not have been initially apparent.

Humility

Having great communication is a great start. However, doctors and patients both have shared motivations and disparate motivations. What they share is the motivation to help or be helped. The disparate motivations are manifold and unique. For a client-consultant relationship, these amount to business needs and these can be interdependent.

As the doctor is an expert in their craft, they hopefully go through vigorous training and have the innate desire to learn as much as possible. Likewise, the patient is a personal expert. They know how to operate their most precious asset and they can sense when things are going well or not so well. The benefit of a doctor’s experience is that they have the opportunity to learn about many operators and their assets. Their research teaches them how to investigate the components that make up their patients, those who don’t have the ability, or stomach, to think of such things. As consultants with such knowledge about their clients, there’s the need to listen for what we do not know.

Where humility is a factor, though, is where all parties should know that they don’t know everything. Humility is taking feedback and even asking how to improve.

Be open to hearing the patient out.

Ask what’s working? What’s not working?

Ensure your client is heard, validated and understood

Ensure that all recommendations and their implications are clear

Client:

Let the consultant perform their assessment.

Be thorough ensuring all pieces to the puzzle are present

Seek to understand the rationale of a recommendation

Desire Improvement

This is the foundation of the doctor & patient relationship. Likewise, it’s the crux of the consumer & producer, and the client & consultant relationships too. There’s a need that has to be filled, a problem exists, there is a lack of efficacy in some form. This means that a product, service, or recommendation somewhere exists to resolve it. Enter the problem solver.

Though these things exist, the problem cannot be solved exclusively by a single party. The genuine desire to improve relies heavily on compassion on the part of the consultant, and willingness to follow through on the client’s part.

Compassion often requires tough love. Even with pushback from the customer, the consultant should share what they know to be true, and deliver their best recommendation for improvement. The client needs to be willing to hear the recommendation.

Without seeking another perspective of an issue there will likely be incremental improvements, at best, if the customer continues to go at it alone.

Conclusion

All relationships are unique and work differently. The key is to understand to navigate each one. I have not arrived, but I am compelled by my experience to share what I learn. I have had a challenging client relation shift from problematic to productive and positive. All it took was guidance from my team and managers to remain committed. Upon reflection, I realized these principles that I shared.

Photo by Med Badr Chemmaoui on Unsplash