Can we all agree that how we experience the world is important? 

So why do so many businesses still see experience design as an optional extra? This has come across my desk often enough this week for me to feel a need to post about it.

Too many designers are still fighting for the right to do the jobs they were hired to do, and that is hugely disappointing. After all this time, it’s disappointing that design voices are often sidelined, their work compromised. One of the key tenets of contemporary digital work is ‘failing forward’, but designers are not often encouraged to try something radical to see if it might work. They are expected to just make something more or less acceptable in as little time, with as little resource as possible. It seems that the absurd idea that experience design is just ‘the icing on the cake’ and therefore not really necessary to making a viable product is still alive and well. 

Let me be clear: the experience is not the icing on the cake: it is the cake. Technology and Engineering teams provide all the complex ingredients and infrastructure without which the thing could not exist, but without a thoughtfully designed experience, the customer has to do the work of figuring out how to put it all together. Requiring your customer to work to use the thing you want them to pay you (in time, attention, or money) to use just doesn’t seem like a good idea. 

Nobody wants to eat flour.

There is a certain cynical view, especially in B2B domains, that it doesn’t matter if the experience is crap as long as the product does something business-critical. And that may be true, until something better comes along. But we are humans, and as we are all increasingly steeped in technology, at work and in our personal lives, the erosion of experiences takes its toll on us. How many times in a week do you swear at a piece of technology in frustration? How much stress would be saved if you didn’t have to wrestle with your tech? Bad experiences in the products we have to use every day cause real damage to our mental health.

And good experiences are more than just pleasant for users. They are flexible and extensible, so that if the product needs to expand or pivot, the experience doesn’t break. They are effective and efficient to use, saving time and money (and stress). They encourage good practices and reward compliance. They don’t make people depressed and resentful. All of these things contribute to the success of a business.

So how is your UX team doing? Do they have a voice at the top table? Are they free to experiment, fail, learn and try again? Does everyone understand the value of what they do? If you’re not sure, then it might be time to work on that. I would be delighted to help.