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Paul Boag

User Experience Revolution

 User Experience Revolution

Many companies try to create a great experience for customers. But few are willing to make the changes required to deliver on that promise. In fact most don’t even realize just how bad their experience can be.

Do you feel like the only person at your company who understands what a huge competitive advantage a good user experience provides? Are you frustrated that your management team doesn’t see the value of creating great user experiences? Do you struggle to convince colleagues to approach projects from a users perspective?

  • Published on April 2017
  • Tags: UX

Print + eBook

$ 39.00

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“I’m currently reading the User Experience Revolution book and I absolutely like it because of the strategic thinking, and its excellent examples.”

Norbert Boros

Smashing Magazine reader

About The Book

Many companies try to create a great experience for customers. But few are willing to make the changes required to deliver on that promise. In fact most don’t even realize just how bad their experience can be.

248 pages. Written by Paul Boag. Designed by Veerle Pieters.

Why This Book Is For You

This book is for anybody passionate about user experience, but who is in a company that needs an extra push. You might be a designer, marketer, content specialist or any one of many jobs concerned about user experience.

You don’t need to be a manager, although you might be. You don’t need to be an expert in user experience. You just need a willingness to challenge the way your company does things and be relentless at putting the user first.

This Book Will:

  1. Encourage you to break out of your comfort zone and start influencing the full scope of the user experience.
  2. Teach you how to articulate the benefits of user-centric thinking efficiently.
  3. Guide you through the process of building a grassroots movement within your company — a movement that will advocate the needs of your users.
  4. Provide practical ways you can raise the profile of the user within your organization.
  5. Help you find and build a proof of concepts to sell the benefits of a user-centric approach.
  6. Show you how to get management interested in user experience, and gain their support.
  7. Identify ways of embedding user-centric methodologies into the culture of the company.
 User Experience Revolution

Print + eBook

$ 39.00

Quality hardcover. Free worldwide shipping. 100 days money-back-guarantee.

eBook

$ 19.00

DRM-free, of course. ePUB, Kindle, PDF.
Included with your Smashing Membership.

Table of Contents

Getting Real About User Experience Design
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  • Customer Relationship
  • Involving Customers Into The Product Design Process
  • Understanding Users’ Needs
The world has changed and there is a new generation of empowered, connected consumers – consumers with higher expectations than ever before. If your company does not meet those expectations customers will go elsewhere. In fact, according to Customer Think, 89% of customers will stop doing business with a company after a single poor customer experience.
How To Sell The Benefits Of User Experience Design
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  • Understand Customer Expectations
  • Users Have Limited Time and Tolerance
  • User Experience In The B2B Sector
  • User Experience Builds Brand
  • User Experience Cost Savings
  • User Experience And Increase Sales
Across all sectors, executives are more concerned with their agendas than fulfilling the needs of users. This makes convincing them of the value of user experience design very hard.
Create Customer Experience Evangelists
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  • Find Colleagues Who Care
  • Reach Out To Your Potential Evangelists
  • Establish A Common Vision
  • User Experience Principles
Harry saw himself as the sole custodian of the user experience, a lone maverick trying to bring about change single-handedly. The more he met resistance, the more he saw himself as the only one who cared. Over time, he ended up bitter and angry at his management team and colleagues. He came to see them as the enemy.
Raise The Profile Of The Customer
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  • Pages
  • Humanise Your Customer
  • Tell The Customer’s Story
  • Communicate With Data
  • Ask Users For Feedback
  • Establish Regular Communication
  • Encourage Action
Let’s imagine two employees at two different companies. We’ll call one Nigel and the other Helen. The companies have been around for the same length of time, are of similar size, and operate in the same industry. Both Nigel and Helen work in legal. Their job is to make sure the companies meet their regulatory obligations and protect them from risk. Both are nice people whom you would enjoy an evening out with. But while Nigel is a constant roadblock to improving the experience of users, Helen is not.
Get Managerial Support
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  • Get The Attention Of Management
  • Apply Ux Design Principles To Management Needs
  • Frame Your Request Around Management’s Agenda
  • Validate Your Arguments
  • Get An External Perspective
  • Find Comparable Case Studies
  • Get Management’s Approval
  • Scare Your Management
  • Inspire Management
  • Give Management A Simple Next Step
The time will come when you will have done all you can behind the scenes. You will need permission to take the next big step. Where that line is and what that next big step will be will vary from company to company. The longer you leave it, the more momentum will be behind your cause and the more compelling your case will be. You will have more support, more statistics, more stories. In short, you will be better prepared. That will be important if you want management to take you seriously.
Develop A Proof Of Concept
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  • An Experiment In User Experience Design
  • Delivering A Successful Pilot Project
  • Put Together The Right Team
  • The Three Rules Of Piloting
  • Find The Time For Your Pilot
The real barriers to implementing the principles of user experience design are external constraints: constraints of the technology; constraints around compliance and policies; constraints around requirements. These limitations have prevented you from ever showing what a great user experience looks like.
Establish Better Working Practices
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  • Begin With User Needs
  • Enforcing Usability Testing
  • Collaborate Through Prototyping
  • Explore Alternative Approaches
  • Focus On Saving Users’ Time
  • Focus On Simplicity
  • Help Colleagues See Complexity
  • Making Legacy Simple
Although Hannah and her team were experts in their field, they were constantly prevented from doing their best work by the organisational culture. They found themselves compromising their work just to get it out of the door in a difficult environment.
Transform The Organizational Culture
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  • Work Across Silos
  • Address Organisational Structure
  • Break The Fear Of Failure
  • Make UX An Operational Expense
  • Update Policies And Procedures Establish
  • New Metrics At Every Level
I was fortunate enough to work with an organisation whose senior management team sent out such an email. They made it clear that customer experience was their number one goal. Yet, a year on and little had changed, despite countless initiatives and training sessions. Any momentum gathered had stalled despite the best intentions of management. What had gone wrong?
A Vision Of A UX-Focused Company
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  • Work Across Silos
  • Address Organisational Structure
  • Break The Fear Of Failure
  • Make UX An Operational Expense
  • Update Policies And Procedures Establish
  • New Metrics At Every Level
Changing an organisation’s culture is a major undertaking. It will take years and you might not see the end. But it is a journey worth making. It won’t just help the business. It will help you, too. It will develop your skills and increase your employability. It will raise your profile in the business. Most of all, it will make a tangible difference here and now. Although some of what I have written about will take years to achieve, you can apply much of what I have covered today, things that will make a difference immediately.

About The Author

Paul is a leader in conversion rate optimisation and user experience design thinking. He has over 25 years experience working with clients such as Doctors Without Borders and PUMA. He is the author of six books and a well respected presenter.

 User Experience Revolution

Technical Details

  • 248 pages
  • 14 × 21 cm (5.5 × 8.25 inches)
  • Quality hardcover with stitched binding and a ribbon page marker
  • Released April 2017
  • ISBN: 978-3-945749-51-7
  • Free worldwide airmail shipping from Germany

Print + eBook

$ 39.00

Quality hardcover. Free worldwide shipping. 100 days money-back-guarantee.

eBook

$ 19.00

DRM-free, of course. ePUB, Kindle, PDF.
Included with your Smashing Membership.

Frequently Asked Questions

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