Great digital experience happen when we engage clients, not just users, meaningfully in the process of digital design. This workshop describes techniques, which not only demonstrate the value of UX, but build better client / designer relationships.

1. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
CONSULTANCY
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Colville©
ENGAGING MEANINGFULLY
WITH CLIENTS
Profitable for companies, loved by customers
UXSW

2. Banksy - Elephant
Great digital experience happen when we engage clients, not just users
Workshop will help build empathy for clients
Describe techniques which demonstrate value of UX
Build better relationships
Gain trust

3. LESS CLEAR THAN WE’D ADMIT
We require client to:
1. Keep pace
2. learn our ways
3. understand our skills
4. interpret what we deliver.
It’s all from our POV

4. James Clar - BOOM
1. Flat images of web design
2. Focus on home page
3. Mobile first - content first, what?
4. Increased costs of RWD
5. No one size fits all
How can we engage clients better in the process?

5. USERS
Apply what we’ve learned about people
As with all good UX, it starts with empathy
Goals
Need
Hopes
Fears

6. ACTIVITY 1
{ Imagine what it’s like
for a client to hire a
} designer?
1 Goals 2 Needs 3 Hopes 4 Fears
In your groups, answer the question . . .
Think about goals, needs, hopes and fears.
At least one for each.
Write your answer on postits
Ask from one of each from each group
NOTE: Make note of the most important on flip chart

7. “I WANTED SOMEONE
I COULD WORK WITH
I GOT A FANATIC”
Most clients have horror story
To do with attitude, communication and understanding of goals.
Their goal is to find someone they can work with
They need someone to make them look good
The fear is they get someone who’s a headache
We could blame communication,
but we probably communicate regularly.
Perhaps it’s the words we use?

8. USABILITY
EXPERIENCE
ARCHITECT
INTERACTION DESIGN
UX
EXPERIENCE
ARCHITECT
INFORMATION
ARCHITECT
USER CENTRED
DESIGN
USER
EXPERIENCE
?
Today, I tell my clients that I’m a User Experience Designer.
But what we do is synonymous, or at least closely related to many other words.
Clients find this confusing. This schizophrenia does not instil confidence in what we do.
A pretty poor start for the guardians of simplicity.
But even if titles are come and go, we’ve got beautifully visualised process diagram to wow clients and explain what we do, right?
!

9. UNLEASH THE
LEXICON
In new business meetings, where process diagrams like this are unleashed.
Hard it is for clients to see the true value of what we do.
The problem here is these diagrams:
Lists activities from our perspective
Not showing the relationship between activities
Fail to show the activities which are most valuable to the client

10. Sitemap
Wireframes
Task
Analysis
Personas
CONFUSION . . .
User
Testing
Pieces of a jigsaw to the client
large degree of mental processing
Seldom in plain English.
We only understand them
Stop asking so much of clients.
Fundamentally, they don’t invite input

11. FLAT
IMAGES People don’t just look at websites, they use them!
Though clients to value flat images of webpages
Need to reeducate
Red herring of digital
Change the conversation with clients away from flat images, deeper understanding of why a user will engage with the clients site and brand.
People use, not just look at website
!

12. DESIGN IN ISOLATION
At it’s worse, all this amounts us designing in isolation
Results in a loss of control away from the designer
Why? Human nature to try and control what we do not understand
Perhaps you can think of a controlling client?

13. IMAGINE A WORLD
M
WITHOUT A CLIENT . . .
Increasing number of designers abandoning client work altogether to build their own apps?
I was lucky as part of Analog Cooperative
It was different, but not how you’d expect.
Focus is on delivery, not deliverables.
The things you do for yourself are different to those you do to show value to a client.
Even in a start-up, you need a product owner or internal client

14. THE HOLY
TRINITY
OF DESIGN
When these things work together great UX happens
Should always be tension in design
Push and pull of different perspectives reveals beautiful designs.
Certain tension bad:
Like when designers try to differentiate ourselves through our designs, this pulls the relationship apart.
We don’t own the designs
It’s the client who’ll have to live with the site

15. ENGAGED
CLIENT
Greatly improved
Removed complexity and multiple forms
via search links or PPC ads content related to their search
Pat Odey, the Virgin Product Manager for this project described to me a product owner / designer relationship
70% of the project time at the agency, LBi’s offices.
This was a partnership.
Pat describes being extremely engaged
Chris Ball of LBi describes Pat as one of the team.
!

16. ACTIVITY 2 - 5 mins
{ 1. What were the key
steps you took on
} your last project?
1 Discover 2 Define 3 Design 4 Develop
In your groups, using postits, answer this question . . .
With one activity or step per posit
Use the 4 phases as a guide

17. ACTIVITY 2 - 5 mins
{ 2. How engaged
was the client at
} each step?
1 Easy to
explain
2 Well
received
3 Involved 4 Empowered
Arrange them on the wall linearly according to phase
Answering the following question
Using the scale to gauge engagement
Discuss as you go
From this exercise, I hope you are starting to think about the best ways to engage clients

18. ACTIVITY 2
One of
the team
Signed-off
Just wanted
it done
3
2
1
0
-1
-2
-3
DISCOVER DEFINE DESIGN DEVELOP

19. 6 ENGAGING
TECHNIQUES*
* Some clients just want it done
Here are some steps I take, which I find really engage clients meaningfully in the process of design.
Before, highlight the importance of preparation
Don’t set it up right, you’re setting yourself up for a fall.
Also, not all clients will get involved.
You may have to work harder with some.

20. 1. FAT HEAD
DIAGRAM
Discovery phase
Objective - customer or user profile.
It only takes 10 - 15 minutes per profile.
Goal is to create empathy for the end users
The looseness of this sketched person removes inhibitions,
Allowing clients to imagine, and input easily

21. 2. EXPERIENCE VISION
Define phase
Shared vision that works on UX Magazine.
Working more fluidly, vision becomes more important
Simply a sentence or group of works expressing the core of the experience people will have with the site.
- Bring the project team together
- Keeps people focused on who’s important
- Creates a culture of shared ownership
They’re surprisingly easy to create and have a lasting effect on the project.

22. 3. EXPERIENCE MAPPING
Low-fi Hi-fi
Discover and Define phases
We’re good at visualisation, the before unseen.
Site is supporting the needs of business and customers
See the process through eyes of customer
Describe experience over time
Mark positive and negative point
Lay the grounds for cross channel analysis
Identify opportunities for service improvements
We build the user layer, based on research,
together with the client, you build the business layer.
Key is to do this collaboratively with the client.
Engaging their imagination in a technique that they used to thinking about, but probably haven't found a way to visualise.

23. 4. SKETCHING
Discover, Define and Design phases
Engages the brain in the kind of visual sense-making 30,000 years.
Sketching is a power technique
Generate concepts quickly
Not costly
The looseness of a sketch removes inhibitions, granting clients permission to Consider and challenge the ideas it represents.
Stick men are a great ice breaker
People often ask when do you stop sketching?
For me, when it stops being about ideas, then it’s time to stop
!

24. 5. STORY
TELLING
The Forest Holiday website is intuitive & clear.
Inviting exploration, it feels tailored to my needs,
in a friendly way, that leaves me full of excitement.
Low-fi
Hi-fi
Define phase
Power technique for engaging people
They're built on a framework that we know.
They have the right cues and tap into our collective psyche.
Stories also work incredibly well to engage clients by:
Putting a human face on data
Making complex things simple
Pack a lot in
Motivating, persuading and inspiring
Bringing consistent narrative across device
A power technique
!
If any of this sounds complex, it's not.
!
We tell stories everyday, it’s not complicated
Understand the basic formula:
1. Character
2. Ambition
2. Tension

25. 6. SKETCH BOARDS
Define & Design phases

26. 7. PROTOTYPE
Define & Design phase
It’s doesn’t matter what you use, just make it move
People don’t just look at websites, they use them.
The web moves now
Show movement early, can save a lot of time later
More powerful and relevant than flat images

27. Next time, think about the client
SUMMARY
EMPATHY OPEN TO INPUT STRUCTURED
Add context to data
Soft skills, not software Removes inhibitions
Framework to input to
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers
Less of a call to arms than a call for Pause
On your next project
Consider how you can engage clients
Starting with empathy

28. RECAP
1 2 3
PLAIN
ENGLISH
No jargon or complex
process diagrams. Speak
in terms that the client
will understand
VALUE TO
CLIENT
What have we learned?
Not just users, in terms
that they can relate to
their business
SHARED
VISION
A simple statement
defining the core of the
experience users will
have with the site
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers

29. RECAP
4 5 6
CHANGE
CONVERSATION
Away from flat images of
web pages to a much
deeper understanding of
why users will engage
with their brand
INVITE
What have we learned?
PEOPLE’S INPUT
Like sketches do, because
they are loose, so they
grant permission to
challenge the ideas they
represent
MAKE IT
INEVITABLE
A good client / designer
relationship is one that
has an inevitable outcome,
rather than Ta-dah!
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers

30. CHECKLIST
Based on a vision
Creates shared ownership
Built on a framework
Bring people together
Creates empathy
!
For engaging techniques
Not on a screen
Remove inhibitions
Grant permission to challenge
Engages imagination
All about ideas
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers

31. LINKS
• Creating a Shared Vision - Alan Colville - UX Magazine
• Part 1 - http://uxmag.com/articles/shared-vision
• Part 2 - http://uxmag.com/articles/creating-a-shared-vision-that-works
• Sketch boards - Adaptive Path - Youtube: http://youtu.be/iVFTBj_BYy0
Requiring complete
understanding of
something, but the end
result feels understated,
confident and inevitable.
We design websites &
apps in the context
that they will be
used: the browser
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers

32. CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
CONSULTANCY
Profitable for companies, loved by customers THANK YOU!
www.colville.cx
@alancolville
Colville© Profitable for companies, loved by customers