This document discusses common myths about user experience (UX) and provides evidence to debunk them. It asserts that UX is a method-driven, team effort led by specialists. User research from the beginning and throughout product development is key to understanding users and creating designs they find easy to use and enjoyable. Testing prototypes with users iteratively improves designs. While UX work requires diverse skills, it provides a high return on investment by reducing risks and improving user satisfaction. UX priorities like usability and customer experience remain important for business success.

1. UX Leaks
Myths and Realities about
User Experience

2. A round table discussion with
Whitespace founders
Julia Borkenhagen & Jesse Anton
UX Myths
and Realities

3. Whitespace =
wasted space
MYTH # 1

5. 5
Dense
Hard to scan quickly

6. 6
Easy to scan
Cart, navigation,
search, promos – all
clearly visible
Lighter

7. UX = UI
MYTH # 2

9. 9
Definitions: ISO 9241-11
USER INTERFACE
All components of an interactive system that provide
information and controls for the user to accomplish specific
tasks with the system
USABILITY
Extent to which a system, product or service can be used by
specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness,
efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use
USER EXPERIENCE (UX)
Person's perceptions and responses resulting from the use
and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service
Easy
Meets needs
Enjoyable

10. 10
A simpler definition

11. 11
CX – Customer Experience
UX CX
Research, design &
optimization of
digital touchpoints
Align business strategy
& operations with the
desired brand
experience across all
touchpoints

12. 12
EX – Employee Experience in the digital workplace

13. Satisfaction survey =
user research
MYTH # 3

14. 14
but are better if part of an overall user centered design process
Surveys are a first step

15. 15
User centered design
Involve users from
the beginning of the
project
Understand their
context of use and
mental models
Create personas,
scenarios, task flows,
and story maps
Build prototypes and
test with users during
the entire process
Continue iterating
and testing after
launch

16. 16
User research techniques
User
interviews
Stakeholder
workshops
Usability test
Field
observation
Expert review
Best-in-class
assessment
Survey Data analysis
DIRECT INDIRECT
We will discuss just a few today

17. 17
Field observation
Helps the design team to understand the context of use

18. 18
User interviews
One-on-one, not focus groups

19. 19
Personas
— Personas help to keep the end
users in mind during all phases of
design, development and testing
— They portray a typical user profile
with their background, context,
needs and pain points
— Personas and scenarios help the
design team to empathize with
the users
Best if based on research

20. 20

21. 21

22. 22

23. After user research,
you create the
interface
MYTH # 4

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Workshops first !
Design thinking, ideation, gamestorming …
- Structured conversations
- Multi-stakeholder involvement

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Affinity diagramming workshops
Organize a large number of ideas or items into logical categories and prioritize them

26. 26
Concept maps
A nice communications tool *
* This one is for an intranet

27. 27
Card sorting workshops
Helps define the information architecture

28. 28
Sitemaps
Can be
annotated,
tested, & linked to
templates

29. 29
Task
models
Flow diagrams of
the user journey
help define the
system
interactions &
clarify user roles

30. 30
Experience
maps
Can be printed
on A2 paper or
displayed on
large screens for
communications
purposes

31. 31
Sketches and wireframes
Purposefully not “designed“ – can be annotated and tested

32. 32
Page flow diagrams (wireflows)

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Common tools:
Axure, Proto.io,
Fluid, Justinmind,
Flinto ...
Test early &
throughout the
project
Interactive
prototypes

34. User Testing
requires a lab and
lots of users
MYTH # 5

35. 35
Agile user testing
© Steve Krug
No lab needed, chocolate helps

36. 36
Tree testing
Testing the information architecture
with remote users

37. 37
Good testing tools exist for mobile
and desktop
Remote testing

38. 38
A/B testing
SOURCE: http://kylerush.net/blog/user-testing-is-surprisingly-effective/
Fine-tuning of production sites and applications

39. 39
Designing, building and maintaining
a great web site or app isn’t easy.
It’s like golf:
a handful of ways to get the ball in
the hole, a million ways not to.
Steve Krug
Practice Testing makes perfect

40. Only UX designers
do UX work
MYTH # 6

41. 41
Team effort
Building a learning-based UX culture in your organisation
Adapted from “User Story
Mapping” by Jeff Patton

42. 42
User story mapping
© Jeff Patton
Role of UX: keep the agile process focused on users

43. 43© Jeff Patton
User story mapping workshops

44. 44© storiesonboard.net
UX in agile projects

45. 45
You can use an eraser on
the drafting table, or a
sledgehammer on the
construction site.
Frank Lloyd Wright

46. UX = LUXE
MYTH # 7

47. 47
Not a luxury if you want your project to succeed
Developer CEO MarketingIT
I want to see everything
on one screen with no
scrolling. Also, make it
really clean and
uncluttered.
Make it look like Apple.User testing would
slow us down. We rely
on analytics and a
backlog of user
stories.
The business is always
asking for fancy
functionality that
doesn’t come out of
the box.
UX designers face competing interests

48. 48
HIPPO =
Highest Paid
Person’s Opinion

49. 49
© Jeff Patton
UX designers are digital diplomats

50. 50
UXicorn
Skills & traits of a
great UX designer
Graphic
design
Interaction
design
Data
visualisation
Mobile
design
Information
architecture
Business
analysis
Interactive
prototyping,
testing
Agile scrum &
project mgmt.
Workshop guru,
design thinkingPeople person,
diplomatic
Technophile, HTML,
CSS, JS

51. 51
That‘s nice, now where‘s the beef?
Up to 50% of programmers’ time is
spent on avoidable rework.
Dr. Susan Weinschenk, founder of Team W,
formerly chief of UX strategy at HFI
Usability initiatives deliver a major return
on investment: it’s not unusual for
usability projects to return benefits of 5-
10 times their cost in the first year alone.
David Travis, founder of Userfocus

52. 52
asos example
before
after
Source: eConsultancy
Removing barriers reduced its checkout abandonment rate by 50%

53. 53
UX & CX = the priority for 2017
This has been true for several years in a row and is likely to remain so for years to come

54. 54
Great UX is worth
billions

55. Summary AND THAT’S NO MYTH !
— UX is method-driven – aids in the creation
of a shared understanding among all team
members and stakeholders
— UX is a collective, team effort led by a
specialist or group of specialists
— The ROI of UX is clear – lowers risk of
rework, helps reduce abandonment and
increase conversions, boosts adoption,
creates brand value, and makes
employees more productive

56. 56
Intranets Custom / Dataviz E-Commerce
Megasites Mobile Training
Enterprise User Experience
2014 8 20+
Founded People Years of
experience
whitespace.ch

57. 57
57
Infrastructure, managed services
Digital solutions
About ilem
16 180 100+4
Years Employees Affiliates Customers

58. www.ilemgroup.com
Merci
Patrick Montier
Head of Digital
+41 22 884 61 00
patrick.montier@ilemgroup.com