Esse papo é de UX: Brandon Schauer (Adaptive Path)
Nada melhor do que falar de Experiência do Usuário com quem estuda, inova e se destaca no assunto. Já que pensamos assim (e temos certeza que nossos leitores também), criamos um novo projeto: Esse papo é de UX, uma série de entrevistas com profissionais de Usabilidade, Interação e Experiência do Usuário do mundo inteiro. Todo mês será publicada uma nova entrevista, trazendo temas e conceitos interessantes que adoramos debater.
Para começar, tivemos um bate-papo com Brandon Schauer, diretor de Experience Design da Adaptive Path. Brandon tem verdadeira paixão por descobrir e entender as necessidades do usuário em diferentes ambientes, dando muita atenção à análise e ao planejamento de estratégias de negócio e aos métodos de estudo e criação de design mais competitivo. Ele mesmo explica sua ‘função’: “ajudar organizações a definir e desenhar experiências mais significativas para seus clientes”.
Com mais de uma década de experiência em desenvolvimento de novos produtos e serviços para web, Brandon possui Mestrado em Design pelo Institute of Design, em Chicago - onde estudou planejamento e gestão de inovação - e já liderou projetos para clientes como Flickr, Motorola e JetBlue.
Confiram a entrevista abaixo (para ler em português, clique aqui) e nos vemos no próximo bate-papo! 
Brandon Schauer (Adaptive Path)
UX Blog: How did your interest in the study of the relationship between UE and business strategies arise?
Brandon Schauer: I became dissatisfied with how little of my work actually succeeded in the real world. I could design great solutions, but I found that I was often designing to solve the wrong problem. I could create good quality designs, but they didn’t succeed because I didn’t fully understand the business problem or because the solution had been poorly diagnosed by others.
This dissatisfaction led me to study both design and business in my graduate studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In my studies I discovered that that business strategy and experience design were more powerful when you practiced them together.
UB: How can a UX project become a competitive advantage to a business (branding and customer satisfaction, e.g.)?
BS: I’ll be the first to admit that every UX project doesn’t create a competitive advantage. But, most every UX project should try to connect to and embellish the competitive advantages of a business.
First, a project team needs to understand what’s distinct and unique about the business. What are the aspects of that business that competitors can’t or won’t emulate? What will differentiate that business from competitors over the long haul? The answer might be a capability such as a unique technology, a system such as an efficient supply chain network or partnerships, or a unique asset such as a brand or a history of customer data.
Second, a project team must identify how they are adding value to the customer’s experience, and then as a byproduct, creating value for the business. This is where blending business-thinking and experience design are more powerful when used in combination. Business-thinking can assess, “In what areas the most value can be created?,” whereas good UX research and design can reveal the best approaches for action on these potential areas to create value.
UB: In your opinion, can ROI change the way we conduct UX projects?
BS:: ROI has two obvious components. One component is Investment, or the money/budget the business “bets” on your work. The other component is the Return, or the money the business receives in result of the project. Every business uses some form of an ROI evaluation to fund projects, even if it’s based on “gut feelings” instead than hard numbers. It’s important for UX project teams to understand how ROI is evaluated within their business and convey their project in those same terms.
UX projects that aren’t conveyed as investments are instead seen as simply “a cost of doing business.” For example, the activity of refueling a bus is a cost of doing business. A transportation executive will choose to refuel buses as cheap and efficiently as possible because this activity won’t increase a business’s revenues. The challenge for a UX project is to communicate how it is an attractive investment and not a cost of doing business.
What’s really interesting is what happens in the process of finding and communicating the value of a UX project as an investment! It dramatically changes your design decisions, making it very clear what to spend your design time and what the design needs to achieve. Once you try it, you’ll be a believer too.
One tool we use at Adaptive Path to find this focus is called Linking Elephants. With such a tool, a UX team can connect desired user behaviors to financial results.
UB: Which aspects does a UX professional have to anticipate before creating a project? Should he/she be involved since the beginning and be responsible for the project scope?
BS: In the real world, I believe the inclusion of a UX professional in the planning and scoping decisions for a project are dependent on what that individual brings to the table. Rarely is a UX professional automatically included.
So what are the skills of a UX professional who would be invited to join in on early product discussion? On who can offer customer insights, propose and quickly sketch solutions, and — the perhaps being the most important skill of all — facilitate a collaborative discussion towards the right solution. Often multiple people must be involved in defining the business objectives, scope, and requirements. A UX professional can be most valued and influential when helping align these competing interests around a vision they help the team build together.
UB: In your opinion, what is the best UX´s team framing? What are the most important skills from each professional?
BS: This always changes. Project are rarely the same. And people aren’t modular components of a machine. What I try to find is a team that in combination has:
* strong insights and empathy for users,
* an ability to propose and prototype multiple solutions,
* an ability to facilitate the core team and business stakeholders,
* and an ability to evaluate and communicate the value of those solutions.
I should also clarify that I use the term “prototype” quite liberally to mean anything you create for the purpose of evaluating and learning. A good sketch can be a design prototype. A mocked-up advertisement for a service can be a strategy prototype. A good business case model is just a business prototype.
UB: I’ve read about the ClearRx case. This UX project impacts the business and changes costumer’s lives in some way. In your opinion, what are the best aspects of this project?
BS: You’ve brought up one of my favorite examples, which I’ve written about on the Adaptive Path blog and my personal blog. In short, ClearRx is a redesign of the pill bottle that helps to ensures that the right person takes the right dosage of the right medication in their home. This addresses a serious problem that otherwise results in serious injury and even death.
What inspires me is that it began with Deborah Adler’s personal insight that this was a problem that could be solved. She created a prototype of the solution, which included an easy-to-read label, clear information hierarchy, an unique color coding for each member of a family. This vivid prototype gave the retail and pharmacy store Target the clarity to see that a safer drug delivery experience for their customers could be a valuable differentiator. Target had to rework their IT systems, Point-of-Sales systems, and retrain pharmacists to make it all happen.
But — here’s the important part — they began with the experience and worked backwards through their operations to make the experience possible. Target’s pharmacy sales grew an estimated 14% in the year following the debut of ClearRx.
UB: Do you think the development of UX projects using Agile processes is the most effective one?
BS: Agile has brought about many good new approaches to UX. However, it is not a panacea. For example, the instrumentation design for a nuclear power plant probably shouldn’t be created with an Agile process. I’d prefer a more cautious and meticulous approach in that case.
To me, one of the most interesting benefits from applying Agile processes to UX is the ability to more quickly iterate on the solution. It provides “levers” to managers, where tradeoffs can be made between scope and quality. And to my delight, most often the decision is in favor of quality.
At Adaptive Path, we’ve been integrating Agile thinking into a method we call sketchboards, which helps to integrate more people into the design process while also generating good design faster.
UB: I’ve read, in the Adaptive Path website, that your “passion for finding and understanding the unmet needs of customers has led him to diverse environments, from the homes of cancer patients to tunnels beneath Walt Disney World.” Do you think different types of environments create different UX projects?
BS: The phrase you quote relates to my interests in empathetic research — going out into the world of the target user to gain insight and understanding for their reality. Just a little of this research can go a long way.
By spending time with cancer patients and their family, my team came to realize that a family takes on several key roles to help a loved-one survive cancer. For example, one family member might play the role of arguing with doctors or fighting with the U.S. insurance system. Another role might be researching cancer and ensuring they have as much information about the disease as they want or need. Each of these roles need to be supported in different ways with different information. Without spending time in their environment, we may have treated them all the same.
Going into the environment of your user ensures you don’t treat every project the same. Instead, you gain the sensitivities to designing solutions that resonate with the needs of users and foster desirable behaviors.
UB: I know you have a huge interest in planning, development and management innovation. Do you think the UX area is an important starting point for innovation in a project?
BS: The user experience can be a key element of innovation. But so can business processes, IT, or other aspects of a solution, as documented by these 10 Types of Innovation.
To benefit from innovations, organizations need to be able to sustain the advantage of that solution for some time. Because the aesthetics of a user experience can be imitated, UX must often be used in combination with other areas of innovation.
For example, the ClearRx pill bottle probably hasn’t been imitated because Target had to rework much of it’s pharmacy business to make it happen. They combined UX with business processes and IT changes to create a sustainable advantage. Visual voicemail on the Apple iPhone does the same thing. AT&T in the U.S. spent months reworking their voicemail systems to create a voicemail experience that made sense to people, not engineers.
Tags: Adaptive Path, Agile, Brandon Schauer, Design competitivo, inovação, User Experience