BA Bites - When Human-Centred Design Isn’t What It Seems: From Users to Customers and True Innovation

Speaker A: I want to talk to you about something that's become almost a cliche in transformation and UX work. Human centered design, or some people say design, ah, thinking. Everyone says they're doing it. Every project claims to be human centered or customer centered, but too often what they mean is internal human centered. We end up designing for users, internal staff, system operators or product owners and calling it empathy. Meanwhile, the actual customer, the person in the world we're meant to be creating value for, is left out of the process entirely or just given a lip service. And when that happens, what we're really doing is an innovation that it's optimization. We're polishing what already exists, not reimagining it. So today let's um, unpack what's really going on and going wrong with human centered design and how to bring it back to its roots centered on the customer's job to be done. The Better Business Analysis Institute presents the Better Business Analysis podcast with Kingswin Walsh. Welcome back everyone to the Better Business Analysis podcast. Now, I want to talk about human centered design design thinking. I know they, they're a little bit different, but what I want to talk about is not the nuanced differences is simply the fact that people say they're doing human centered design or customer centric design, but they're not really doing it. And I'm going to talk about some of those points today and some segments. We're going to break down five segments and we're going to talk about some of the challenges here. Segment one is around the mirage of human centered design at its best. Hcd, human centered design means designing from a deeper understanding of people, how they think, feel, behave and make decisions. But in practice, it's often used as a shortcut to simply jumping. When I say jumping or hopping to development, people say, we did some interviews, we made Personas, we ran a workshop. Before you know it, the UX designer is wireframing and the BA is writing user stories without ever understanding why the person needs a solution in the first place. An example might be a government team. Say they're redesigning a licensing port to make it more human centered. They get consultants in, they're human centered consultants and maybe an app development company that provide those staff. So they talk to frontline staff, but not the business owners applying for those licenses. So what gets improved internal forms, approval flows. What does not get improved? A customer's job getting license faster, easier and more confidently. They don't care what those steps are that we have to go through in the back end or even in the front line, that's not innovation. That's just better uh, administration and maybe better frontline services. Different. We move to segment two and I think this is important, the difference. And look, we all make mistakes by saying the wrong words. You know, client versus customer, you know, if you're in profit making or, or not for profit and user. And I sometimes say user stories when I mean customer stories. But let's be clear on what the difference between a user and a customer is from a, from a real point of view. A user interacts with your system. A uh, customer, uh, decides whether to engage with you at all. Remember that a uh, user interacts with your system. A customer decides whether to engage with you at all. So important in internal projects, your user might be employees, but your customer is the citizen, the member or the buyer your organization ultimately serves. And a potential customer, like a non authorized user or someone who's browsing your website, their potential customer. They're even more important in some respect in terms of some of the marketing steps in terms of getting them to engage, to sign up like new, new business. The danger comes when we optimize the user experience at the expense of customer experience. As bas, Our job is to ask whose problem are uh, we really solving? We talk about problem statements. Sometimes it's internally focused and whose job to be done are we designing for? Because innovation happens when we design around the customer's job, not our organization's version of it. So let's talk about the customer's job to be done. I heard that this week in context, but it was actually talking about steps. So segment three is the customer's job to be done. This came from Clayton Christensen's job to be done framework, right? That's the bible and it reframed innovation beautifully. People don't buy a product or service, they hire it to get a job done in their lives. Right? He was talking about the customer. For example, a commuter doesn't buy a coffee. They hire it to wake up and signal the start of the day. This is so important. Yes, they buy a coffee. That's the uh, maybe the steps that they go through from our point of view. And maybe those steps are uh, embedded. So think about the steps for buying a coffee, right? And you know, these are the user journey steps, which is you go up to the counter, you order your coffee, you pay for your coffee, the coffee gets made, they pro provide it back to you, you might say thank you and you drink your coffee. Right? See that there? Uh, they are the user steps. And this is where you need to get out of this mindset and this is where human centered designers go through. They go, let's optimize those steps. That's not true innovation. Okay? True innovation doesn't worry about that. They worry about the fact they need to wake up and signal the start of the customer's day. They're hiring the coffee to do that. They're not buying the coffee. And that's the difference. Because let's say coffee was still the answer or the solution, but it's tied to a solution which again isn't really going wide. And diversion in terms of coffee may not be the best solution here. You could have other products that you could serve in the space because the customer's job to be done, as we said, it's just a wake up. It could be another caffeine hook. Uh, and what you're finding in America is that coffee sales are dropping. Now if you don't know that, actually the reason why people buy coffee is to wake up and the signal the start of their day as part of a routine, the ritual. You could be offering, uh, coke, other caffeinated sources and not just coffee. And so Starbucks are dropping, uh, losing market share. It's because, but the, the um, intake of coffee or caffeine, sorry, is going up, right? Because the job to be done is different to what you're providing. So if you get stuck on the solution and the steps to get in the solution, then you've kind of lost the customer's job to be done. You're focused on that use case. That's different. Again, when we talk about buying a coffee, you've gone through all those steps. So you go, let's optimize that. This is how everyone, um, buys a coffee. Say you've decided it's coffee and that's the rounds and your possibilities or your bounds and you go through and you go, I've got to pay for it. You know, wait for it, they're going to make it, blah, blah, blah. That may not be the most efficient or innovative way to even approach that process. Sweet. Optimizing those steps is not true innovation. If you, for example, said, well actually you just walk up to the coffee store and they already have your order because it knew 10 minutes before you ordered the coffee that this is your usual time. You could just walk up and pick up the coffee. That's true innovation because maybe you've got an app on your phone and it knows, you know when you order coffee and it's ready by the time you're There or it asks you to confirm, are you still getting coffee today at 10am? Is this still your order? Yes. Click a button and your coffee's ready. Right? The payment, the waiting line, all those steps are irrelevant. They're not customer jobs to be done right? Do you get that now? In another example might be a small business doesn't buy accounting software. They hire it to reduce stress and get back to running their business. So again if you think about it from a customer lens, this is proper human centered design. Then it might be a solution might be outsource the whole of their accounting department and counting the whole accounting. Whereas you limit it to buying accounting software, you limit it to the fact that they have to now manage that software. It's completely different from innovation to selecting a solution. When we focus on the customer's job, we see possibilities we would miss otherwise. But here's the catch. Many teams only understand the internal job to be done or the common existing pattern that customers use. How can we process it faster? They ask how do we collect this data? How do we make this report easier to submit? Their organization jobs, their responses right, they're important but they're not why customers show up. And so segment four when innovation should be customer lead because there's not always a use case or an opportunity to do what I've just said around the innovation side and sometimes you get true human centered designers, people that are fantastic who may in human center design design the hell out of it. You know they, they overdo it when the realms isn't innovation. So you just got to be careful that you are given permission to do this within the realm you're doing. But also don't assume that there isn't an opportunity for innovation because I would say true to m human centered designs. And when you enable, when you engage with a human centered designer, you're asking for innovation. So in true innovation projects, UX service design or transformation, a customer job should lead the solution and the uh, methodology. That means we don't start with what can our system do or how can we replace our system. We start with what's the customer trying to achieve and how might we enable that in new ways. That's where creativity comes in because how we solve it is actually up for debate and innovation projects. But why we're solving it uh, shouldn't be. And it is very just a note here, very hard to change customer behavior. And when I say change customer behavior as to create a new market, um, so it does have to be rooted in some logic that they want their job to be done. But you'll be amazed that customers will change patterns or sequences which is slightly different to behavior. They still want their coffee and you can do it in faster way. But if you start with the current process, all you're going to do is optimization. So you have a bank and it launches a new mobile feature to simplify payments. The real customer job here, what is it? Not to make payments, make payments might be where you jump to the customer's job has actually helped me feel in control of my money. So instead of another click transfer button, the innovation answer might be productive budgeting alerts for spending behaviors or visual uh goal tracking. That's true human and customer design segment five. So how do bas and other people in the space it back to reality? Because there is a reality. You go this is called divergence. Okay. And then you converge. This is true divergence. Here is where we as bas can actually have a real impact. So maybe if you're doing this innovation area, you're not doing uh say a traditional project. Don't write as a user or as a Persona. Want to maybe write as a customer. Trying to achieve. That's a good starter for 10 when you write your requirements there they're almost a different layer up, different dimension upwards. Okay. So you still will have your Personas as a whatever I want to achieve whatever goal. But they will be more functional. But these are way up. Okay. And they're almost a set of requirements at the top they're still epic and user stories um but they're much before they hit the organization. So you can say as a customer I'm trying to um and it could be the type of customer as a um, maybe a tech savvy um banking customer. I'm trying to achieve. So it's trying to achieve. Okay, that's different because then you're allowing the goal right at the top. You can use themes for that if you want to as well. Make sure you distinguish between internal and external empathy. It's fine to understand your staff pain points but they're not the end goal. They're a means to deliver better uh customer value. You sometimes need to do both. But you start with the customer map the what I call the double job. So there's the internal and the external job to be done. So ask what's the internal job that the solves and what's the customer's job this enables and I'd probably start with the customer and when they both align that is actually where true. Um I guess viable innovation lives it's between what the customer's job is right? What does that enable them to do and then how do we solve that? And, and that is true innovation that actually works. It's not just you know, back crazy uh, ideas that are never going to come to reality. And that's how you do it and measure m what matters if your success criteria are ah system speed and staff uh efficiency, you're in process improvement number of even number of clouds. But if it's customer satisfaction, NPS update or behavioral change, you've made small behavioral changes, you're an innovation. So next time someone says we're being human centered, ask which human? The user Customer. They'll probably say customer. And even better whose job ah are we helping them work do but what is that job? And they might say make a payment and you say are you sure? Isn't it manage their money more effectively? Because true innovation doesn't start with tools or processes or tech or frameworks. It starts with understanding what the customer, uh, the real customer is trying to achieve and giving them a better way of doing it. The how is actually up for debate and innovation. But why shouldn't be? I hope you had a good week. That is another tip for how you can be a better BA and just a better human centered it uh, professional. I'll see you next week. Sa.