User experience needs to be a hot topic again

18 March 2010

Daniele Fiandaca raised the question of whether digital agencies are focused on aesthetics at the expense of user experience (nma 4 February 2010). I’m delighted to see this issue being discussed because in recent years user experience (UX) has become un-sexy.

What I find most interesting is Daniele’s solution. He concludes most agencies are getting it “very right” (a statement I, along with millions of web users, would probably take issue with) but until they have dedicated user experience specialists they’ll continue to get the balance wrong. We hire plenty of UX professionals who join us from agencies frustrated at their low level of involvement in client engagements and the relative contempt in which their skills are held.

We routinely hear UX was the first thing to be cut when budgets got tight. The evidence is all around that user experience is still not taken seriously. Think of the interactions you’ve had online in the past week and you’ll have seen poorly designed user journeys or a disconnect between experience and design.

This issue won’t be solved by agencies building dedicated UX teams, nor by customer experience consultancies bleating on about the need for their skills. It’ll be solved by clients taking customers seriously, recognising the opportunity to differentiate that a well-designed customer experience will offer them, and then demanding that budget is allocated and work completed.

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