Achieving Results with James Downes, Box UK User Experience Consultant

James Downes has been with Box UK since October 2005. When he joined us, he brought with him ten years of experience in the IT industry. His extensive previous client list includes organisations such as The Cabinet Office, Lamborghini UK, Fujitsu and Mercedes Benz.

Since joining our User Experience team, James has worked on a number of significant projects involving our range of clients from the FTSE 100 to international standards bodies and leading organisations across the UK public and heritage sector.

He is passionate about improving the web for users across all sectors and brings his vast and detailed knowledge of accessibility issues and Government standards to bear on each project he works on. He is regularly asked to comment on issues related to User Centred Design, Accessibility and User Experience.

Q: User Experience is a topic that has been getting a lot of attention lately. A lot of people seem to be throwing the term around, but I wonder how many people really understand what it means. How would you explain User Experience to someone who has never heard of it before?

JD: It’s essentially about keeping the user in mind at all times throughout the design and development process. To paraphrase Jesse James Garrett, it's all about making sure that every aspect of the user’s experience with your website is the result of conscious, explicit intent. Whether it is site navigation, a form you want visitors to fill out, or even how basic copy and images fit together on a page, every possibility of every action the user is likely to take needs to be taken into account.

User Experience is also something of an umbrella term – it can cover Information Architecture, Information Design, Interaction Design and of course, Usability. A good UX designer will be all of the above, and often have some Business Analysis, graphic design and technical skills thrown in for good measure.

Q: In the last few years, organisations have developed an increased appreciation for User Experience and what it can mean to the success of their business. What do you think has caused this new focus on UX?

JD: The internet has become so much more competitive, and businesses are realising that it’s where they can make a dramatic improvement on their margins for relatively low cost (in comparison to other platforms). As a result, they are starting to analyse everything that happens on their sites in more depth. They’re using Google Analytics and other statistics tools to help them fine-tune the way that they interact with their customers online. 

Whether you are selling widgets, taking charitable donations or publishing content, simple and inexpensive improvements to User Experience can often make a tangible difference to your bottom line. It’s pretty obvious really – a visitor is much more likely to buy from you, donate to you or generally engage with you if you provide them with a good User Experience, than if you provide a bad one.

Q: Why is usability important?

JD: Your website might be the first and sometimes the only interaction a customer or potential customer has with your company. People develop first impressions incredibly quickly. If your website is difficult to use, visitors may get the impression that your company is difficult to work with. Even worse, they might just think, “This is too difficult, I can’t find what I’m looking for so I’ll try elsewhere.” It’s all about keeping your clients and making them want to do business with you.

Q: A lot of the literature on UX talks about the importance of behavioural psychology in anticipating how a user will navigate a website. What role does psychology play in how you test websites for Usability?

JD: I’m no psychologist, but an understanding of user behaviour is obviously very important. When designing a website it is important to understand and anticipate user behaviour. To do this, you need to have observed people using different kinds of websites. It also helps to have observed people from different backgrounds, different nationalities and different age groups, because they can all behave completely differently. It’s all about recognising and anticipating user behaviour and either adapting to it or building your product around it.

Q: When and how did you become interested in User Experience and what made you make the professional leap into the field?

JD: I started designing websites, intranets and client applications about 14 years ago, which was before many people were talking about Usability or User Experience.  Back then I got into it the way a lot of people do when they find a topic they are really interested in, through reading everything I could find about it. Jakob Nielsen’s books on usability and Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think were both hugely influential for me. They really got me thinking seriously about how big an impact good User Experience and Usability can have on a website and on a business.

Q: There are a lot of people who claim to be Usability experts. What tools or measurements can businesses use to determine whether the person they hire is actually a good fit to help make an impact on their website?

JD: It’s a good thing that lots of people are talking about User Experience and Usability but the downside is that it can be difficult for businesses to weed out the hobbyists from the professionals.

Businesses need to keep in mind that they will be working quite closely with their UX person, so they need to like working with them on a personal and professional level. They also need to be confident that their User Experience designer understands their business and their goals, understands their users and their needs and can translate those two things into a successful website.  

The approach a User Experience Designer is going to take should be a very important consideration. A lot of agencies start with the aesthetic design of a website. For me, that’s the wrong way of doing things. In the work I do, my first priority is always about understanding the business and the audience and then working through how it’s structured and what the visual layout of the page will be. Methodology is important and businesses need to ask themselves, “Does this methodology fit in with my business?”

Q: How should UX design fit into the website development process? For example, if I am building a new website for my company, at which point should I seek this kind of expertise? If I am looking to improve an existing site, where does UX fit in?

JD: Regardless of whether you’re building a new site, or looking to improve an existing one, a UX designer should be one of the first people you talk to.

The first thing I need to understand is what my client wants to get out of their website – what their goals and objectives are. Then I need to find out who their users are, what they need, want and expect. Only when you fully understand the purpose of the site can you move forward – defining the functional and content requirements, designing the site’s Information Architecture, working out how things should be laid out on the page and so on.

Even if you have a limited budget with which to improve your site, a User Experience designer can often make small adjustments that will have specific measurable benefits, just as long as the business objectives and user needs are clearly defined and understood.

Q: What is the most common Usability mistake you see?

JD: It is often obvious when you look at websites when they haven’t put the user first. The error I see most often is bad navigation. This can be something as simple as poorly thought out labelling. For example, a website might use technical jargon on a site that receives international visitors. Technical jargon might be ok in the UK, but in a place where English is a second language it may not be understood.

Also, many websites grow organically over time and become undisciplined, disorganised and therefore, difficult to use. Visitors get frustrated if they can’t find what they’re looking for, and can end up getting lost on a site. Again, the most important thing to remember is that every design decision needs to bear the user in mind. When you’ve designed your site’s Information Architecture, or you make changes to it, performing even the most informal user testing can give you insight into how your visitors will interact with your site.

Q: What is your number one Usability tip?

JD: It’s simple: consider the user every step of the way.  Put yourself in the user’s position when you design things, then test design elements with users and observe how they interact with them. One stage of our UX process at Box UK is to develop personas (fictional archetypes that represent members of our audience) and ask ourselves what this person would do if faced with a particular screen or menu. This is a great way of keeping our users in mind at all times.

Q: According to a recent report on the top 100 brands released by Milward Brown, despite the economic climate, the mobile industry has seen increases of 28%, which is the largest increase of any sector polled. What role does User Experience Design play in the mobile market? How is UX different on mobile devices?

JD: The User Experience is a completely different consideration in the mobile world. To begin with, the screen is very small and individual mobile devices are all very distinct. The difference between an iPhone or an Android device compared to a mobile using the Symbian Operating System, for example, is enormous. Even moving around is very different as you are scrolling with a little joystick or using arrow keys.

One of the most important things that businesses need to understand is that users have completely different needs on a mobile platform compared to when they’re using a regular web browser. On a mobile device, one of the first things a user may want to find is contact information or a location map. They might not want to get into the huge reams of content that you have on your regular site – they just want access to quick information on the go.

A mobile site should not just be a duplication of the information on a regular website. The user needs can be completely different.

Q: Companies want to see a direct return on investment after spending resources on services such as User Experience. What are the tangible benefits of investing in UX?

JD: The benefits of investing in User Experience are easily measurable. The most common way of measuring change is by monitoring the conversion rate.

The first step is understanding what the specific goals for a project are and then tracking them. For example, if a company wants to get somebody to subscribe to their newsletter, buy one of their widgets, or donate some money to their charity it is quite easy to measure how subtle changes to a website make an impact on those goals.

One of the first things we do when we look at the business objectives for a project is also look at the success metrics. We find out from the organisation what it is they want to achieve, whether it be a certain percentage increase in sales, or a reduction in costs to a call centre, for example.

Q: If someone is interested in hiring a User Experience expert, how should they go about it? Who can they contact?

JD: There are professional institutions and organisations that represent Usability experts, UX designers and Information Architects, but anybody can join them for a fee. They aren’t always a good indication of who is good and who isn’t. The best thing to do is to talk to other companies (who have great websites) and get personal recommendations. Of course, companies looking to move forward in this area are always welcome to call or email Box UK. 

The main thing I would like to leave people with is that I feel passionately that User Experience can and does make a big difference. Whether you are trying to increase profits or are looking to cut costs, when it comes to User Experience, the results really are measurable.