Creating Design At Scale In Societe Generale

Nivin Al Kuzbari at UXDX Community: UK. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA-mLxlCno4

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Growing up as an inventor

[00:00:00] My name is Daniel Gost and I'm here today to talk about how to design products that people love.

[00:00:11] I grew up with my grandmother in a small village near Barcelona. As a kid I was very imaginative, as you can see in the picture, and I used to say that I wanted to be an inventor. Actually, in my mind I was already one, because when playing I recycled toys, all the toys I could find at home, and paired them with cereal boxes to create entire cities, shops, or invent scenarios where whatever was passing through all those was automatically sliding, who knows how, through the power of two batteries. Also, I could play with things with my grandmother, and I didn't have to spend money buying any new toys.

[00:00:57] Today what I'm going to share with you is how, as a product designer, I apply the same desire to make people's life easier in creating products they want and love. You can see this is the process that I always apply when taking on any project, and research and strategy is really key. That's really important, and that's what I think about all the time when I design anything.

[00:01:30] Instead of spending time on creating beautiful interfaces, what I first focus on is the business objective, and I answer three really quick questions that are really important for me. One is, what's the problem that we are solving? The second one is, who has this problem? And the third one is, what do we want to achieve? Only after answering those and aligning with the team on the right problems to solve does it make sense to really move on to the solution and create feasible proposals.

[00:02:09] The testing phase really helps to improve the design by getting feedback from people who will use your product, and by following all these different steps that I'm showing you on the screen is when I'm able to understand and evaluate whether the proposed solutions are solving the problem identified at the beginning of the project.

[00:02:29] In the next few minutes what I'll share with you is the most important research methods that I use to help understand more about the people I'm designing the product for. But in the spirit of saving time I won't be going too much into the terms of each method, but I'll make sure that I cover the key aspects for each one.

Three research strategies

[00:02:53] Research methods can be divided, as you can see on the screen, into three different strategies. The first one is to understand whether you're focusing on the right problem by gathering data. That's really, really important to start off any project. The second one is to find new opportunities by grasping insights. And the third one is knowing what to improve by testing your designs and getting feedback with real people who might use your product. I will focus on a couple of methods for each one in the next slides.

Gathering data: user interviews and Jobs to be Done

[00:03:37] The first one is gathering the data. User interviews have become really, really popular, and this method really helps to know what users think about a specific topic in one-on-one sessions. You're going to see on the screen pros and cons for each of the methods. Interviews tend to be a quick and easy way to collect data. Although you may feel that doing those is very simple and straightforward, actually there's more to a good interview than many people really realize. It really needs a lot of preparation to be done, and making sure that you keep focused on asking the right questions, in the direction that's relevant for the project.

[00:04:32] This is Jobs to be Done, the one that everyone talks about in product conferences. At this point, I'm sure absolutely everyone has already heard about it. I like to think of Jobs to be Done as a framework for innovation, and really consider the thinking that people hire products and services to get a job done. It really helps to map the different steps to go through to get the desired outcome, and understand which of these steps to really focus on for unmet needs.

[00:05:19] Jobs to be Done is very respected within the industry by its own merits. But you might ask why? Just because it really helps finding gaps and opportunities in the market. But I've also heard from a lot of companies that they tried to apply it and they didn't succeed. The reality is it can become quite overwhelming when thinking of, you can imagine, all those jobs and different jobs. Just be aware of those difficulties, and especially when it comes to interpreting any data. However, despite that, I've tried it myself and still really like it. Just bear in mind not to get too far down the rabbit hole. I'm going to show you one example later on, and that would be great.

Grasping insights: empathy maps and extreme users

[00:06:19] The second one is grasping insights, where the empathy map is a really simple and easy to digest visual that captures knowledge about the user's behaviors and attitudes. An empathy map is a great workshop activity that could get all the members of the team and different stakeholders to get in alignment and get inside people's heads, and actually know what the goals and the different challenges are, in one place.

[00:06:57] But the thing is, because you can visualize it doesn't mean that you actually know absolutely everything about the user. If you don't get the right data, it might not be accurate enough. I would make sure that the data is as reliable as possible. Otherwise you're running on a fairytale. If anyone has come across a project in the past where they didn't get the right data and came up with a completely different solution, one that's not the one that really solved the problem, it's because probably at this stage they didn't think about it properly, or because actually they didn't consider applying different methods at the same time. What I would encourage, even though I really love the empathy map, is to consider using all the different methods that I'm going to explain to you later on.

[00:08:01] This one is actually very easy to describe. When we are working on a project, we always, and I've been guilty of this in the past, focus on the audience that we are building this product for and forget about the rest of the people who might live in the world. For example, when designing a travel app, designers, including myself sometimes, can easily not contemplate who those users are who maybe have some physical impairments and need extra help to get to a destination.

[00:08:44] By understanding those extremes, it really gives new perspective and insights. For example, those people that are actually extreme users sometimes can convert themselves into early adopters without actually realizing it. And that's why it's really important to consider them. I'm a big fan of making products that everyone can use, and about inclusivity and accessibility, but let's be realistic: it can be for everyone, but it's important that you consider as much as possible the different extremes.

Getting feedback: usability testing and online surveys

[00:09:32] In order to get feedback: this method actually is a really popular one. When I talk about usability testing at work, everywhere I work and every single project with every single team, they get really, really excited. And don't take me wrong, I actually really like it. It's really important to see how people interact with your product and get direct feedback from them. One of the things that I like the most is how really flexible it can be. It could be done either remote or in person, moderated or unmoderated, but also you can test so many different variants. You can test just concepts. You can test, for example, earlier prototypes, or you can test MVPs, or test the real product that's out there.

[00:10:35] One of the things that we need to consider is that it's very crucial for a product designer to ensure that the moderator has the best balance of keeping the participant on a task without interfering too much on the user's natural experience. Because at the end of the day, this is not a normal setup where people would interact with the product, but one that's a little bit manufactured. If you are not really careful, it can lead to biased results.

[00:11:09] Online surveys are a great way to reach and engage with your target audience and get feedback from them. The time span needed to complete an online survey is really, really way shorter than any of the other traditional research methods, and the information is being gathered automatically. That's really handy, because that means that you can go, instead of five participants on a usability testing, to thousands of people, feedback from a really short period of time.

[00:11:46] The only thing I would consider here is to bear in mind that through the lack of an interviewer, because it's an online survey, there's no interviewer there talking about what the different tasks are, it's really about clarifying, it could end up not being able to know exactly why people are doing or deciding certain things, and it could lead to less reliable data. That's why, and I will repeat it during the presentation, it's not only about using one particular research method, but about using all the different methods in conjunction to get proper results.

Case study: the Skyscanner profile section

[00:12:40] I'm going to show you a couple of case studies that show how all these methods can be applied to any project. And as I said, it's not only about one in particular, but about using all of them as much as possible to get to know the user as accurately as possible. Of these two projects, one is a little bit more of an iteration, and the second one is about an end-to-end product innovation project, where you can see how the different methods could be applied no matter what the scale of the project is.

[00:13:17] The first one is one that I worked on at Skyscanner. The profile section of the app was outdated due to the new branding, and the structure was a little confusing for certain people. What happens is that there were a couple of struggles that we identified, apart from the rebranding, that we wanted to make sure our solution was focusing on. People really wanted to manage their preferences easily, and your profile couldn't let them do that. But also they needed to get access to travel documents information when booking. They needed to get access to the bank[?]. Therefore, a way to store all the information added on was really valuable for them.

[00:14:19] The result was a more intuitive information architecture of this section, but also the fact that people could interact with it and add their travel documents and the different payments that they are using, for a quick and easy checkout when they are buying any of the products from Skyscanner.

[00:14:47] To be able to provide the resolution, what I did with the team is run both qualitative and quantitative methods, such as user interviews and online surveys, asking people to group elements, for example, on those online surveys. Group these elements, to make sure that I could get an understanding of how people put things together, so the final organization of this profile could be aligned with the people's mental model.

Case study: My Makeup Artist

[00:15:23] The second study I want to show you is one that I was honored at the Drum Awards[?] to have the best technical innovation and be one of the winners. At my previous company I was working on this: we realized that people couldn't find the right makeup for them, because they really struggled with matching their unique physical features with the right makeup that suits them.

[00:16:00] For example, you see this lady, and of course you see an image from marketing material. However, you may think that someone like this may not have any makeup problem. But actually she does, because as a woman whose skin has changed over the years, her needs of makeup and her requirements have changed. But actually, if we think about the extreme users, it's not only about her, it's also about being able to find the right makeup for those people who have different skin colors that are not necessarily the ones that the mainstream is focusing on. And also being able to identify the different face shapes. It was really key for this project. But let me just go through a video quickly, I think it would explain this problem a little bit better.

[00:17:02] The beauty industry is taking over. Every day there's a new trend, a new influencer, a new advert, and thousands of new products in every shade imaginable flooding our screens and makeup counters. Makeup shopping has become an overwhelming task. So how do you find the products that match your needs? Introducing My Makeup Artist. It's the world's first virtual makeup experience that combines face analysis, augmented reality and artificial intelligence, all fueled by Jobs to be Done, a research process that gets to the heart of unmet consumer needs. And the main one for beauty buyers: they don't want makeup, they want to look the way they want. Through qualitative research we've identified 75 user needs and surveyed over 3,600 people across multiple locations. We uncovered a number of unmet needs by the market and came up with four key differentiators to solve paralysis of choice. Then we answered them.

[00:18:10] Those are the different key differentiators. First is through live face analysis: we were able to analyze over 4,400 face combinations. And then we can provide an artificial intelligence recommendation engine, which really helps users to find products that are bespoke to their physical features, skin type or even lifestyle.

[00:18:38] We also provide a try-on feature using augmented reality technology, which is the one that you are seeing, that one of my colleagues, Katie, is using as a demonstration. This really helped to give an instant makeover and know exactly how those products that are bespoke and recommended for you would look, and see how they work on your skin color before buying them.

[00:19:13] Finally, after buying them, step-by-step content was created to keep different users with helpful tips on how to use the perfect products, because we realized it's not only about knowing what the different makeup products are that are best for you. But also, through all these methods from research, we really recognized that some people really struggle with applying them later on. So I took the token of what the work[?].

[00:19:51] The reality is we did use everything that I've explained to you in terms of the different research processes. They really helped to understand and go into the user's mind, and using qualitative and quantitative research methods really helped to build a product that actually people really wanted to use.

[00:20:21] But it's not only about how you design this. It's not about the design process[?], but also that at the end of the day it has an impact on the business as well. Because the combination of all these research methods, and the process that I showed you, about so many different projects that I have worked on in the past, really achieved great metrics like engaging customers, but also really helped to create happy teams and be able to create products that would be scalable in the future.

The secret is empathy

[00:20:59] So really, what is the secret, you may ask? Some people ask me the same question. My answer really goes back to my childhood, when creating things for my grandmother to make her life easier. My secret is empathy. It may sound a little bit woo-hoo, but it really helps to make sure that you create the product customers need, and not what you think.

[00:21:31] Before going ahead, let me just clarify what the definition is, because you might have heard this in different settings. But this is psychology, how it defines empathy. It means really walking in someone's shoes, but not only about understanding it; it's also about being able to respond accordingly.

[00:21:56] How does this really relate to design? Empathy makes you enter the customer's world and really understand them. And designers such as myself really need to build empathy for people in order to take the right course of action. Because as the definition says, it's not only about understanding them, but actually being able to act upon your learnings.

[00:22:31] And empathy through the different methods really lets you go deeper. It's not only about observing what people say or think or do or use, but also about being able to understand what they know, feel and dream, to be able to find those underlying motivations and needs.

[00:22:59] Design actually is not only to make beautiful products, as I said at the beginning, or easy to use them. Because in building empathy, we can create products that truly please the users and their needs and make their life easier, just as I was doing with my grandmother. Products designed around people and their needs are really more likely to be used, and often in the future.

Key takeaway

[00:23:35] One key thing and key takeaway that I want to talk to you and chat to you about today is that next time you've been asked to design a product or a feature, no matter what the level of complexity is, what I want you to do is to think how those are going to bring value to the user, and consider that you're not going to use only one of those methods that I've explained to you, but use all the different ones through the entire design process. So you can gather data, grasp insights and get the proper feedback, so you can iterate on the product later on. By doing all of these that I explained to you today, it really helps to go from a problem framing to a fully fleshed out people-centric solution that people will love.

[00:24:32] So let me introduce my grandmother. Just as a kid, I wanted to make her life easier by creating those games, so she didn't need to spend money or worry about the fact that I didn't have toys that other children may have. My grandmother's happiness was very rewarding. So believe me, it really pays to build customer empathy. Thank you very much for listening today.