What is Digital Experience?

A little background…

About 12 years ago, whilst working as a business analyst within a digital agency in Bristol, the business decided that I and the User Experience designer should start to work more closely together and form a new team. This made perfect sense to us both, but what to call it? We went out for a drink and during our discussions arrived at The Digital Experience Team, as this brought together the two disciplines that I was responsible for BA and QA and their UX.

During the next few years, we worked together in lockstep, crafting both the user experience and functional experience, with our quality assurance efforts capping off the digital experience (DX) that our users had. He would ask me about the functionality he was wire-framing and I would ask about UX best practice for functional decisions I was documenting. It was a true collaboration of disciplines.

This time was massively informative in my BA practice for a couple of reasons… Firstly DX informs the decisions I make for the functional rules that I write for documentation, ensuring that I am thinking of the user and business need – (blog post to come on the importance of this soon). Secondly the validation that UX was vital to achieving the success of the business objectives I was responsible for delivering for our clients. If the UX was bad, the user was less likely to carry out the activities that we were tasked with designing journeys for, therefore the quality of that experience was key to ensuring that the project had the best possible chance of success. I realised that as the BA, it was as important that the user needs were met, as were the business objectives.

Digital experience is a key part in the way that we design solutions for our clients at Tiny Spark. We put the user at the heart of everything we do, while balancing the business needs.

 

Several benefits to a DX Approach

 

 

Understand user & business needs in combination

Carrying out the discovery phase research activities as a single exercise across BA and UX, allows us to not only provide a complete set of ‘project needs’, but also identify any competing user and business needs. This then aids in the prioritisation of the business requirements, being informed by a hierarchy of user needs.

 

 

Creating user-centred solutions

Our DX methodology, allows us to leverage UX design principles to develop user-centred solutions that align with both user needs and business goals. Using techniques like wire-framing, prototyping, and user testing, we ensure the design meets the usability requirements while supporting the desired business outcomes.

 

 

Bridge Communication

Business Analysts act as a bridge between stakeholders, developers, designers, and users. The BA can ensure that the UX design process remains focused on solving the right problems and meeting the defined business objectives. In BA communications with stakeholders, a better understanding of the user needs provides clear guide rails against which business decisions are made.

 

 

Collaborative Work

Fostering collaboration between BA and UX teams throughout the project lifecycle, brings open communication, joint workshops, and shared documentation to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards a common vision. 

 

 

User Journey Mapping

Using BA process mapping techniques provides the ability to create a single set of solution diagrams that can be client-facing as well providing what the development team need to inform their technical architecture documentation.

 

 

BA thoroughness To UX consideration

The combination of disciplines brings with it a level of detail, thoroughness and analysis from business analysis when carrying out UX Design. As a BA you consider all permutations, visual states needed, and exceptions to consider as part of the UX design. We more thoroughly map out system flow logic, considering basic, alternate and exception flows, ensuring that we have considered the top-level functional rules for all edge cases at an early stage. This weeds-level overview in tandem with a clear focus on user needs means that we can have the best of both worlds.

We can have our cake…and eat it.

 

In conclusion

By combining the strengths of Business Analysis and User Experience, organisations can provide better internal and client communications, more fully understanding the project needs; and develop products and services that not only satisfy user needs, but also drive business success and competitive advantage in the market. 

Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about this process or indeed if you think your project could benefit from considering digital experience as a whole.