Business Proposal For Implementation Of User Experience Process

Question

Task:
You have been hired by a travel start-up that has an existing product. Their product is currently used to book and manage flights, accommodation, and cars for all types of customers. They want to improve and build on their product but are unsure if the investment into UX will help and is worth it. You must research and develop a compelling business proposal explaining why the start-up would benefit from implementing UX (user experience) into their process. You need to.

• Research and develop a high-level plan of what the UX process would look like
• Where and how would you start, what tools and techniques you would use, in what order and what methodologies and approaches you would take.
• Demonstrate the benefits and ROI of implementing a UX process.
• Communicate the risks of not implementing a UX process Please refer to the Task Instructions for details on how to complete this task.

Context
This assessment will:

• Assess your ability to communicate and champion a user-centred approach.
• Evaluate your understanding of the UX process, its benefits, and risks.
• Evaluate your ability to select, implement and apply appropriate methodologies, processes, and tools to a project.

Task Instructions
You are required to write a 900-word business case demonstrating the benefits of implementing user-centred design. There are two main parts to this business case.

Part A
Communicate the benefits and risks of implementing UX. You need to provide evidence to back up your statements with real world examples and references, this can be from statistics or case studies of other businesses implementing UX and their outcomes.

Part B
Develop a plan for how you would implement a UX process at the travel company. Put together a high-level plan of what methodologies and tools you would use, in which order and what the end goal is for the start-up. Provide a rationale for each decision highlighting its importance and contribution to the end goal. For example: Would you start with research or user testing? Generative or Preference Research?

Will you conduct user interviews or contextual enquiries?

Answer

Part A

Target Market

The target market of the travel start-up to be considered while implementing user experience process will comprise of leisure tourists, business travelers and students going abroad for higher studies. These individuals will belong to the age group between 18 to 50 years and in the middle to high income groups. Besides, the company will target customers who are willing to book everything like flight tickets, accommodation, entire itinerary and others through travel companies.

Benefits of UX

User experience is essential for the travel start-up company for attracting customers. There are various benefits that it can gain from introducing UX in the company (Benyon, 2019). They include improving customer acquisition by persuading or convincing them about the product or service, helping with customer retention by offering seamless experience, optimizing development time and cost, increased productivity through employee engagement andenhanced user engagement (Law, Van Schaik & Roto, 2014). Furthermore, UX designs help in better understanding the problems and pain points of the customers for improving the products or services. These designs also enable the company in enhancing the quality of users’ lives by fulfilment of their needs and requirements. Besides, it can validate concepts by rapidly testing these UX designs for enhancing the user experience. The user-centered approach would be further beneficial in developing a clear vision for future actions of the travel start-up. Users can be engaged as customers by analyzing their emotions, needs, requirements, feelings and requests for arriving at a better solution (Benyon, 2019). Moreover, it also helps in gaining credibility, decreasing the resource burden and improving estimation of users’ needs for products or services.

Risks of UX

There also exist risks associated with the implementation of user experience that should be analyzed by the travel start-up for its successful operations. Some of these risks or challenges include lack of available features of this UX design for testing and modifying based on the customers’ preferences, presence of usability bugs in the designs and iterative nature of the designs (Albert& Tullis, 2013). There are various other risks that can derail this UX processes, which are absence of proper methodology, inappropriate or insufficient deliverables, lack of stakeholder engagement, non-involvement of technical teams, absence of limits, boundaries or controls over stakeholders, skipping the research stage and inconsistency and lack of ownership in teams. Besides, information about the customers’ tastes, preferences, demands, feelings or emotions are not always readily accessible, which also makes it difficult for appropriate design of user experience (Albert& Tullis, 2013). 

Part B

Tools/methodologies 

Process

The process or methodology of user experience of the travel start-up should be undertaken based on the various steps of user research, designing, wireframing, prototyping, testing and implementation and launching. This systematic method of deploying the UX design would be beneficial for the company in ensuring that the process is successfully implemented (UIUX Trend, 2021). 

Methods

The travel start-up will select the methods of contextual interviews and automated surveys for acquiring the information (Philips, 2021). Contextual interviews will involve observing the users in their natural environment while surveys will be conducted online by providing them with questionnaires. After gaining information, user inputs are used for starting the design phase about the products and services that will be offered to the customers (UIUX Trend, 2021). 

Tools

Here, the travel company can develop personas, ecosystem map, user journey map and story boards. The next step involves wireframing where the start-up will define various elements like information architecture, navigation design and interface design for developing a visual guide of the products and services. 

Steps

In this process, the company can build a prototype version of its website and services by developing the closest version of the final product. 

Testing can be performed through various methods like usability testing by involving actual users and enabling them to analyse the experience of navigating and handling the website (UIUX Trend, 2021). 

The last step will involve launching the travel start-up’s website after carrying out UAT testing. In addition, research activities should be continued for monitoring UX performance of the website, identifying areas of improvement, proposing new features and observing other industry trends.

Rationale for decisions

The travel start-up company can undertake some practices before implementation of the user experience in the organization. An effective value proposition and product strategy will be formulated before undertaking any UX designs. This value proposition helps in determining the products and services that the travel company would offer to the customers by sending clear communicative message (Babich, 2017). On the other hand, the product strategy will be developed throughout the entire lifecycle of the product or service being offered and an execution plan would also be established. This will help in reaching specific target audiences and drawing their attention on the products and consumer attributes. It is essential to carry out the user research for gaining information about their feelings, perceptions, tastes, emotions and preferences (UIUX Trend, 2021). In this regard, various research methods can be used by the company interviews, automated surveys, focus groups, expert reviews and others. Besides, testing should be undertaken for identifying any flaws, inconsistencies or errors in the overall website design and consequently make necessary changes.

End Goals

For starting the operations in the market, the travel start-up should first build its own website. This has been evident from the above methodologies where the website can be launched by following the sequential steps. This is the primary goal of the company. After launching the website, the second objective would be to evaluate the performance by surveying user participants and making necessary changes. The third goal of the company will be to increase website traffic by 5% in the next three months and enhance its visibility amongst the target customers by 7.5%.

Timeline

References

Albert, W., & Tullis, T. (2013). Measuring the user experience: collecting, analyzing, and presenting usability metrics. Newnes.

Babich, N. (2017). Most Common UX Design Methods and Techniques. Retrieved from https://uxplanet.org/most-common-ux-design-methods-and-techniques-c9a9fdc25a1e

Benyon, D. (2019). Designing user experience. Pearson UK.

Law, E. L. C., Van Schaik, P., & Roto, V. (2014). Attitudes towards user experience (UX) measurement. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 72(6), 526-541.

Philips, M. (2021). The Complete Guide to UX Research Methods. Retrieved from https://www.toptal.com/designers/user-research/guide-to-ux-research-methods

UIUX Trend. (2021). User Experience (UX): Process and Methodology. Retrieved from https://uiuxtrend.com/user-experience-ux-process/