Wikipedia: An edge case is a problem or situation
that occurs only at an extreme maximum or minimum
operating parameter.

The most satisfying and memorable interactions are often the simplest. Life is complicated enough, and…surprise…most people don’t want to spend any more time interacting with your company’s call center, sales team, application or website than they absolutely need to. So why are so many interactions between companies and their target audiences so complex? Often complexity is the result of trying to design interactions for everyone, which inevitably leads to interactions designed for no one.

One of the culprits in this drive to satisfy everyone is the edge case. Also referred to as the “Corner case”, the “Outlier” or the “Exception,” these are interaction scenarios that are not typically part of the main set of use cases for a given experience. These scenarios rarely happen, yet unwary design teams can be drawn into spending a disproportionate amount of time and effort addressing them. The solutions typically result in layering complexity on what should have been a simple, streamlined process.

When dealing with edge cases, the stakes can be high. They range from driving up the cost of product/process/system/service design, to the creation of poor employee or customer experiences that jeopardize the achievement of your business goals. The following tips can help businesses and experience designers get the edge on edge cases.
TIP #1 – First Get the Facts:
Research actual usage to understand actual impact

Arm yourself with evidence. Gather available information and/or data to validate that the particular scenario needs to be addressed. Understand the problem from the audience’s perspective and confirm that addressing the scenario as outlined truly is the best way to meet the audience’s need.

If you don’t have evidence you require to make an informed design decision, go get it. Most likely the people insisting the case needs to be addressed have a business case to justify the cost and effort. Ask to see that information. If there is no such business case, insist on doing at least a modicum of quick, primary research with the target audience to make sure the solution has value.

Audience insights are becoming easier and easier to obtain through surveys, remote user testing, field studies, customer reviews, etc. Companies are even using Facebook and Twitter to pose questions and get quick insights for decision making. Of course, the real expertise is in the interpretation of the insights into meaningful stories that will impact business decision-making. If you reach out to a solid representative mix of your target audience, you will start to surface relevant insights to the best way to meet their needs as well as the goals of your business.

Armed with evidence, you can make an informed design decision.

TIP #2 – Reduce Business Complexity:
A complex customer experience is often the result of a business process or product offering that needs to be simplified

Overly complex and convoluted interactions typically reflect organizations and/or processes that are by design overly complex and convoluted. It never hurts to turn the analytical lens on the business and work out the complexity. I’m often surprised how open companies are to a little reflection on their own processes. You can approach the subject by saying something like, “You are asking us to design the experience within the context of the overly complex way in which you currently do business. I’m suggesting we take this opportunity to look into the redesign of the service/process to see if there are ways we can address the root of the problem.”

A good example is Sprint’s recent overhaul of their phone service options. Research into their target audience revealed that they could reduce the number of plan offers to just three (3) and meet the needs of the vast majority of their potential customers. Rather than continuing to add more services in a shot-gun attempt to satisfy a wider base of customers, they re-thought their entire strategy and streamlined their offerings.  They lowered the effort required for a potential customer to choose to do business with them AND they simplified the job of supporting their service options. Win win.

TIP #3 –  Create and Use Relevant Personas:
Use data to link audience priorities to business priorities

If your organization hasn’t created personas that truly reflect your audience segments, create them and use them. Personas provide a constant reminder of who you are designing for and what their priorities are. Many organizations we work with already have personas in some form, but they typically aren’t complete and are rarely being used effectively.

Detail of Persona segmentation data

Effective personas include quantifiable segmentation data on the current customers represented by each persona. To help manage edge cases, add an additional layer that displays what your organization’s desired percent audience make up is for each persona. This information helps identify those edge cases that affect highly valued audience segments and, therefore, might be worth addressing.

Final Thoughts:

Not every edge case is evil. Sometimes they are the thoughtful details we strive to have in place to make an exceptional experience. Sometimes, when a recognizable pattern starts to appear, they can lead to the creation of innovative new audience segmentations, services, or product offerings. If that’s the case, then run with it!

I worked with a client in the financial services industry who had a situation where 5-10% of a particular customer segment was bringing in 85-90% of the revenue for a particular niche.  In this scenario, what might have been perceived as the edge cases with regard to the flagship product offering were actually the foundation for the creating of a new audience segment that required a separate experience all together. Rather then going down the path of  a “one-size-fits-all” retrofitted experience, we took those edge cases and used them to inform a custom tailored experience, with its own online tools, its own call center reps, all without jeopardizing the primary brand experience.

A well-designed experience needs to be diligently tended and defended. A design can be well implemented originally, but can be denigrated over time by the retrofitting of ad-hoc business requirements based on edge cases that draw people’s attention from the business’s and its target audience’s main goals. Be on the lookout and be ever vigilant to your design. Your audience will applaud your efforts. Your competitors will wish they thought of it first.

UX is still being treated as though it’s a very subjective topic to measure. It’s unfortunate that in many cases, success is simply summed up with statements such as “it’s now easier to use”, “it’s better then before” or…my favorite…”we tested 5-7 users and they all said it was more user-friendly.”

“This is not acceptable. Not having a measurement strategy is what keeps UX as a “nice to have” as opposed to being an influential driving force within an organization.”

Without credible UX success measurements, we all risk not being able to quantify our success.  Without credible UX success measurements, we are unable to align our efforts to an organization’s business objectives and desired outcomes. This often results in UX efforts becoming very unfocused, undefined and easily changed on a whim. Basically, you’re left having to tell a very subjective story of your UX success or failures, which unfortunately, could lead to you and your team being very exposed.

Why are we not measuring our UX efforts?

Often times stakeholders or clients don’t realize that UX can be quantified and measured. As UX professionals need to take the lead and show them how to connect the dots between how UX (or lack there of) is impacting the bottom-line and how it ties back to the organizations core mission.

We need to be backing our UX efforts with quantifiable stories such as, “We decreased shopping cart abandonment by 30% which lead to 10% higher sales”, “We increased intranet adoption by 55% .”, “We increased overall user satisfaction by 30%.” The list goes on. We need more answers to the “so what” question. The questions that quantify “why” we are conducting any UX efforts in the first place.

So how do we do this? 

Imagine if you could clearly define measureable goals for your UX efforts? What if you could clearly connect the dots from your UX efforts to your project’s bottom line metrics or desired business outcomes? What if you could align UX to your organizations primary mission statement? What if along the way you could also glean actionable insights that could be used for continuously evolving the design of your product, website, or application? Talk about maximizing your UX investments! There is a simple methodology for doing this. It really only requires that you commit to it and ensure the results are made available for the stakeholders and team members to make informed UX decisions.

STEP 1 – Decide What to Measure

A sound measurement strategy includes a mix of both qualitative and quantitative metrics. These metrics are gathered over time so that they aren’t presented as snapshots of a single point in time but presented as trends. (see examples below!)

The measurements or KPI’s (key performance indicators) can be derived from a variety of sources such as user research (usability testing, surveys, structured interviews, heuristic evaluations, card sorting, etc) and/or analytics (i.e. data from your Webtrends, Google Analytics, Coremetrics, etc), But again, since this is not only limited to measuring user interfaces and websites, also consider sales data, lead generation stats, social media metrics, etc…basically any user touchpoint that can be considered a measurement of a “desired outcome that aligns to a business goal.”

Marko Hurst has modeled an excellent approach for aligning business goals to desired UX outcomes.  In fact, he’s created a useful “Goals-to-Outcomes” worksheet that helps facilitate this. I’ve followed this approach with much success. It involves defining and mapping the following “Business Goals>User Goals>Tactics>Desired Outcomes.” This approach yields very focus and accurate results for defining specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for UX efforts.

When specifically measuring the performance of a user interface, the process involves designing a test that defines representational tasks users are most likely performing, and/or tasks that the business or client would desire them to be performing. The foundational set of metrics (with examples below showing trending) to measure the “usability” of a product or website are typically:

Success Rate – The number of participants that successfully completed a task

Time-on-Task – The average amount of time it took for participants to complete a task

# of Errors – The average number of times an error occurred, per participant, while performing a particular task

Motion Failure Rate -  I prefer to establish an ideal or “happy path” and compare the participants actual results against that. This is more specifically defined as the average amount of clicks, motions, or gestures (basically any deviations from a predefined “happy path” or process) that were errors. This is more insightful then the typical “# of Click” metric used by many UX practitioners. I emphasis this because high numbers in this area are not always a bad thing from a user perspective, as long as they are successfully following the most optimized path and achieving their goals.

Satisfaction - Measuring satisfaction is often overlooked, yet is very simple to measure, and extremely important in terms of UX. There are various methods available to gather this rating, but the one I most prefer is using a simple three (3) question post-task survey. The participant is asked to complete this immediately following each task being tested. It’s made up of three components (or questions) that gather user ratings for overall ease of use, satisfaction, and “perceived” amount of time. The three (3) ratings are then averaged to create a combined score.

When reporting our UX findings, I find it very useful to segment the behaviors and findings of the top most satisfied participants and comparing that to the bottom least satisfied.

Measuring “Usefulness”

In addition to establishing metrics that mainly measure “usability” consider inlcuding metrics that also measure “usefulness.” Jeff Sauro outline a straight-forward approach to consider for going beyond standard usability metrics in his blog titled “Measuring Usefulness” He mentions incorporating metrics that gather insights from users `that measure how useful this product is for accomplishing their goals. This is very important, since no matter how usable something is, if it’s not of any real value to the user…this is all a moot point!

Measuring Social Media

In regards to social media products and applications, this has brought whole new layer of things to measure such as amplification, awareness, conversation, engagement, reach, participation, etc. Before getting caught up in the fire hose of social media metrics, again, make sure you first established clear goals and desired outcomes. (As mentioned earlier using the “Goals to  Outcomes” worksheet.) Map these to your business bottom-line. What you truly need to measure will reveal itself.

I have found the following blog post from the well respected web analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, to be a great place to provide perspective on how you should approach measuring your Social Media efforts: Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value

But again, at the core of any UX research, always plan to talk with to your intended audience to gain insights on the user satisfaction, usability and usefulness of your current or planned social media experience.

STEP 2 – Design your measurement test approach – Make it repeatable

Once you have defined what needs to be measured, you will need to design your test protocol. Often times called a “moderators script” or “approach brief,” this maps out the details of what you will be measuring, the participants you plan to recruit, the activities and the tasks you will have them perform (user tests) as well as establishes the duration and pace of the study. One hour sessions are most ideal, but I’ve conducted successful 1/2 and 90 minute sessions with equal amounts of success depending on the context of the study. Always make sure you secure a well-versed moderator who can run a successful “structured” study. A lot is riding on the moderator being able to conduct these sessions properly…and still keep the participants focused and engaged.

Also, ensure your test approach can be repeatable! Your test approach can not be considered a one time testing effort. You should always be focused on establishing a measurement “strategy” as opposed to a measurement “snapshot.”

STEP 3 – Baseline the Current Experience

Start measuring now! Measure what you can now to start gathering intel on your current experience. If you are performing an redesign and seeking baseline metrics to later compare your post launch efforts, ensure what you measure now will be available to measure again in your newly redesigned experience.

STEP 4 – Measure the New Experience

After the launch of your product, follow up with the same study and data gathering methods you employed during the baseline exercise. Pay special attention to having you or your team recreate the baseline tests in the same manner as originally implemented. New questions, tasks, and data often times need to be added into the mix to account for new features that didn’t exist in the baselined design. If possible, and only if you can create a meaningful story, map this new information to previous measures. Otherwise, this new information has to be called out in your report as “newly acquired” and these new metrics will be used to define new baselines for future measurement efforts.

STEP 5 – Plan How You Will Visualize Your Data - Consider the story you’ll be telling over time

I’ll admit, I am terrible with numbers, but has not hindered the success I’ve had employing measurement strategies.  I’m a visual person, and this has helped more then I could imagine in this areas of UX and measurement. Executives have become numb to copious amounts of data. What actually provides meaning and drives change is the ability to share a story. Using metrics support a story and provides credibility.  Thoughtful visualizations maximizes the impact of the data.

Example: User Experience KPI Dashboard

So, at the early parts of any measurement efforts, it’s also wise to consider how this information will be visually represented. It’s a key part of how the story will be told. If I’m collecting tons of data that can’t be distilled down to simple visual representations, this is usually a key indicator that there isn’t a story here worth reporting on.

Finally when it comes to reporting, don’t plan to report your metrics as a single set. Different metrics serve the needs of different audiences. Executives need a very different scorecard than the UX team. Typically there are three types of scorecards: the strategic, the operational, and one with daily task-based reporting.

STEP 6 – Establish a Continuous Improvement Program

Use the learning from this initial cycle to tweak the process and refine it so you can repeat it on an established  regular basis (monthly, quarterly, per release, annually, etc) whatever is most feasibile for your website or application. Assign UX resources to manage this and report back findings and recommendations on a regular basis.

Why all this effort? User experience trends are constantly evolving. How will you ensure that your product, website or application is keeping up and providing the best experience? If you don’t design your approach to be a continuous process, all you are really doing is creating a measurement “snapshot” a one time view of your UX in a single point in time. Always think trends over time, that is were the real insights reveal themselves.

Example: User Experience Continuous Improvement Program

Too much to handle? – Then start with small tightly controlled experiments

If this is sounding very grandiose and requiring tons of effort, it doesn’t have to be. It can be very easy to start. If it’s not possible to fully dive in to an overall measurement strategy, It is highly recommended that you begin with small incremental “tightly controlled experiments” to get into the measurement mindset. Yo will be surprised how far you get with just a simple structured study, a few credible measurements, and a good story.

Again, Avinash Kaushik, provides valuable details on this topic in his blog post “Controlled Experiments – Measuring Incrementally“

The Final Measure:

When the C-Level folks gather at the table to talk business, they aren’t judging success and making decisions because “it just feels like we made an improvement” (or at least the smart ones!) No…they’re discussing important bottom-line metrics, and credible facts to base their decisions and future strategies on. It’s their language. UX needs to be part of that discussion. UX needs to distill their story that speaks that same language and also resonates at that level.

Having a solid UX measurement strategy in place gives UX the credibility to sit at the “big table” and be recognized as a core part of any business.

“The tactics of leadership are easy.  The art is the difficult part.

As User Experience (UX) teams are becoming more and more common within organizations, the UX profession is becoming more and more in need of strong and effective leadership at the helm to realize the full potential of their teams and to ensure that the UX vision and strategy is being embraced at the proper levels within the organization. This leadership could be in the form of a UX Manager, Senior UX Strategist, Executive Director, etc. whoever has the key responsibility for UX and the team(s) that support it.

Often times, great practitioners are pulled out of the ranks and placed into leadership roles solely based on the quality of their deliverables. Not having the right leadership skills and leadership mindset can greatly diminish the team’s standing within an organization. Not to mention, poor leadership skills will have disastrous results from a personnel morale perspective. The UX industry as a whole deserves the same focus on leadership principles and values that other industries and practices place on it. Effective leadership will be a key driver to ensuring UX realizes it’s fullest potential within all industries and has the attention it deserves to make better products, applications, and experiences. Besides, our audiences, end-users, customers, audiences, clients, etc are counting on us too!

I’ve been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to lead numerous UX and Creative Design teams as well been under the direction of some very influential leaders within the UX profession. I’ve found that it requires the proper skills and mindset that can properly and successfully lead a UX team. One that’s always keeping an open mind to new ways of doing things, while also knowing when to effectively draw from “old school” leadership wisdom. Of utmost importance, UX Leaders must be able to clearly articulate the UX story and be able to connect the dots back to how UX positively impacts the organization’s bottom line and/or business goals.  UX leaders must also be an attentive listener to their team. Leadership is a gift provided by those who follow you.

Below are a few observations from my own experiences that I have found to be essential to the role of a UX leader…

1. Help the overall organization realize the value of UX.  A UX leader must be the team’s biggest advocate. Just because an organization has a UX practice, doesn’t mean they know how to leverage it’s full potential. A strong UX leader will seek every opportunity to “tell the UX story” by sharing successes, case studies and making the right introductions for the team.
2. Start the UX conversation as early in the process as possible. Nothing is more frustrating and limiting to the value a UX designer brings to the table then arriving at a project “after the train has left the station” Effective UX leaders insert themselves into the appropriate conversations early in the process so that even before any design begins, the opportunity for preliminary UX lead research efforts can happen. This results in the UX team having less of a constant uphill battle throughout the duration of the project, which in-turn increase overall project success. It also, greatly reduces employee turn-over!
3. Establish success criteria. There needs to be solid articulation of the UX project goals and what will define success. This is best illustrated by defining Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help baseline the current design state and measure “post-launch” performance. UX teams and their clients will understand what to focus their efforts on and outside teams will see the impact the UX process (or lack of a process) has had on the project goals and the business bottom line. This is powerful stuff, yet very underutilized method for conveying the value of UX.
4. Provide the UX team with the know-how for navigating the political landscape.  For a “UX’er” within an organization, or even for a consultant, insights on what they should say and not to say to particular folks they’ll be working with is of ultimate value to any team member. UX leaders and their teams know the value of this type of guidance. Political faux paas are just as equally damaging to the team and the leaders reputation as a poor design presentation or deliverable.
5. Help the UX team articulate the value they provide in a manner that translates across the organization. UX team members are often immersed deep into their discipline. An effective UX leader knows how to direct the team member on what is the real point or message that needs to be made. Whether it’s a presentation, a UX story, a report, or face-to-face meeting with a difficult client. An effective UX leader knows how to cut to point with stories that resonate with the intended audience.
6. Attract and retain talent. The best UX leaders are most passionate about two stories: 1) why their organization is the best organization to be working for, and 2) what is the overall vision for the team. To attract talent, a UX leader should always be in scouting mode and have his/her stories in their back pocket. Leader can further extend this scouting responsibility by providing the proper tools for his/her own team to also seek out the right talent. (Allow employees time to participate or teach a related course, attend a professional networking events, etc)  To retain great talent comes down to two things, a clear vision and team trust. To endure through those tough days, team members need to clearly know their purpose and feel they are enabled to succeed within the organization on their own terms without having to validate every decision.
7. Be the team cheerleader. “People don’t leave a company, they leave their manager.” An effective UX leader must be engaged enough to keep a finger on the pulse of the team so he or she can proactively head off any negativity (at a team and/or an individual level). But more importantly, they must be well versed in the art of reminding each team member of their unique strengths and the value they provide. This goes a LONG way. Being appreciated is a key factor in employee satisfaction and long term dedication. In my experience, UX practitioners know how to handle complements better then any other professionals!
8. Remind the team when to stick to the process. When working with multidisciplinary teams on projects, there are always opportunities for other team members to challenge the UX process. “Do we really need to perform user research?” “does it really take that long?” “can’t we just skip wireframes and go directly from prototype to full-color comps?”…the list goes on. A strong leader knows when and why the UX team member should NOT back down from their proven process. The leader also provides the proper points to arm them with so the process does not get squashed.
9. Remind the team when it’s safe to drop the process.  UX professionals tend to be very passionate about their processes and methodologies, The best can clearly envision the perfect approach for a particular project. Sometimes, for reasons beyond the realm of control, that ideal approach may not be the right fit for the a particular project and/or business needs (I know, it’s hard to imagine!). A skillful and experienced leader can help the team make the right decisions on how to “gracefully scale down.” Some flexibility can always be found, but an effective leader will know how to limit the UX team’s exposure to risk and safely position the UX team to convey what the trade-offs will be to the larger team and their stakeholders on what they will be giving up by not following the ideal UX approach.
10. Remind the team why they entered this field in the first place. A great leader, in any profession, can always bring his/her team back to the reasons why they love what they do. Nothing makes a more powerful connection with people then this. Shared experiences, and passion can resonate in the toughest of times helping a team endure the most challenging situations, while at the same time, enabling teams to reach the highest levels of potential.

BONUS Principle: I recently read Seth Godin’s book Tribes. The one point he made the resonated the most with me was,

“The secret to leadership is simple:  Do what you believe in.”

Nothing will make your leadership abilities surface more naturally then this. Find what it is you believe in, and you will naturally lead others there. Hopefully what you believe in is UX!

There are many more principles out there. I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface. UX Leadership is an evolving process, and so is the process of learning it. I plan to document more principles as I come across them in future articles.

As a UX leader yourself, what makes a good UX leader great? As a UX practitioner, what leadership principles have you found to be most effective?