Don’t Call Me an Expert

I’m a problem solver and I’m endlessly fascinated by learning about what other people do and how they do it. Like in the Matrix when Neo starts to see objects as code? Well I see an organisation and the people it serves as a bunch of physical, social, and psychological experiences.

These experiences in the digital age are so crossed up and intertwined that existential debates about where a traditional ad agency ends and a digital marketing team begins, or who’s responsible for deconstructing which business goals into what kind of mar-comm strategies and tactics just seem to miss the point entirely.

It’s about the user, stupid   🙂

I’m big on relationships. Not just interpersonal (though that’s a given), but the relationship between what someone who wants to buy from you feels in the moment of being aware of a pain (but unaware of what to seek out for a solution), and what you as a business owner, or marketing stakeholder have to do in order to get in front of that person. It’s hard and it’s complicated and the blurring of lines between IT, Marketing and Communications doesn’t help.

That’s why you need someone outside your organisation to help you. I represent the interests of your customer and if what you do doesn’t meet my needs – I don’t care how flashy or clever the ad or offer is, you’ve already lost me and I’ll tell you as much by constantly bringing you back to evidence-based, human-centric factors that affect my willingness to click, commit, convert and continue as an asset to your operations.

When centering business strategy around experiences, perspective is everything. While you’ve been working hard to “get your message out there”, and you’ve paid plenty of consultants and creatives to help you “target” your market – you’ve yet to fully take advantage of an end-to-end planning process that architects your systems, assets, interfaces, and content around fulfilling the needs of your users – your tribe.

JK : UX is founded on the principle that good user-experience relationships start with an understanding of:

1. Your high level goals driving you as an organisation. Why do you exist? It’s not about making money – that’s an effect caused by doing what you do. WHY do you do it?
2. What the tasks and needs your users, buyers, customers, clients (let’s just say it- HUMANS) have.
3. How you create strategies to solve for them across physical, digital, time and campaign spans.
4. How you link it all together in a way that produces actionable business intelligence according to HOW you run your business.

I say i’m not an expert because doing this well requires a working knowledge of a dozen domain areas that are in constant flux. Experts preach. They tell you stuff like “You should buy Facebook ads” or “You should really be using an open source CMS”. And they often lack the humility to say “I don’t know”.

So instead: I practice. 

I practice user experience analysis, and information architecture planning at the same time. I think of classic marketing channels theory while noodling on an emotive path to purchase and buyer journey mapping. I contemplate your brand and value propositions alongside emerging user interface and usability best practices. I pay tribute to overpriced, under-used strategic plans by giving you a road map and analytics plan for “what’s next”.

And I generally like to do it over coffee. Want to get started?