It's not about technology - it's about customers

Building a robust, dynamic lodgement solution requires many ingredients, the most important being the customer.

Often underestimated and underappreciated, user experience research is integral to the design process, and is Australia Post’s secret weapon in building new parcel sending solutions.

IT companies like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Intel, and IBM all have dedicated User Experience research arms to evaluate the user’s experience within their products. Why should Australia Post be any different? After all, how can we build a premium lodgement solution for customers, without knowing what they need or want?

Ask a designer, and they’ll tell you design is about solving problems. So when we’re not 100 percent sure what the problems are and what we can do to solve them, we need to take a closer look at the customer.

According to Sue Izmir, Senior UX Researcher, Lodgement and APIs, user experience research is about understanding the customer’s needs and problems and feeding that information into the design process.

User research requires time and empathy, otherwise it becomes extremely difficult to come up with a product that is desirable for users as well as feasible and viable for the business.

“Ideally, you want to talk to a wide range of customers before you even start building a solution, so you get a feel for the many different ways they work with you and any pain points and challenges they may have,” says Izmir.

 “Concentrating on business problems and technology solutions won’t always fulfil a customer need, no matter how much effort you put into it. This is because, we as service providers are often clouded by our own assumptions and biases and we need to take extra steps to guard against that.”

Solving problems holistically

Izmir says that we need to take a rounded view of any problem before we can solve it. This means incorporating all aspects of the ecosystem – key stakeholders, customers, users, business needs and constraints - in which a product is used or will be used.

“It starts with understanding who our customers and users are, collecting data, synthesising it and looking for behavioural user patterns to identify opportunities. These opportunities are turned into concepts and are refined to develop a solution – like Parcel Send – that eliminates as many of customer pain points as possible and give everyone a smoother experience and will be aligned with the business needs,” she adds.

Using the feedback loop

A core tenet of user research is that it doesn’t end when a solution is built. If anything, it gathers momentum in the ever-growing need to evolve and become better.

According to Izmir, in order to optimise or refine a product like Parcel Send, we need to be informed by our customers all the time.

“To perfect a product, we conduct user testing prior to release and then constantly gather feedback from customers as they use it in the day-to-day. Without their input, we can’t solve their problems and build a product that meets their needs,” says Izmir.

“Testing and feedback maximises our financial investment by validating feature ideas or design solutions prior to building them. This way, we can reduce risks very early in a product-development lifecycle – during the exploration phase, before a business has made any significant investment in a design solution.”

Originally published at auspost.com.au