ITEC 4501 Web and Mobile User Experience Design

Customer experience maps take some work to construct. Small companies and beginners in the web and mobile field usually allocate a small budget to UX design, which drives UX designers to cut down on activities.

For this discussion, imagine you are part of a project involving the creation of a brand-new site for a retail store that sells power tools. You have a limited budget, so some activities have to be eliminated. Describe your decision, along with an explanation, on whether or not to construct a customer experience map as part of your UCD process.

Due to the limited budget, some UX activities have to be eliminated to reduce costs. Some of the activities eliminated include QA testing, business strategy prototype, competitive audit, and value proposition. While these activities are an integral part of the UCD process, they may increase costs of the project which is constrained by the budget allocated. An emphasis has to be placed on designing on key UX activities which significantly influence the quality of the end deliverable. The activities that have to be considered include user research, Testing UI design, Usability Testing, Consumer Journey Map, Service Blueprint, and business strategy prototype. These activities are critical factors that influence customer experience when using a site.

Customer experience map has to be created to understand how customer interact with the site (Johnston, 2011). Even with a limited budget, it is essential to develop this map gain an insight into how customers should be handled. The map is an important component of the UCD process which describes how the customer experience can be realized across all channels. With this map, the stakeholders involved in the project can better understand the experience from the perspective of target customers (Richardson, 2010). Thus, as a stakeholder in the project, I would construct the journey map including all the key components such as personas, timeline, emotion, channels, a moment of truth, etc. This would appropriate in understanding how the customers want to be spoken to, what are they thinking, acting, etc. Additionally, the journey map would help the stakeholders to explore answers to questions that arise during research and UI design (Teixeira, 2012).

References

Johnston, R., & Kong, X. (2011). The customer experience: a road-map for improvement. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 21(1), 5-24.

Richardson, A. (2010). Using customer journey maps to improve customer experience. Harvard Business Review, 15(1).

Teixeira, J., Patrício, L., Nunes, N. J., Nóbrega, L., Fisk, R. P., & Constantine, L. (2012). Customer experience modeling: from customer experience to service design. Journal of Service Management, 23(3), 362-376.