User Experience, often referred to as UX, is a hot field right now in the design and tech world. User experience principles, which are tailored to improve the human experience, can be applied to the workplace.
So let's get our feet wet and talk about this idea of designing experiences in order to improve employee engagement.
What is UX?
First, let's define UX in a way that's easy to understand. User experience experts focus on the human side of the products and systems we use every day. Whether it's a physical object, an application, an event, or an environment, people have an experience whenever they interact with it.
That experience can be quite good — or quite bad. It's the job of UX experts to continuously improve that experience! It's as simple as that.
UX Research and UX Design Basics
UX research and UX design are the most common areas of expertise in the field. UX researchers look deeply into the needs of businesses and customers (also called users) in order to determine how to best meet everyone's needs.
They test out potential solutions and methodically gather data that informs design decisions. UX designers apply this research in order to create better products and experiences for users.
Once designers create a new and supposedly better version of a product, researchers test it out. This cycle continues as long as it needs to . Each time, the product — and thus the user experience — improves.
Together, UX researchers and UX designers follow a methodical process that results in better products — and thus better experiences for everyone.
Applying UX to the Workplace
Just as UX experts can problem solve physical products, they can problem solve events, systems, and experiences. This means that UX experts are in a position to research, test, and design new solutions to improve the workplace experience for business owners and users alike. In this case, the users are the employees and the stakeholders.
Perhaps this seems like an unusual application for UX, but it's not much different from testing out and problem solving a product. In essence, anything that has been designed — anything that has structure and culture — can be improved via the UX process.
A Basic UX Process for the Workplace
UX is a deep topic, but there are a few practices you can adopt that will improve your business. Alternatively, you can hire an expert UX or organizational development team to tackle your business as a design challenge.
Bottom line, it's important to understand that workplace culture is a product in itself — and it is a product that can always be improved!
Sure, you can let things happen organically rather than designing better experiences for your employees and customers intentionally, but that's a risky way to do things. Such an approach can quickly lead to blind spots and business failure.
Bottom Line: UX Improves the Employee Experience
If you want to keep your employees engaged and decrease turnover rates, find out what their hopes are. Find out how you could improve their experience. From C-level executives down to the janitorial staff, everyone plays an important role in keeping a business up-and-running successfully.
Take a good and curious look at everyone who makes everything possible at every level — and do your best to provide better experiences and better solutions for everyone across the board.
At MeetingPulse, we believe in thoughtful leadership, healthy workplace communication, positive employee experiences, and constant improvement of corporate culture.
We provide easy-to-use interactive live feedback tools that support healthy communication for employees and administration alike.
If you want to know more about your employees' thoughts and preferences so that you can design a better workplace experience, consider trying the trial version of our browser-based audience response system.
We provide real-time survey and polling software for any device, so users never need to download an app.
Contact us for more information about our audience response system or click on "Keep Me Posted" on our blog page to receive blog updates and our free ebook.