Leeds-based agency Bolser on why user experience (UX) is key to shaping digital design projects – and how it works with its clients such as Football Foundation, Microsoft and KFC.
“Good UX is not just design, it’s deeper than that. You need to look at the bigger picture,” Dominic Howe, Client Services Director at Bolser, told Prolific North on the importance of UX.
Howe, who has worked at the agency for almost 20 years, works closely with clients by examining their needs and ambitions and how the agency can work to achieve them.
“Our mission statement has three pillars: championing the user, innovation and digital delivery,” he explained.
Within the user experience and design side of projects, he said the agency found that “championing the user and integrating digital innovation can really be well applied to UX”.
Hanneka Kilburn, Head of Design at the agency, oversees a team of five designers who are in charge of everything from design, pitch creative, concept work through the entire UX process from the beginning stages to its final execution.
“The way we see UX is that it involves the whole end-to-end digital journey, making a product that the users want to use, making it as simple and as easy and as effective as possible.
“It is not just about an interface, it’s about everything that goes with it. We look at it offline as well as online, how users interact with that product, is it easy for them to use, what kind of interactions are they doing,” she said.
Looking at the customer journey by “mapping out the user” and finding out who they are, then walking them through the process to find out how well they interact with a product is equally as important as the design, Dominic added.
“We have always been good at seeing things out in the wild. We will spend time with clients and actually understand their business and how people use their digital products and services,” he said.
From going into a restaurant to understand how the ordering process works, to figuring out if there are any customer issues or problems, it is all part of how the agency strives to understand the way a company works behind the scenes and ultimately, user behaviour.
“We come into it from an outsider’s perspective,” he said. “That is where we go back to the design team essentially, having that fresh pair of eyes to determine whatever problems exist in the digital space.”
