The UX factor

I was on the plane last week and was reading a great article by Lillian Tong called The UX factor. The article was in the Virgin Inflight Magazine but the basic concept was about the way customer experience is changing and how those companies that seek to connect with customers and are designing customer experiences. As Tong explains the existance of over 6000 UX jobs on Indeed.com a global job site in a two week period shows that this new skill of creating customer journeys is now in high demand. I  did an interivew with Chris Risdon from Adaptive Path which has now been acquired by the USBank Capital One where he heads up the Design for Capital One Labs.

Listen to Chris explain how design has created compelling customer journey and a competitive advantage.

UX design now can be seen to deliver high returns, with Tom Gilb explaining it might be as much as $100 for every $2 spent!! So it seems that good design is really good business. We now interact with our mobiles every few minutes. We move seemlessly from the online to the offline world and we expect a holistic customer journey between these mediums. Service design or as I like to call it Strategic Service Design looks at the entire experience across devices and offline and shapes the company's core business model. Functionality, playfulness, engagement and delight are all elements that a company can influence with service design. To learn more go here.