First Experience Index annual report: the key in transforming our user experience culture
ENGIE Design Studio has published its first Experience Index annual report, a year and a half after the Experience Index launch. Hundreds of ENGIE digital projects were analyzed, revealing key learnings on where we stand today in terms of user experience (UX) maturity and how to improve our digital product performance.
Back to basics: it all starts with the end-users
What is the point of spending time and money on building a digital solution if it does not fix user pain points, nor generate sufficient value? None! This is where UX comes into play: it ensures that a solution is useful, efficient, user friendly and viable for the company. User Experience is a strong lever to improve our digital projects’ business efficiency.
It is now obvious that UX makes a decisive contribution to rapid product adoption. It also opens numerous opportunities for competitive advantage, customer engagement and loyalty, employee efficiency and comfort, and the optimization of our organizations and processes. UX is a powerful asset in improving your digital projects’ business efficiency and, in fine, the Group’s performance.
The Experience Index: measuring the user experience’s delivery in digital products across ENGIE
Where does your project stand in terms of user experience? This is the question behind the Experience Index launched in 2021 throughout all ENGIE’s project teams. The team self-assessment barometer was created by ENGIE Digital’s Design Studio to measure the user experience of digital products and services across ENGIE.
So, how does it work?
By answering a series of questions on key fundamentals, you get a score indicating how far along you are in your design journey. You then get a UX maturity level for your project, based on the understanding of, and responsiveness to your users’ needs, as well as how aligned your team is around these aspects. Four levels of maturity have been determined:
- Emerging: very low priority is given to UX, as projects are managed by tech and business KPI’s;
- Tactical: UX is integrated into the project’s lifecycle, but without vision or regularity;
- Mastered: UX strategy, standards, and processes are followed and fully integrated into the project life cycle;
- Vital: design is a strategic asset and part of the project’s DNA.
Based on your score, the Experience Index will give you personalized advice based on four key fundamentals: User Experience, Team, Methodology, and Leadership.
A first Experience Index Annual report to understand where ENGIE stands in terms of UX maturity
Our goal was to help ENGIE Digital’s product teams focus on user issues by designing this tool. Then we decided to make it available to all the digital projects in the Group. It’s an important step towards scaling UX practices and culture. Today, we get requests even from outside of ENGIE, and we are thinking about offering this tool to some external partners. It’s great! As a large industrial Group, our first annual report shares UX state of the art, but other organizations will also find their solutions to their issues here.
The results of 126 projects and services from 298 respondents working in four Global Business Units (GBU’s) across ENGIE’s main regions have been consolidated into the first Experience Index annual report. With an overall score at the “Tactical” level, the data analysis highlighted four major insights that will help us go further and push user experience as a real value provider to our projects.
1. The UX paradox
User experience and user data issues are well known by respondents, with 83% collecting users’ feedback. But 69% do not consider it as a high priority for their products! The UX paradox can be explained by the fact that we still trust traditional business and tech indicators for regular projects, yet they are not relevant enough to track user product perception. The challenge now is to update these metrics so that they can improve our products and our business efficiency.
2. It’s a match!
Sharing user feedback has increased by 20%. Our teams are bonding over user knowledge, but not at the same rhythm. In some of the most UX advanced projects, user insights are increasingly seen as a major issue for product or project development. This is a good point, but team expectations regarding user perspective remain vague, as team members do not know concretely how to exploit this, and what the designer’s role and actions are in this respect. When the intentions match, the next step is to get to know each other better!
3. Connecting the dots
Only 23% of respondents ignore whether UX principles are applied, meaning that design fundamentals are extensively shared. From now on, competitive advantage can only be achieved if these principles are put into practice and connected to tech and business issues. A great deal of information is available about users, product usage, and technical issues, etc. So, let us connect them with specific experience indicators.
4. Power up!
58% of respondents perceive and understand how design impacts product adoption. Next on the agenda is to help them realize that user experience is a business performance lever. Respondents have underlined the necessity to create a common UX strategy, with more synergies between business, design, and tech teams. A common vision and framework are key to clarifying management and team expectations in terms of the experience we deliver and the increased efficiency we can generate through user insights at all product life cycle stages.
How to go one step further: what is next?
Developing a UX approach implies an active engagement for the team and the business stakeholders. Here are some basic principles to focus on from the start:
- UX design is a rigorous, rational approach, so plan, budget, and organize UX phases in your product lifecycle. Structure how the team interacts with each other in this respect;
- Measure the UX impact on your business KPIs;
- Designate a user experience leader to share user data within the team regularly, and build together a sharing ritual or channel that fits with the team’s organization;
- Systematize advanced interactions with users by usability testing, feedback loops, and behavior analytics etc.
Wish to read the full report? Check it out here!
Be part of the next edition: assess or re-assess your project’s user centricity, receive your score, and get tailored recommendations that will allow you to go further and increase your design maturity! Get your score here (ENGIE account required, sorry!).
