Services – David J Gilmore

Engagements / Projects

My services generally fall into one of three categories –

Creating Authentic Conversations
Prototyping Experiences &
Strategic UX.

An engagement can be as short as a few hours or as long as many weeks spread over a year or more – though I am always open to surprises and different ideas.

Creating Authentic Conversations

– meeting with and talking to customers and users in order to better understand the experience they currently have and would ideally like to have

Everyone is talking to their users and customers – and usually at considerable expense. And sometimes qualitative and quantitative teams collaborate and sometimes they seem to be more competitive.

The key question is whether you are you getting what you need from your user and customer engagements?

Are you gaining powerful insights?
Are you being surprised by what you learn?
Can you do something valuable with those learnings?

Maybe less obviously, but equally importantly you should also be asking if your users and customers are getting value for the time they spend talking to you.

Are they gaining a better appreciation of your (potential) value to them?
Do they see the outcomes of your conversations in your new product launches?
Do you know who (and how often) your users and customers are being approached for insights?

Other important questions are whether you are varying your methods enough, or whether you’re talking to the right people (best existing customers perhaps, rather than best future customers)? And if you are using their input to make design decisions, do you have any processes for validating the authenticity of the data your users are giving you?

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Getting Authenticity and Spontaneity

In customer and user interactions two critical goals are the spontaneity and authenticity of their responses and yet surprisingly few such interactions achieve them. Are you hearing authentic responses? Or are you hearing what your customers and users want you to hear, or what they think you want to hear? Do you know which of those responses were made spontaneously and which were prompted? People find imagining new products (and services) very hard and gaining authentic responses requires careful planning and execution.

Designing customer / user encounters to uncover new knowledge

Do you feel that you are learning what you need to when you meet users, customers and other decision makers (stakeholders)? Are you convinced of the need to get closer to your customers and users, but unsure of the most productive way to go about it?

Best practice in discussing concepts with users and customers

How can one ensure that time spent talking to customers and users is used effectively? How can one ensure that everyone leaves the sessions feeling that they have had new insights and have come to new understandings about the possibilities ahead?

Prototyping Experiences

– ensuring that you are getting full value out of your designers and that they are fully heard and committed members of the development team.

Are your designers kept very busy designing screen layouts, icons, design systems and other aspects of the user interface of your product? Is the user interface being driven by the features and functions of the product, or by a vision of the eventual experience?

Do your designers have time to explore the possible resultant user experiences? Can they provide input in the design of those experiences?

It isn’t uncommon for designers to be continually busy and yet also be continually frustrated at not being able to design the experience they would like to design for users.

It also isn’t uncommon for designers to be so busy on the user interface that they can’t engage in understanding the user needs, or translating those needs into product and experience concepts.

Do your designers feel engaged in the prototyping and evaluation of product experience concepts, as opposed to the building and evaluation of finished user interfaces?

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A Review of Prototyping Process and Content

Sometimes a team needs an independent, external review of prototypes, and designs, and progress. And sometimes they just need an external voice to talk things over with. What purpose do prototypes serve in your UX and UI design process and are they aligned with strategic goals? Are these prototypes being developed rough, rapid and right?

Experience prototyping and early concept research

Prototyping is often misunderstood as an early development activity, with the goal if de-risking various engineering paths. Often, the most valuable prototypes are experience prototypes that communicate the idea of a concept experience before significant engineering effort has been invested. These experience prototypes serve to enable colleagues, customers and users to better imagine the ideas you are exploring and, thereby, to engage in discussion and idea generation about what exactly they should be.

Designing the UX team experience

Do you have a highly experienced and skilled UX team? And are they changing the user experience for your users and customers as effectively as they might? UX teams almost always suffer from a tension between the need to understand the bigger picture and the urgency of generating collateral and resources for a looming product release – we need to find ways to use that tension creatively and positively, instead of allowing it to create stress and paralysis.

Strategic UX or UX Strategy?

– identifying which innovation (idea) to focus on, and how to turn a promising idea into a fleshed out experience and product proposal.

Do you take the time to consider the experience you might be creating before you rush into product and user interface design? Are you even sure which users you are designing the experience for? And what about your users whom you are not designing the experience for?

This is especially problematic in large, complex systems (for example, healthcare) but it also applies in the realm of automation, where your product depends upon other people and other products and also other people will be affected by your product.

The best example of this challenge is the ‘self-driving’ car, where it rapidly becomes clear that it isn’t obvious whose user experience we might be designing … there is no driver; who is the owner? what is the passenger experience? And what other products and experiences are key to making that passenger experience a success?

The UX of Algorithms and AI

If your product is an algorithm, or a piece of AI, then it may seem to have little or no user interface. But there is still a user experience to be designed – how does an algorithm with no user interface of its own deliver an appropriate and branded user experience?

Strategic UX for Complex (Socio-Technical) Systems

In healthcare and heavy industry (and much of light industry and commerce) little productive work gets done through the use of single product (or tool) by a single person. And in many sectors there are other individuals (and technologies) that may be as, or more, important than your tools and products. In these contexts the need for a crisp, well-defined Strategic Framework for UX is vital.

The bigger picture – what is Strategic UX and why does it matter?

The design space for good user experience design is infinite. Trying to design a screen, or user interface without an agreed understanding of the bigger picture can be very frustrating, inefficient and unproductive. Strategic UX is about knowing where your design energies should be directed for maximum impact – which people are you designing for; which products and interfaces are most important; and what non-UI constraints have to be considered?