Experience design defined and why it puts the modern in modern public affairs
We all do it. We scan instead of read. We zone out after the third zoom meeting or virtual conference session. We lose focus if we do not immediately find what we are looking for.
We muddle through decisions, thoughts, and actions, even though there is ubiquitous information at our disposal to come to a near perfect conclusion.
As most experience designers do, I’ll quote Steve Krug, author of the ultimate user experience guide read by hundreds of thousands: “Don’t make me think.” Whether your key audience is policymakers, public health advocates, academics, c-suite executives, the press, or the public, they are inundated by information — accurate or not — on a daily basis.
And it is exhausting.
That is why it is imperative to optimize how audiences experience your messages and ideas, especially if you want them to do something at the end of it all. Experience design is a system for optimizing that interaction and enhancing satisfaction, creating a gateway for you to meet your audience – who are people underneath it all – where they are, drive relevancy and context, and establish deeper connections.
Experience design is more than wireframes, pretty visuals, and calls-to-action. It is a process and a mindset that separates what we think audiences want from what they actually need.
To ensure you are creating powerful experiences for your audiences, the brand, message, or campaign must be:
- Useful
- Usable
- Findable
- Credible
- Desirable
- Accessible
- Valuable
(I will dig into each of those in future posts.)
At the root of this mindset and methodology is unveiling audiences’ underlying motivations around, impressions of, and expectations toward a brand, message, or campaign to not only measure and understand their affinity toward your chosen messaging, but also to design ideal delivery mechanisms for those messages to reach and engage different audiences.
A user- and audience-oriented mindset is often missing from public affairs campaigns. Achieving each of the experience design tenants takes not only a concerted effort, but also balance and most importantly, audience-based insights and input.
Signal’s three-phase Experience Design Methodology minimizes assumptions to unveil the real problem, ascertains tangible solutions to create effective delivery mechanisms, and verifies that what works in theory also works in the real world.
To learn more about how Signal can help you design powerful experiences for your audiences, reach out to our experts at awillard@signaldc.com.