I also see the recent challenges as an incredible opportunity for user experience (UX) professionals, from research and analysis to interaction, information and interface design. The very tenets of UX–focusing on people, synthesising multifaceted needs (e.g. customers, frontline employees, management, shareholders), improving each interaction with the system/process, guaranteeing accessibility (including keeping cost of entry low) and establishing trust between all parties–aim to foster “equity, fairness, sustainability, and stewardship”.

However, I also see a need for our practice to take it up a notch when it comes to delivering the goods. Definitions, goals and tenets all help define an industry and provide clarity in approach, but it’s the results that make or break us. As much as customers seek a more social-oriented, e-commerce platform or as employees seek a more accessible and useful intranet, it’s the stakeholders on the other side that we need to satisfy. We need to put our money where are mouths–and minds and hearts–are. The business world will then begin to internalise and institutionalise UX values.

This means understanding which research techniques will provide the best set of data; keeping our findings objective; providing figures/measurements that support our inferences; involving the business in the design process; and most of all, delivering real value (increase in revenue, decrease in costs, acquisition of new customers, retention of existing customers). If our approach is true, the results will follow.

I’m not implying that most of us in the UX industry are snake oil salesmen, but I have certainly come across some amazing examples of voodoo and wand-waving in proposals and executive presentations. It’s almost as if the people we rely on throughout the process are also the ones we try to alienate. As the finance industry has recently learned (just Google “john stewart jim cramer interview”), an elitist, hands-off approach (”Don’t worry boys, leave the number-crunching and projections to us”) can come back and bite you where it hurts.

I believe our call is to “deliver real, significant, solutions” to both users of a system and those financing it. However, our leadership and value in the business world and public sectors won’t be demonstrated and substantiated until we deliver real, financial gains.