Personalizing The Right Way

Human-centered design or user-centered design puts focus on the people who are going to use the app or end product. And as such, it has to go one step beyond being useful, intuitive and engaging and deliver real-value personalization.

Many designs promise personalization through more personal and “human” experiences across moments, channels, and buying stages. But as a relatively new subset of human-centered design, personalizing the right way is still a bit challenging to grasp.

We tend to think of design as a highly-skilled technical process that happens behind closed doors. But the truth it — it needs to happen outside if we want the product we’re designing to be used by real people. We already know the importance of empathy for creating a rich and rewarding experience for the end user to drive service and product participation. Now, the design process is evolving to better understand and make sense of people’s needs, not just data, as a vital component of human-centered design.

As applications are serving human beings through virtual means and for offering the services to the customers in a human way, consumers look for personalized interactions now, more than ever. Designers need to employ data-driven storytelling, and take the omnichannel approach. It further helps in treating the customers humanely and creating individualized experiences.

The next-gen customers expect to be dealt in a personal way where they know what they want, the channels to communicate with, and the ways to be interacted with, and it’s up to developers to deliver.

The power of personalization

Typically, designers approach inclusive design by considering a wide range of people. Personalization, however, narrows the focus to one group of people of a type of person so you can dive deeper into their specific needs, and achieve more in a shorter period of time.

For new product development, personalization starts with finding real people who resemble target users. Hypothetical “users” won’t cut it, and statistical data about demographics and purchases — while helpful in understanding the market at large — is simply too vague.

Assumptions will mislead you. You must talk with real people. People who are using related products or doing the work your product is intended to serve.

Once you find those people, you need to ask the right questions. Gathering as much information as possible about both the positive and negative aspects of their experience will allow you to make better development decisions. You need to consider:

• Are there any people being excluded from our product, experience, or service? If there are, how can we include them in the design process?
• What information, features, or tools would they find the most valuable?
• What quick way or ways can we make it real for them to learn?

By asking these questions and involving those people who are typically excluded in the process, you will be able to go deeper by focusing on their journey first. The benefits of this approach are several.

First, you have the ability to generate emotionally-compelling ideas sooner because you’re spending energy ideating and prototyping with one person type vs. many people. Second, you gain the ability to arrive at unique and actionable insights faster because you are experiencing the nuances of only one journey vs. what’s generally shared across many.

There is another component to the personalization process and that is the commitment to agile management. This includes the use of cross-functional teams dedicated to specific customer segments or journeys with the ability to execute rapidly. Performance measurement must evolve similarly and become more focused on testing velocity, success rates, and creative boldness.

When you personalize your app or product, you need to be able to do more than simply demonstrating the needed expertise. Collaborating and integrating information with colleagues from across the organization, in IT, analytics, product development, and legal will be key to professional advancement. Only by looking at the consumer’s journey from all possible angles can you guarantee a true, personal experience.

Developing apps and products with personalization capability is a journey to get to the full suite of capabilities needed for true dynamic personalization. Experienced designers know when and how to leverage the right tools throughout the human-centered design process to deliver working models: always-on, real-time, one-to-one communication across the consumer ecosystem.

The most important thing is that apps and digital products are nothing without customers. For stepping in with modern customers, personalization has become a prime focus designers who want their app to resonates with the target customer’s goal, behavior, and preferences. Only then do you have a massive hit.

At Mind Katalyst we build custom apps across different platforms and emerging technology including iOS, Android, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Wearables and IoT. We help organizations and entrepreneurs build their minimal viable products (MVP’s), iterate to product-market fit, or scale big.

By bringing to the table top tech talent in iOS, Android and backend development, the Mind Katalyst team is motivated by a deep appreciation for building meaningful, relevant and functional apps.

For more on how Mind Katalyst can help you scale your technology products, contact us for more details.

Carnellia Ajasin CEO of Mind Katalyst, is passionate about inventing new technology products in the emerging technology space that are meaningful and relevant. She works with ambitious organizations and businesses on the strategic application of innovation, creativity and emerging technologies to create competitive advantage, transformative impact and growth in business and society.