Validate ideas again and again to design improved user experiences

Master idea validation through user research and design thinking.

In brief:

• Whether you’re creating a new solution or designing a new operating model: putting humans at the centre of the process leads to better results.
• Using research and design thinking helps teams master idea validation and make designs speak directly to specific user needs and preferences.
• Investing in these processes now can improve outcomes and create possibilities.

Teams. Organizations. Websites. Programs. Models. Everything works better when designed with the end user in mind.

Focusing on a series of human factors can increase the probability of business transformation success to more than 70%. What’s more, organizations that put people at the centre of transformation efforts are 2.6 times more likely to succeed than those that don’t. Still, tapping into that potential requires a deliberate plan — one that starts by mastering idea validation through user research and design thinking. That’s the first step.

Anyone who’s worked on large-scale programs or change initiatives knows: the bigger the project, the greater the number of voices around the table. That diversity of thought is a good thing. It can be a powerful force to shape new solutions, whether you’re developing an app or reimagining how an entire organization works. But as the number of stakeholders grows, so do the risks of misaligning your end product to the views of the people in the room instead of the end users who will ultimately engage with whatever you’re creating.

The kind of user-centric methodologies we use at the EY Design Studio can help teams overcome that hurdle and laser-focus on the people who matter most. Mastering idea validation and user research using this intentional process can help surface invaluable insights about end users, harness these findings to guide ideation and validate your concepts with precision, empathy and innovation. Doing so also provides a data-backed business case to bring even the toughest stakeholder on board for trying a different approach or setting assumptions aside. That’s always a good thing.

So what’s it all about? Design thinking is a process by which users research, gather facts, identify personas, consult subject matter professionals and brainstorm to generate a great number of ideas. From these ideas, the best are turned into prototypes and rapidly tested to see which work best with your users — and how best to refine them. In EY Design Studio, it’s our key means of rallying disparate groups to a common cause and compelling purpose, putting end users at the heart of the design process to generate better results. How?

Consider public policy development. It requires iterative analysis and evaluation — time-consuming steps that can stall momentum. Over the course of a project with a Canadian health services agency, EY  teams spotted an opportunity to embrace agile policy development as a means of catalyzing change.

We know citizens have come to expect public services to mirror the easy and seamless digital experiences they encounter across the private sector. In fact, EY research shows nearly one-third of people in Canada and around the world consider increased digital technologies in the provision of public services as one of the top three ways governments can improve service quality overall. This includes those living in the province where our project was based, who we realized could benefit from a digital front door to health care and other services. We could see how harnessing digital could go beyond empowering citizens with greater ownership of their own health to actually foster preventative health care and improve outcomes. But moving in that direction would require the province’s public service to first adopt a new approach to policy development and a different way of working. Enter the need for design thinking.

In this case, our end users were the public servants themselves. We needed to build a new internal model that would enable them to develop policy much more quickly, ultimately allowing them to effectively address opportunities like the digitization of health services.

Using design thinking, we dug deep to understand these end users and their daily reality. To create new alignment between policy, technology and operations, we brought together ministries, stakeholders and decision-makers with varying mandates and goals. We built consensus around a North Star, effectively laying the groundwork for a reimagined, human-centred digital app solution to deploy preventative health services at scale.

By designing this new working model, we achieved unprecedented progress in just four months. Newfound cross-ministry collaboration unleashed remarkable progress. Frequent communication allowed everyone to work iteratively and drive results quickly. Testing artifacts helped us gain rapid insight into user expectations, validating ideas and decisions along the way.

As a studio team, we became directional fact-keepers. By the time we’d gathered and tested the facts for this user group, we were certain that moving in this direction of a digital front door was the right next step. We got there by rigorously putting people at the heart of design thinking. 

You can, too.

1. Know your users. Using a mix of exploratory and strategic research enables you to learn what your primary user groups really need. While exploratory research focuses on understanding user context, experiences, needs and pain points, strategic research focuses on discovering expectations, unmet needs and, most important, uncover new opportunities and course-correct design.

2. Define terms. Clear language and definitions at the front end can help everyone communicate and iterate better throughout the design thinking process.

3. Determine tradeoffs. You can’t design to cover every use case. Operating efficiently requires you to prioritize and isolate user journeys that must be defined, developed, iterated and translated into service blueprints. Building them requires a lot of work for all parties involved, so make sure to choose carefully.

4. Share insights. Make everyone part of the research team. Be transparent. Whether you’re journey-mapping or prototyping, share insights continuously so you’re always working off the most accurate and up-to-date information.

5. Combine data. User experience is defined by so many different factors. Combining data sets — from behavioural to demographic and everything in between — helps you get the fullest possible view of your end user.

6. Be accessible. Some projects run well online. Others need in-person connectivity. Think about how you can be inclusive in terms of working styles, preferences, capabilities and exceptionalities to position everyone on your team to succeed.

7. Assume nothing. This means testing, testing and more testing. Research isn’t something you only do at the beginning of a project. It must be an ongoing activity, used to continuously explore, design and validate user needs and solutions. Focus on testing hypotheses, service blueprints, prototypes and proof-of-concepts, both with end users and internal experts.

What’s the bottom line?

Putting humans at the centre of design generates better outcomes. To do that, teams must first master idea validation through user research and design thinking.