With the changing dynamics of the business world, today, the user base and their expectations are evolving too. Keeping up with these expectations and delivering improved experiences is going to be a challenge. To develop innovative, efficient solutions that address the current business problems and enhance the user experience will require UX to be at the forefront.
In today’s time, remote UX is going to play a major role in meeting the customers’ expectations. There are certain misunderstandings formed about the ROI for remote UX and the impact it can generate, due to lesser awareness.
Though it has been proved through many success stories that, one can achieve thoughtfully designed, well-informed solutions even when working remotely as a UX design partner.
Remote UX is 100% possible.
It can deliver the same ROI and success one would achieve by engaging with a co-located UX partner.
Let’s understand the success mantra and the ROI of remote UX. An attempt to understand the parameters that are not compromised when practicing remote UX.
Diverse Talent
Wider participation by designers from varied locations adds diverse talent to the team. A diverse and talented team facilitates better collaboration. The effects of this can be seen in the increased quality of work delivered.
India has been hailed as the upcoming UX hub with potential for tremendous growth, in a recent report released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology with McKinsey & Company. The promising, untapped talent pool of Indian designers presents excellent opportunities for India’s place on the global UX map.
Efficient Stakeholder Management
Stakeholder interviews and design reviews in any other scenario take longer in terms of timelines and efforts. With remote UX, we have been presented an opportunity as managing the time of the decision-makers becomes simpler.
In the context of current pandemic and social distancing, most of the leaders though located globally, have stationed their workplaces in a single location. As they are not constantly on the run, travelling around the world – it becomes easier to manage meetings and interviews that include their active participation.
The format of the stakeholder interviews and workshops may differ a bit considering the human capacity to spend time consistently in front of the computer screens. When earlier discovery workshops may have taken up 3–5 hours in a day or so, now the structure of the remote workshops will be more concise and distributed through more time slots.
Cost Savings and Reduced Timelines
These are some of the obvious advantages of remote UX practices. People can collaborate and attend meetings digitally in lesser time. The to and fro commute of subjects for user testing is reduced.
Being able to attend face-to-face interactions demands not just the time of all the parties involved but also the feasibility to commute to a common place at the same time. Whereas, lack of commute creates more flexibility in the agreeable time slots.
In our experience, our teams have proved to work more efficiently on remote UX projects without affecting the impact they build through designs. With remote user research, a wider reach of users is another plus. It is also a cost-effective method. Multiple people can provide their review comments without commuting to a common location, at the same time.
Higher Productivity
In these work-from-home induced times, designers have started to utilize their time more efficiently. The rate of ad hoc meetings disrupting the scheduled day has reduced and work commitments have become much more streamlined. Most of the meetings happen as per the plans. Another contributor to the stakeholder management becoming less challenging.
These and many more advantages make the case for remote UX ROI and practices. Yet there is a lot of speculation that revolves around the possibility and impact generated through remote user research. Remote research and testing are techniques of eliciting and evaluating user behavior patterns.
YUJ Designs: Frontrunners of UX in India
At YUJ Designs, we have been working remotely for the last 10+ years. And successfully delivering high ROI for UX design. At the time when studios were dependent on face-to-face meetings and briefings, we were working remotely for clients all over the world on some of the most challenging projects.
And we were yielding the same impact and results. Over the years, we have conducted remote user research and testing for hundreds of users.We have clients across the United States, Europe, India, and APAC regions. Having worked on 100+ international accounts, the products we worked on have garnered an ROI for UX design between 2x to 5x.A majority of our clients range from Fortune 500 to Fortune 100 companies, software product companies, and many other organizations that understand the ROI of UX.
We have product managers, designers, and talented resources that are trained and equipped with handling remote UX practices well. We have successfully delivered remote UX projects in 22 different countries. Some of the extreme challenges we have faced include no access to users, a lack of uniformity in languages spoken at the client site. These difficulties can be overcome by adapting smarter methodologies, better collaboration and thinking out-of-the-box. There were instances when we relied on better digital collaboration and communication tools, better research methods, hiring translators in case of the language barriers, etc.
Our verdict is when it comes to remote UX, nothing is impossible.
Remote UX helps the design to be perceived as a process and not an after-thought or a one-time-effort to deliver customer delight. Every time a customer or user interacts with the product, it is the design of the product that matters most. The users experience the design and derive conclusions, make decisions and purchases. Design of a product matters the most to a user than any other aspect.
With clarity in the purpose and visibility of the project and its success path, remote UX will thrive. Through the right structure and processes remote UX can be beneficial to the business. In today’s time, more and more companies are taking efforts to digitally equip and transform their businesses. Remote UX will become the need of the companies transforming digitally.
The pandemic may have forced companies to look for remote UX practitioners. A hopeful future will be where businesses start embracing design as the crucial business differentiator.
Amplify your brand presence with the best UX design studio that truly aligns your needs with those of your consumers! Get in touch with us at YUJ Designs, today!
