Each design is a proposed business solution which is essentially is a hypothesis. Any design process — as strives to get the answer or solution to a fundamental problem — essentially starts with the problem in mind and some assumptions in mind, which is mostly a hypothesis. And to solve the problem, with the assumed hypothesis or the business value in mind, the designer iterates and if he uses User-Centered Development (UCD) approaches, he would go into the cycle of Think – Make – Test cycle. And this implicit way of solving the issue creatively uses references to different aspects of business, namely :
- The complete business offering
- Customer orientation and service innovation for customer relationship
- Business Infrastructure
- Revenue Streams
- Productivity and Cost control structures
As DesOps principles and practices have Hypothesis Driven Design & Development (HDD) and UCD process as its core components, it also refers to the same business value propositions. Implementing DesOps actually takes these into consideration and tries to use technology to improve the process around these.
If we refer to any standard business model frameworks such as Business Model Canvas, a template that is popularly used for developing and investigating every important aspect of the organization. The framework in such a template outlines investigations for areas such as key partners, key activities, key resources, value propositions, customer relationship, channels, customer services, cost structure and revenue streams, which always helps to understand and identify the core goals, strengths and priorities of the business that provides the context in which the UX has to be seen. This can be seen in the following equation: “Customer needs + Business context +Technological feasibility = Successful UX making the successful product”.
In a business model, we refer to UX when we plan a strategy for “Value Proposition”. In the typical Business model Canvas, value proposition involves areas like the following, which can be seen traced back to DesOps principles & practices.
- Newness: In DesOps, this is associated with “Continous Discovery” and “Design Thinking” practices.
- Performance: Improving performance by optimizing the process blocks through Agile & Lean methodologies through the implementation of automation through service design approach.
- Customization: DesOps implementation focuses on customizing the process blocks through service design approach and defining business process redesign/engineering.
- “Getting the Job Done”: This is fundamentally the result oriented approaches taken in DesOps which touches upon different aspects like roles, cohesive team play, removing wastage through Lean methodologies and the similar.
- Design: This is core to DesOps, and is seen as the creative problem-solving.
- Brand/ Status: Brand and Status is well associated with the feedback loops that include the real users in context and feeding the design process with continuous feedback including brand perception and related mental model of the user of the target segment.
- Price: Though purely a market associated component, the price can be dramatically reduced through implementation of DesOps, as it focuses on reducing waste and improving efficiency through automation and process improvements
- Cost Reduction: It is one of the fundamental components of ROI on DesOps in an organization. DesOps helps reducing cost through service design approach to optimize and redefine business process.
- Risk Reduction: DesOps helps reducing ambiguity by the implementation of optimized process and automation powered by the feedback loop that touches all the roles and the aspects be it human or machine in context. This improves reliability and thereby reduces risk.
- Accessibility: Through the implementation of Design Thinking, UCD model like contextual and participatory designs and continuous feedback loop, DesOps helps to ensure the accessibility factors are in consideration while iterating over a design.
- Convenience/ Usability: Through its advocacy of UCD models and Design Thinking and integrated feedback loop, DesOps help in ensuring usability aspects in all design delivered.
From a product manager’s standpoint, the successful UX meant for a business must balance between the needs of the users and the feasibility of implementation of the UX solution within the business context, and all the practices and principles of DesOps converge towards this.
(c) 2018, Samir Dash. All rights reserved.