How UX Design Principles Can Help HR Launch New Tools And Services
UX is For Everyone, Not Just Techies: User Experience design isn't limited to tech experts; it's about understanding human behavior, making it accessible for anyone interested in improving experiences.
UX Principles in Everyday Life: UX principles extend far beyond product launches, applying to webinars and social media, demonstrating their relevance in diverse situations to enhance user engagement.
Humans First, Machines Second: Focusing on psychology over technology highlights the importance of human-centered design, emphasizing the need for a deeper understanding of users in all aspects.
If you are anything like me and are more interested in humans than machines, you might have thought that User Experience (UX) design requires a computer science degree and mad coding skills.
We talk about UX all the time when launching new features and products, but we also use the UX language and principles when running a webinar, creating social media content, and thinking about an internal team-building activity.
UX principles permeate everything we do, and I have been completely immersed and fascinated by how these seemingly technical things have less to do with technology and more to do with the psychology of humans.
Where better to apply UX principles than in the functional area, whose sole purpose is to enable humans to do their best work and have fun doing it?
What Is UX?
User Experience (UX) “refers to the feeling users experience when using a product, application, system, or service”. UX has traditionally been focused on software products and how their intended users interact with them. However, the mentality of a UX designer — understanding the customer deeply and creating products that people want to use, vs what we think they should use — is helpful for people and culture leaders.
Most often, UX is prevalent in designing software products when the user is removed from the product provider and is experiencing and using their product on their own.
As part of that, UX designers focus on everything from participating in customer interviews to understanding customer pain points, designing product mockups, coding them, and measuring the performance of the product features.
Why Is UX Important In People & Culture?
People & Culture leaders are continuously tasked with developing new ways to do existing things (manage payroll, benefits & vacation policy) and creative ways to do new things (launch recognition programs, help their teams connect, drive employee engagement, etc).
As such, People and Culture leaders and their teams are constantly launching new products and services for their internal customers - the company’s employees. A UX mindset helps design those tools and processes in a way that makes them accessible, simple, and enjoyable for employees to use.
How To Apply UX Design Principles To HR Tools And Process
There are many UX design principles that UX designers refer to when doing their work. A few of them are relevant when designing services and can easily be transferred to designing HR tools & processes.
Who is this for?
The premise of this principle is that before coming up with any solutions, one should understand the user completely, including:
- Their story
- Pain points
- Emotions and thoughts around them
- How they will benefit from the solution, and
- How they intend to use it.
Creating a tool or process users will love is impossible if you don’t understand them completely.
Once you have a clear picture of the users and their stories (through customer interviews and observation, for example), you can go to the drawing board and start thinking about ways to solve the problem.
Applied to HR
At HeyTaco, people will often come to us saying they want to launch a recognition program because people have expressed in the employee engagement survey that they don’t feel appreciated by their teammates and management.
The HR team, wanting to solve the problem, goes straight to exploring different recognition & rewards platforms without even having a conversation with their internal customers, the employees, about what makes them feel appreciated and what is currently missing.
Without diving deeper into the employee feedback and understanding not just one person but the variety of customer personas you have on the team, the recognition program, in this case, is doomed to fail and create an experience no one engages with.
Don’t make me think
The harder we make a choice for our users, the less likely they are to choose and the more likely they are to give up. The focus of this principle is to make decisions easier for users in order to increase the probability that they will complete a task.
According to Marvel, three things increase cognitive load: too many choices, too much thought required to make a choice, and lack of clarity.
For example, next time you are picking a dinner spot with your friends, recommend two very good options highlighting the best thing on their menu, instead of five very vague options. I bet the whole group will reach a decision a lot faster.
Applied to HR
Providing 20 options for healthcare benefits sounds amazing, but it can make a new hire’s head spin. Help people decide which plan is right for them by asking them a few questions, and then sending over the 3 choices you’d recommend based on their situation.
Usability: the ROI of effort
Usability measures how easy something is to use. You can measure usability in a few different ways:
- Can people complete a task?
- How long does it take them to complete it?
- Can they remember how to complete the task even after a longer period of time has passed?
- Did they find the experience of completing the task pleasant?
Paying attention to these criteria when designing a new service or launching a new internal tool can help you create user experiences your employees will love, even when it comes to a relatively boring task like downloading their W2.
Applied to HR
For example, when creating new manager training, think about how to increase the training’s usability as measured by the above criteria. Don’t write long manuals and training guides that you plan to deliver to managers, and hope they read them.
Instead, think about the task you want new managers to complete, and how to make it easy and enjoyable for them to complete it. You might find that creating bite-sized pieces of information and content, and sending it to managers once a week for the first few months in their role might drive the training’s usability up and in turn, increase the performance of managers in the role.
Know the context
This principle is all about knowing how, when, and why your customers will use the tool/service you have created. It is not enough to solve a problem with a tool. If you can understand the circumstances under which the customer uses the tool, they will be more likely to adopt it.
Applied to HR
When launching a new recognition tool, consider why people recognize someone, how often, and where.
If you learn that people want to say thank you right when the thing they want to express gratitude for happens, and they want to do it using their existing tools, consider giving recognition a part of their daily workflow.
Make it easy for them to use a recognition tool on both their computer and their laptop, so they can say thank you while being away from the big screen.
Get feedback - evaluate and adjust.
When it comes to People & Culture services and tools, set it and forget it is never the right choice. As our internal customers and business context change, we need to change the way we deliver value to our customers.
Continuously evaluating your initiatives and adjusting accordingly will help you stay ahead of changing preferences, tastes, and environments.
Applied to HR
Besides asking your people for feedback and sending employee surveys, one underused way to learn is observing their interaction with the product/service. Sometimes people are not conscious of a thing, but they will show you a lot of what they think if you just watch them use something.
Many things can be changed, even if it takes time. The higher the stakes (the harder it is to change something, like your payroll provider), the more important it is to take time at the forefront to learn about the users' pain points, take advantage of free trials, create pilot groups, and get feedback early & often.
The lower the stakes are, the more you have room to experiment and learn alongside your customers.
Community Experience
Want to keep the conversation going around how you can improve your people experiences and processes? Join the People Managing People community, where you can collaborate and share ideas with other HR and people operations professionals who are facing the same challenges as you each day.
