A Non-techies Journey to UX Design

Charlotte J. is a UX Designer and Digital Transformation Consultant at a large French Insurance company. Shes a true Parisian, her passion definitely came pouring out throughout our conversation!

Before getting too far ahead, let me briefly explain what UX is.UX or User Experience is centred around how a user or customer interacts with a product such as a website or app. The best UX delights the user by; fulfilling and, in the best circumstances, exceeding their expectations and needs.

For example, if I go to buy something, in true I want what I want, when I want fashion (before coronavirus), I would hope to find what I needed very easily, therefore no confusing navigation or poor search functionality. If I leave the app or website, I want to start where I left off, I would want helpful product descriptions and content. Once Ive made my choice, I now want to checkout using the quickest process possible, probably Apple Pay.

For me personally, this user experience would lead to me providing a positive C-SAT (customer satisfaction) score. A key metric that many businesses track as an indicator of how satisfied their customers are and how to improve the customer experience at various stages of the funnel. Customer feedback, whether gathered through surveys or focus groups, is usually then reflected in fundamental User Experience activities such as analysis, design, prototyping and evaluation.

Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.For more information on UX design, Id recommend reading The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and Dont Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug.

I followed Charlottes non-techie journey to highlight another unique path that led her to exactly where she loves to be, in UX design! In my previous nontechies blog, we saw how Vikki managed to pivot from law, financial services, then consulting into the worlds leading fashion tech business. Similarly, we see how Charlottes serendipitous journey into the world of digital and UX.

What did you study?I graduated with a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from London South Bank University. I returned to my home, Paris, to complete a Marketing and Communications masters.

As part of my masters, I did an apprenticeship, which gave me the great opportunity to juggle studying with working as an International Communications Officer in a big French insurance company. This really complimented the theoretical knowledge I was learning on my masters. How would you describe your journey into digital & how long has it been?

After graduating with my master degree, I stayed a year in the same position, but full time. After this I decided it was time to broaden my horizons outside of the financial sector, which isnt that easy in France! Dare I say it, but in France employers tend to put you in boxes, these boxes are even tighter when youre young.

Despite the challenge, I finally started working as a Press Officer for lifestyle brands and events. Two years after, the previous international insurance company hired a Chief Digital Officer. She contacted me as she was creating her team of Digital Transformers and wanted to offer me a position.

She was so determined that we would have the proper means to implement actions and was very passionate! Another challenge I said yes to without hesitation, I was honoured! This was the start of my adventure in digital and tech!

At first, I was in charge of integrating a digital culture into the daily lives of the employees through; conferences, workshops, internal consulting missions and deploying new tools. It was previously a very traditional business. After working on several new projects, I had the opportunity to be in contact with external consulting agency UX designers and this is how I got to discover this job!

I LOVED it (Charlotte literally squealed thats the passion I was referring to earlier), it made so much sense to me! I think I have always been a UX designer in my head and in my life! I always think about peoples needs and feelings, whether youre my dinner guests, or Im buying a birthday gift, I love offering people the best experience I can in real life!

So a few months later, I joined Les Gobelins, a great French school providing UX Designer training for professionals.I feel like UX design isnt just a job title, but it should be a proper mindset! It sounded crazy to me that some marketing and communication teams were not considering users needs before launching a new product or service!

Knowing who your future consumers are and what they want is just common sense to me, but I realised, for some reason, many businesses werent adopting this mindset. This is the way you will successfully sell your services or products!What is your current role and what are you responsible for?

Im now a UX Designer and Change Management Consultant. I work in the Internal Projects Incubator team. My role is to be the guarantor of the final users needs in the projects we ship.

It goes from setting our UX and drawing awareness to them, to organising and facilitating collaborative intelligence workshops, conducting surveys, analysing results and making recommendations and prototypes, testing solutions and making new recommendations based on tests and feedback. Its a continuous journey of testing and learning.What advice would you give someone who wanted to become a UX Designer?

Go ahead! A lot of people are looking for a work that makes sense! And this work truly does!

Also, do not give up when facing people who are reluctant to adopt UX principles. People in the business will love to come with solutions before actually knowing the needs of the consumers of change. Keep fighting it and ask why until to have the true answer!

I know it is not easy, sometimes people think UX design will make them lose money and time at the start of the project and is not worth it but its a worthwhile investment that will definitely bring ROI (return on investment) once the product/service is launched! Believe in yourself and believe in what you do.Whats your biggest achievement so far in your digital career?

Launching, in four months, a great MVP for a digital app to be used in crisis management. The project team had been working with a paper version for more than a decade, it was complicated to update the details and not robust! So the company needed to improve both, the teams and final users experiences.

They wanted a digital version but the internal IT rules and processes were so complex, nobody really took the time to get it off the ground. My boss gave it to me! I organised a collaborative workshop to know what were the future users requirements were, then we aligned these with the project teams objectives.

We came out with the solution that was a digital application.Following the insights from the workshop, we prioritised the functionalities that would for the first MVP and got a backlog ready for the next versions. I teamed up with a great digital agency in charge of developing the app.

Once the MVP was ready, we tested it with the users and the feedback was so positive, although we had to make some changes. For example, we changed the layout design for the contact filters and worked on the connection experience to make it smoother, whilst meeting the IT security rules. All these steps were realised with the apps Product Owner, who was great.

We worked really well together and he was fully ready to manage the project after I delivered the MVP! It was so impactful in terms of changing mindset, working effectively, delivering and testing. I love experiencing these iterative phases and proving how worthy they are.

Charlotte truly hopes that in a few years, UX, will be a mindset in all companies. Her journey teaches all of us that by applying yourself in roles and delivering value, can open new doors. If it wasnt for her great work at the insurance company in her Comms role, she would have never received a call to re-join in the Digital Transformers team.

Like Vikki, Charlotte stumbled on a new area of interest, through working on a project with other consultants. Sometimes its not about where you start, but its all about the journey and the opportunities you land on the way.As Charlotte pointed out, UX design is very practical or as she put it, theres a lot of common sense involved in it.

If youre interested in UX design, maybe start thinking about your own experiences with products such as websites, apps and even non-digital services. You can start shaping what you think makes good UX design principles.A big merci to Charlotte for sharing her story with us.

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RELATED QUESTION What is the most epic long (at least 8 minutes) rock song ever? You can nominate one song and one honorable mention. What is the most epic long (at least 8 minutes) rock song ever?

You can nominate one song and one honorable mention.Woodstock - Ten Years After - I'm Going Home(Live) - YouTubeAs far as I know, this is the greatest rock presentation to date!Below has 2 song parts that are from the same long album, Happy Trails, which, in its totality, is essentially a long jam.

I include audio first, then related film footage for each part. Who Do You Love is a great cover song and the lyrics show such a spectacular sense of dark humor: the singer creates all these death-tinged descriptions of his belongings, then asks the girl to take a little walk with him and tell him who she loves! Whats she gonna say, Actually, I love your best friend Max!

Yeah right, and he remembers hes still looking for those Marquis de Sade designer chairs he saw at Lord Buckleys made from human flesh!Mona is such an amazing example of Love, Devotion, and Surrender, presented in a testosterone and estrogen laden rock anthem tour de force, and I still get chills from it; I find myself longing for consummation, in physical rapport with the song, through a form of dancing that may make the Tango blush!YouTube