UX STRAT Interview: Rob van der Haar, Informaat

Paul: Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself: your current job role, your company, maybe a brief biography?

Rob: My name is Rob van der Haar. I’m working as a principal consultant at Informaat, an experience design agency in the Netherlands. I’ve been doing so for the past eight years. I have a background in interaction design; I actually graduated as an interaction designer in 1995, at Utrecht College of Arts. That was the first full time interaction design course in the Netherlands, maybe even in the world. It was a really new field of work: designing interactivity. I’ve been working as a designer after that, mostly for large organizations like Philips and Nokia. Gradually I moved into UX management, so managing design projects and teams, eventually becoming an experience design strategist. The latest stuff that I’m doing right now is design organization consultancy; embedding and positioning design capabilities within enterprises.

Rob: My early experiences as a designer have been mostly working for organizations that have a long tradition in design. Philips and Nokia are companies that have been doing design for a long time, design is well integrated and appreciated in the company. When I moved to Informaat around 2010 I was doing design projects for organizations in the financial- and public sector, for which design was a new and often externally run activity. The Informaat strategy is not only to do experience design projects but also to transfer our design expertise to the organizations we work for. All our clients are in a digital transformation, so design has become a core activity for them. They have a responsibility to direct the quality the design and to increase its impact.

Paul: Can you tell us a little bit about what you’re going to be talking about at UX STRAT?

Rob: My presentation will be about raising the maturity level of enterprise organizations, with respect to experience design. A few years ago, they seemed to reach a certain ceiling when it comes to improving the user experience. You couldn’t actually improve from just doing the design itself. So, I started looking at the process of how design is being done in the context of large enterprises. There’s basically a lot of stuff to improve, so I’m mostly looking at the organizational aspects of design, looking at the design team, structuring design activities and positioning of design in the organisation, aligning design processes with other processes, etc.. In my UX STRAT talk, I will be highlighting a specific framework that I’ve been developing and using over the past few years, that’s a collaboration model for the experience design driven enterprise.

Paul: When you talk about enterprise design teams, are you talking about teams that are specifically working on enterprise apps, or are you including consumer-facing properties, or just design in general within enterprises?

Rob: I’ll be looking at design in general. So, what I see in enterprises is that there's’ a lot of design activities across the company, not only in apps or websites, but also in brand, marketing, communication, innovation, etc. Especially in financial spaces, design is quite new, you need to align experience design activities with other design activities in a company. For example, brand and communication is often not aware of the complexity of what a user experience design team is doing. And vice versa, the UX team is not always designing within a company’s brand positioning and principles. So, the collaboration model will basically fill in some of those gaps focusing on improving the overall customer experience.

Paul: Is your talk primarily about lines of communication and collaboration between different roles, or are you also talking about the processes that they actually use, the deliverables that they make? How far into the enterprise are you looking?

Rob: In my talk, I will basically be introducing two concepts: one is a collaboration model, and the second one is experience design chains. So, the collaboration model, I basically use to show the relation between the different design activities in an enterprise, how they should guide and lead the design of the experience across departments. The experience design chains will go into a bit more detail about the process, so they will show the different departments involved, what role experience designers play, what they deliver and how they should collaborate with each other.

Paul: It seems in the US that over the past few years a lot of the UX activities have moved from external to internal, and then now the external folks are partnering more with companies and helping them more like in a mentor role. Are you seeing that in Europe as well?

Rob: Oh, absolutely. Especially at Informaat, the company where I work, our UX strategy is basically to not only do the design work--we might do it once or twice, or maybe even a third time--but we also think that the organizations we work for should have their own responsibility in guiding the design and even doing the design. So, our UX strategy is to deliver, co-create and support/integrate design. The latter is exactly what I do as a principal consultant. My focus is to raise the design maturity of the organizations we work for. That means looking more at the process, coaching design management, positioning of design within the organization, and clarifying the collaboration with other departments, teams and disciplines.

Paul: It sounds like strategy has been a significant part of your role at Informaat. When you think of strategy, what comes to mind, or what are the pieces or components of strategy from your perspective?

Rob: Well, I always separate the two terms, design strategy and strategic design. Strategic design, I see that more as using your design toolkit or design methodologies to guide the organization and management decision making, often related to a future experience they should deliver but could be about other things as well. Design strategy, I consider to be the approach you have towards creating and delivering a really good experience. So, one is really aimed at the actual experience and the second one is aiming at directing the organization. My feeling is that those two terms are separate. They’re often mixed, design strategy and strategic design--but I think they’re two different things.

Paul: Yeah. In fact, the UX STRAT conference is divided into two parts, really. There’s one day that’s externally facing, so what are the methodologies we need to use to create the best design possible, what kind of data can we use, etc. And then the second day is typically focused more on the enterprise itself, what kinds of teams and structures can create innovative designs. So, that’s along the lines of what you’re saying, I think.

Rob: Yes.

Paul: Well if you look into the near future, where do you see strategic design going in the next few years? What kinds of developments do you think are going to impact it? Anything about your own personal career that you think is going to be impacted as new technologies come on board?

Rob: Well, if I stay close to the work I’m doing right now, I see organizations focus a lot of their attention to operational excellence, digital transformations, agile transformations, often from an cost or IT perspective. In my opinion, those two transformations don’t necessarily deliver value to the customer, nor unique experiences. So, I think the next transformation enterprises should be in is an experience transformation, where organizations should spend a substantial amount of energy to delivering unique experiences starting from brand positioning all the way to experience delivery. If they don’t, they risk becoming irrelevant. As a counter reaction to just operational excellence the aim of the experience transformation should be customer experience excellence, and design should, of course, lead this transformation.

Paul: Any examples where you felt like the customer would probably want something different than what they’re getting today from banks? I mean, without crossing any proprietary lines from your contracts and so forth.

Rob: I can stay general on that one. I think, especially in the financial sector, it has a lot to do with being trustworthy. You should not only tell customers you care about them but also let them experience financial services which benefit them in the long run. That’s exactly why there needs to be strong links between the brand and brand positioning, designing the omni-channel experience, but also with the proposition experience; the actual financial products. It’s actually one of the essential experience design chains in my collaboration model.

Paul: I’ve done some work with banks as well. It seems that one impediment to progress is the structure along the ines of products, where you work with a certain product and then everybody in that one silo focuses on that product, but it doesn’t speak to how necessarily the customer experiences that product, because there’s probably a series of things that they’re experiencing all at the same time. Do you think that a strict product focus is slowing down the shift to customer centricity?

Rob: I’ve been actually detailing this out for one client. And the interesting thing is if you start detailing it, you will still have products or propositions or services, but the company itself is not structured around it. So, my structure more looks at the channels, so where you deliver your propositions and then at the life cycle of customers in general. So, how you reach and onboard customers, how you deliver optimal services and then how you retain those customers by offering them more value. And that leads to an organization model that is actually based on touchpoints and journeys.

Paul: I think it’s a really fascinating area. I think you’re helping companies along the path of becoming more customer-centric and giving them more of the kind of experiences that they need.

Rob: Yeah, I hope so. I hope also my talk will stay very practical so that actually UX strategists can use the method I introduce to improve their own organization or their clients’ organizations. At the moment, I’m tuning it because it used to be a combined story with hacking agile transformations and this collaboration model. So, I’m separating it as an individual story now, really aiming it at the UX STRAT audience. So, that’s coming along pretty well.

Paul: Perfect. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you want to tell our readers before we sign off?

Rob: I’m looking very much forward to sharing my insights and ideas. So yeah, see you at UX STRAT Amsterdam!

Paul: Awesome, thanks for talking with me today Rob!