Sonja Rattay is co-founder and Head of UX at Block Zero, where she creates experiences that bring humans and technology closer together. I spoke with Sonja about her strategic design work with smart homes, and her upcoming presentation, “Re-Thinking User Experience: Creating Ecosystem User Journeys,” at the UX STRAT Europe conference, which will take place in Amsterdam on June 10 – 12 (see https://www.uxstrat.com/europe for more info).
Paul: Why don’t you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? Your current job role, your company, maybe how you got to your current role?
Sonja: Sure. I’m head of UX and co-founder at a strategic design studio based in Malmö, Sweden. We provide project-based consulting in design and innovation strategy to tech companies of all sizes. I have a background in interaction design, and I have worked with clients within UX strategy and service design over the last few years, but I have also conducted internal and collaborative research projects and pilot projects in fields like immersive fashion technology and futuristic interfaces.
Paul: Awesome. So, what will you be talking about at UX STRAT?
Sonja: I’ll be talking about challenges within the design process that come up when not designing for a specific product, or individual service, or a singular defined user persona, but for a holistic experience which requires more of an ecosystem of components and multiple products. I’ll share our understanding on how that also affects different groups of users, not just the primary user, but also secondary users and even non-users, and how the product experience is shaped by their social system and social interactions.
I think it will be a mix of reflection on current emerging technologies and the responsibilities that designers face that come with those. It will be very heavily based on case studies and experiences and reflections that we have gathered in our work with clients, the methods and the insights that we’ve derived from these projects, and how we use these to approach our responsibilities in practice--not just in theory, but how to actually put it into reality.
I think there have been a lot of discussions about these responsibilities, with companies and designers, to make sure that we’re creating a positive impact, and that we’re careful not to build invasive products when we are using new technologies, like machine learning and introduce them into smart homes for example. So, while we’re implementing smarter, context-aware and more capable products, we also have to make sure that we’re not overpowering the user.
Paul: You mentioned that your agency is a strategic design agency. UX STRAT conferences focus on a combination of strategy and experience design. Can you tell me a little bit about what you think that means, to be a strategic partner?
Sonja: I think it means to not just take into account the primary use of the product but the entire context within which it’s placed, both for the user as well as the company and the market. It’s not focusing on the very short-term user needs that are being met with this solution, but also the long-term consequences that can appear within the life of the user but also what kinds of consequences it brings for the company when a product is launched and so forth. So, aside from not just focusing on a singular experience, it’s a more holistic view of the design process. It is also keeping an eye on constantly changing trends and their future implications on the marketplace as well as phenomena that could disrupt the business the customer is in, to design something sustainable. It also means to drive trends in the market together with the client through the creation of new products and services, and not just being a spectator.
Paul: Have you had recent projects that highlight this strategic aspect that you can tell us about?
Sonja: Yeah, definitely. We’ve been working with very different companies, big companies that are active in the area of smart homes, such as AR and security startups. All of these projects have been very much about experience strategy. Both big companies that are creating solutions for smart homes or connected cities, as well as younger companies using new forms of technology like AR or blockchain. They face the challenge of how to create things that have consequences in the future they can’t yet foresee. They might end up unintentionally creating products that are tapping into human behavior that’s actually not bringing out the best in people, but might make use of bad habits or weak spots in human psychology.
Within these projects, especially in the smart home project that we’ve been collaborating on, we’ve done design strategy work in order to actually enable them to see their whole product suite from a more all-encompassing perspective. That played a big role in bringing actors together to actually enable a responsible approach to connecting multiple products.
Paul: What are some of the methodologies you’re bringing to the smart home context that enable you to develop strategies for them?
Sonja: We’ve done some user research in the soft security smart home project and also in the AR project. But in the bigger sense, what we have been providing is more of a mapping of contexts and relationships. We also created what we call vision candidates with them, that are used to define an overall understanding of situations and scenarios, and are then used to connect multiple stakeholders within the research process. Both of these are meant to make sure that everybody’s aligned on both acceptance criteria, as well as broader guidelines and strategy for these development processes.
Paul: I’m interested to hear more about the kinds of deliverables that you’re talking about. Can you describe them a bit further?
Sonja: One is a multi-level experience map that models different types of users and intensity of interaction with a product. Then there are different intervals of time, short-term consequences and long-term consequences, and how to integrate that in the design process to enable adaption after the release, and including acceptance criteria for long term use.
Then we work with what we call vision candidates, where we develop different scenarios that encapsulate the experience and that embody those acceptance criteria. These defined stories are supposed to enable and guide the design decisions up to the release--is this living up to the expectations that we want to have in terms of a responsible experience? These two things are parts of the framework we design with customers.
Paul: What do you see on the horizon for experience design strategy? How do you see the next three to five years shaping up for your team and your clients? What are going to be the most impactful changes?
Sonja: Because there will be more complex products that are not just one device being used by one user, but a multitude of devices being used by a group of users, that these types of interfaces will vary a lot. Voice is already establishing itself in the market, and it will be followed by more complex, more diverse kinds of interfaces, but the skill level of different user groups will vary a lot. The main challenge I see will be to try to avoid a divide between user groups, because some of them are faster to adapt to new interaction paradigms than others who are not necessarily able to oversee consequences of smart systems being implemented. So in that regard, I think it’s a challenge for designers to actually create systems that do not leave people behind who are slower in terms of technical adoption.
Another challenge with new technologies coming on the scene, product providers need to be more responsible in being able to evaluate mistakes that have been done in the past and reflect on how we got there, and actually get away from the “Move fast and break things” attitude and rather move more slowly, maybe go back and fix stuff that we have been putting out. I think that’s actually more a process challenge rather than new technology. We know how to build new technology. We don’t know how to fix things that might go wrong by integrating new technology in markets.
Paul: Thanks Sonja, I’m looking forward to your talk!