Rewired

Chapter 16Customer experience design: The magic ingredient

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

—Susan Sarandon

You can do the planning, the developing, the hiring, and the investing, but if the customer – either internal or external – doesn't want to use the digital solution you've created, none of that matters. This tension – between what users need and what companies want to launch or know how to build – is what makes customer experience design an essential ingredient in your digital and AI transformation, with the power to drive innovation, adoption, and value.¹

Every company wants to be customer centric. They all want to offer products, experiences, and services that customers or users love. Those who really stand out on this front have created disproportionate value. Our research shows that design-driven companies had much higher revenue growth and higher TRS growth over a five-year period than their peers.² User experience design, as it's most often referred to, acts like a magic ingredient added to a digital recipe.

That value is as real for B2B companies as it is for B2C ones. We have found that in heavy industrial settings, user experience (UX) design is just as important in having front-line operators adopt new digital solutions. Any company that is serious about its digital and AI transformation will need to build up a UX design capability in the following four ways.

Hire great designers first