Interview Creativity and Standards in UX - A Contradiction?

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As Head of UX at Eplan, Linda Schmidt is responsible, among other things, for optimally integrating the UX area into already existing product development processes. We had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about standards, creativity, and apparent contradictions.

You actually studied industrial design and are currently President of the Association of German Industrial Designers. At Eplan GmbH, you are head of the department responsible for user experience. Where do the two topics, industrial design and UX, come together?

The experience we as humans have with our environment, products or software does not distinguish whether it was designed by an industrial designer or a digital designer. People judge based on their own context, objectives, and experience. Designers who proactively shape and design user experience put people at the center and follow a common process, the human-centered design process. The basis is always the users' requirements.

Specialists in industrial design are UX designers who develop industrially produced series products, such as construction machinery, medical laboratory machines, or strollers. In the digital area, however, they develop traditional software.

Both disciplines work closely together in areas such as mechanical engineering, medical technology, or construction machinery, as these are holistic systems. Here, both disciplines, industrial design and digital design, intersect to create a positive, consistent user experience for the user.

UX plays a vital role in digital transformation. A positive user experience can increase efficiency, reduce errors, and help to achieve business objectives more effectively. It can also be a differentiator in the market and create competitive advantages. Furthermore, UX can help to better understand the needs of users and to orient the digital transformation process more towards the actual needs of the users.

This is where UX becomes key. The User Experience helps us to filter and interpret the huge amount of information and data. It prepares and presents the data in such a way that we can understand and use it. UX can therefore be seen as a kind of translator between man and machine. Hence, without UX, digital transformation would not be possible at all or only very inefficiently.

User Experience plays a key role here. It ensures that we only come into contact with an appropriate amount of information, process it and apply it. UX puts people at the center, not technology, to design digital products that are user-centered, innovative and user-friendly. Just implementing a new technology won't bring about change or innovation if people can't understand and operate the technology. Thus, UX also contributes to efficiency, productivity, acceptance of new technologies and adaptability. It enables agile development through continuous user feedback, thereby reducing the risk of development failures, cost overruns and damage to reputation. In short, UX is crucial for the success and acceptance of digital solutions in companies.

In my job, I regard myself as an advocate for the user. That means my role is to represent the user's interests within the company. This includes ensuring that our products are easy and intuitive to use, and that usability is always an important part of the design process. It's about creating an optimal experience for the user and making sure their needs and desires are at the forefront of our design decisions.

This phrasing is of course a metaphor and underscores the UX function as representing the interests, needs, and problems of specific users and target groups. In this context, it means that the main focus of UX is to represent the user needs in the best possible way in the project or to validate these through research and place them as requirements. Just as a lawyer represents the rights and interests of his client, we try to represent the interests of the users.

While other roles cover other important aspects of a project, my emphasis in using this metaphor is to ensure that the needs and experiences of the users are at the forefront and considered in all decisions and developments. It is about maintaining a balanced perspective and making sure that user-friendliness and understanding for the users is always present.

Compared to other roles involved, this means that other tasks predominantly focus on technical aspects, business objectives, and budgets.

Many outsiders consider people who work in design to be free spirits. What is your stance on norms and standards?

I would like to start my answer to your question with a quote from the Berlin theater director and director Boleslaw Barlog: "Progress is only possible if one intelligently breaks the rules." So, rules must first be known before they can be consciously broken. And yes, maybe we are considered free spirits because in most cases we do not bear any official responsibility, which I personally really regret. But that's another topic.

In any case, creative minds are extremely important for businesses in order to remain innovative and thus competitive. Despite all the rules that need to be observed, you have to keep looking outside the box. Knowing about norms and standards is important in order to test the boundaries at all. So norms and standards are daily bread for designers.

In the UX field, there are also various norms that keep us designers free to not have to discuss the same topics over and over again. There are norms for the definition of UX and usability, human-centered design processes, and interaction principles.

Yes, it has happened that the results of usability tests contradicted prevalent standards. In such cases, it's important to understand why and whether the standards need to be updated or if there was something unique about the tested scenario.

I don't personally conduct usability tests anymore; that's handled by the UX Research team in my department. But essentially, it can be said that conformity to expectations outweighs the standards in interaction principles.

That means when users have a specific expectation of how something should work based on their previous experiences, it might be better to stick to what they're used to, even if that means going against some established interaction principles or standards.

This means the following: Industrial software is often already between ten and 25 years old and has grown historically, as they say. In the past, there were hardly any standards, these have only developed or changed over time. Also, no usability tests were conducted to find out if the interaction was understood, efficient, or satisfactory. Users have learned over the years to adapt to the behavior of the software, they have gotten used to certain interactions and expect to find them again - even if they contradict the usual standard. This phenomenon is quite common.

So, I can definitely answer your previous question with a yes. In my area, we experience this repeatedly. There is no right or wrong here.

We deal with this phenomenon by understanding the context and the user's expectations as much as possible, and aligning our solutions with it.

It all depends on the strategy and objectives of the project. If the goal is to focus on existing customers, then the interaction concept should not or only slightly be adapted. If the aim is to attract new customers and new generations, then it makes sense to cleverly adapt the interaction concepts gradually. It's a real tightrope walk. In many cases, it is more sensible to develop a completely new product for this new target group, rather than angering existing customers.

It is important to conduct the usability test with the defined target group and then only make a decision on whether and to what extent the software is adjusted.

Networking and the exchange of professional information at such events are very important to me.

Working as a UX designer in the industrial context, especially in management, is still a rarity. For this reason, I appreciate the gathering of experts at the Future of Industrial Usability very much. In everyday life, I hardly have the opportunity to do so, especially not within my own company. Networking and exchange help with certain challenges, to approach topics differently or to be inspired by others.