User experience (UX) has long been the cornerstone of digital design. However, in recent years, human experience (HX) has gained prominence among design and technology professionals. Why shift the focus from “user” to “human” experience, and where do related disciplines like customer experience, human-centered design, and service design fit in?
First, it is helpful to define HX. HX describes a person’s holistic interaction with a product, service, or organization across touchpoints — whether as a customer, employee, patient, or citizen. HX design involves creating digital products and services that meet the needs of users, customers, and other stakeholders. By integrating several disciplines, HX design delivers greater efficiency, efficacy, and satisfaction and enables organizations to create meaningful, memorable interactions.
Understanding Experience Design Disciplines within HX
Let’s explore some of the key disciplines that make up HX, how they differ, and how they contribute to HX design.
Customer Experience (CX)
CX considers the full spectrum of a customer’s interactions with a product, service, or organization — both digital and physical. It focuses on creating consistent, desirable experiences across all touchpoints and fostering brand loyalty.
Key aspects of CX include:
- Emotion and perception: Positive emotions and seamless experiences build strong customer relationships.
- End-to-end journey: The entire customer lifecycle is addressed, from pre-purchase to post-purchase.
- Omnichannel consistency: Consistent experiences are provided across online, in-store and mobile channels.
- Customer feedback: Customer feedback helps refine and optimize the overall experience.
User Experience (UX)
UX focuses on the quality of the user’s interaction with a digital product, system, or interface. It aims to enhance overall satisfaction by making interactions intuitive, efficient, and enjoyable.
Key aspects of UX include:
- Usability: Products are easy to use, intuitive, and require minimal effort to achieve tasks.
- User-centered design: A deep understanding of user needs drives development.
- Interaction design: Focus is on layout, navigation, and interactive elements.
- Testing and iteration: Prototypes are tested with real users to make improvements through iterative design.
- Accessibility: UX ensures products are accessible and meet 508 compliance standards.
Service Design
Service design enhances experiences for both customers and employees by aligning and optimizing service delivery. It considers the entire ecosystem of interactions, processes, touchpoints.
Key aspects of Service Design include:
- Enterprise optimization: Processes are streamlined to eliminate bottlenecks and enhance efficiency.
- User-centered design: Services are tailored to the needs, behaviors, and preferences of users.
- Value exchanges: Service design creates mutually beneficial interactions between stakeholders. Value can come in the form of information, access, collaboration, or monetary value.
- Touchpoint design: Individual touchpoints align with the overall service experience.
- Co-creation: Stakeholders are involved in the design process to ensure expectations and needs are met.
Human-Centered Design (HCD)
HCD emphasizes collaboration, empathy, and feedback loops to solve complex problems. It applies across all industries, creating functional and emotionally resonant solutions.
Key aspects of HCD include:
- Empathy: Teams understand users’ experiences and challenges.
- Problem definition: Identify opportunities and evaluate solutions for impact.
- Iterative process: Prototyping, testing, and feedback refine solutions.
- User involvement: Users are involved in the design process to ensure their needs and expectations are met.
- Cross-disciplinary collaboration: Teams collaborate with diverse experts to create comprehensive solutions.
The Human Experience Design Process
At Tria, our process follows the Discover, Explore, Build, and Evaluate (DEBE) framework, integrating with agile methodologies:
- Discover: Conduct qualitative and quantitative research to inform strategy.
- Explore: Collaborate with users and teams to generate and refine potential solutions.
- Build: Use design systems and tools to create effective solutions.
- Evaluate: Test models with users to ensure solutions are both effective and efficient.
Throughout the process, HX teams collaborate with engineering, product management, end-users, and business stakeholders to align on desirability, feasibility, and viability.
So why is HX design important? It ensures products and services are functional, efficient, and inclusive. By understanding users’ needs, and expectations, organizations can confidently deliver solutions that are effective, memorable, and meaningful.