A strategic consultant and expert on the user experience (studying users' behaviour, emotions and real experience), he has more than 17 years' experience working in the digital sphere. With his extensive knowledge with respect to users interacting with digital interfaces, the use of advanced online metrics, multichannel monitoring and qualitative understanding of consumers, in his presentation, he gave students an insight into resources for improving the user experience.
Over the course of the talk, the speaker defined the Strategic Customer Journey, outlining the new digital conflicts that we have to tackle. As the lecturer explained, we have to achieve all this without overlooking the importance of getting to know our customers, the way they act and behave, their interests and fears, among other key aspects.
Gustavo began the presentation with a key point: the vision when we start a project. One common mistake is to design a service based on our perception and desire for it. We think from our perspective, without realising that the user is our key protagonist. "This is why we cannot simply apply our vision, but rather we have to approach it from the standpoint of the customer's real experience", he added.
The experience that we provide for third parties causes new digital conflicts that we have to take into consideration, such as desire, need, context and people. "When we observe a group of customers, we should focus on the time they are experiencing and what they remember, the emotions that are activated and the individual meaning of the context".
It is useful to bear in mind that the experience will not be the same for all of the users, but rather each person will gather a different positive value depending on a range of factors. As a consequence, extracting the final meaning "comes from the context" and, as we cannot extract this information through observation, we have to act as our customer would.
To illustrate, the expert showed us how a common context (enrolling for an MBA) can give rise to different meanings, depending on the user's need and personality. Our task is to anticipate each customer, identifying their concerns and motivations and, as a result, knowing what we are dealing with. To achieve this, Gustavo defined the fundamental questions that we always have to ask: Who is the person? How much do they empathize with this content? Why have they made this decision?
It is not enough just to answer these questions though. The lecturer also emphasized that "we need to understand the person in their individual nature, their relationship with their surroundings, psycho-cognitive, social and cultural responses that will give meaning and make sense of the explanation of consumption within a certain context".
Meanwhile, the lecturer explained that all projects must have three large blocks, the first of which is the design. To be able to sketch out an initial idea of what we want to offer, we first have to have a clear idea of who is our target market and get to know them in detail (their habits, customs, social and emotional benefits). It is essential to define our consumer to be able to satisfy their needs, which we can identify by conducting in-depth interviews, observations and Webanalytics studies, among other tools.
The experience is the second structural block to take into account. "The user experience is the set of factors and components in terms of the user's interaction with a specific environment or device, the result of which is the generation of a positive or negative perception", explained Gustavo. We have to construct a unique 'journey' for our customers, which must be full of good experiences that motivate them to repeat. In order to design our journey, we have to define each stage of the shopping process (stages of the journey), providing a response for questions such as what details define this journey, what could go wrong or improve the experience and what does the user interact with?
To conclude, the lecturer explained the third and final factor: measurement. The journey that we give to each user can be measured in terms of the perception and feelings triggered in each of them. "We take measurements at each step, building overall indicators", explained Gustavo.
