1 hr 41 min

Mural board access: (lower right corner)

Part 1 recording here

Why is Policy Design the mother of all leverage points?

Policy design refers to the deliberate creation and implementation of rules, guidelines, and protocols that govern various aspects of an organization’s products and services. Take a standard everyday process of logging into a website service, such as Microsoft Outlook 365. A policy of locking users out after eg. five attempts or of suspending an account with a message of “contact your administrator” can create barriers to access and erode customer satisfaction. Policy design says there’s got to be a better way!

In Service Design, good policy design is integral to service orchestration.  For example, imagine policies that impact the quality and accessibility of education. For instance, policies that promote inclusive education by providing resources for students with disabilities or ensuring equitable access to educational opportunities for marginalized communities can help reduce educational disparities and foster social inclusion. Well-designed policies in this area can drive systemic change and create a more equitable and inclusive education system.

Policies are rules, and rules need to be deliberately designed.

While design strategy and organizational design play crucial roles, an often overlooked yet powerful tool for driving customer satisfaction and business success is effective policy design. Policies can serve as the backbone for organizations, shaping customer experiences and influencing their interactions and long-term relationship with the brand or product-service.

A policy in an interface or a service interaction among employees and customers reflects rules. Rules reflect decisions. The better your rules, the more intentionally noise-proof your decisions. “Noise,” according to Daniel Kahneman, refers to how flaws enter human judgment. For instance, most business teams develop policies based on intuition, which can lead to flawed decision-making if not corrected with evidence of user behavior. In the UX field, this is a classic problem that causes downstream user experience problems. For example: “Make users do this, before they do that”, or “First, we require they do this before doing the thing most desirable to them”.

Policy Design is possibly the one tool to rule them all

Policy design is a critical element in improving products and services. By focusing on consistency, customer empowerment, and risk mitigation, well-crafted policies can accelerate user adoption and drive positive business results.  To stay competitive in today’s fast-paced marketplace, organizations must prioritize policy design as a strategic tool for creating exceptional product and service experiences.

In this workshop, we will discover how to introduce Policy Design through a step-by-step approach to policy design.

Topics we will cover: (2 parts, 1 hour each)

• Understanding the absolute power of policies on products and services
• Diagnosing policy problems and framing policy challenges
• The Policy Design Process
• Steps to facilitating a policy design workshop with stakeholders

About UX Inner Circle Workshops:

These workshops are live events with an informal presentation by Frank Spillers and group activities and discussions, with a more hands-on experience to learning the material presented. Online workshops are included as part of your UX Inner Circle membership. They allow a deep study of UX topics, with insights drawn from process best practices and case studies from Frank Spillers two decades in the field.