The world around us is changing ever more rapidly. Advancements in technology and science, in spaces ranging from artificial intelligence and machine learning to gene editing technologies, renewable energies, vaccine research, robotics or precision medicine are just a few of the many areas in which humans are making significant progress and that eventually will help us tackle the existential challenges our society faces, including climate change, increasing income inequality, mental health or recurring health epidemics.
Some areas where the power of technology to improve the status quo excites us include:
Healthcare: from better monitoring of patients and treatments to increasing engagement in clinical trials, launching better tools to assist mental health and counseling or telemedicine.
Education: making learning experiences more accessible, engaging and personalised according to each student’s needs.
Environment: improving renewable energy processes, improving waste management across the whole value chain, reducing waste and pollution and optimising resource utilisation.
Inclusion: increasing accessibility for individuals with disabilities (e.g. speech-to-text and text-to-speech software).
Financial services: financial inclusion for the base of the pyramid, reduction in cumbersome onboarding processes, easier access to lending solutions, reduction in dependence on a single institution, streamlined international payments.
Poverty: creating new economic opportunities in primary sectors including agriculture, farming and fishing, increasing access to basic needs including education, communication and transportation.
In parallel to technology advancements, the focus on user experience has recently increased dramatically among digital companies as they realise it has a direct impact on the overall satisfaction of users with a certain product or service, as well as the revenue their product generates. In the extremely competitive digital world, the customer journey is more than just a marketing term and companies need to continuously revisit their users’ interactions with their products so they are as seamless, intuitive, and enjoyable as possible.
As such, while technology advancements make many of the recent innovations possible, user experience and design improvements are often at the heart of some of the biggest commercial successes in technology. Examples include the launch of a much more intuitive operating system like Windows 95, which featured for the first time a graphical user interface (GUI) instead of command-line interfaces; the ease of use of the first iPhone with touch-based controls; Netflix’s user-centric and personalised interface or the recent simplification of complex professional processes through tools likeCanva and Figma. By being more human-centered, better user experience ensures that the product does what it is intended to do and drives tangible outcomes to benefit both users and businesses.
The emphasis on user experience and design is even more relevant across mobile games where differentiation is often non-existent and the player cost of churning from a game is practically zero. As a result, onboarding tutorials are tested over and over, player experience is personalised to each individual, localisation goes beyond a mere translation and ensures cultural relevance and monetisation is adjusted depending on the player. In summary, when it comes to mobile games, the customer journey becomes essential to increase engagement, improve retention and unlock monetisation, thus determining whether the game will be financially successful or not. The learnings from working with these gaming companies over the years inspired us to start Boost Capital Partners in order to democratise access to such tools and knowledge base.
An optimised user experience helps companies to:
Improve ease of use: A good user experience makes amazing technology accessible not only to a narrow group of advanced users but to a much larger segment of the population.
Increase productivity: user experience can help companies to streamline processes, reduce errors, and minimise the time and effort required to complete tasks.
Improve decision-making: An optimised user experience provides users with clear, actionable information, helping them to make informed decisions and achieve their goals more effectively.
Grow satisfaction: An easy user experience can contribute to customer satisfaction, which is crucial for building and maintaining long-term relationships with customers.
For all these reasons we strongly believe that by making user experience and the overall customer journey a key pillar of their strategy, companies can create products and services that not only push the boundaries of technology but at the same time are able to meet the needs and expectations of their users, resulting in increased adoption, customer satisfaction and loyalty.