User Experience (UX) Is Not CMS

[Matt Metten]

In the past few months I've heard more and more discussion around UX (user experience) within the context of ServiceNow and I, for one, am glad. However, the "solution" many people point to is the CMS Application. I thought it would be good to chat about that for a minute.

UX is a really specialized practice that involves elements of design, development and human behavior. Sure, on one side of the technical is chatting about what is available within CMS, but the majority of the UX "stuff" happens outside the platform.

For the most part, UX deals with the following things:

• How do users actually do their tasks? You can't just throw any script on a page to figure this out. This involves gathering a group of actual users, looking over their shoulder (figuratively) to see how they accomplish the tasks you are trying to test against. You could spend months on this depending on the variation of users you want to cross section as well as the tasks you are trying to accomplish with your effort. If this is a net new release you might even take longer as there is little context. With more seasoned users you can get really specific and watch how they actually run through your scenarios. This all goes to inform your requirements that you then need to run through a few design rounds.
• Solving the "why" with the "how". This assumes you have a clear list of "whys" that are either pain points or requirements that you have in front of you. Then you head down the path of figuring out how to get all that done. You have to figure out how to match your requirements to your layout and this usually involves a pretty skilled design team. How do we construct a wireframe to fit all the items in that we need? In the context of a website launch there could be 25-50 different things that need to be considered as functional requirements. Working through where all that is going to go and how you think a user is going to navigate all that is purely a UX exercise. You haven't even touched the CMS yet.
• Testing the results thoroughly before building. To me, this is the greatest value of UX. Before you pull out any crayons to start designing or write any lines of code, you can test your hypothesis over and over until you make sure you're on the right path.

Once you have your UX requirements in order, the CMS is the vehicle to make the vision come to life. CMS is critical to the overall success of UX, but the lens by which you have the discussion should ultimately start at the user and work it's way to the CMS for application.

This is more than a semantics discussion. There has to be a shift in the way we go about building new things. Taking the time on the front end to do user research, clearly defining goals and then testing over and over will all but ensure project success. This goes beyond CMS (obviously) but I think hold specifically true for that effort as so much of it subjective and creative in nature.