There has been much said about the importance of “experience” as it relates to someone’s interaction with a product or service. We usually call this client experience, human experience, user experience, or customer experience. Companies do projects to better this experience for their customers (internal to the company or external consumers). Operational and financial metrics often drive the strategic thinking regarding why we should do a particular project. But in its simplest form there is a more human element to what we are doing. We are changing an individual’s experience. In fact, change that occurs via our projects usually will illicit an emotional response from those impacted. Change often very personal.

Change to an experience is something that can easily be overlooked by project teams. Teams are usually laser focused on getting the project done. We start by taking someone’s idea and move it through a rigid and binary process, create a project, and off we go. But if we take a minute to step-back and think about the change that we are causing as it relates to the interaction customers have with the product or service; we will find what is taking place is far more complex. It is in fact, a form of art. In a project, we have most of the elements of art; human’s using their creative skill to design something that elicits an emotional response. Would that not describe most of your projects? Your project is the art of experience design.

A project manager should be more than a note taker or facilitator. They should have the team consider the project’s impact to the experience. They can then develop plans and frameworks to address the impact. Project managers should come to the table with ideas to help their team think through the design and impact to the experience. When they do this, they will add value to the business they are working for, to the projects they are working on, and to the overall experience of those being impacted by the project. These considerations go a long way in making a project manager a trusted business advisor verses an overpaid secretary.

Before starting your next project consider the change to the customer experience the project will yield. Then, consider a few points:

  1. Understand the experience impact your project will have
  2. Determine how you will manage the change that the user will go through as they are impacted by the new experience
  3. Create a process to understand how you will determine if the change to the customer experience was a positive one

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About Hill City Global: Our mission is to see our client’s vision come to life through the implementation of their strategic initiatives by working alongside them as a trusted partner. We do this by providing project implementation and related consulting services through our easy to work with team that knows how to communicate and fits your culture. We are proud to call Sofia, Bulgaria home. Learn more at www.hillcityglobal.com. 

Company Leadership: Ryan Fischer, CEO and Founder 

Board of Advisors: Chris Daum, President and Chairman of the Board of Directors at FMI Corporation; Joseph Swarengin, Vice President and US CFO of Krispy Kreme; Adrian Donato, Ed.D, University of Southern California (USC) Lecturer and Founder of InterEd Strategic.