From UX to Experience strategy, M6 Web is changing

Supporting a digital team from the product to the User Experience (UX) is one of the big trends of UX Design. Marina, UX Strategist, participates in the deployment of an experience-centric strategy at M6 Web. We followed Marina for a day.
His mission : support, as Experience Manager (XP), the cooperation between the different entities (marketing, graphic studio, product and technique) in order to develop new services.

Story of “high fidelity” support in a large company that is changing in order to pivot towards a corporate culture reconciling product and user experience.

Innovate for an enhanced experience

Since 1987, “the little chain that goes up” has established itself as one of the major players in the media in France. Today she is interested in new forms of content consumption (smartTV, tablets, smartphone, etc.). It is in this context that Marina builds its mission in order to support teams in designing a new experience.
Listening to its user-customers and the market, M6 seeks to anticipate their expectations and needs. This positioning at the crossroads of user experience and business strategy requires Marina to develop a real UX strategy.
Beyond course design, UX Strategy is a macro approach to UX Design : take into account all the needs and constraints to achieve business objectives.
M6 innovates by wishing to bring together its business needs and its UX needs. Thus, this non-separate approach is named by Jesse James Garrett: Experience Strategy.

Business Strategy + UX Strategy = Experience Strategy

Change by Design

9h
Between a unicorn and an inflatable palm tree, there is a creative and studious work atmosphere in the Neuilly open space.
Change by Design
business owner, Product Owner, Developers, Artistic Directors share the same workspace. Communications are thus optimized. Here, everyone collaborates with a common goal: to create an innovative digital service. And when it's time for the story mapping workshop, the team enthusiastically takes over a work room.

All of us are smarter than any of us – Tim Brow, IDEO


Find the value proposition together

10h
Shifting a team's center of gravity from the product to the user is a sensitive process. Inviting the team to co-design workshops is one of the levers available to the UX designer to gradually remove resistance to change.
story mapping
During this story mapping, Marina co-hosts with Chiara Pettinelli, Product Owner. Their objective is to delimit the product and granularize its development into functionalities (user stories). During this exercise based on agile methods, UX and PO ensure that the product (or service) remains user-centric and that it is technically feasible.

Brainstorming & “Empathy for the users”

This is an essential step in supporting a digital team. Based on prototype people, Marina makes it easy for the team to empathize with end users.
Through a set of questions, she leads the team to imagine themselves in the place of the user.
Together, they discuss their understanding of the needs, expectations and user journey.
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La good cooperation between the UX Designer and the Product Owner allows the two experts to bring out the features that will best meet the needs of users and marketing. Distributing, synthesizing and transcribing the exchanges requires a certain experience and skill. The goodwill and commitment of the team reinforces the relevance of this work.

Convergence & User stories

11h
The last phase of this workshop aims to shape this brainstorming work. It is important that the whole team converges on the choice of features and their scripting. This breakdown into user stories will then make it possible to develop and test the product quickly and efficiently.
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The workshop ends with a summary and the programming of a future workshop.
It is already time for Marina and Chiara to give a quick feedback on this morning in order to optimize their next workshops.
Evaluation and iteration are essential tools in the support provided by Marina as part of her mission. By progressing in this way, it allows the team to build skills in agile methods and design thinking.

research 

14h
Marina conducts user research alongside the workshops. To carry out her interviews, she recruited a user panel based on her “proto personas”, presented earlier in the morning.
In order to be able to collect data from users located throughout the territory, it operates by telephone. On the basis of an interview grid, she unfolds her questions, takes notes and reflects on the comments of the interviewees for about twenty minutes per interview.

User research: find the right method

This qualitative approach makes it possible to deepen the knowledge of users, their needs and expectations. Thus, new lines of work can emerge and sometimes this makes it possible to deconstruct representations of the modes of use and consumption of the product.
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She will later combine her analysis with quantitative data by collaborating with data analysts, in particular. The results produced by user research will have a significant impact on the further development of the service. They will make it possible to validate the working hypotheses, reinforce and even enrich them. Sometimes they can also lead to redirecting the product.

Assessing Change: A Strategic Approach

16h
All change support work must be subdivided and assessable.
 To do this, Marina works with Elodie Bassinet, Matthieu Cahu, Romain Monclus, Pierre-Thomas Guillot and Simon Joliveau. in order to define a roadmap with objectives as well as KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure success.
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Together, they exchange their points of view on the strategy to be deployed: programming of workshops, evaluation criteria, schedules of deliverables, guerrilla testing, etc.
Offer & product managers, scrum masters and UX designers work together to prepare organizational changes that will make it possible to offer an innovative experience.

Smell like team spirit

18h
At the end of this intense day, the team meets for a drink near the offices. The discussions continue on the strong points of the week and the points of improvement, on proposals for optimization. The user experience and the digital transformation also pass through these times of sharing and intimacy with the team.
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A few questions to:

Matthieu Cahu, Product and Innovation Manager at M6 Web

If you had to define the Experience Strategy in three keywords, what would they be?

Empathy, Business, Iteration

How will you integrate the Experience Strategy into your next project?

As quickly as possible, if an idea or a new business issue arises, we seek to have the Experience Strategy intervene to challenge a brief and as quickly as possible ask the questions of why in order to refocus on the problem/need and not the solution.

What qualities do you look for in an Experience Designer?
  • Être curious
  • Have a good understanding of business issues. 
  • May he never take nothing for granted and challenge every easy way out
  • That he knows to be convincing 
  • A good little dose ofintuition
What are your three favorite apps?
  • Dojo : find the best restaurants, bars and exhibitions in Paris and London.
  • Citymapper : essential for getting around Paris, New York or Berlin.
  • SunnyChairs : no longer looking for a terrace in the sun, this application finds it for you.

zak-ferris-19902

Take away

    • Center your transformation on its business needs & the needs of its users
    • Surround yourself of a diverse and talented team
  • Build an improvement system continues based on the values ​​of trust, the right to make mistakes and autonomy.

Some references

Sébastien, UX Lead @UX Republic