The True Power of UX Goes Beyond Digital

There’s a tendency to think that when we’re designing for a user’s experience, we’re only talking about applications, websites, and other digital products and services. Yet, UX design encompasses far more than digital design. It always has.

Last week, I was in Memphis, TN at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. I met with the UX team at the hospital’s fundraising and awareness organization, ALSAC. That team is responsible for the experience of people funding the hospital’s operation and maintenance. They’ve built out websites, applications, email campaigns, and any number of digital tools and services to make it easy to donate to St. Jude’s.

The UX team formed when ALSAC realized that building digital tools would be difficult. Before that, the organization hadn’t thought at all about designing donor experiences. It had never occurred to anyone to bring on a UX team.

Many organizations formed their first UX teams under the same circumstances. They hadn’t thought about user experience until they were struggling to deliver well-designed experiences.

That almost always happened as they were making their first forays into delivering digital products and services. This is why we meet people who think UX only is for digital, even though user experiences aren’t constrained to the digital product…