Friday, April 15, 2016

Beware. Those creating your digital CX are a different species from those using it.

As usual, some excellent insights from the Nielsen Norman Group. This time it is about young Millennials (18-25)

So why am I talking about this age group on a blog that is about older people? Well, it is probably a young Millennials who are designing the CX in most organisations.

I suggest you read the NN/g's blog post but here are the main differences they find between these young people and their parents/grandparents.

First the similarities. In many ways, young adults are just like other adult user groups — they want easy interactions, straightforward content, and an enjoyable experience.

Now the differences.

  • They are extremely confident in their own ability to navigate digital interfaces, even when encountering radically new design patterns. As a consequence of their confidence, young adults are error prone when using interfaces. They often click first, and ask questions later.
  • They rarely blame themselves when things go wrong. They typically see usability issues as the fault of the site, and will sometimes criticise the organisation that the site represents.
  • Google is the first point of reference for most things because of its ease of use and simplicity.
  • They have very different opinions (from their parent's age group) about the visual appeal of websites.


Who knowns if their behaviours will change as they age? Maybe their impulsiveness and self-confidence in using digital interfaces will decline. Right now that doesn't matter.

The important thing is that if the people driving and creating an organisation's digital presence have a very different 'digital mindset' to the majority of the people that will be using the app/Web/e-mail then there is a potential problem - a really big problem.


How many of you recognise the problem and are doing anything about it? Dick Stroud



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