Human Centred Design with Piccia Neri

Good design, good user experience, good marketing, good branding, good business. They all have the exact same things in common. They're all going to tell you. Do your research, get to know your customer as best as you can. Make sure you solve their problem.

Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast. This is another guest edition and I'm really excited to talk with Piccinnery in this episode. All about human centered design and specifically human centered web design so you'll learn more about what that means. But I think this is particularly important for agencies who seem to not necessarily get their websites right and don't necessarily put their user at the center of the website. And that's what today's episode is all about. So another action packed episode and some really tactical takeaways from it. So let's get on with today's show.

Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta.

Today's episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that simplifies the web hosting experience for agencies. The platform offers complete peace of mind and allows agencies to focus on their growth with 24. 7 support and easy to use features. Now Cloudways is launching its Agency Partnership program that's designed to help agencies grow to new Heights. So visit cloudways.com enagency and join the program to get access to extended technical support, discounts and and co marketing opportunities with Cloudways. Okay, on with today's show. So today I am really excited to have Pecha Neary with me. Now Peacher helps agencies, designers and developers thrive and win on the web by putting their users at the center of the process. Now this is really music to my ears because I feel like so many agencies focus too much on themselves and not enough on their client, both from a design perspective, perspective, navigation perspective and a content perspective. So I'm really looking forward to hearing what you've got to say, Picha. Now, Peacher also runs the Design for Conversions conference with a theme of increasing sales and usability by putting people first. And that's happening on the 17th to the 20th of May 2021 and we'll talk more about that later. But first, welcome Picha. And is there anything else you wanted to add to my introduction?

That is a wonderful introduction, Rob. Really, I'm impressed on how you've encapsulated what I am doing at the moment. So no thanks. Thanks for that.

Brilliant. Good stuff. So let me start off by asking You a really broad question when it comes to website design and content, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see agencies making?

I think that that's the main one. The main one is not, not putting the user first and talking first of all. Let's think of a typical agency website. The tendency is to always talk about yourself. And the thing is that you're not the person that you're serving. Who you're serving is completely something else. And the important thing that happens when you make that mentality shift and you become user centered, or better said human centered, it means that when you also create products and websites for your clients or anything else, it doesn't need to be a website. So that's why I also often say product for that reason. Then if you start putting their users first, you end up avoiding a lot of client related issues. Like for instance, you know, the typical one, can you make the logo bigger? And if you have, if your answer is well, I might be able to do that, but. But then your user won't be able to see this other important thing. So if you put the user first, that is, it could be something else. For instance, very important because I'm very big into accessibility. For instance, you can't use that color because it would mean that people who have colorblindness won't be able to see the button or things like this. It's an extremely important mentality shift. I would say that this is the, the biggest mistake. It's not by no means the only one, but I think it's the biggest mistake.

Yeah, absolutely. So we're all on the same page. Can you give me a bit of definition of exactly what human centered design means and what it means to the web developer and the web designer?

Human centered design is putting the people that use your products at the center. That's who you are creating for, that's who you are designing for, that's who you are building for. And it seems obvious until it absolutely isn't. Because it's so easy to, to lose sight of that and not remember that we are here to solve a problem. Now there is, I mean, the reason why it's better to say human rather than user is that there's a debate within the industry, the user experience industry, according to which if you say user, you're dehumanizing and you are reducing people to just data to the moment that you're using your product, whereas they extend beyond that. However, to be completely honest, I often say user and not always human because sometimes it's Just simpler. It's just a way of, you know, it's just a way of referring to it. The main thing about it, about thinking in terms of human centered design, is that you make sure that a homepage will not talk about you or about the client's business that you're building the website for, but it will talk to the person who's visiting it, who has a problem at that very moment and you're there to solve it. That's the most important thing.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it drives me crazy that people forget that the website might be one of the first points of contact your prospect has with your business. And you've just got about five seconds to show them that you understand them and the pain points that they're challenged with and that you can solve those pains. So if you start off by talking all about yourself and how great you are and here's some clients that we've worked with, then you're really quickly going to lose those potential clients because quite frankly, no one cares about that stuff until you've proven to them that you really understand them and their pain and that your products and service can solve that pain.

To be honest, five seconds is actually quite optimistic because there's plenty of studies that prove it's way less than five seconds. And then on top of that, if you think about it, this is another one of my mantras. It's one of the things that I live by. Good design, good user experience, good marketing, good branding, good business, they all have the exact same things in common. They're all going to tell you, do your research, get to know your customer as best as you can, make sure you solve their problem. It's where everything meets. It's the sweet spot where everything meets. And basically what a website must do is solve the problem for the person. And where's the sweet spot? Well, the sweet spot is to get them to do what you want them to do, which would be the conversion, they're buying something or clicking that button. But it also has to be the best thing for them. And how do you find that out? You find that out by talking to your users and making sure that you do understand them. And I would say, actually you asked me earlier about the biggest mistake, which I said was not not doing user centered design. And the second biggest mistake is not testing because especially, I mean, I come from print design. I was a traditional, I was a book designer and then I was a proper full blown creative designer, which are the, actually, I have to say, the worst kind to design on the web. And I put myself into it because it's all about. When you're a creative designer, it's all about your creativity and how clever you are. It's not really about helping out. And I think that was the massive shift for me that now since moving to the web, I'm actually helping out people. And it's a really, really big difference. And that's a theme that comes out in the, in the conference interviews a lot. The second biggest mistake is not testing enough. Because as like I. Yes, I was saying, you know, if you're a book designer, once the book is printed, there's no, you can test it out in the sense that, you know, there's draft copies that can go out and so on. But fundamentally when it's done, it's done and dusted and it goes on a shelf and you don't, there's no second, you know, you can tweak it and optimize it. Whereas I think that in a way it's the curse and the huge benefit of designing for the web or creating digital products or creating products that can have iterations. It could be a PR campaign, it could be anything else. When there is an iteration that means that you can test, you can ask people what they think. And often agencies feel like it's really difficult to test because there are testing tools that cost a lot of money. But really you can ask your mother to test the website literally. And often I find that it's the best test that I can do because if she gets it, then anyone will, because she's not obviously not a digital native or she started using the Internet when she was well advanced in her years. So there's always a way of testing. I would say that that's a really important thing to do because things that may seem obvious to you are really not that obvious to someone else. And we all suffer from proximity blindness when we work on a project very closely. So you, there's no way that you can tell unless you step away from it and get someone else who's never seen it and is not invested and is sick of it actually, even sometimes, you know.

Yeah. And I think we get too close to it. So we're writing content or we're designing stuff. We're just too close to it to see the wood for the tree. So having that third party objective viewpoint and getting them to stand in the shoes of the customer and stand in the shoes of the, of the viewer of the website is, is so important. I mean, this is a topic that I talk about in a, you know, in every kind of context because, you know, and I've made the mistake before. So it's kind of partly me teaching people what not to do because I did it wrong. But for example, if you're thinking about getting into the online world or launching a new or service, you've got to go and validate that idea and research it with your marketplace and make sure. Something I talk about all the time is to make sure that you are selling painkillers and not vitamin pills to your audience. Because a vitamin pill is something you know would be good for your audience, but it's not solving the headache they've got today. And what they're really looking for is that product or service that solves the headache today. So you've got to go out to market and test this stuff first of all and understand, you know, I think this is also a big message for the value of niching and the value of therefore being able to understand who your ideal client is. Because when you have a clear niche and you have a clearly defined ideal client, you can then start to understand exactly what their key pains are. And then that's the messaging you want to get right on the homepage of your website.

Absolutely. And this ties perfectly in with what I was saying earlier, which this is the same thing that you must do. Whether you're designing, you're doing user experience, you're doing marketing. It's something that all these disciplines have in common because as you were saying, you, you try you finding the painkiller that will solve the problem. I love that analogy, by the way. I think it's great. And I mean, it's a process. When you do that process, it will be so useful for anything else that you want to do. Even say that you're doing. If you're doing this for a client and they want to do a LinkedIn campaign, for instance, they will have to do the same. You know, when you interviewed my LinkedIn coach, Tracy Burnett, who's brilliant, and that's the first thing that she will tell you, that's what she gets you to do. You know, her business building exercises involve you getting razor sharp on your niche and knowing what the pain points are for your clients and solving them, it's exactly the same thing that you should be doing when you're either your own website or a website for a client. And you need to get your clients to understand that it's hard sometimes because they need to make a mentality shift and you need to help them along. And that's something that I had very clear in mind when I was organizing the conference. And you get getting my ideas together about it. And that's why a lot of the talks are really focused on that how by putting the human beings that use your products or your clients products first, you are actually going to make more money and you're going to save money so that once your clients understand and once you adopt a process in your agency that focuses on that, there will be so many more rewards. And I'll give you, there's many examples that I could give you, but one that I really love because it ties back in with what you were saying earlier about the website being where we interact with the first port of call, where we have the opportunity to interact with our customers. And that is about forms. So if you think about, you know, even the simple contact form that you have on your website and then, you know, going a little bit more complex into surveys and other ways, testing, you know, surveys that you can send your clients to, test outs and so on, it seems so simple. You just ask questions. Well, it's not. There are so many things that you should bear in mind when you're building a form. And it's something that I got not obsessed with successive, but definitely so interested in recently because I realized at some point that you're probably excluding people because if you want to be inclusive and make sure that you help as many people as possible within your niche, you need to make sure that you don't exclude others. So there's one of the interviews in the conference is with Ezzy Hardy, who's a disability and inclusion expert and she talks so convincingly about the value of the purple Pound, which is the revenue that's generated by users with disabilities. Do you know whether a disabled person can use your forms? Do you know whether your website can be navigated without using a mouse and things like that. And so interesting because it's very, very, very simple. But do you, you may even think, well, you know, I'm converting anyway, it doesn't matter to me. But you know, how much more you may be able to converse if you bear these things in mind. Because accessibility is, is big. I think it's, it's as big as responsive was a few years ago when you started having to make sure that people could access your products on, on mobile and people are like, oh God, boring. But you know, you had to do it. And accessibility is a little bit like that, only that it's the epitome of user centered design because you may think that it's boring, but it's not, it is going to make you more money. And the attitude is these days is like, oh, if you're not accessible, you're going to get sued. I don't want to go that way at all. I want to say, have you thought how many more people you could help and therefore how much more money you could make if you were sure that you were being completely accessible and therefore inclusive? Another long rant. But it's, it's so important and I do think it's absolutely the way to go because I mean it's, it's a way in which we can do a little bit to make the web a better place. But also it is definitely, you know, the conversions argument is a really, really big one.

I think I'm, I'm going to be guilty of, of some of that stuff. Although I think I never say my, I never say my website is a beacon of what a great website is. But I try to make sure I don't fall foul of some of the things I see on my clients websites. But I've got to confess that my thinking around accessibility, you know, is not where it should be. So that's something for me to pay attention to. Now, before we jump in to talk about the conference, I just wanted to spend a few minutes kind of getting some practical advice for you. So I think a lot of people will be shaking their heads and agreeing with what we're saying today. But let's say they've, they're a web design company, they're going to their client. What practically does this look like and how is it different to how they might currently kind of get the brief and create the initial designs and the wireframes and present it back? How do they need to approach this in a different way to make sure that it is user centric?

The first thing to do to make something, anything user centric is the research at the beginning. I think that's where it starts from. And again, it's something that is in common with absolutely every other discipline, as we were saying earlier. So start from the research and start from how you can help. That's where it starts in terms of making things accessible. I'm with you. I'm still checking on my own products, the things that I do for myself to make sure that it's all done as it should be. But if you follow basic principles, if you follow basic design principles, you are kind of most of the way there. It's not as scary as it may seem. So that's One way of looking at it, that is a very practical way and that is very reassuring when you think about it. But I would say that the big mentality shift is to start from the research and make that the most important part. It's what user experience design is all about, really the biggest chunk of it. And sometimes I think it's about 60%, not even 50. And also do not consider the build as a linear process. Be prepared to go back and forth, back and forth. It's not linear. And I think that it would be one piece of advice that I, that I would give. And it does mean that if you, if your process is different, then I would suggest that you change it. Because if you think in terms of a website as a book, so you know, if you do something that you get perfect and you don't launch it until it's perfect, that means that you spend a very long time on time on something that isn't perfect anyway. Because as we know, perfection doesn't really exist. But that may be wrong in some very specific ways. But you can't find out until you try it out in the wild. Because even you know, you can do as much testing as you want while it's not launched yet, while it's still, but you're not going to know until it's out in the wild. So that's something else that I think is a very practical way of looking at it. And it is, I would say, you know, launch early, test and then perfect and tweak. And I mean, there's lots of people that recommend this type of approach, which is growth driven design.

Yeah, no, that's such good advice because at the end of the day, you know, we can use all the research, we can spend so much time crafting something, but then when we put it out in real life, it doesn't quite deliver the results. And of course we've got to look at the data we get back in the real world to help us identify where, you know, the bottlenecks are, where people are falling off a cliff and disappearing and why. I think the other thing is that the research that you do early on, it's one of my favorite expressions, is slow down to speed up. And this is a really good example of it. Like slow down at the beginning, do your research, because one of the other things that's going to tell you is it's going to help you understand your client's customer's journey and then you can think about what part does the website play in that customer journey? How far does it go and what do we want our reader, our user to do in relation to viewing the website? And I think that's one of the things I often talk to my clients and I'm not a web designer or anything but when I look at their websites in the context of their sales and marketing and I ask them what is the purpose of your website? They often kind of don't really know and the reality is it's just brochureware but they kind of hope it's going to be something else and they don't really know because they haven't stopped and thought it. So I guess that's a really good important question to ask the web designer to ask the customers what's your expectation of the website? Where does it fit in your sales and marketing strategy?

So true. And that's why when I say research it needs to start with you asking many, many, many, many questions to your client. And I think the first one is that one, why do you need a website? Thank you for saying that. Because also ask why as many times as possible. 5, 6, 7. I mean they say it's 5, then this is 5 but you know even more. And I can guarantee that you will unearth things that the client isn't even aware of. Because when a client wants a new needs say they need a new website, there's always something going on with the business that needs to be found out and it's extremely interesting to do that. Besides the conference, I also, I have a big UX course for agencies and the research module is the biggest in because it's so important. And I also do you know there's a real life example of a client of mine and I spent so long interviewing them so much time and whenever you can you shouldn't just interview the leaders, you should also interview the employees. Anybody who's involved with a product with a business delivering side should be spoken to because otherwise you, you don't know what else might come up. And that's when, when I say you know, do your research, that's, that's it, that's where it starts. It starts from you talking to the client as much as you possibly can. And it's extraordinary how often they don't. They just think well because I need a website, everybody needs a website. But they don't. And it's like no, you need. And so often you see websites that you go, you go to the website and there's nothing to do. And that's my whenever I do reviews which are so interesting and I love Doing. Because sometimes you can get so much sorted just by doing a review and sorting out a few practical things rather than rebuilding from the ground up. The first thing is always, what am I meant to do here? Where do you want me to go? And that simple, simple but essential thing that so many websites miss out on, Usually that's the first thing.

Yeah.

So what's really interesting about that is that it's the difference between the customer seeing a website as a strategic asset or a tactical thing that they've got done. And from the agency's perspective, it's the difference between being a bog standard web designer or being consultative. And guess where the value is. The value's in the consultative piece. Because, you know, without belittling, because this is true in any industry that, you know, developing a WordPress website is a very commoditized thing. And how do you look different from the freelancer who's charging 500 quid to develop the website? Well, you look different by the process that you use and by being consultative with the client and saying, hey, hang on, let's understand where the website fits in your overall business strategy. Let's understand what the purpose of the website is, let's understand how your customers will use the website and all that stuff. And if you do that, you start to not only make yourself look different to the competition, but you also start to be able to charge, because that's where the real value is.

Absolutely. And that's where the transformation is for the clients. That's how you can deliver something that would really, really change things for them. And they may go, wow, I haven't thought of that. And as you say, I don't even really build websites anymore. I'm not interested. I mean, I love designing. So when I do my own stuff, I love it because I love the actual physical designing, doing layouts, I still love that. But at the same time, that's not what I do anymore for my clients when I do it, because I really just only it's the consulting bit, as you say. That's absolutely. Couldn't agree more. That's where the value is.

Yeah, brilliant. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the conference. So this Designs for Conversions conference happening in May, tell us about how it came about and what its purpose is.

Precisely this. So I. To help people make a real transformation by putting people at the center and also design, because that's something else that I noticed. So I'm very active in the WordPress environment. I work with cloudways, they have a big WordPress audience and I'm a speaker, I'm a volunteer, I'm a conference organizer for WordPress. So I know many, many, many WordPress agencies and freelancers. And the reality of it is that most of them do not have a design background. And if you think that WordPress powers 40% of the web, it's a lot. And the reality anyway, extending to the 100% of the web is that most of the websites that we see on the web are not created by people who have a design background. So that's where I step in and I want to help out because often people think that design is css, it's styling, and it's absolutely not. It's the process that we've just described, that's what design is. And also the shift on the people, on thinking about the people that use the product is the second next step. So every single interview is about that and every single interview because I'm carrying them out right now, they all end up being on how to help more. Which for me is fantastic because it's, that's not what I used to be like when I started designing. It just really wasn't. And now I like that so, so much. And it turns because I'm not someone who sells naturally. I've never, you know, I'm learning, I'm learning from. But now I realize that it makes me think that when you sell in inverted commas, because it could be that you're selling for free, but you know, it's just the concept of giving something to other people, whether they give you money back or not, you're serving, you are helping, you're solving a problem, that's what you're doing. And that really it's what it's all about. And it's kind of the through line of the conference. One thing that if anyone you know, can correct me, I'll be happy to be wrong. But I've been organizing and thinking about this for nearly a year now and I've done a lot of investigating to see whether there was a conference similar to this. And I haven't found it in the sense that this is a conference that's designers talking to non designers, agencies that build websites, but they don't have a design background because every single other design conference that I've seen is designers talking to designers. So it gets very technical or it gets very specific. It just, it handles different types of problems. It doesn't actually think in a necessarily client centric way. And this is what the difference is for me. I really want this conference to help people handle their clients and the way they deliver their projects in a different way and start, you know, changing their perspective.

Obviously it's an online conference this year. Will there be opportunity for people to ask questions and get questions answered as well as listening to these great people speak?

Absolutely, because the talks are prerecorded. But there's a live segment which will be at the end where there's a chat box where people will be able to ask questions. And then there will be a live segment at the end with the speaker answering the question. But there's also from the sponsors, there will be live panels as well. And I'm really excited because I got a webflower on as sponsors. For those who don't know webflow are a designer hosting solution, you could say that they are similar to wix in a way, but they're like, you know, if wix is your scooter, then webflow is the Rolls Royce because it's really top quality in a number of senses. And because I'm a WordPress user and I just love the idea of offering an alternative because it's, in a way it's competition, in a way it's not competition because if you're a WordPress agency, I think that you need to be aware of the other good tools that are out there because they may be right for a client. There may be a client for whom WordPress is a complete overkill and they should be using a different tool instead. So I think that offering the alternative is very, very important. It's something that's going to make us, us more complete as agencies. And webflow have actually have a designer whose title is Growth Designer. And I like what. And it's a designer that only, only occupies herself with conversions. Optimized. I'm flabbergasted. I didn't know. Did you know that such a job title exists? I didn't know.

There's all sorts of interesting job titles. What a great job to have. And I know, I'm sure people are going to learn a lot from listening to that speaker about optimizing their pages and making sure I, I mean, this is a whole other conversation, but you mentioned it earlier, but it drives me crazy when I look at someone's website and I see like at the top of the page, like above the fold, I see a Contact us button and.

I say, look, I'm going to put.

My mind reading hat on now. And I bet you that you are getting zero people clicking on that button because they don't know who you are. You haven't proven you haven't delivered any value. As you said earlier, value first. And they are not going to go take this massive leap. It's like walking into a store and immediately someone trying to sell you the most expensive item in that store and you, you don't know anything about that store. So you know it's completely the wrong approach. So I think that person talking about conversion optimization is going to be a really great talk. And we'll put a link in the show notes to the conference so. Because obviously people are going to want to know how they find out more. So we'll put a link to that is.

It's free to attend. It's free to attend. It's free to attend. Sorry for the interruption.

No, no, that's. That's super important to know. I'm going to make sure I put it in my, my diary as well. The question I ask all of my guests who come on the Agency Accelerator podcast is if you could go back in time and give your younger self just starting out in the work, working world one piece of advice, what would it be?

I would definitely say you can be or do absolutely anything you want. Do not believe anybody that gives you limitations or that says you can't possibly do that or that's going to be too hard. No, just don't. This is the main thing that I would tell myself and anybody else.

Great piece of advice. Yeah, I'm going to, at some point, I'm going to go back through all of my episodes of the podcast and pull out everybody's messages because it's always a really interesting that they very, they very rarely repeat themselves. Everyone's got something slightly different and that would make a great piece of content, I think. So if anybody else wants to get hold of you, Peach, besides looking for the conference that we'll put in the show notes, what. How else can people find you?

They can find me on LinkedIn, Peacher. Neri. I'm the only one. So that's Pandy. And on Twitter it's Peacher because I signed up like probably the third person. So that's it. You know how to. Basically, if you know how to spell my name, you're always going to find me.

Yeah. So just for, just for clarity, you spell your name. P I, C, C I, A. Okay. So in case anyone doesn't look at the photos. Listen. Such an interesting topic, one that we need to revisit again in the future and perhaps dig into some aspects of what we talked about in more detail, but hopefully this has useful to you guys listening today. Hopefully you're going to leave this podcast and go and look at your own website and see some of the things that Peach has talked about that you can actually start changing and improving. And obviously we'll hope to see everybody at the conference in May.

Thank you so much for having me Robert. It was wonderful.

It's been a pleasure.

So lots of food for thought today and I don't know about you, but I'm going to go and have a good look at my website now and see if there are three or four things that I can fix based on the insights that Peach has shared with us today. So I hope you found it useful. And as ever, please make sure you smash the subscribe button and share this with your colleagues. And please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. But other than that, have a brilliant rest of your week and I will see you next week for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast.

Sam.