EX Design Principles:

• Meet the employees' needs Keep the employee in the center throughout the process & make sure you really understand them
• Know where you are in the design process When thinking about creating employee experiences, this also applies. The same as you would be designing a new website, a new internal process requires you to understand where the company is right now and what the vision is, so that you can design a process to support this journey. In different situations there are different kinds of tools and models to use, you can't just copy/paste.
• Have a clear hierarchy In UX design this refers to the site hierarchy, how the navigation in the digital service is designed, how smooth the experience is when you browse through a website or an app. In the EX context I see this as how the different areas of your culture strategy or processes go together, do they assembly in a cohesive entity and support each other e.g. from recruitment process to exit, from the ways of celebrating to learning and development. One way of ensuring this is to have clear values, vision and mission and mirroring these to the models you're designing.
• Keep it consistent In the UX design world this means that you should use solutions that are familiar to the user e.g. how do you scroll, where can you find the login button, where is the search tab located etc. This makes sure the user gets to focus on your solutions and not wasting time to learn how to use your application. The same goes with EX - you don't need to create everything as a new, focus on the most important points of the process and use already created tools and models to support it.
• Understand accessibility How important is this! When thinking about EX accessibility goes from the physical environment to the digital and everything in between. It's one aspect of inclusion that is a big trend right now, so you want to make sure you really understand the whole context and make sure you include it into everything you design for you people
• Context is key This is to point out you understand the user's context. In the words of EX - is the employee working from home or office, what kind of situation are they in their career or employee life cycle etc. The best solutions see individuals and their needs instead of one bunch of people.
• Usability first You design for the employees, not for you. The HR system is there to serve the company and its people, not (only) HR.
• Less is more Many times it feels you need to cram all the elements and models and trendy ways of working into one solution and this usually leads to not serving anyone or the project to never being finished. In UX the aim is to reduce the operational and cognitive costs for the user, and this can be applied to EX context as it is. Keeping it simple doesn't mean it's not modern, cool, topnotch EX solution - it means that you're a professional who can see the most important factors and package them into an understandable model that people are able to use, preferably on their own.
• Use simple language Communication is the key also when designing EX. Making sure the language, e.g. instructions are easy to understand, posts are not too long, answering the most important questions and making sure you know what those questions are. One important principle is also the narrative, storifying your service so that it really hits the users and makes the message even more meaningful.
• Typography is powerful This goes on to more the visual context and usability and accessibility. In the EX context I'd say that a big part of communication is also the visual part. If you don't know how to do it, hire someone to do it for you. I promise it's an investment that pays itself back pretty quickly.
• Feedback matters In the UX context this refers to giving the user feedback e.g. a reaction when they click an icon so that they know the website understood their action and is doing something. In EX this also applies, knowing you are heard means a lot. Listening is a powerful tool; people feel they are seen and heard. But if it's not met with action it will lose its power pretty soon. Listen and take action and visualize this so that people see it's being done.
• The user is in control In the UX design there's a fine line you need to figure out how much you want the machine to make decisions for you and how much the user has power. How much are you able to destroy or lose content if you click something wrong, can you cancel etc. This goes to the EX world as well. How much responsibility and power does the individual have and making sure this is understood by all.
• Design with personality This differentiates you from your competitors. Your company culture and values are the best ways and tools to make this happen. Use these to make your EX the best possible for your current and future employees.

A few UX principles were left from the list because they were more on the technical / visualization side, but otherwise I think there's so much we can use just by understanding these factors that are proofed to make the best experience for people using services. And thus, they should be also applied to companies' internal services and experiences.

Credits: The UX principles list is from Springboard and selected here, because it captures really well the wholeness of UX design: https://www.springboard.com/blog/ux-design-principles/

#HR #UX #EX #userexperience #employeeexperience #organisationculture #companyculture #leadership #design #culturedesign