People talk about UX and CX mainly in relation to websites and apps. But how do those terms apply to the design of interior spaces?
Designing for the User Experience
UX - or User Experience - is about how a space works:
How easy is the space to navigate?
How do staff work in the space?
How efficiently can staff do their jobs?
Is the bed comfortable?
Is the bar stool the right height?
Is what I want in stock?
How easy is it to get goods to my car?
UX is important. Things have to work. Design can be based on industry best practice.
Designing for the Customer Cxperience
But it’s just a subset of CX, which is Customer Experience.
Customer Experience exists both inside and outside the physical environment. It’s more about how customers feel about your brand. It can start way before the physical visit, with what influencers tell us, where we look online, what gets delivered to our inboxes. It can start by a simple word of mouth recommendation.
The Customer Experience continues all the way through the visit to the environment. It includes all of those UX touch points but also includes the emotions - how we feel about the space. Those are the feelings that will make us want you to stay longer, take pictures, share them with our friends. If there’s something for sale, we’ll want to buy it. Either there and then or afterwards, at home or even on the journey home.
The customer experience isn’t contained within the environment - the restaurant, the café, the showroom, the shop. It lives both in and around it and is based on your brand.
We can design at a practical level for the User Experience, but the Customer Experience is the bigger picture - and much more valuable to your brand.