General

Role of Developers in the DX – Digital Transformation

Why do Developers need to know?

Developers cannot run the show all their work-life working on a particular technology. Technology changes with time. Some become obsolete. If a developer aspires growth, wishes to remain state-of-the-art in the industry, he has to hold the currency which gives him maximum returns. Like cloud and big data, digital transformation is another happening place in the industry.

To remain competitive, companies all over the world, across industries, are taking on digital transformation as an essential part of their overall business strategy for the future. They are coming up with creative ways to promote developer ecosystems both inside and outside their organizations. The potential and novelty for developers are endless, and the path to digital transformation becomes that much more attainable. Digital transformation gives an opportunity to the developers to create solutions that re-imagine the digital world.

What is DX?

Digital transformation is the re-innovation of an organization through the use of digital technology to make their business activities, processes, competencies and models 100% digital. The technological evolutions and changes they bring upon us are accelerating rapid, displaying exponential growth – and consequences.

DX is driven by changing CX

Let us have a look at the digital transformation in a more focused lens called customer experience. To have a lead over the competitor’s a company should be able to offer a finer customer experience and human side of the business. Digital transformation is driven partly by technology and also by the evolution of customer behavior.

Digital transformation also stands for the pursuit to comprehend how ‘disruptive technology’ affects the customer experience. It cut shorts the personal touch which was a traditional strategy to engage and nurture customers. Digital customers should be provided with an experience. These experiences may comprise of segmenting the profiles of the customers, providing customized services, predictive marketing, pushing for self-service, digitally enhanced selling, conducting cross channel conferences etc.

The ultimate goal of the developers is to guarantee the user experience with ever more digital touch points. A developer should be technologically ready and culturally agile to act and effectively do something that requires insightful changes and a deep understanding of the customer’s journey.

A connected customer who can easily compare prices, buy anywhere and criticize publicly.  Digital age customers expect a different level of experience from their service providers; they expect organizations to know what they did on previous interactions and deliver immediate resolution with as little effort as possible on their side regardless of the service channel.

One can follow these steps to drive the digital transformation in his company for building customer relationships for life.

  1. Identify initial customer experience focus areas, plan the project accordingly and invest the correct organizational resources to sustain the transformation.
  2. Apply new-fangled technology to better customer understanding, use the new data and insights to improve the customer journey.
  3. Streamline and automate customer linked processes to save valuable customer and employee time
  4. Provide pertinent customer context to employees along with training and on-going guidance on how to utilize it.
  5. Set a customer experience vision and goals, ensuring that the message is crystal clear especially at the frontlines.

Mapping and understanding the customer experience is becoming critical in guiding transformation efforts.

Digital customer experience is determined by UX

A digital customer interacts with the website to check out what the product can do, its features, the cost, to buy the product and for the after support. UX design is the art and science of generating positive emotions among people who interact with products or services.

UI developers should understand the bigger picture. UX will trigger CX which will in turn help business make the digital transformation (DX) successfully.

DX = CX + UX + UI+ BackEnd Services

The broad responsibility of a UX designer is to ensure that the product logically flows from one step to the next. UX designers are primarily concerned with how the product feels. Good UX Design happens when the decisions are made in a way that understands and fulfills the needs of both users and business

A developer can create a toggle, a flow, or an interaction that is striking, exceptional, and functional in a flow—UXD extends into all the disciplines that come together to make the user experience as a whole great. To come up with something like that, we should also have interaction designers, content strategists, information architects, user researchers, engineers, and product managers—all of whom have a shared responsibility to create an experience that is easy to use, and leaves users happy because it is adding value to them.

According to this study from the Oxford Journal Interacting With Computers: 

“The goal of UX design in business is to “improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.”

In UX design role, UI designer designs a digital product which is easy to use, a delight to interact with and guarantees to the user that it would be valuable. If it succeeds in doing so, UI designer has helped the transformation of a customer from the user.

User Experience is not just about design. It is about the strategic understanding of users and their behavior. UX developers have a breath of talent, which can be utilized as to have them as strategic planners, customer advocates, and innovation drivers.

At the end of it all, the experience of the people UI developers design for is what determines the success of the products, services and relationships that they create for the business.