Sully Group participates in ADIRA and FLUPA UX round tables

A look back at the exchanges between CIOs and designers

On November 17, ADIRA (Association for Digital and IT in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region) and FLUPA (French-speaking Association of User Experience Professionals) brought together experts at the GEM Lab at Grenoble École de Management to discuss the challenges of experience design in IT projects. Nathalie COTTÉ (Senior Independent UX Designer) and Nicolas SCHWEYER (Head of UX-UI at Sully Group) shared their visions and practices, moderated by Dominique BORRES, CIO.

UX/UI: a lever for project management

Dominique first pointed out that IT departments may perceive the UX/UI approach as a constraint. The speakers demonstrated that design can, on the contrary, facilitate the project, provided that interventions tailored to the constraints of the stakeholders are planned with them. An agile design approach offers workshops that bring stakeholders together and facilitate buy-in, accelerate decision-making, reduce the risks of trade-offs, and streamline specifications and developments. UX then becomes a driver of performance, not only for the final product, but also for project management.

UX to clarify and consolidate needs

Discussions highlighted the difficulty for project owners to synthesize the expectations of different stakeholders (IT departments, communications departments, business units, etc.). Designers, thanks to their neutral third-party position and their listening tools (interviews, workshops, personas, user journeys), facilitate mediation and creativity. Their intervention helps to restart dialogue, reveal the complementary nature of needs, and unite support for the project.

Aligning product vision through mock-ups

Facilitating workshops that bring together people from different backgrounds can be complex. The speakers emphasized the power of mock-ups, a universal language that allows everyone to visualize the solution in concrete terms. Mock-ups make features tangible and promote shared understanding, whereas technical descriptions can be difficult for some professions to grasp. The end user, placed at the center of the process, becomes the natural arbiter during co-design workshops or tests.

Conclusion and lessons learned

User experience design is neither an option nor an isolated specialty: above all, it is a collaborative method that creates a common language between business lines, IT, and users. UX design fails when it is disconnected from the field, but succeeds when it is shared and integrated into every stage of the project.