Drive seamless digital customer experiences with composable UX
Disjointed customer experiences are a widespread marketing pain point. Delivering seamless digital user experiences across the touchpoints of the customer journey is tough, and a traditional channel mentality won’t get you there.
Challenges
- Siloed UX approaches based on traditional channel mentality are preventing organisations from delivering a seamless digital customer user experience to internal and external audiences.
- Multiple silos hinder the continuous and fluid CX, while monolithic technologies undermine the consistency of experience.
- Better strategy around customer data management and customer journey intelligence is needed to make composable UX attainable.
As businesses navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape, delivering a seamless customer experience is more critical than ever. Customers expect a cohesive and personalised journey that meets their needs and provides a consistent experience across all touchpoints. Unfortunately, disjointed experiences remain a widespread marketing pain point, resulting in frustrated customers and lost business opportunities.
To deliver seamless digital user experiences across the customer journey, a traditional channel mentality won't get you there. Siloed UX approaches based on traditional channel mentality are preventing organisations from delivering a seamless digital customer user experience to internal and external audiences. Multiple silos hinder the continuous and fluid CX, while monolithic technologies undermine the consistency of experience.
In this article, we'll discuss how composable UX can help organizations address these challenges and deliver the seamless customer experiences that modern customers expect.
What is Composable UX?
Composable UX is an approach to user experience design that focuses on creating a modular and flexible system of user interface components. These components can be used and reused across different touchpoints and applications, allowing for a more agile and adaptable approach to UX design.
Composable UX is based on the concept of "composability," which is the ability of different components to be combined and recombined in different ways to create new and unique experiences. This approach differs from the traditional monolithic UX design approach, which creates a single, inflexible user experience that is difficult to modify or adapt to changing needs.
The key to composable UX is the ability to break down user interface components into smaller, more manageable pieces. These components can include everything from buttons and forms to entire pages or applications. By breaking down these components into smaller pieces, it becomes easier to manage and modify individual components as needed, without affecting the rest of the user experience.
Composable UX and Customer Experience
Composable UX is particularly well-suited for delivering a seamless customer experience. By breaking down user interface components into smaller pieces, it becomes easier to create a consistent experience across different touchpoints and applications.
For example, imagine a customer is interacting with a company's website and decides to download a mobile app to continue their experience. With composable UX, the components used in the website can be reused in the mobile app, creating a consistent and seamless experience for the customer.
Composable UX also makes it easier to create personalized experiences for customers. By breaking down user interface components into smaller pieces, it becomes easier to modify and personalize individual components based on customer preferences or behaviors. This allows businesses to create a more tailored experience for each customer, which can lead to increased engagement and loyalty.
Challenges of Composable UX
While composable UX offers many benefits for businesses, it also comes with its own set of challenges. One of the biggest challenges is the need for a better strategy around customer data management and customer journey intelligence. Without a clear understanding of customer needs and behaviors, it can be difficult to design effective user interface components that meet their needs.
Another challenge is the need for a more collaborative approach to UX design. Composable UX requires a high degree of collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders, which can be challenging in large organizations. It also requires a significant investment in tools and processes to support the creation and management of modular user interface components.
Despite these challenges, the benefits of composable UX far outweigh the challenges. By creating a modular and flexible system of user interface components, businesses can deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience that meets the needs of modern customers.
Implementing Composable UX
Implementing composable UX requires a significant shift in mindset and approach to UX design. Here are some key steps to implementing a composable UX approach in your organisation:
- Build a modular design system: The first step to implementing composable UX is to build a modular design system that breaks down user interface components into smaller pieces. This requires a thorough understanding of the different touchpoints and applications that your customers interact with, as well as the specific components that make up these touchpoints.
- Identify common components: Once you have a modular design system in place, the next step is to identify common components that can be reused across different touchpoints and applications. This can include everything from buttons and forms to entire pages or applications.
- Create a component library: To make it easier to reuse and manage these components, it's important to create a component library that includes all of the different components used in your design system. This library should include detailed documentation on each component, including design specs, code snippets, and usage guidelines.
- Implement a composable CMS: To effectively manage and distribute these components, it's important to implement a composable content management system (CMS). A composable CMS allows you to easily manage and distribute modular content components across different touchpoints and applications, making it easier to create a consistent and seamless customer experience.
- Foster collaboration: Composable UX requires a high degree of collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders. It's important to foster a collaborative culture that encourages communication and feedback between these different teams. This can include regular design reviews, workshops, and other collaborative activities.
- Invest in the right tools and processes: Implementing composable UX requires a significant investment in tools and processes to support the creation and management of modular user interface components. This can include everything from design tools and content management systems to project management software and collaboration platforms.
Benefits of Composable UX
Implementing a composable UX approach can provide a wide range of benefits for businesses. Some of the key benefits include:
- Improved customer experience: Composable UX allows businesses to deliver a consistent and seamless customer experience across different touchpoints and applications. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Increased agility: Composable UX allows businesses to quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market conditions. By breaking down user interface components into smaller pieces, it becomes easier to modify and personalize individual components based on customer preferences or behaviors.
- Reduced design and development costs: Composable UX can help businesses reduce design and development costs by making it easier to reuse and manage user interface components. This can lead to faster design and development cycles and reduced time-to-market.
- Increased collaboration: Composable UX requires a high degree of collaboration between designers, developers, and other stakeholders. This can lead to increased communication and feedback, which can improve the quality of the final product.
Conclusion
Delivering a seamless digital customer experience is more critical than ever. Traditional UX design approaches based on a channel mentality are no longer enough to meet the needs of modern customers. Composable UX offers a more modular and flexible approach to UX design, allowing businesses to create a consistent and personalized customer experience across different touchpoints and applications.
To implement a composable UX approach, businesses need to build a modular design system, identify common components, create a component library, implement a composable CMS, foster collaboration, and invest in the right tools and processes.
The benefits of composable UX are clear: improved customer experience, increased agility, reduced design and development costs, and increased collaboration. By adopting a composable UX approach, businesses can stay ahead of the curve and meet the evolving needs of modern customers.
Sources
Gartner, Drive Seamless Digital Customer Experiences With Composable UX, By Irina Guseva, Don Scheibenreif, Jason Wong, Gene Alvarez, John Field, Published 26 October 2021.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
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