<aside> 🌟 Gabriela Pardo Aguirre is a UX Consultant for Saludsa, based in Ecuador. Through her consulting work, she works to create new products that help businesses grow, while also making sure that user needs are met. She also offers mentorship through ADPList, an online resource for UX-related careers.
Check out her Linkedin here!
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I’m Gabriela. I’m in Ecuador, and I’m a consultant for Saludsa, a pre-paid medicine company here. My main role at Saludsa is to give advice to the business leaders to help them see how UX can be a valuable tool for our users, our clients, and our company. I have a bachelor’s degree in Communications, and I started getting into UX when I worked at a tech company here. In South America, especially in Ecuador, the tech industry isn’t as developed as in the US, so the UX area has only been growing in the last 5 or so years. I started as a UX researcher and later on became a UX consultant, since my skills were more equipped for that role.
When I started working at Saludsa, they already had an app and a website for their clients. As a pre-paid medicine company they offered health plans, appointment scheduling, instructions to reach physical centers, and many more transactional activities all through those sites. The business wanted to have a centralized platform for users. The main pain point when I was brought onto the project was that there wasn’t a lot of organization in these sites. Users had different experiences when they would use the app and the website, and the sites were created to only have one or two transactional flows. Later, when the business started adding more features, and users couldn’t find anything. They didn’t even know some feature existed.
We started the process by really understanding what we needed to do with this application; how the application could become an ally for the users, and the business. With this in mind, we started with the redesign, not just of the user interface, but the system of organization for the sites as well. Throughout that redesign stage we worked with a few outside companies that were working on the UI and implimentation, and it was a big focus for the app not to just be pretty, but for it to have good performance and for it to be useful. We focused on architectural information organization to address a lot of the pain points we’d discovered through our research. I was in charge of that, as well as collaborating with the business to maintain communication with them about how the redesign would help them on a long-term basis.
After the redesign, we started getting really good results. We were growing not just because of the design, but because of the system that we created. We got a lot of word-of-mouth recommendations, because people started to trust the site more. What I think is great is that because of this redesign, not only has our app usage has gone up by 20%, and it’s also created a possibility for the business to create new products and grow within the system we created.
Every role is definitely important for the entire UX process, but they all have different focuses. Researchers are focused more on understanding deeply what the user really needs, their pain points, what kinds of things they struggle with. The designer makes solutions to address those pain points. They understand what the researcher finds, and starts to work on a solution and a structure for the product. Designers might be a more creative, whereas a researcher might be more analytical.
A UX consultant may have experience in either the research or the design side of UX, but what makes them different is that they also have skills from a business angle. Consultants have to think about how the business wants to create new products in the future, what their existing products are like, and the general market and competitors. With all this information, you can give more in-depth insights than just from a user-focused perspective. Of course, with a UX role, you have to always have in mind the user’s interests. You still need to make products that are usable, but those products also have to bring something beneficial for the business. You have to be this connection between what the user needs, what’s happening with the business, and establishing a mutual understanding between them. You’re this bridge between the two. Without understanding both sides, it’s harder to create the right solutions. Without seeing the whole scope, you can’t provide useful insights.
When I started working in UX here in Ecuador, the field was definitely not as developed as it is in the US. Not every company has a UX team, and even less have a UX consultant. If they start creating UX roles, they struggle to connect their current business strategy with user-centered goals. What I noticed was that there are not many UX Consultants, but there are a lot of UX designers. It can be hard for people to understand business strategies when they’re more creative. If you can find that balance between UX and business, there is a big need for that skill. There are so many possibilities.
When I became a consultant I was surprised at just how much of an impact I could have with product development and business goals. I was always taught from a UX perspective that by understanding the user, the customer, they will give you the resources to create a product that is useful. It’s amazing how much more you can do when you have both the user and the business in mind. You create much better solutions that work in the long term.
The biggest thing is that you have to maintain your creativity. You have to stay resourceful, and take advantage of the tools you have available. One of the weaknesses I’ve seen in UX designers is that they really don’t understand who they’re working for and the needs of their company. I’ve met a lot of people who are so focused on the user, and the user’s needs, that they may sometimes forget about the system that they’re working within. What does your company do? What are their processes? You don’t have to be a UX consultant or want to do consultant work to get more involved. Try to understand the full system you’re working in, and if you have all of this context, not just what the user told you, you’ll come up with more sustainable and effective solution. If you aren’t aware of the company itself, the solution you come up with might not be reasonable to expect from the company to develop. Try to understand the company you work for, and try to understand what’s happening around in the industry your company is in. This goes for anyone in a UX position, but by understanding all of those relationships, you can start to develop a way of thinking to analyze any problem space better.