UXi Validation: How to Evaluate if Brand Values Can Be Experienced by Users

Based on the theoretical foundations, being a user or customer is the core of each experience, whether you call it brand or user experience. Hence, an iterative user-centered design approach appears to be a valuable instrument to ensure harmony among both experience constructs. Each project needs its individual process, requiring iterations and continuous adaptations to fit the needs of the brand and user group of concern. Norman and Verganti (2014) compare user-centered design to the process of a blindfolded person climbing a hill, scanning the environment until sensing the next higher position. The mountain peak is a metaphor for the ideal quality of a product, involving all possible UX aspects. The presented UXi strategy can be understood as additional assistance, besides common approaches like usability testing. It helps designers to get to the next higher peak of the mountain, including harmony between brand experience and user experience. This includes scanning the area to find out whether the current design strategy really is the best possible solution. In order to improve the harmony between brand experience and user experience, real users of a specific target group have to be involved in evaluating the current state of a product. This chapter describes how to validate whether brand experience and user experience are harmonious or not in order to assess if the user experience fits to the expected brand experience. Therefore, the UXi Need Footprint is the foundation for different evaluation approaches creating an evaluation strategy, which can be applied depending on the project case. These approaches are described by comparing the use cases of the three controversial mobile banking apps.