How to serve customers with User Experience?

We believe that good user experience gets users to do what we want them to do, while great user experience aligns company beliefs with consumer values.

At Giant Shoulders, we think about design as our way to serve our clients and their vision, and together we orchestrate the user experience to serve their consumers. Good design, when done right, is never the star; design is meant to communicate and not dominate. We believe that good user experience gets users to do what we want them to do, while great user experience aligns company beliefs with consumer values.

Introducing Servant Leadership

I was introduced to the concept of servant leadership while serving in the Singaporean military, years before embarking on my creative career. We had a creed as military officers to lead our men by example, and answer for their training, morale and discipline. We were expected to lead by meeting the needs of our men, removing obstacles, and helping them excel in their roles. My experience is well summed up by Chris Edmonds, an expert in the area, defining servant leadership “as a person’s dedication to helping others be their best selves at home, work, and in their community. Anyone can serve–and lead–from any position or role in a family, workplace, or community.” Likewise at Giant Shoulders, we subscribe to this belief and apply servant leadership in the way we work.

By adopting this thinking, it fundamentally challenges the value we placed on design. It is easy for designers to make decisions that serve ‘the design’, and not make decisions that serve people. At Giant Shoulders, we never see our work as more important than our client. To us, the process is as important as the final product. It is an opportunity to build deep relationships–us with the client, client with their community, client with their brand.

The Promise of Design

Some of us have the opportunity to work with innovators in companies who understand that their vision can not be reached without partnering with customers. Through design, we can serve them by helping align their beliefs with consumer values, beyond features, to build lasting relationships. We believe that is the promise of design.