Jason's life at GBG interview
What does a UX designer do?
In short, as a user experience designer, I make sure that GBG solutions are usable, enjoyable and accessible for our customers.
UX design involves carrying out research to really understand how customers engage with our products, identifying the cause of any user problems, coming up with ideas and concepts for solutions and then testing and validating those ideas to enhance the experience.
What is a great customer experience?
I love this quote by Don Norman, one of the pioneers of UX: “Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible.”
I truly stand by this statement. Poor design sticks out like a sore thumb, whereas we tend to notice it compared to when something is seamless. Great experience and safe experience are indivisible for business growth in a digital world, and that’s true for any business including GBG. Great customer experience not only makes our customers happy, but it improves our productivity, lowers training costs, and reduces user errors and change requests.
“Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible.”
Can you give us an example?
So, we were recently working on the identity document capture experience for one of our identity verification products. We were discovering that there was an unacceptable capture fail rate; users were either capturing poor-quality images or in some cases not managing to capture an image of their identity document at all.
Our team implemented better upfront guidance and improved user feedback within the document capture journey, significantly reducing the number of failed or poor-quality image captures. In this way, by focusing on end-user experience and designing interfaces around needs, we bridge the gap between process and outcome as seamlessly as we can.
“I was very proud to receive a GBG award for exceptional work in our customer team at the end of the last financial year. To have been nominated and recognised is really satisfying.”
What are you most proud of recently?
Personally, I was very proud to receive a GBG award for exceptional work in our customer team at the end of the last financial year. To have been nominated and recognised is really satisfying.
As a UX team, I’m really proud of the work we’re doing to create a GBG UX Centre of Excellence, promoting a structured UX design process, increasing the amount of customer research and usability testing we do. Not only is this helping to better manage our capacity and work as a team, but significantly it’s delivering better design and improving the accessibility of our products across the business.
What do you like about life at GBG?
I love the people at GBG. Team members are really supportive and easy to get along with. It feels great to have good friends among team members and great collaboration between teams – that supportive culture was just what I needed to get through the pandemic.
Our flexible working policy allows us to work where and when we want, which has been great as it allows me to work at times where I find my concentration and creativity levels are high. I’m really not a morning person; I find my brain often springs into action after lunch and sometimes in the evening!