Thinking, doing, being. Give your customer what they need to “just be”

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, there are three stages to learning something new:

1. Thinking
2. Doing
3. Being

When we start learning something new, by ourselves or taught by someone, we progress through these stages.

Learning to move!

Let’s take learning how to dance salsa for the first time. Learning anything with the body comes with foundational basics that you need to learn first. With salsa, you start with:

• Basic footwork
• Body positioning
• How to hold your partner

…before moving on to more advanced moves.

If you’ve ever tried to move your body in new ways (dancing, yoga, boxing, skiing), you’ll be familiar with how robotic you feel. This is because there’s a lot of Thinking happening in this moment. You’re not taking in any of the cues from the music or picking up things from the environment yet because you’re so focused on executing the move you’ve just learnt to the best of your ability.

If you’ve managed to get through the first stage without feeling like you’ve completely embarrassed yourself (well done you!), you will now be in the Doing stage. Here, you might still be a little focused on executing the move but things start to fall into place:

• Your steps are more fluid
• You’re keeping up with the beat of the music
• You’re probably starting to perform multiple moves at the same time

Finally, we move into the third stage, Being. This is where much of what we’ve learnt has moved into our subconscious and we begin to dance without thinking or doing, and instead start being:

• Our feet are moving
• Occasionally our shoulders are shimmying
• You’re no longer looking at your feet
• You’re enjoying the music and the company of your partner

Just be

To us, designing with your customer in mind should mean you provide them products and services that allow them to Be, over Think and Do.

“Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible.” — Steve Krug

Providing your customers with ways to get what they need without making them think is key in our fast-paced society because they have other priorities or tasks in their to-do list. So, if your product or service isn’t helping, it’s getting in the way and you’re giving them a reason to check out your competition. It’s never been easier to switch to another service but the good news is it’s even easier to connect with your customer and understand what they need.

What can you do

It’s important to truly understand what your customer is trying to achieve while using your product or service. By gaining empathy and thinking like your customer you can alleviate, and sometimes eradicate the annoying and frustrating experiences.

Speak to your customer

• Use journey maps to understand their journey
• Identify any pain points in the journey

If you have staff, it’s also important to understand what they’re doing and when they’re running into issues too. You might find they’re doing things differently to what you expect.

Speak to your staff

• Use service blueprinting to map interactions
• Identify any pain points in the process

Try not to recreate the wheel.

Design intuitive experiences

• Utilise familiar patterns and processes
• Remove obstacles

Re-evaluate and simplify steps in a process

• Only ask for the information you really need
• Use better iconography for a more intuitive UI