UX and Productivity

Improvements in technology and business process improvements is often considered important in maintaining living standards.

Despite enormous upheavals to contend with, technology and business process improvements might have saved the world’s biggest economy from disaster. However, what could this mean for the future? Moreover, the intricate relationship with population growth cannot be ignored.

We all know about the frustrations and time wasted from a poor user experience. If we are using a website or product that we have chosen, we can usually choose another one. However, the situation is different when our employer has already chosen for us. Users are frequently dissatisfied. The employer knows that User Experience improvements can be made (or alternative technology can be purchased), but in the meantime the efficiency of business processes will be reduced.

It is little surprise that countries that have embraced efficient personal and business process, have greatly benefitted. For many situations, technology has become being cheaper and more reliable than human beings. Production processes and supply chain efficiency have improved, leading to massive productivity gains. The technology industry has been a cornerstone of this phenomenon.  

As an illustration, consider the experience of the United States since 1995. Despite a terrorist attack, a housing bust that triggered a financial crisis and a painful ‘dotcom crash’ … GDP production was unmoved. This stood at 25% in 1995, and stood at 25% in 2010. [Wall Street Journal]

 To maintain productivity like this in a tough world is remarkable. Moreover, whilst the US economy as a whole improved efficiency by 21% during the years 1990 to 2008 [McKinsey & Company], in the ‘tradable’ sector of the economy (where technology improvements are easier to make), this figure jumps to 44%.

The developing world has been catching up fast. Interestingly, I am observing the same strategy in using design improvements to power improvements in productivity - pulling apart business processes and thinking about every moving part. In website (re)design and other areas of digital strategy, the results are especially powerful. However, it seems that many of the improvements in the developed world have now been made. For example, productivity in the USA rose just 1.3% in the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year, which was actually better than most of the major developed economies. [Wall Street Journal]

 
Most economists believe that productivity gains are the surest way to raise the standard of living and GDP in a country. It is no coincidence that many American products and services are designed ar
ound the customer, but also that there is a local population to use them. As America continues to have a high birth rate [Wall Street Journal] and a strengthening user experience industry, I believe standards of living will be maintained. It is also no coincidence that America has been instrumental in other areas of productivity improvements and home to some of the world's most influential thinkers on the subject – e.g. David Allen, author of the bestseller ‘Getting things Done.’ As a part of his global productivity method, Allen has created models that creates a productive way to think of projects and situations.

One of the fundamental rules of economics is that standard of living improvements are a function of changes in:

the size of the work force multiplied by the productivity of the work force 

[no more economic equations, promise]

So long as the American UX and Business Transformation industries continue to make modest improvements, as the work force is predicted to grow by 11% over the next 20 years [Wall Street Journal], GDP should be maintained.

However, I believe India promises to have a very interesting future. If a similar thing happens regarding productivity improvements and population growth, the "Middle-Class Nation" [Forbes] will get even bigger. I am thinking about the opportunity of overturning millennia of inefficient bureaucracy with technology and business process improvements, and a population that is predicted to increase by 32%.  [Wall Street Journal]