Journal of Design, Business & Society - Experience Research Part 2, Apr 2025

The traditionally rationalistic domain of occupational safety is expanding from mistake prevention and fault-finding towards maximizing things that go well. The latter, known as Safety-II, calls for positive engagement by empowering workers to establish safety at work. This study takes a novel approach to Safety-II by focusing on the user experience to understand how it can help move towards Safety-II. This case study explores ‘safety talks’, a safety management method, and was conducted at two Australian mine sites. The study takes a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews (n = 25) of managers and employees. The data analysis followed inductive thematic analysis with a data-driven approach. The results show the significance of understanding the workers’ experience and needs to achieve desired outcomes with ‘safety talks’ and supporting them appropriately. They highlight the importance of improving safety, understanding the purpose, learning and caring. The results further identified conversation quality through inclusive engagement and relevance, and visibility of outcomes, as key elements for ‘safety talks’. To advance the Safety-II thinking, it is important to understand how workers can be motivated and empowered to work safely. Experience design is a promising yet underutilized approach to increase autonomous motivation to behave safely. This research provides the first step towards it. The Framework of Meaningful Safety Talks provides a grounding for future research on Safety-II management tools. There is a research gap in understanding the role of user experience of safety management tools. To our knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the emotional experiences of such tools. By using safety talks as an example, it contributes a Framework of Meaningful Safety Talks covering the user needs and requirements delivering them successfully.

Purpose/audience: A successful customer experience (CX) requires change management to adapt to evolving customer behaviours and digital touchpoints. Small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) face challenges in CX management due to limited resources, but an effective strategy should outline customer journey stages and channels. While digital footprints and qualitative insights are valuable, they must be transformed into actionable knowledge for business growth. We explore how SMEs can improve their capabilities in generating customer insights for better CX. Methodology/approach: We conducted 26 interviews to explore how SMEs gather customer data during holistic journeys. By visualizing customer journeys, we analysed digital tools for data collection and automated analytics and identified gaps in insights, incorporating qualitative research to explain customer emotions and motivations. Findings: We highlighted challenges with CX data that leave customer understanding incomplete. Information gaps in purchase decisions and a lack of customer perception knowledge resulted in confusing service structures. Despite face-to-face interactions, companies often fail to utilize this unstructured data. Furthermore, software platforms integrating multiple customer interaction channels (omnichannel) may hinder the effective use of CX data. Implications for practice, society or research: Fragmented customer data require skills in data literacy and qualitative research. While SMEs recognize the importance of gathering these data, they often lack the resources to analyse these effectively. The study illustrates how a company’s customer journey analysis and omnichannel strategy visualization highlight information gaps and guide data analysis from various sources to achieve actionable insights for better CX through triangulation. Originality/value: SMEs often lack resources for CX data sourcing and insight building. Visualizing the complexity of CX from the customer journey helps identify information gaps and opportunities for lightweight data sourcing. This can support SMEs in utilizing simple, practical methods for prioritization and relevant multimethod data sourcing, leading to action-based insights.

Experience goals have been introduced to guide experience-driven design, but there are few tools to test whether those goals are met. This research introduces an evaluation technique that addresses the practical evaluation needs of experience-driven design projects in organizations. The XGoalTest technique was developed through thirteen design students’ experience-driven design course projects in two countries over twelve years. This article reports a literature review and analysis of ten selected course projects. A literature review on UX goal evaluation revealed a research gap in evaluation methods targeted for testing if the design outcomes match the UX goals. The student projects revealed seven important requirements for such an evaluation technique. After two decades of research on how to determine what experience to aim for and to design something that is expected to evoke that experience, this article proposes an instrument to evaluate whether that experience is actually realized. While numerous methods exist for evaluating user experience, the XGoalTest technique offers a novel, structured approach to assess whether design outcomes meet a specific experiential goal.

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a short-form version of the experience type scale (ETS) to measure individuals’ perceptions of experiences as memorable, meaningful or transformational. The resulting four-item tool, the ETS–short form (ETS–SF) is based on previous scholarship related to the experience type framework (ETF) and the validated ETS (sixteen-item). To test the reliability and validity of the ETS–SF, we recruited 278 college students to participate in a structured experience (i.e. short film) and then reflect on their experience using the ETS and the ETS–SF. Findings suggest that the ETS–SF is a reliable and valid measurement tool. It produced findings that align with the proposed ETF structure. The ETS–SF is a practical tool for assessing the degree to which participants in different types of experiences perceive them as ordinary or extraordinary. These single-item measures can quickly provide insights into the perceived impact of designed experiences. There are no other single-item measures to assess memorable, meaningful and transformative experiences. The ETS–SF is a first-of-its-kind measurement tool that can be used in any experience context.