Published on May 2, 2022

To create digital products that will be finally adopted and used successfully, it is key for the team to have a clear understanding and focus in solving both the formal business needs with its technological limitations, as well as the human user needs with the product or service. The roles dedicated to providing this type of clarity are Business Analysts (BA) and User Experience Designers (UX, UXD). Together, they ensure the product is a workable, attractive, and easy-to-use solution that enables both businesses and users to achieve their end goals.

Who they are and what they do

On one hand, Business Analysts focus mainly on analyzing the business needs to satisfy the product in question, as well as the business rules that it must respect. He/she is promptly responsible for the construction of clear and unambiguous acceptance criteria. They are usually “owners” of the product, as well as researchers or team managers.

On the other hand, User Experience Designers take business needs, investigate and adhere to the user needs, and generate conceptual solutions for the end product’s user experience (usually, in the form of a prototype). This involves multiple verticals that this role must consider to achieve a successful product: Information architecture, interactions, visuals, and content, among others.

It is important to understand that, although the two usually research, design, and evaluate the product together, their approach is very different and provides a distinctive value on their own. It can be expected that both roles are the ones that provide clarity to the rest of the team members from the perspective of the requirements, functionalities, and flows that will conform to the application. It is also worth clarifying that the definition of the technological edge of the analysis is primarily the responsibility of the Technical Leader (TL).

How they complement and add value to the product

These roles provide clarity to the team by researching and defining the key points of the product’s improvement which will provide the greatest positive impact on users, which means: minimizing development costs to only what makes sense to implement. Some of the most important points where both roles add value to the product together are:

Understanding the needs of stakeholders. UX, the users. BA, the client, and their business.
Researching, devising, and evaluating the product together.
Modeling the requirements. UX focused on achieving the perfect experience. BA in the correct functionality.
Communicating the requirements. UX provides the design artifacts. BA the documentation of the processes, diagrams, and API flows.
Handing off deliverables that fix the product. UX provides design solutions. BA information about the business, its processes, and its rules.

How the project can make the most of these roles

If we are talking about the creation of an entirely new product, one of the most relevant tasks at this point in the process is to create a solid structure that allows covering all the business and user needs that they seek to cover, and will scale in the future as much as possible to cover the business app’s potential expansion. This is where having at least 1 BA and 1 UX before starting this stage, I think, is a smart decision. Unfortunately, it is usually something recurrent to see in IT projects that during this phase the budget is allocated to dev hiring and these roles end up not being hired, or hired part-time, or leaving only one 1 of these roles covering both areas. That translates later into a project that won’t scale, or that has an uneven vision in contrast to what the users and/or the business really needs.

Another important point is the synergy of these roles: It is important that these roles complement each other, contributing and taking charge of their area and scope. Business Analysts and User Experience Designers can sometimes find themselves looking away from each other, indifferent, not having enough communication, completely ignoring, or even competing with each other. This is very inefficient and poses a risk to the good definition of the product. Ideally, both roles should work together, be constantly aligned on what they are defining, and constantly updated on the latest discoveries. Starting from day 1 by setting the rules of the game that balance both areas (and taking into account that they can be fine-tuned as the project progresses), I believe that not only ensures good collaboration between these areas, but it is one of the main points that they define the success of the entire project.

Building a single source of truth for the elements that make up the product’s documentation takes a lot of effort but really helps in building efficient and clear communication. I am a great supporter of the wide use of models (user personas, journey maps, flowcharts, API flows) as a flexible and efficient format to conceal the knowledge learned while shared in a clear and easily readable way for all team members.

As a separate point, user stories (or job stories for JTBD) are usually the most efficient model for communication requirements, and it is where UX and BA must make it clear how this requirement addresses the needs of users and the business. Accompanying this model with a definition of done/ready, acceptance criteria, and detailed design specifications are fundamental pieces that provide clarity to teams to understand how that user story should be approached so that, once implemented, it will end contributing the expected value to the product. This work must always be delivered before the implementation to avoid overlapping of implementation with product definition (a usual cause of the increment in UX debt). Therefore, it is recommended to have this defined 2 weeks before the development sprint.

Takeaways

The creation of successful digital products requires a vision aligned with the solutions expected by both the business and the users. Those who are in charge of bringing this clarity to the team are business analysts and UX designers. It is recommended to count on at least 1 of each role whenever the product needs to be improved in some way.
While both roles work to define the product, both roles provide a distinctive value by themselves.
Working together on the requirements is a job of both roles, and the good specification and structure of these are the key to achieving a good implementation and analysis.
Having defined processes and good communication from the beginning helps both roles share a good relationship.
Achieving a single source of documentation for product requirements is relatively easy to implement at the early stages of the project and helps a lot to organize and find information later.