Rethinking the user experience with Tomer Sharon

Tomer Sharon, Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer at anywell, has a wealth of experience in various User Experience (UX) functions. In a recent interview with us, he shared his journey into UX and what he will speak about at #mtpcon San Francisco 2023 on June 14.

Where to start?

Tomer started his career as a researcher working for several UX functions. He later moved to Google as a Lead Researcher, where he focused on search results for sports, media, and weather. While working as VP, Head of User Experience at WeWork and then Managing Director, Head of User Research and Metrics at Goldman Sachs, he developed an interest in measuring user experience and happiness.

Today, based in New Jersey, he is the Co-founder and Chief Experience Officer of anywell, an organization that focuses on helping companies manage hybrid work facilities, teamwork, and the employee experience.

Measuring the user experience

During his time working with product managers, Tomer has learned that many tend to fall into two groups when it comes to UX. “The first group cares only about detailed metrics, such as conversion rates along the funnel. On the other hand, the second group focuses primarily on high-level metrics,” he says. Many organizations lack a focus on high-level metrics and get bogged down in the details of each metric, he believes.

“At a high level, I see teams going into the nitty-gritty of each metric while missing the overall picture,” Tomer adds. For example, if you wanted to measure the success and experience of a rock concert, many people might look to the rise of “ticket sales”. Although this is an important financial metric, it doesn’t necessarily track the overall experience of those who went to the concert because ticket sales happen before fans get to experience the concert.

A better experience metric would be to measure how many pictures people are taking, how much noise they are making, and how much they are standing rather than sitting, for example. This approach provides a better picture of the experience.

Due to experiencing several product teams falling into this trap, Tomer will discuss the importance of this in his keynote session at #mtpcon San Francisco 2023. He also plans to discuss Google’s HEART framework, (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, and Task success). Launching a product is not a success in itself, and companies need to understand what the challenges of the user experience are.

“I hope that understanding the high-level challenges of the user experience first, then delving deeper into the intricacies can help teams focus better on the things they need to work towards,” Tomer says.

Behaviours vs opinions

Tomer believes that understanding high-level metrics is important for the whole team to embrace because it helps them understand the bigger picture. “Teams need to know if something that they’re working on is succeeding or failing,” he says.

Every experience can be measured, Tomer adds, you must understand what is going on with your users and also differentiate the difference between user behaviour and user attitude or opinion. “People’s opinion is very unstable,” he says, “many organisations put an emphasis on NPS measurements,” but opinions can be heavily biased and can fluctuate. On the flipside a user’s behaviour doesn’t change as much and is extremely stable, he explains.

“For example, if I own a coffee shop, I am of course, interested in what people think of the coffee that I make, but I’m also interested in how many cups my regulars drink a day, what time they come in, and how long they stay in the coffee shop. If I see fluctuations in their coffee consumption or time spent in store, then that’s where I can start to ask the important questions to see why this is the case,” Tomer says.

Finally, Tomer hopes that people will learn how to use the right metrics to shape their overall experience strategy. He closes: “Data itself doesn’t give you all the answers, and you need to ask the right questions to shape your user experience strategy.”

Join Tomer and other amazing keynote speakers at #mtpcon San Francisco today. Happening on June 14, join us in person or online.