Three years ago, four Jamaicans created Jamaica's first user experience report. We had no idea if anyone would care. The response stunned us. That report pushed UX into boardrooms where it had never been mentioned. Business leaders started asking questions they'd never asked. Job postings appeared for roles that didn't exist before.
Now we're back with something bigger: the Caribbean State of User Experience report, featuring over 80 voices from across Jamaica, Trinidad, and Barbados.
Why this report... Why now
COVID changed how we do business in the Caribbean over the last few years. Between 2020- and 2022, there was a mad rush for digital. Businesses that had ignored digital capabilities for decades suddenly needed WhatsApp ordering by Monday, an online store and website, stat! Corporations scrambled to build new products or to expand their apps to offer more services to their customers online, like digital customer onboarding. There was also a trend towards hybrid services to bring order to the chaos of in-branch support brought on by social distancing protocols. Organizations hired roles they'd never considered before : UX researchers, content designers, digital strategists. For a brief moment, it felt like we were catching up.. but then the pandemic was over and many businesses never bothered to continue their pursuit of better digital offerings for their customers. Many rushed COVID solutions never got past the MVP stage and projects that were in the works went into the idea graveyard to die. Still, COVID whet the appetite of the Caribbean people for better experiences so in this report we look at how the digital has evolved in the region and also to answer this fundamental question:
How do we actually build digital experiences that actually work for Caribbean people?
To get to the juicy stuff, we brought together UX practitioners, product teams, and business leaders to get their experience and opinions on the current reality of how we build and to explore how we create a future of digital experiences that are both authentically Caribbean and globally competitive.
