Increase UX maturity and where to start (#7)

Motivation

It’s always a challenge to introduce UX into a company or to bring it to the next level. There are a number of key factors that come into play when it comes to UX. Are you the first UX Designer within the company or is there already a team? Is it a start-up or established corporation? The understanding and attitude of the team, management, and organization shape the success or failure of UX. Fortunately, there are so-called UX maturity models to determine the current state of your company.

Challenge

Regardless of all the key factors, whether you are alone or an UX team exists, there is a quote from Jared Spool that always applies:

Your organization is perfectly optimized to produce the user experiences it currently delivers. If you want to improve the user experiences, you’ll need to change the optimizations of your organization. This is the core of a UX strategy. – Jared Spool

Know your status quo

UX needs to be continually readjusted and taught as the business expands and new procedures are developed. As a result, it’s possible that UX suddenly starts at a level 1 or level 2 in a new department, or that former employees leave and new ones with less or different experience join the team. It’s a constant cycle of: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing (Tuckman’s stages). Furthermore, communication, exchange, and alignment are crucial given that each departments and people have their own terminology.

Solution approach

Organize a retro or interview to get a better understanding from your colleagues. Do internal research. In this case, talk to every department that deals directly with the User: Support, Marketing, etc. but especially Product Management and Development. UX is present in all departments.

This typically helps in clarifying common UX misunderstandings and identifying areas where current workflows can be improved. Whether an UX team is present or you are alone, this is an ongoing process.

For the record, there isn’t really a clear distinction between each maturity level; it’s all kind of blurry. For instance, I’m the first UX Designer hired to push a level 2 firm to the next level. Even so, I introduce and present UX as if the company is at level 1. so that we have a common foundation to build on.

To-do list therefore could be:

Conduct internal research
Explaining what UX is via a presentation (keep in mind their current understanding of UX)
Clarifying the benefits for the company and customers
How to get started with UX work
Possible internal UX processes (developed together)
Creating first Archetypes/Personas
Capturing knowledge and insights from the teams (aka research repository)