The path to improved user experiences in your organization

“If it felt good, you didn’t push hard enough. It’s supposed to hurt like hell.”

Jack McTavish, mentor to Dean Karnazes “Ultramarathon Man”

The path to user experience design improvements within your organization can be described as a marathon, not a sprint. And as such, you may stop to tie your shoe, or slow down as you get some water. It will be some effort, but in the end you’ll have a lot more to show for it than sweat and tears.

I diminish the positive aspects of running a marathon mostly because I have no personal experience to pull from. I’ve never actually run a marathon. I prefer reading about people that run. So inspiring.

Now all of the books I’ve read about marathon runners has convinced me that running a marathon is just as much a mental game as a physical one, and you definitely aren’t going to run a marathon on your first day of training. The same goes for reaching UX Maturity. But if you’re looking to get started, there’s no time like the present.

UX Ma-what?

You might not have ever heard of UX Maturity before today, so now I’m really going to rock your socks when I tell you an organization can actually achieve various levels of UX Maturity. The model originally developed by Jakob Nielsen in 2006 exists today as 6 distinct stages. I’m guessing you’ll relate to at least one of them.

From the Jakob Nielsen-led Nielsen Norman Group site:

The 6 stages of UX maturity are:

Absent: UX is ignored or nonexistent.

Limited: UX work is rare, done haphazardly, and lacking importance.

Emergent: The UX work is functional and promising but done inconsistently and inefficiently.

Structured: The organization has semi-systematic UX-related methodology that is widespread, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.

Integrated: UX work is comprehensive, effective, and pervasive.

User-driven: Dedication to UX at all levels leads to deep insights and exceptional user-centered–design outcomes.

That same site will guide you to articles for each of those stages, and if you’re like me, you just finalized your Saturday night plans, enjoy! But if you have other interests, like running your organization, and managing people, and answering emails, and unmuting on Zoom calls, then you might not need that exhaustive of an approach. Knowledge is power, but burnout is real. So let’s focus on the part of this vast understanding where you can do the most good.

So here’s where we break it down

The composition of UX Maturity described in those treasure troves includes four factors: strategy, culture, process, and outcomes. So those are the areas I’ll summarize in a list of goals for you here:

Strategy

• Include UX in your mission, objectives, and priorities
• Schedule time for UX in your process
• Budget for UX
• Spend money on UX resources

Culture

• Don’t ignore the folks in your organization who are thinking about your users
• Okay go ahead and read those articles, or be open to reading about UX, maybe just the funny articles that compare UX Maturity to running a marathon

Process

• Include UX expertise in your evaluation process
• Collaborate with UX throughout design and research

Outcomes

• Incorporate UX metrics in your tracking

Those are lofty goals, I know, but remember, this is the end, this is what we’re training for. My assumption here is that you are not a UX designer. Nor do you have any plans to be. (If you are a UX designer, bless you. Please share this the next time you’re trying to convince an organization that they can “do UX” without doing everything all at once and let me know how it goes.) But like most folks with demands of their time and goals of their own, you’ll likely recruit help (hire a UX designer), and if you’re lucky it might even be a team of help. The ask here is not that you join that team, or even directly lead that team, but rather exist as an ally and an advocate.

It’s a lonely road if you walk alone

The best business advice is often to put the right people in place and get out of the way. The problem here is that even a dedicated UX team can do amazing things, but those amazing things do no good sitting as findings reports on their desk. They have to expand out into your ecosystem and affect change in all areas of your business. This takes time, and is often met with resistance. Knowing that and having a willingness to help already puts your organization at an advantage.

Expect to be surprised

For each of the areas described above do not assume that you will complete them all in one go. Hire UX designer today, reach UX Maturity Stage 6 tomorrow. Nope. But you can start small. Think about mentioning UX in your mission, then maybe next time set an objective or two, and follow that up a while later with defined UX priorities.

That wasn’t so bad, now was it? But we’re not done yet. Next, start talking to those folks that are talking to your users, and “like” that article that your UX designer shared on LinkedIn, and read it too. You know that budget you allocated to UX? It’s been a while, why don’t you double it? Have you seen the latest UX metrics you’ve been tracking? They’re obviously worth it. Hey, while we’re at it, let’s get two more UX designers.

And on and on, and so it goes. Before you even realize it’s happened you’ll be rising the ranks from Absent to Limited, Emergent, now Structured, Integrated, and then oh snap, what is this? User-Driven! Oh yes you did! Has it really been… fill in the blank with the number of years, because yeah, it will probably be years… of a lot of work, but when you do finally cross that finish line all of your users will be there to celebrate with you. And then you can move on to your ultramarathon. Oh did I not mention that before? But yeah, I mean it’s obvious isn’t it? Because what does everyone want to do once they finish a marathon? Yup, keep running!

Like our new good friend Jack McTavish would say “Go out hard and finish harder.” Because no one gets into the marathon business to only run for one day.

This article is day 3 of a 31 day series. A mash-up of the Inktober 2023 prompt list and UX insights for business owners. Read more about the challenge here.