User Experience continues to be recognised as a driver of success by companies of all sizes and attempts to measure this value have been made.
One such report by McKinsey found that those with a high score (referred to as the McKinsey Design Index score, abbreviated to MDI) also performed better financially.
Going back over 16 years to when I started my career, it was an almost daily requirement to justify one’s own existence, let alone have a seat at the boardroom table. Ensuring things were centred around the humans we’re designing for, whilst sounding like common sense (at least to me), was something you had to continually defend. Now it seems, with the aforementioned helping hand from our friends at ‘The Firm’, we can walk tall and say proudly – sometimes even at a near audible volume – “This seat is taken.”
So, UX design is increasingly important to business success. What now? You’ll need one of those UX type folk, right?
Well… Yes and no…
All too often we see businesses simply decide to go out and hire a UX designer as a way to meet this need. Unfortunately, despite knowing there is a need, they have very little experience of what or who they’re really looking for. The job advert will describe a lead or sometimes a head UX designer, skilled in UI, able to work strategically across multiple (often scores) of projects, with a deep understanding of AR, VR and AI, and – to add insult to injury – will probably need to have a deep working knowledge of the latest JavaScript library.
This jack-of-all rainbow unicorn sounds far more ‘bedroom’ than ‘boardroom’ to me.
But what’s the alternative and where should a business start on their pathway to design-savvy success?
First, before anyone opens up Sketch or Axure (or Photoshop!?) in anger, user experience (call it design thinking, HCD, or just ol’ fashioned “good design practice”) should be placed centrally in the company’s culture.
Notice, I didn’t mention the need to hire a UX designer… At least not yet.
Before hitting the job sites with ill-informed adverts, think about where UX should sit in the company. I’m going to refer to this as a “UX readiness check”.
To begin, task someone within (or with access to) the top tier of your organisation to analyse the boundaries that exist internally, (e.g. physical products, services, web presence, marketing, brand) that don’t exist externally for your customers. Try to understand what’s working well, and what’s not working well from a customer’s perspective. Identify the gaps in your organisations knowledge of your customer’s experience. Be honest. Be objective. You probably know less about how your customers behave than you think you do. That’s fine! Just be honest and try to be objective.
As simple as it might sound, a UX readiness check is no mean feat. It may take up to several months to really get a handle on the relative pain points and challenges you face with regards to your company’s interactions with customers. Truthfully, it could be carried out by a team of seasoned UX professionals in a fraction of the time it may take a senior leadership team. That said, don’t self-impose barriers to a more d-i-y approach as a starting point. It’ll whet the appetite for UX and design thinking if nothing else.
By working in this way you’ll quickly discover who (the type of character, their experience and potentially even how many different specialists) to hire, what they’ll need to focus on first and how much effort it’s likely to take to get the job done properly.
When all is laid bare, the value that a UX-led strategy might bring will be clearer. Moreover, the resulting actions you need to take will also be far more apparent. A score, whether MDI, NPS, or any industry alternative, is rarely good in providing you with clear, actionable next steps. An objective review, focusing on how the most value is for the customer
As a UXer, I have supported companies in undertaking a UX readiness check to understand how to build a user-centric culture in businesses for almost a decade. I also have experience of placing entire UX teams in organisations, but before doing so, I like to know where the true challenges lie. What’s important? What’s not? Who can help drive this? Who will detract? How can we support and nurture design talent to thrive in a less design-savvy organisation? How can we prioritise the opportunities within the organisation to meet customer expectations? How can we do our best work that will sustainably affect your bottom line?
I don’t have the answers here, they’re unique to your organisation. But I can help you find them. If you like to learn more, then do get in touch.
