uxsg#6 workshop

BUILDING A STRATEGIC UX TEAM

Insights from effective UX teams Sarah Bloomer Principal UX Singapore 27 June 2013

1 SarahBloomer & Co | UX Singapore 2013

Our goals for today

Part 1- Team • Your team • Where to locate your team

Part 2 - Culture • The impact of company culture • Use the maturity model to plan

Part 3 – UX Strategy • Align UX strategy with business goals


Who is Sarah?

SarahBloomer & Co | UX Singapore 2013 3

• Usability Engineering • User Centered Design • User Experience Designer

• UX Director • Coach & Mentor • Mom

Who are you?

Stand up if: • You are a UX team manager • You are a UX team of one • Your team is brand new (less than a year old) • Your team is more than a year old • Your team is global and spread across different

countries


First let’s define organizations…

Software

Enterprise

Creative Agency

The software is the business

Software to support the business

Website or webapps to deliver services

Work with software companies and enterprises to help them design user experiences


What you’re creating

• Commercial software • GUI • Web app

• Internal software • GUI • Web apps • Enterprise apps

• Websites • eCommerce • Marketing • Informational

Single platform Multi-platform


UX strategy drivers

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What are you trying to achieve through your UX strategy?

Influence how we do things

Change the culture

Improve a product or service

Improve development efficiency

Get people to think differently

Better product design

What are yours?

SarahBloomer & Co | UX Singapore 2013

What is a UX Strategy?

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UX Team Acceptance

Product Vision

Integrated CX strategy

Business Goals Brand Strategy Market Share


What makes a UX team “Strategic”?

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IMPACT

EFF

OR

T


Implementing a strategy is change

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Skepticism

Curiosity

Acceptance

Partnership The better accepted your team is the higher the UX capability

Ehrlich & Rohn, 1994 www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html


The Big Stumbling Blocks

• Wrong focus—no alignment to business goals • Team lacks direction or cohesion • Lack of communication • No champion or support • Being unaware of your corporate culture

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UX teams and UX strategies fail when….


YOUR WORLD How corporate culture impacts UX


Culture will impact your approach

Design centric • Creative approach to design • Tend to design for designers—visually oriented

Engineering centric • Technology driven • Have always owned the user interface

Sales & Marketing centric • Believe they know their customers • Feature driven, over usability or experience


How to learn about culture Interview

• stakeholders • the teams you’ll work with • other teams about the teams you’ll work with

Identify the key decision makers • Product managers? Lead engineers? • Who owns the design? • Where are potential allies?

Look for initiatives on which you can have an impact for quick wins


Analyzing the culture

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Engineering/ Development:

Process:

Design decisions:

Performance:

User Experience:

Formal or informal?

Requirements driven? Technology driven?

Deadline/budget driven?

Creates nice pictures? Critical to success?

Communication:

User research and feedback

UX Vision

Yes or no? Coordinated or fragmented?

Shared and understood or not?

Product Definition:

Ownership:

Design decisions:

Product managers? Marketing? Engineering? User Experience Team?

Feature driven? Competitor driven?


Increase acceptance by meeting half way

• Engineers like: • Rules, standards and patterns • Deadlines

• Designers like: • Wireframes with latitude to do their own thing • Opportunities to be innovative

• Sales & Marketing like: • Feature lists • Research


Know your organizational culture

"the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization."

Charles W. L. Hill, and Gareth R. Jones, Strategic Management. Houghton Mifflin 2001.

• Myths • Values

• Barriers • Opportunities


Identify barriers and opportunities A barrier may prevent or undermine the adoption of UX

• UX is new to the organization • No skilled people • Design research is under valued

An opportunity may help with acceptance of user experience activities

• New senior manager with previous UX experience • Initiative to reduce the calls to technical support • Developers don’t have time to design and code


Identify myths and values A myth is a belief held by your stakeholders

• UI design is subjective and cannot be measured or engineered • If we design for ourselves, it’ll be fine

A value is a belief that defines the culture through actions

• Developers are rewarded for rescuing failing projects • Pleasing senior management is good regardless of solution • We’re a consensus driven organization—everyone gets a say in the

design


Discussion

Small groups: • Pick one barrier and one opportunity at your company

from the list presented • Tally the similar barriers and opportunities • Discuss them with each other: why? Together: • What are the shared experiences?


Barriers • UX is new to the organisation • Not enough UX resources • Difficult to hire skilled UX people • Not enough time to do research or evaluation • Product management “owns” the user interface design • Big egos / lots of politics • Limited access to users • Lack of trust between Development and Product

Management • Short sprints cause Development to change design to

meet deadlines • Design research is under valued • [your own]


Opportunities

• Well accepted user experience team • Senior management willing to ‘champion’ usability • Other staff are interested in user experience

(eg QA, tech writers)

• Starting a new product • A company reorganization • New funding for more resources • A huge product failure • Initiative to reduce the calls to technical support • Developers don’t have time to design and code • [ your own ]


BUSINESS GOALS AND UX Base your strategy on business goals


What are business goals?

A goal should be • Action oriented • Completed within a target time frame • Specific and well defined • Achievable yet challenging.

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Business goals reflect the strategy of an organisation, how to accomplish the mission.


Corporate vision and goals


Mock company: Crabb e-Software The company, Crabb e-Software, has one product: TrainingNOW. Crabb e-Software were market leaders when they first introduced a SaaS product into training management TrainingNOW is an online web application. It is designed for training management, admin and sales for commercial training. Users can:

• Set up courses: assign instructors, set up location and scheduling • Track enrolment: develop student/participant lists, log contact • Generate leads: draw names from the student/customer database • Track student participation: courses attended, grades (if relevant), goals


Crabb e-Software’s business goals

• Regain position as market leader in online training management software

• Increase customer base by 15% • Bring the product up to date

Experience Vision for TrainingNOW TrainingNOW will be market leader by providing a seamless training management experience. Our customers will feel confident that they have a complete and current picture of their training plan and strategy. The product will allow users to be highly productive by minimizing rework, presenting easy to read overviews, and creating intuitive workflows. Users will share data and keep each other current, from administrators to executives. It will have a professional, up to date tone and style.


TrainingNOW’s experience vision

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Brand Promise:

Seamless support of all aspects of training management

Customer Research:

Users are: Admin Managers Marketers Telesales

Office workers

Multi-tasking

Not web savvy

Frequent and infrequent users

Experience Goals:

Customer is confident that TN will streamline their training management

TN is seen as up to date, fast and reliable

Each user group feels productive and effective

Business Goal: Increase customer base by 15%


Derive UX goals from business goals

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Experience Goal Issues Business Objectives

UX Goals Success Metrics

Customer is confident that TN will streamline their training management

• Users report that they often enter the same prospect multiple times, so they are called repeatedly.

• Sales isn’t aware when a course is close to full

• Courses underperform when registrants drop out late

• Administrative staff are often interrupted and lose their work

• Enable sales to sell the product based on productivity gains

• Increase the number of customer reference sites

• Reduce customer support calls

• Improve admin staff efficiency

• Enable information to be viewed in different ways in multiple locations in the organization

• Create reports for management which reflect improvements

• Create a kick-ass customer database

• Customer contact logs are shared by all users

• 10% reduced customer support calls

• Increase time to proficiency from 2 months to 2 weeks

• 20% increase in customer satisfaction

TrainingNOW


Align your UX team with goals

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TrainingNOW: business goals • Regain position as market leader in online training

management software • Increase customer base by 15% • Bring the product up to date


Your task: • Pick 1 UX activity to address each goal • Think about who to partner with at Crabb e-Software Now add constraints: • Release a major update in 4 months • You have 1 UX practitioner, 1 tech writer and 3

product managers

Establish specific metrics

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Measure Benchmark Timing Ownership

Productivity improvement

Reduce task time by 20%.

Track and time current process (usability and end-users)

1.Usability test during dev

2.6 months after launch

Product Owners

UX Team

Customer satisfaction

Reduce customer complaints by 10%

Capture current survey results

Monthly for 6 months

Customer Service

Sales Increase sales by 10%

Capture current statistics for past year

Every month for a year

Sales

Some companies like metrics, some don’t. For those who do, choose your metrics carefully. Don’t be afraid to go for non-measurable goals: our customers report that it’s fun.


YOUR UX TEAM Fit your team into your culture


The UX Team ingredients

Goals

Company

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Location

Approach

People


UX is unique in every organization

Business goals / drivers

Product(s) & Team

Process

What How

Who When

and

and

Constraints

Company culture

Build a team that meets the needs within given constraints


UX has evolved

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Interaction design: Navigation Layout Controls

Style and tone: Visual treatment Language

Interaction design Information architecture Development

Visual design Writing/Editorial

Deep customer knowledge: Ongoing research and feedback Evaluation

User research Experience analysis Usability testing Analytics

Technology: Opportunities/constraints Trends

Technology Social networking, mobile etc.


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Modeling the user experience practice: a unified story

operational model

capability model

user research interaction design information architecture usability engineering visual design content writing front-end development

process model

UX meta model

user-centered

taxonomies / ontology

knowledge in-flows & out-flows

capability interaction touch points

attitude & behavior

model

waterfall agile

leadership logistics staffing

sponsorship funding

personas scenarios

rich pictures storyboards

Jennifer Fabrizi, 2013


Make sure the team fits into the culture

Create roles your culture will accept right away • Engineering: evaluation and needs analysis • Design: information architecture and evaluation • Sales & Marketing: research (by stealth) and evaluation

Recognize myths and values, change from within Build allies and demonstrate complementary skills.

• Engineering: collaborate in UI design • Design: clear hand-off from wireframes to visual design • Sales & Marketing: share customer research; prioritize feature lists.

Invite to usability testing sessions


UX Practise Models


Center of Excellence

Project Project

Project

Project

Centralised All projects go through the same process

A strategy looks to the future

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An experience strategy: 1. Anticipates and accounts for future form factors, technology

platforms, and user expectations 2. Promotes a perspective on the character of uniquely GE product

experiences 3. Uses values and principles as guides to design and development.

Case study:

GE wanted to drive revenue and growth through user experience practices • UX Framework • UX Process • UX Principles (tied to brand promise)

GE UX Center of Excellence

http://archive.mxconference.com/2012/videos/building-ux-and-design-culture-at-ge/


UX Practise models


Decentralised

Project

Project Project Project

Work individually Sometimes research/evaluation is centralised

UX manager

UX Practise models


Project

Guild model

Project Project

UX manager

Project Project

QA Engineer Engineer

Product Owner


Product Owner


Product Owner

UX manager


Product Owner


Product Owner

Work individually Meet together weekly for one full day

Focus your UX design efforts

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Priority projects:

UX team works directly on product team

2nd tier projects:

UX team facilitates the product team’s work

Provide UI standards and resources for self-serve

3rd tier projects:

Educate and facilitate: Share the outcomes of priority projects

Project

Project

Project

Project Project


Where should your team live?

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Pros Cons IT group Same ‘team’ as

analyst/programmers Not seen to be allied with users

Business Same ‘team’ as end users IT sees you as not in touch with their issues

In-house

Pros Cons Development Same ‘team’ as

analyst/programmers Not seen to be allied with users

Marketing Closer to the goals of the company

Fosters better relationship with marketing

Engineers see you as not in touch with their issues

Product team Same ‘team’ as product owners

Not seen to be as familiar with technical issues or product positioning

Software company

Locate yourself with the group who owns design decisions


UX MATURITY Evolving UX acceptance


Capability Maturity

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http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/planning-your-ux-strategy/


A UX Strategy implements the vision

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Business goals / drivers

Product(s) & Team

Process

What How

Who When

and

and

Constraints

addresses both what and how


Five tactics for teams big and small

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Communicate Share, knowledge share, integrate

Educate Enable others

Adapt Change, try it out, improve

Leverage Find allies and opportunities

Facilitate Help others, integrate


Show and include

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Users Business Analysts Product Owners Stakeholders

Product Team Users

End users Developers (participatory) Stakeholders (observers)

Definition workshop Field research User story mapping (Agile) Process mapping

Brainstorming Sketchboarding Collaborative paper prototyping Design studio

Group collaborative walkthroughs Participatory paper prototyping Usability testing

5-9 participants 2-9 participants 1-2 participants Group of 5-10

Discovery & Analysis Envision & Design Evaluate & Refine


Collaborate to communicate


Create “foundation teams”

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Build relationships within your organization through Communities of Practice. Promote cross-functional collaboration. Cross-functional teams drive ongoing research, design and evaluation.

Customer research

Customer facing experience

Product Strategy

Branding Marketing UX Team Product Strategy

Personas Field studies Analytics

Sales Stores Customer service Tech support Training

Personas Stories Customer feedback Voice of the Customer

Sales Marketing UX Team Tech Support Product Development

Design research Usability test results Tech support issues Release plans


Create UX Design Goals

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Kronos Innovative Our products are modern and unique in both visual appearance and behavior. We lead the industry in leveraging the latest advances in technology. Easy to learn Like your favorite consumer products, minimal training is needed to get started. Fast & Responsive Speed matters. We balance ease-of-use with powerful features that optimize task completion with minimal time and clicks. Engaging & Playful Solve complex problems with enjoyable interactions that are an extension of customers’ everyday experiences. Smart & Powerful Make better decisions. Our products harness the power of technology and industry experience to deliver insights when and how a user needs them.


7 Evaluation Guidelines

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User Objectives and Actions

Layout & Visual Treatment

Orientation

Language & Terminology

Feedback

Forgiveness

Navigation


At Kronos,we aligned UX goals with design principles and taught product management how to critique against the goals.

Focus your message to the audience

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Increase sales

Lowers support and training costs

Reduces IT development costs

Increases product quality

Increases user acceptance

Increases productivity; fewer errors by end users

Decreases staff turnover

Fewer late design changes

Potential re-use

Shortens overall development cycle

Meet goals of a sprint

Increases product quality

Decreases maintenance cost and effort

Greater satisfaction; less fatigue

Reduces training time and effort

Less time spent seeking support and help

Less learning required

Fewer errors; faster error recovery

Fosters focus on the tasks instead of the technology

Senior managers look at the bottom line of any investment or development.

How UX improves my costs?

IT managers are measured on ability to meet budgets and deadlines How UX helps me make my deadline and stay within budget?

Users want better and more appropriate tools & experiences

How will this help me do my task better?

Return on investment Performance goals Satisfaction and use

Senior management IT management Users


In-house development

Show the UX vision

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• User narratives, tell stories • Conceptual prototypes • Comics and Storyboards

• Kevin Cheng at kevnull.com • Sun Web Experience Design

• Video • Knowledge Navigator (1987) • Mozilla Labs & Adaptive Path Aurora • Microsoft Silverlight Productivity Future Vision

Knowledge Navigator: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0 Aurora: www.vimeo.com/1347289 Micros www.officelabs.com/Pages/Default.aspx


http://www.vimeo.com/1347289

Talk it up all the time

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Reduce your vision to 5 attributes that fit on one hand

Modular for quick updates

Supports multiple roles

Easy to learn UI

Enables collaboration

Seamlessly integrated with other systems

Describe the attributes during meetings and elevator conversations


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Group discussion:

What is the first thing you’ll do when you get back to work?


Wrap up

People

Methods

Location

Vision

Your UX Team Your world

Culture

UX Maturity

Interaction Communicate

Educate Facilitate Leverage

Adapt


Sample values


• We need to ‘innovate’ and make cool technology • Pleasing senior management is good regardless of

solution • The product managers are king • Developers are rewarded for ‘rescuing’ failing projects • Staff who don’t ‘rock the boat’ are safe in their jobs • Clever code solutions are applauded • Risk is dangerous

Sample myths

• UI standards can’t be implemented for all the diverse needs of the user groups

• If I design for myself, it will work fine • UX conflicts with Agile • If developers are familiar with the interface guidelines and

principles, they’ll design good user interfaces • UX specialists are not technical enough to grasp the

requirements of systems development • Requirements are anti-agile • Users don’t know what they want


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References – Strategic UX Teams

Books

Cennydd Bowles and James Box. Undercover UX Design. New Riders. 2010.

Arnie Lund. User Experience Management Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams. Morgan Kaufman 2011

Daniel Pink. Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Riverhead Books. 2011.

John P Kotter. Leading Change.

Paul Sherman. The User Experience Team Kit. ShermanUX.com/Files/UXKit/UX_Kit_Aug09.pdf

Presentations

Alcorn, Katrina. How to Manage a UX Team (without losing your mind!). March 2007/ iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/files/Katrina_alcorn-uxmanagers.pdf

Kreitzberg, Charlie, Cognetics “How Can Usability Departments Become More Influential and Lead Organizational Change?” UPA 2005 http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/conference/2005/im_kreitzberg.html

Greg Petroff. Building UX and Design Culture at GE. Adaptive Path MX 2012. http://archive.mxconference.com/2012/videos/building-ux-and-design-culture-at-ge/

Jennifer Fabrizi and Sarah Bloomer. Changing the UX Mindset - Transforming your UX team through Collaboration. February 2013. UXPA Boston.

Kim Goodwin. UX Leadership. Interview with Gerry Gaffney, October 2011. http://infodesign.com.au/uxpod/uxleadership/

Kim Goodwin. Leading UX. http://www.slideshare.net/KimGoodwin/kim-goodwin-on-ux-leadership-2011-04

Sarah Bloomer and Susan Wolfe. Building and Managing a successful UX Team. Tutorial. UPA 2011

Sarah Bloomer. Upgrading your UX Team. Virtual Seminar. April 2009. http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/upgrading/

Sarah Bloomer. Building Strategic & Effective UX Teams. Tutorial. UXPA Washington, DC. 2013

Joakim Sundén and Anders Ivarsson. Agile at Spotify. 2013. http://www.slideshare.net/JoakimSunden/agile-at-spotify

Tim McCoy and Janice Fraser. Lean UX, Product Stewardship and Integrated Teams. 2011. http://www.slideshare.net/seriouslynow/lean-ux-product-stewardship-integrated-teams

Articles

Pabini Gabriel-Petit. Specialists Versus Generalists: A False Dichotomy? In UX Matters. 2009

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/specialists-versus-generalists-a-false-

dichotomy.php

Michael Hawley. 5 Ways to be Persuasive in Your UX Work. In UX Matters. 2012.

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/11/5-ways-to-be-persuasive-in-your-ux-work.php

Michael Hawley. Coaching Experience Designers. In UX Matters. March 20, 2012

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/coaching-experience-designers.php

http://shermanux.com/files/uxkit/ux_kit_aug09.pdf

http://iasummit.org/proceedings/2007/files/Katrina_alcorn-uxmanagers.pdf

http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/conference/2005/im_kreitzberg.html

http://archive.mxconference.com/2012/videos/building-ux-and-design-culture-at-ge/

http://infodesign.com.au/uxpod/uxleadership/

http://www.slideshare.net/KimGoodwin/kim-goodwin-on-ux-leadership-2011-04

http://www.slideshare.net/KimGoodwin/kim-goodwin-on-ux-leadership-2011-04

http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/upgrading/

http://www.slideshare.net/JoakimSunden/agile-at-spotify

http://www.slideshare.net/seriouslynow/lean-ux-product-stewardship-integrated-teams

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/specialists-versus-generalists-a-false-dichotomy.php

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/specialists-versus-generalists-a-false-dichotomy.php

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/11/5-ways-to-be-persuasive-in-your-ux-work.php

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/03/coaching-experience-designers.php

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Renato Feijó Planning your UX Strategy. In Johnny Holland. April 2011.

http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/planning-your-ux-strategy/ This article defines UX strategy as the

whole customer experience.

Leonard L. Berry, Lewis P. Carbone and Stephan H. Haeckel. Managing the Total Customer

Experience. In MIT Sloane School of Management Magazine, 2002.

Daniel Szuc, Paul Sherman and John S Rhodes. Selling UX. In UX Matters. 2008.

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2008/10/selling-ux.php

Capability Maturity

CMMI Institute, Carnegie Mellon. www.cmmiinstitue.com. Downloadable resources including

CMMI models

Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon. http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/?location=secondary-nav&source=652373

Nielsen, Jakob. Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 1-4 Alertbox. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/maturity.html 2006

Nielsen, Jakob. Corporate Usability Maturity: Stages 5-8 Alertbox. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html 2006

Rich Buttiglieri’s presentation to UXPA Boston on UX Maturity Models http://www.slideshare.net/UPABoston/ux-maturity-modelbuttiglieri. Rich includes other exemplars of UXMMs.

Steve Psomas. The Five Competencies of UX Design. 2007. http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/11/the-five-competencies-of-user-experience-design.php

Other research

Sarah Bloomer & Susan Wolfe. Effective UX Teams. 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013. This survey has been

sent to UX team managers worldwide to track how internal UX teams are structured, issues faced

and solution.

Yury Vetrov. How to Calculate the ROI of UX Using Metrics. UX Matters. 9 July 2012.

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/07/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-ux-using-metrics.php

IDSA site. GE User Experience Strategy and Capacity Building http://idsa.org/ge-user-experience-

strategy-and-capacity-building

Blogs

Louis Rosenfeld. Blog: Oct 14, 2003: What Would MachIAvelli Do? http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000211.html 2003

Cameron Moll. Nine Patterns among Virtuoso UX Teams. May 2013. http://cameronmoll.tumblr.com/post/49513340428/nine-patterns-among-virtuoso-ux-teams

Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin. http://managinguxteams.com/ 2011 Discontinued blog about managing UX teams in start ups.

Brandon Schauer. 7 (Video) Lessons for Managers of UX. 2012. http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/7-video-lessons-for-managers-of-ux

Brandon Schauer. Just What is a UX Manager? 2012. http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/just-what-is-

a-ux-manager

http://johnnyholland.org/author/renato-feijo/

http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/planning-your-ux-strategy/

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2008/10/selling-ux.php

http://www.cmmiinstitue.com/

http://www.sei.cmu.edu/cmmi/?location=secondary-nav&source=652373




http://www.useit.com/alertbox/maturity.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html

http://www.slideshare.net/UPABoston/ux-maturity-modelbuttiglieri



http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/11/the-five-competencies-of-user-experience-design.php

http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/11/the-five-competencies-of-user-experience-design.php

http://www.linkedin.com/e/q528ml-hd1p1vos-23/plh/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uxmatters.com%2Fmt%2Farchives%2F2012%2F07%2Fhow-to-calculate-the-roi-of-ux-using-metrics.php/Gbo0/?hs=false&tok=3I7muHTfIJ15E1

http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000211.html

http://cameronmoll.tumblr.com/post/49513340428/nine-patterns-among-virtuoso-ux-teams

http://managinguxteams.com/

http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/7-video-lessons-for-managers-of-ux

http://adaptivepath.com/ideas/7-video-lessons-for-managers-of-ux

http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/just-what-is-a-ux-manager

http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/just-what-is-a-ux-manager

uxsg#6 workshop

Design

adoption of ux ux

ux strategies

ux team strategic

ux team manager

ux strategy drivers

strategic ux team insights

feedback ux vision

corporate culture impacts