Building a strategicuxteam-uxindia14

BUILDING A STRATEGIC

UX TEAM Insights from effective UX teams

Sarah Bloomer

UX India | 9 October 2014

SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 1

Our goals for today

Part 1- Assessing your Team

• Your issues

Part 2 – Your world

• Company culture

• Business goals

Part 3 – High performing teams

• Team models

• The attributes of high performing team

Part 4 – UX leadership

• Leading vs managing


Who is Sarah?

SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014

• Usability Engineering

• User Centered Design

• User Experience Designer

• UX Director

• Coach & Mentor

• Mom

3

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

5

What you’re creating

• Commercial software

• GUI

• Web app

• Internal software

• GUI

• Web apps

• Enterprise apps

• Websites

• eCommerce

• Marketing

• Informational


Single platform

Multi-platform

6

What is your biggest team

challenge today?


Discuss with your table:

• Write down the top challenge you are trying to solve

Tell your table:

• Your company

• The type of organisation:

Software, Enterprise or Agency/Consulting

• Your team size

• How long your team has been set up

Do you have a shared challenge or are they all

different?

7

The Big Stumbling Blocks

• Wrong focus—no alignment to business goals

• Team lacks direction or cohesion

• Lack of communication

• No champion or stakeholder support

• Being unaware of your corporate culture


UX teams and UX strategies fail when….

8

Your team lives in a bigger world


People

Methods

Location

Vision

Your UX Team Your world

Culture

UX Maturity

Interaction

9

What is a UX Strategy?


UX Team Acceptance

Product Vision

Integrated CX strategy

Business Goals Brand Strategy Market Share

10

There are many different types of UX strategies

What makes a UX team “Strategic”?

11

IMPACT

EF

FO

RT


Five tactics for teams big and small

Communicate Share, knowledge share, integrate

Educate Enable others

Adapt Change, try it out, improve

Leverage Find allies and opportunities

Facilitate Help others, integrate


YOUR WORLD How corporate culture impacts UX


Each situation is unique


Business goals / drivers

Product(s)

& Team

Process

What How

Who When

and

and

Constraints

Company culture

The sum of the parts will help

determine the best approach

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Start with your company 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

15

Culture drives the values and norms

that drive actions

K. Goodwin: Leading UX

UX London, April 2011

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 ]


Another angle on culture

Design centric

Engineering centric


Paul Sherman. Changing Processes and Cultures. Nov ‘07

Creative approach to design

Tend to design for designers—visually oriented

Technology driven

Have always owned the user interface

Believe they know their customers

Features over usability or user experience

Sales &

Marketing centric

Find ways to collaborate that match

the values of the culture

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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


Analyzing the culture


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?

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Be strategic by understanding culture Barrier:

Small UX team

Design research is under valued

Myth:

If we design for ourselves,

it’ll work fine

Value:

We have to adopt Agile because

everyone else is

Communicate:

Start small design research activities

focusing on strategic design issues

Educate:

Demonstrations of effective designs

Usability testing

Facilitate:

Bring groups together, don’t work in

isolation

Provide tools and resources

Leverage:

Collect user experience data from

customer facing groups

Adapt:

Embed yourself with key scrum teams

Opportunity:

Adopting a new approach


UX STRATEGY Move into a position of influence


What is a UX Strategy?


UX Team Acceptance

Product Vision

Integrated CX strategy

Business Goals Brand Strategy Market Share

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3 tips for creating a UX strategy


1. Align your strategy with

business goals

2. Track your impact

3. Communicate

Be clear about what is driving your UX strategy

Identify business goals you can impact

Build your activities and UX goals to support the business goals

Create UX or Design Goals as a framework

Determine success metrics

NPS or Forrester’s CXi

Talk up the attributes of your vision

Create comics or storyboards

Present your designs or concepts

What are business goals?

A goal should be

• Action oriented

• Completed within a target time frame

• Specific and well defined

• Achievable yet challenging.


Business goals reflect the strategy of an organisation (how),

how to accomplish the mission (what).

28

Corporate

vision and goals


Samsung Electronics

Vision 2020

http://www.samsung.com/sg/aboutsamsung/

samsungelectronics/vision2020.html

29

Discussion

Small groups or pairs:

• Review your one barrier and one opportunity

• Review your biggest challenge

• Write down one business goal from your company (that

you are allowed to share) or make one up

• How can UX help achieve the business goal?

• Will the barrier or opportunity may impact your team’s

ability to support the goal?

• Will your challenge be a barrier to helping achieve the

business goal?


Be aware of other forces

Goals


Location

Approach

People

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Company culture

Business goals

UX maturity

UX strategy drivers


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?

32

A strategy looks to the future


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/

http://www.slideshare.net/UXSTRAT/ux-strat-2013-susan-rice

33

What is a UX Design Goal?

A UX Goal describes the experience you aim to deliver,

using adjectives you’d like to hear when others review or

describe your product. They define the goals of your

product and drive design decisions. A design goal:

1. Helps distinguish your product from your competitors. (Jared Spool)

2. Is aligned with your unique value proposition and brand experience

3. Guides design decisions

4. Can be applied to multiple products to create a common, shared

experience.

5. Is broad enough to be defined more narrowly, eg what is “speedy”

on a desktop app vs a mobile app?

6. Is the way you want your customers to describe their experience


Align

Create UX Design Goals


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.

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Align

Kronos Workforce Management

Derive UX goals from business goals


Experience Goal Issues Business

Objectives

UX

Requirements

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 top notch

customer

database

• Customer contact

logs are shared by

all users

• Implement

persistent save

• 10% reduced

customer

support calls

• Increase time to

proficiency from

2 months to 2

weeks

• 20% increase in

customer

satisfaction

Company: TrainingNOW

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Align

7 Evaluation Guidelines


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.

37

Kronos Workforce Management

Communicate

Track effort vs impact


IMPACT

EF

FO

RT

38

Track

Establish specific metrics


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 helped their work.”

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Track

Talk it up all the time


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

40

Communicate

Show the UX vision


• User narratives, tell stories

• Conceptual prototypes

• Comics and Storyboards • Kevin Cheng at kevnull.com

• Davy Hoornaert on Printrest

• 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

Microsoft www.officelabs.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Microsoft's Future Vision : Live, Work, Play 2013

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Communicate

http://www.vimeo.com/1347289

http://www.officelabs.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Building influence is change

Skepticism

Curiosity

Acceptance

Partnership

When you introduce a new

approach, you’re asking

your company to change

Enrlich & Rohn, 1994

User interface design and evaluation, Stone, Jarrett, Woodroffe & Minocha 2005

www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html


YOUR UX TEAM Fit your team into your culture


The UX Team ingredients

Goals


Company

Location

Approach

People

44

People: What roles do you need?


Interaction Designer

Information Architect

Front End Developer

Usability Researcher

Writer Content Strategist

Front End Developer

Visual designer

Application design: Website design:

Interaction Designer

Visual designer

Usability Researcher

Writer

Business Analyst

45

UX today


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

Responsive design, social, mobile etc.

46

Emerging roles

• Product Steward Tim McCoy

• Represent user needs and goals

• Manage product vision, framework

• Provide creative direction

• Collaborate with team

• UX Architect

• Works across program within a product/multiple products

• Reviewing designer

• Drive vision & strategy

• Lead special projects

• Typically found in large UX teams:

2 on a team of 30 designers plus 10 writers


Slideshare: Lean UX Product

Stewardship and Integrated Teams

47

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


TEAM MODELS Find a good match


Where should your team live?


Software

Enterprise

Creative Agency

Product Development 30%

Product Management 40%

IT Department 40%

Product Management 28%

N/A

To be strategic: Locate your team where product

decisions are made

Bloomer: Effective UX Teams 2013

50

UX team models


Centralised

De-centralised

Hybrid

Advanced Typical

Range of skills

applied as needed

Center of

Excellence

Generalists assigned

to specific product

teams

Communities of

practice

Specific activities

centralised, others

team based

Teams of specialists

and generalists

51

Models to structure your team


Project

Project

Project

Project

Centralised

All projects go through the same team

Software companies

Consulting companies

Pros:

Consistent approach

Cons:

Projects require different

levels of effort

52

Models to structure your team


Decentralised

Project

Project Project

Project

UX practitioners work individually

UX manager

Software companies

Pros:

UX knows their product well;

works in Agile

Cons:

Lack of communication across

products causes variable UX

53

UX practise models


Project

UX manager

Hybrid Specialist activities are centralised (eg. usability testing)

Enterprises (non-software)

Design Agencies

UX research

UX testing

54

UX practise models


Project

UX manager

Hybrid Specialist activities are centralised and shared

Enterprises (non-software)

Design Agencies

Writing/Editorial

UI Development

Visual Design

Customer research

UX product strategy

Project

Project

For example:

Personas, Journey maps

Shared components

Research results

55

UX practise models


Project

Guild model

Project Project

UX manager

Project Project

QA

2 Engineers

Product Owner

UX manager

Work individually

UX meets together weekly for one full day

Software companies

56

Communities of practice


Communities of practice are groups of people who share a

concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to

do it better as they interact regularly. (Etienne Wenger 2007)

Community: engage in joint activities, help each other, share information

Practise: shared stories and experiences, shared tools.

57

Build internal communities of practice


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

Usability test results

Tech support issues

Release plans

58

Focus your UX design efforts


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

59

HIGH PERFORMING UX How to create a team that works well together


The attributes of high performing teams

• Good listeners

• Listen to other points of view

• Able to relate to other people

• Strong communicators

• Make shared decisions

• Collaborative and relational

• Continuously learning

• Each project teaches something new

• Build collective intelligence

• Reflect on what works and doesn’t work.

• Teams should be launched and relaunched

• Agree on goals, challenges, roles and engagement (charter)


Amy Edmondson.

www.athenahealth.com/leadership-

forum/_doc/Teamwork_On_The_Fly.pdf

Daniel Pink. Drive. Book or watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

61

Skill Development

Soft skills

Shared knowledge

Product consistency

UXers must work within many teams


User Experience Group Product Team

Expertise subgroup:

eg. user research, testing,

interaction design

Applied skills

Hard & Soft skills

Communication

Process (eg Agile)

Applied skills

Hard & Soft skills

Communication

Shared knowledge

UX practitioners must excel at working with long term and

short term teams

62

UX teams include different types of people

sequential

detail-driven, anal

logical

analytical

rational, clinical,

disciplined

objective

quantitative

literal, word- and

number-driven

nonlinear, random

holistic, big-picture,

strategic

intuitive

synthesizing

emotional, instinctive,

passionate

subjective

qualitative

visual and image

driven

Emily Cohen: Managing creatives in a left-brain world


What is your biggest team

challenge today?


Group Discussion:

• Review your team challenge from earlier

• What would you do differently with your team to

address your challenge?

• Different team model?

• How the team works together?

• How the team works with product teams?

• Develop new skills?

64

UX MATURITY Evolving UX acceptance


UX maturity


Skepticism

Curiosity

Acceptance

Partnership

Stop battling for acceptance

and get strategic

Ehrlich & Rohn, 1994

www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html

66

Show and include

67

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

Discover & Analyse Envision & Design Evaluate & Refine


Required skill: facilitation

Especially useful for teams of 1-3

Spread your value to gain acceptance


Adjacent teams

Colleagues

Allied teams

Beneficiaries

Upper management

Stakeholders

Your UX team

Other beneficiaries

Facilitate & communicate:

Capture goals, thoughts and needs

Leverage & facilitate:

Support their goals

Educate & collaborate:

Customer support, marketing etc.

Collaborate:

QA, Tech writers etc.

68

Collaborate to communicate


Focus your message to the audience


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


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

70

Focus your message to the audience


Increase sales

Lowers support and training costs

Reduces IT development costs


Fewer late design changes

Potential re-use

Shortens overall development cycle

Meet goals of a sprint


Decreases maintenance cost and

effort


Creates a more competitive product

Increases Net Promoter Score

Greater customer satisfaction

Aligns with the brand strategy

Senior managers look at

the bottom line of any

investment or

development.

How UX improves

revenue?

IT managers are

measured on ability to

meet budgets and

deadlines

How UX helps me make

my deadline and stay

within budget?

Sales & Marketing want

to have the right story

How UX helps me

increase sales and

market share?

Return on investment Performance goals Market differentiation

Senior managers Engineering managers Sales & Marketing

Software development

71

Some approaches

I can’t do

customer research

UX doesn’t own

the design

Educate

Become a co-designer

Facilitate

Co-design/design brainstorms

Share reusable design assets

Communicate

Demonstrate your vision

Write stories, create prototypes

Adapt

Relocate your team to be with the

decision makers

Leverage

Work with customer facing teams

Sales

Customer Support

Training

Market research

Customer satisfaction surveys

Communicate

Engineering Design Sales &

Marketing


MANAGING YOUR TEAM Leading and managing

73 SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014

Management vs Leadership

“Just being able to be there for others and to listen to them

is one of the most important capacities a leader can have.”

Joseph Jaworski

Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the

right things."

Peter Drucker,

Essential Drucker: Management,

the Individual and Society


Making your team effective

• How your team works together

• How your team works with others

• Hard skills

• Soft skills

• Attributes: build trust and make it safe to explore designs

• Primary things we do:

• Meetings and workshops (work together)

• Design or analysis (work alone)


The attributes of a good manager


• Operational skills

• Plan and delegate

• Domain expert

• Set clear expectations

• Positive recognition

• Leadership

Necessary skills when leading both an ad hoc team,

or an established team

Soft skills

• Active listening

• Empathy

• Honesty

• Humour

• Keep your cool

Be a guide, not a commander.

Martin Zwilling, Forbes

Managing user experience


People

Assign work: communicate expectations

and deadlines

Avoid surprises: give feedback constantly

through weekly meetings

Develop skills through team reviews, paired

work, mentoring

Process

Integrate UX activities with development

process

Work both fast and slow

Be flexible

Build a library of common design elements

Projects

Prioritise and choose strategically

Don’t be afraid to say no

UX Leadership

• Working with your team:

• Build trust

• Appreciate different styles

• Give feedback; take criticism

• Mediate conflict

• Enable learning and mastery

• Build a shared vision and approach

• Working outside your team:

• Communicate vision

• Mediate conflict

• Negotiate

• Communicate, communicate, communicate


Spread your value to gain acceptance


Adjacent teams

Colleagues

Allied teams

Beneficiaries

Upper management

Stakeholders

Your UX team

Other beneficiaries

Facilitate & communicate:

Capture goals, thoughts and needs

Leverage & facilitate:

Support their goals

Educate & collaborate:

Customer support, marketing etc.

Collaborate:

QA, Tech writers etc.

79


Group discussion:

What is the first thing you’ll do when you get

back to work?

80

Wrap up


People

Methods

Location

Vision

Your UX Team Your world

Culture

UX Maturity

Interaction

Communicate

Educate

Facilitate

Leverage

Adapt

81

Thank you

Sarah Bloomer

w: sarahbloomer.com

e: [email protected]

@boolie


mailto:[email protected]

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


Leadership & Management

Building a strategicuxteam-uxindia14