How to Incorporate User Experience in Organizations

Last month Keikendo presented a model to identify the maturity level of user experience within an organization. We call it the Keikendo Maturity Model and is the result of over 10 years experience shared by Keikendo founders in organizations of different types, sizes and markets.

While each organization may have goals, processes, techniques and teams with special characteristics, in terms of user experience we have seen similar situations regardless of the type of organization.

Such situations can be described from the barriers to the adoption of user experience within an organization. The model describes 20 barriers clustered into 5 levels:

• Unintentional
• Self-referential
• Expert
• Centralized
• Distributed

It is highly feasable that the 20 barriers do not cover all situations in all organizations, but the most common. They are a sort of average of the most common situations, and each organization may add those applicable to it.

In this article I will describe only the most common barriers that occur at each level, along with the tools that I consider most powerful to overcome them.

1. Unintentional

• Level description: for organizations in this level user experience isn´t designed proactively but is a consequence of certain business goals and IT constraints. Generally speaking, there are no resources with knowledge of user experience or with the intention of incorporating its processes or technics.
• Common barriers: unknowledge and rejection.
• Tools: formal training (courses, events, etc.) or informal (internal presentations, lectures, etc.)

2. Self-referencial

• Level description: at this level organizations design products as if users were like them. Users are fictionally made up, often idealized, but they don´t really participate in the design process. UX can begin to be part of the organization´s public communications but in general it is no more than an slogan.
• Common barriers: budget, time and resources constraints. 
• Tools: user testing is the most powerful tool for overcoming resistances of this level. When observing real people using a product or interface, many preconceptions fall apart and it is possible to discover where and why they are failing. 

3. Expert

• Level description: at this level emerges one person or small team within the organization with concerns about user experience. It is possible that a new technique has been applied, at least once, which usually is user testing.
• Common barriers: formalization, expansion and deepening of the process. The UX technique that has been implemented can not be a consistent part of the design process. On the other hand, it is difficult to replicate it in other projects and even incorporate other complementary techniques.
• Tools: quantification of user testing to measure results and compare projects where UX techniques were applied to those who were not.

4. Centralized

• Level description: organizations that are at this level have a user experience team consisting of at least three roles: interaction design, information architecture and usability. Several UX techniques are applied and user testing is a consistent part of the design process.
• Common barriers: issues are related to UX team scalability. The value of UX has increased and different departments within the organization ask for more resources and better skills but it is difficult for the UX team to meet these demands. Generally this is because UX still is an internal service instead of a strategic area with its own budget.
• Tools: in this level is very important that UX metrics are linked to KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and expose the impact that they have.

5. Distributed

• Level description: User Experience is an strategic area of the company at the same level of Marketing or Finance. UX is part of the organizational culture and participates in the phases of discovery, design and development for products and services. 
• Common barriers: barriers usually show up in the consolidation phase of UX as a strategic area of the organization. In general they are caused by generational issues and unknowledge of senior executives, including the CEO. 
• Tools: show how User Experience improves ROI (Return On Investment).

Maturity progreses one level at a time, organizations can not skip levels because each one of them requires the integration of knowledge, skills, specific profiles and changes at the internal processes that can last years.

To achieve higher levels of maturity (4 and 5) are two important changes have to occur within organizations:

• Organization goals
• Power balance

The first one involves incorporating new variables in the economic and financial business ecuation: focus on users. The product and service development cycle changed, the organization begins to think about the design of products with users in the center of the process, actively involving them from discovery and research phases, to design, development and support. The organization understands that users are the most important variable to achieve their business goals.

The second issue requires changes that affect all organization levels particularly middle management and directors including the CEO. It entails the participation of users into the decision-making process, which is a situation that could limit management control. In organizations with a personalistic management culture this can be difficult and requires gradual changes that would have to be always supported by positive results.

For each of the described levels there are tools that can overcome barriers. The contributions of the Keikendo Maturity Model are that it provides a map where each organization can be located throughout the identification of symptoms of distress, and to provide an action plan to incorporate user experience in order to improve business results.