Evangelizing UX
No matter the size, evangelizing User Experience within a company is a difficult task. Things get even trickier though, when you’ve got dozens of engineering and product teams spread across 5 time zones and 3 continents. Its not surprising that corporations are usually the slowest to adopt new practices. Even though UX is a maturing field, there seems to still be a lot of mis-understanding around the discipline among corporate leadership. I wish I kept track of all the times I’ve heard an executive describe what I do by telling me that they’re excited for me to make it “sexy” or “pretty.” Sure that’s a part of it. I want the experiences I design to be just as beautiful as the next designer, but UX is about putting function over form. Helping organizations see the value of an Experience Team is a difficult calling. Before leadership can realize the potential of a UX team, they need to understand how to use them properly. As with any other tool in the box, if UX is misused they’ll never be truly effective. Here’s some actionable things you can do to help evangelize UX to an under-informed team.
Promote Design Thinking
Every problem in life is solved by designing a solution. Some problems are more complex than others, but regardless of size, design is a critical ingredient in problem solving. The practice of design thinking is a method of creating solutions with the focus on making things easier in the future. One of the parameters that makes up design thinking is the consideration of both present and future uses for a product or service. Considering all use cases and edge cases allows us to explore drastically different approaches quickly while we iterate through options.
For many people this isn’t something that comes naturally. In many cases individuals tend to solve problems for the here and now. What’s the quickest way to get to ‘x?’ This leads to short-term solutions that need to be revisited frequently. When the practice of UX is not fully understood it leads to shortened design cycles that don’t leave room for proper consideration or user testing.
Promoting design thinking within your organization from leadership all the way down to colleagues can drastically improve the receptiveness to and authority of the UX team. It builds trust and shared understanding. You can start promoting this change by conducting design studios like this one with groups of individuals in your company. You’ll quickly find how passionate and receptive your team mates are to solving problems with you.
Pair Up
Pair up. Not with another designer, but with a developer. There’s a lot of benefits to designing together. In addition to being able to see the other side of the coin, you can also quickly vet out possible solutions for feasibility or functionality. Developers & Engineers are very smart folks that, more often than not, want to be included in creating solutions. The same way UXers don’t enjoy being handed re-skin projects, Engineers don’t like having things tossed over the wall at them.
Inclusion is such an important aspect of the design process that its surprising how easy it is to let slip. When the deadlines are fast approaching, its seems that inclusion is the first thing to go. We put our heads down, our headphones on, and start pounding away at our keyboards. We need to do a better job at remembering that working together will get us to the finish line more quickly.
Sketch
There’s a psychological advantage to sketching. The less “done” things look, the more others feel like they can continue to contribute. Sketching is an easy way to promote both inclusion and design-thinking. Because its rough and unfinished looking, other people feel like there’s still time to offer up ideas and solutions. When we start designing pixel-perfect mocks right off the bat we involuntarily close the door on many of the great ideas that could have otherwise surfaced.
This was something that we practiced in architecture all the time. We had the tools to start designing buildings in 3D models right away, but that often led to other team members and, even worse, the client feeling like they’d lost their opportunity to give feedback. Sketching is a low effort deliverable and the shared understanding is that sketches are easy to throw away and recreate. When you’re promoting design-thinking and pairing up, sketching, even at its lowest fidelity, can be an extremely valuable communication tool to get everyone on the same page.
