Every UX Leader Needs A Unique UX Strategy Playbook

I could tell the question I’d asked was a completely foreign idea, just from the look on the UX team manager’s face. She was sharing her frustration about her product teams asking for the UX team’s help, but not letting them do their job.

Some product teams were great, she told me. Those teams would bring her UX team in early, ask them for direction, exploring the problems, listen to research results, and make shifts in the product direction accordingly.

But other product teams were bringing her team in too late, dictating exactly what the design should be, and get upset when the user research showed those designs wouldn’t solve any customer problems. She’d tried to get these product teams to bring her folks in earlier, but they kept waiting until they’d locked the design down.

That’s when I popped the perplexing question: “Are you allowed to say ‘No’ when a product team asks for user experience help?”

“Why would we want to do that?”she asked.

I explained how saying ‘no’ was an advanced approach for dealing with product teams that waited too long. The basic idea is to tell them you’ll only work with them if they bring your team in early enough. Otherwise, they’re on their own.