Nobody Listens to UX
Koan #42
“If they just would have listened to the team, to UX, we could have saved them so much heartache and work!”
My colleague was working on her second cup of coffee and clearly fired up for our routine morning check-in as she recounted a story I had heard so many times before. Her team had conducted their research, knew the customer and despite outlining a vision in a service line meeting, the product team had decided to go for the money.
They went in a different direction. One that favored a business case.
The results were, let’s say, less than favorable. Now, they were attempting to reboot the product in a direction that, coincidentally, aligned with the original proposal from the UX team.
“Nobody listens to UX,” she told me.
I thought about that for a long time after our conversation. I thought about how I had experienced similar situations. I’ve even said the same thing myself a number of times in my career.
Nobody listens to UX.
A few weeks after that conversation, my wife showed me a quote from the 7th President of Rice University, David W. Leebron. It was a blurb from The Chronicle of Higher Education. The article featured 9 outgoing presidents who weighed in on how higher education is changing.
