How do you judge UX maturity of any organization?
A quick technique to analyze the UX acceptance level in an organization during initial interviews and conversations.
Introduction:
You could be a fresher or an experienced user experience practitioner looking for an ideal company to work and leverage your career. There are several things that a person considers before deciding to join a company. One of those points could be preparing for the interview and acing it.
You would have come across several articles concerning the list of questions that provide the best user experience questions and suggestions towards preparing your responses.
The objective of this article is a little different. This article aims to prepare you to analyze the maturity level of user experience in a company during your initial interview process and more importantly during the initial round of discussions.
It is an attempt to guide any UX practitioner on taking a crucial decision. A decision in your career to accept the right offer and not to land in the wrong organization.
Most of the interview process would begin with one of the recruitment team members contacting for basic details and matching your skills and profile with their job descriptions.
As a design lead and manager, I have faced the issue of not receiving correct candidate profiles while recruiting user experience designers. It could be lack of experience of recruitment team in the field of user experience to understand the overall demand. It is our responsibility to assist them in selecting potential candidates like providing questionnaire, joining them in few shortlisting sessions and giving continuous constructive feedback.
After an initial discussion with the recruitment team, a phone interview is scheduled with a small group of interviewers. This is one of the best moments for a job aspirant to gauge the maturity of user experience in any organization.
There are few rounds of questions asked to the candidate to qualify for another round of interview process. These interview questions and statements during the discussions are the early indicators that could be categorized into the best and worst categories. It would be nice, to begin with, some of the worst questions and statements followed by the best. This could provide a better picture of understanding the overall maturity of user experience in an organization.
Worst questions and statements:
- Show us your design portfolio (***UI Design!!!)
What interview panel means:
When this question comes too early in the interview process and the interviewer is interested in looking into the output and final designs rather than striking a conversation. It means the maturity level of user experience (acceptance and adoption) within an organization seems to be lowest. This could be one of those frequently asked “Dark Ages” questions to any user experience practitioner.
2. Do you just create sketches and wireframes? that’s all? (***Cost-effective resources !!!)
What interview panel means:
You need to understand that the interviewer is trying to find a UX unicorn who could deliver everything from user experience to user interface design and maybe further converting designs to HTML’s.
The panel aims to hire a swiss knife that could be used for all types of activities within the organization. It could be a good place for a multi-skilled individual at the same time the designer will not be provided enough time to justify each phase of the design. This will lead to designer skipping the important steps in the process of design and focus on specific deliverables.
3. We test our designs with our development team and present them to stakeholders and receive feedback to improve our products.
What interview panel means:
This statement indicates that the company has either never worked with any user experience designer or does not find any value in investing time and money on understanding user problems while interacting with their products.
These individuals look for a designer on command or design as a service at their disposal. They expect the designer to design a beautiful looking application, software, or website and reluctant to empower them.
E.g. The designers considered as painters in the process of construction. They are required once the building has been constructed and needs to be coated with plasters and beautiful vibrant colors. They do not need to review or question the overall structural integrity of the building.
4. Our clients have requested to get our product reviewed by a user experience designer and we are hiring for it.
What interview panel means:
This could be a tricky situation as the client has identified the value and the power of the user experience process. The hiring organization has not developed the taste of working along with designers in building their products. The designer could land in a position that could not be desirable as the client will expect the best experience and the organization will refrain the designer from proposing a better solution.
It is clear that the organization has a technical mindset and has a constant fear of scope creep and over-commitment from the designer. This could lead to rejecting the new approach of design thinking and providing the user experience. There could be a possible constraint to grow in this type of organization due to predicted challenges and constant push back from the strong community of technically driven management.
E.g. We have already built a very nice and robust box (software or application), and it works so nicely. You just need to build a great experience within it. Go ahead make it look beautiful, sprinkle your magic, but keep in mind no matter what happens DO NOT STEP OUT OF THE BOX!!! (sweetly and subtly).
5. The stakeholders have been working in this domain for several years and they can provide us with all the requirements for executing this project.
What interview panel means:
The organization or the team does not intend to spend any budget on the user experience research or user need identification. They find it more meaningful to interact with the stakeholders on the business requirements and product direction.
It is similar or extension of the statement above (Point 4) where the designers are expected to interact with the stakeholders to elicit the user’s needs and pain points. They are expected to review the concept and designs with the group of stakeholders and get approval without interacting with the actual users. It indicates the overall maturity in regards to the user experience process is low within the organization.
Best questions and statements:
What is UX design?
- What is User Experience Design according to you?
The interview panel wants to know:
The interviewers genuinely care about your thoughts on the user experience design and the passion within you to advocate users’ needs and empathize with their problems to build the best experience and products.
The last thing they would like to hear is the standard definition of user experience and the traditional design process which feels like reading from a well-known user experience books or articles. This is the perfect opportunity for the designer to shine and spread some magic around to impress the interviewers.
2. Present us the problems you solved and explain your adopted design process in a project?
The interview panel wants to know:
The interviewers intend to listen about the most critical end-user and business problems a designer has solved with an adopted process during the journey of mapping a great experience.
It is not always about the biggest companies or the projects a designer has worked over the years. What matters most is how a designer genuinely cared to identify critical problems, advocated those issues, and the impact of the solutions provided to address those urgent user problems. It is about how a solution or a carefully weaved experience brought a positive impact on the lives of the users. The designer should aim to change the way people interact and feel about a product or service.
Any product or service can be designed in many ways, applying numerous techniques and methods. It could be loaded with features and capabilities beyond imagination, addressing all the end user issues.
“What makes a great product or service?”
A product or service which can emotionally connect with the users and support them in the time of need. Proactively identifies the gap or break down in the life of a user and carefully assist them to overcome those obstacles. A product or service which is empathic, proactive, reliable, dependable and genuniely care for the users.
3. What is the process you follow while working with multi-disciplinary teams in any project?
The interview panel wants to know:
As the quote suggests,
“The journey is more important than the destination”
It means the interviewers are not interested in the end product or visual designs. They are more focused on the process and critical decisions made during the design journey.
4. How do you constantly improve your understanding in the area of User Experience Design?
The interview panel wants to know:
The interviewers are interested in understanding designers’ areas of interest within the field of user experience and the number of measures a designer would take to update their knowledge. They also want to know the approach and sources by which the designer intends to improve the knowledge.
This is a good hint that the interviewers identify the need for constant improvement and will possibly help the designer to enhance their skills in the future.
5. What is your view on the future of User Experience Design?
The interview panel wants to know:
This question says a lot about the interviewer’s curiosity to measure designer’s knowledge and perspective towards the future of user experience. It indicates that the interviewers have a certain organizational vision towards innovation and like to evaluate the designer’s thought process.
It is one of the good indicators and an opportunity for a designer to openly express their view, opinion of the prospective future.
BONUS:
It is also interesting to identify the number of user experience individuals involved within the interviewer panel. The designers can also observe the level of involvement of these individuals in the entire process of the interview.
This will provide a sense of understanding of the overall power, influence, and opinion within the panel (and possibly organization too).
Conclusion:
It could be unfair to comment on all the organizations as few of them could be in the path of discovery into the world of design thinking and user experience approach of solving problems. Some organizations might be willing to invest and bring these practices into their product development cycle and looking for assistance in building a good design team.
This could be a great opportunity for a user experience designer to accept the challenge. However, this path could be difficult and may take a few years to educate, bring acceptance, and fully infuse the design process within the organization.
