Step-by-step: designing a system to prioritise UX pain-points

I’ve been working in product and service design roles within large organisations for some time, and most of the teams I’ve worked with have experienced a similar problem.

Their organisation values user centred design, and phrases like “human centric” and “UX” have become buzzwords that get a lot of attention. Designers are getting hired. Projects are getting funded.

But at a high level, no one has much clarity on how to prioritise experience improvements. Are the designers working on the right things? Is the budget going where it could do the most good? Who is deciding what to work on, and how are they deciding what “UX” issues need attention?

There are many foundational user experience issues that affect huge numbers of people every day — logins that don’t work, confusing forms, and bewildering eligibility criteria are just a few — which are overlooked in favour of the latest complaint that went viral on twitter.

That’s not to say the complaint on Twitter isn’t valid, or that the potential PR effects shouldn’t be addressed. But we need a way to understand how important it is, and whether it needs attention right now.

So what do we want to do?

As a product and service team
We want to consistently measure the user experience
So that we can understand how the experience changes over time
+ understand where to focus our attention,
+ measure the effectiveness and…