A Tale of Two UX Teams
When it comes to creating great experiences, company culture is key
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In the sprawling suburbs of Chicago, there existed two organizations devoted to making life better for humankind. Each one developed products and provided services intended to improve the health of its customers. But their products were not always widely adopted, their services were seldom used, and they often fell short of their missions.
Those who donned business suits and bore lofty titles spent many hours contemplating this dilemma in meetings. They spoke of new features and marketing campaigns, and tossed around words like “innovative” and “seamless” while stewing in their quandary. They renamed their meetings “workshops” to induce creative brainstorming. This, they thought, would enable them to address their dilemmas.
After many workshops (which were just really long meetings) and much discussion, they concluded that they should employ a team of professionals devoted to the user experience of their products. And thus, in each organization, a user experience (UX) team was born.
The teams were very different. Both started small. They were scrappy and nimble, with only a few able bodies to handle an immense amount of work. But one team grew while the other remained small. The team that grew—Team L—employed all sorts of experts, including content strategists, UX copywriters, UX producers, and devoted teams of researchers and visual designers. They even hired specialists to handle the design system.
The team that remained small—Team S—focused on efficiency and relationships. This was mostly out of necessity. Good relationships not only helped them build better products, but also helped them sell their designs to stakeholders and, thus, become more efficient.
Team S was more inclusive. In some sense, they ceased to be a team unto themselves. Instead, they were part of a larger team building a product and creating an experience. Team L, however, built up walls. They didn’t realize that teams, through their very existence, exclude. As the French philosopher Jacques Derrida noted, to include is also to exclude.
Team L saw developers, product managers, and business analysts as something akin to enemies. They believed the other…
