UX14 - Changing the UX Mindset (Sarah Bloomer)

Are you new to managing a team of user experience professionals? Are you trying to improve the acceptance and effectiveness of your user experience team? Or maybe you’ve got a mature UX practice and are wondering what’s next?

We hear the usual recommendations: find an executive sponsor, create UX champions, demonstrate your value, and apply metrics. These recommendations focus on demonstrating and convincing our colleagues about the value of UX. While each of these approaches can be effective, they rarely take UX to the next level of maturity. We need new strategies for improving UX influence.

Sarah believes the field of User Experience has reached the point where we need to think more deeply about how we fit, how to work within an organizational system and find more multi-dimensional roles. It’s not just about convincing, but about collaborating; it’s not just about process, but about being a change agent. Soft skills such as listening, facilitation and influence are equally important to design and research skills. She’ll summarize by explaining how the Capability Maturity Model is relevant to UX and provide ways to move your team or practice forward.

Transcript

1. CHANGING THE UX
   MINDSET
   Gaining influence through collaboration
   UX India | October 2014
   Sarah Bloomer
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 1
   @boolie
   @boolie
   

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2. You are here
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 2
   Culture Collaboration Capability Maturity
   @boolie
   

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3. Acceptance of UX involves change
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 3
   Skepticism
   Curiosity
   Acceptance
   Partnership
   Stop battling for acceptance
   and get strategic
   Ehrlich & Rohn, 1994
   www.useit.com/alertbox/process_maturity.html
   @boolie
   

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4. What we are told:
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 4
   “You need an
   Executive Sponsor”
   “Invite everyone to
   observe usability testing”
   @boolie
   

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5. We tend to get busy with UX
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 5
   @boolie
   

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6. …when you need to look beyond
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 6
   Working with colleagues
   Negotiate the UX role
   Build awareness
   Be strategic
   @boolie
   

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7. SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 7
   Techniques
   Design process
   Design principles
   Tools
   Development process
   Coding constraints
   UX is part of the whole
   Soft Skills
   Communication
   Promoting UX
   Domain expertise
   Marketing
   Finance
   eComm
   etc
   Essential
   Leadership
   Management
   Other skills
   Writing
   Facilitation
   Divergent thinking
   @boolie
   

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8. What do UX practitioners need to
   succeed?
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 8
   The Hardest Soft Skills Mia Northrop @mnorthrop
   Creative thinking
   Communication
   Problem solving
   Analytical thinking
   Active listening
   Collaboration
   Interviewing and observation
   Persuasion and influence
   Planning and organization
   Teamwork
   Soft skills
   UXers
   Senior managers
   Product managers
   Facilitation
   Critiquing
   Consensus building
   Building trust
   Client management
   Negotiation
   @boolie
   

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9. CULTURE
   SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 9
   @boolie
   

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10. Organization types
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 10
    Software
    Enterprise
    Creative Agency
    The software is the business
    Software to support the business
    Website or web apps to deliver services
    Work with software companies and
    enterprises to help them design user
    experiences
    @boolie
    

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11. Each situation is unique
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
    Business goals / drivers
    Product(s)
    & Team
    Process
    What How
    Who When
    and
    and
    Constraints
    Company culture
    The sum of the parts will give you
    help determine the best approach
    11
    @boolie
    

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12. Start with your culture
    • Culture drives the values and norms that drive actions
    • Cultures that deliver great experiences are:
    • Adaptive
    • Accepting of (reasonable) risk
    • Accepting of (reasonable) failure
    • Committed to quality
    • Willing to prioritize
    • Other-focused
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 12
    K. Goodwin: Leading UX
    UX London, April 2011
    @boolie
    

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13. Cultural values and myths
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 13
    Actual company values are the behaviors, attitudes and skills that are
    valued in fellow employees.
    Myths are beliefs that reveal those values
    Users don’t know what they want, we can design for ourselves
    Companies create corporate values
    that they aspire to
    1. Deliver WOW Through Service
    2. Embrace and Drive Change
    3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
    4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
    5. Pursue Growth and Learning
    6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
    7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
    8. Do More With Less
    9. Be Passionate and Determined
    10.Be Humble
    Zappos.com
    @boolie
    

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14. SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014
    Another angle on culture
    Design centric
    Engineering centric
    Paul Sherman. Changing Processes and Cultures. Nov ‘07
    Creative approach to design
    Tend to design for designers—visually oriented
    Technology driven
    Have always owned the user interface
    Believe they know their customers
    Features over usability or user experience
    Sales &
    Marketing centric
    Find ways to collaborate that match
    the values of the culture
    14
    @boolie
    

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15. Apply your design research skills
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 15
    Get to know your co-workers
    Field studies
    To understand your co-workers and their
    context of work
    Personas
    To enable you to design an effective process
    Rich picture
    To identify attitudes and behavior
    @boolie
    

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16. Field studies
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 16
    • Interview and observe the people you work with:
    product managers, analysts, quality engineers, scrum
    team colleagues.
    • Interview stakeholders to understand their goals
    and beliefs.
    • Be a product owner.
    Storytelling:
    How do they feel? What do they say? What do they complain
    about? What do they boast about? What are they proud of?
    Who do they admire in the company?
    @boolie
    

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17. Create personas of colleagues
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 17
    Jen Fabrizi, 2013
    @boolie
    

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18. Rich picture
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 18
    Competitors
    Product
    Owner
    Business Analyst
    Testers
    Architect /
    Tech Designer
    Developers
    UX Architect
    Enterprise
    Architect
    Business
    Analyst
    Senior
    Leadership
    Teams
    Customers
    Which
    company
    do I trust?
    What are people
    like me doing and
    saying?
    What do
    customer
    s want?
    What are our
    competitors
    doing?
    Will it be on
    time and on
    $$??
    Gotta block
    for my
    team!!
    Do they get
    what I want?
    What do I
    want?
    They want
    what, when?
    Scrum Master
    External
    Pressures
    In-Group
    Pressures
    Internal
    Pressures
    Scrum
    Team
    The
    Enterprise
    PO Cabinet
    LEGEND
    Mental
    Models
    Ideas
    Let’s visualize it
    together!
    Use rich pictures to
    “reason about work”;
    (Monk & Howard,
    1998)
    J. Fabrizi, 2013
    @boolie
    

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19. SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 19
    operational
    model
    capability
    model
    user research
    interaction design
    information architecture
    usability engineering
    visual design
    content writing
    front-end development
    process
    model
    UX meta
    model
    user-
    centered
    taxonomies
    / ontology
    knowledge
    in-flows &
    out-flows
    capability interaction
    touch points
    attitude &
    behavior
    model
    waterfall
    agile
    leadership
    logistics
    staffing
    sponsorship
    funding
    personas
    scenarios
    rich pictures
    storyboards
    Fabrizi, 2013
    Modeling the user experience practice:
    a unified story
    @boolie
    

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20. FINAL TIPS
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 20
    @boolie
    

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21. Be a leader to drive change
    • Communicate all the time
    • Keep a learner’s mind
    • Build trust in all directions
    • Give credit where it’s due
    • Stay out of the weeds
    • Value your team
    • Make time to mentor and coach
    • Shut up and listen
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 21
    @boolie
    

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22. Collaborate in all directions
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 22
    Adjacent teams
    Colleagues
    Allied teams
    Beneficiaries
    Upper management
    Stakeholders
    Your UX team
    Other beneficiaries
    @boolie
    

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23. Build communities of practice
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 23
    Build relationships within your organization through Communities of
    Practice. Promote cross-functional collaboration. Cross-functional teams
    drive ongoing research, design and evaluation.
    Customer research
    Customer facing experience
    Product Strategy
    Branding
    Marketing
    UX Team
    Product Strategy
    Personas
    Field studies
    Analytics
    Sales
    Stores
    Customer service
    Tech support
    Training
    Personas
    Stories
    Customer feedback
    Voice of the Customer
    Sales
    Marketing
    UX Team
    Tech Support
    Product Development
    Usability test results
    Tech support issues
    Release plans
    @boolie
    

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24. Tips to move up the maturity model
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 24
    Learn about your
    culture:
    Build trust: within your team, with your peers and
    your stakeholders
    Show you value co-workers: support them, help
    them succeed, give them the information they need
    Get to know your co-workers: Spend time with
    product managers, scrum team colleagues, senior
    management.
    Share: UX is most effective when it is influencing and
    enabling other groups.
    Find allies: Learn how other groups are measured.
    Identify myths & values: Find what’s preventing you
    from moving forward. Also barriers & opportunities.
    Communicate in all directions: Within your team,
    next to your team, above your team.
    Be a leader:
    Design your team: Be tactical: Choose activities that will be accepted
    within your culture. Align your UX goals to bigger goals.
    @boolie
    

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25. It won’t happen over night
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 25
    http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/planning-your-ux-strategy/
    @boolie
    

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26. You’ll get there
    SarahBloomer & Co | UXIndia 2014 26
    Culture Collaboration Capability Maturity
    @boolie
    

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