UX Strategy Masterclass, with Darren Hood

so welcome to those listening on microsoft teams as well as those joining us via youtube you can go ahead and introduce yourselves in the chat whilst we get comfortable in the meantime my name is jonathan copeland i'm a user experience designer at sand dollar design i'm also the host of the guidelines podcast you can reach out to me on twitter at gmcopal as well as on my website i'd like to kick off this evening by thanking ux joburg's sponsor sand dollar design sandon design is currently running a promotion in which you can book a free consultation with a team of ux strategists researchers and designers to review your app website or system or get advice on how you can grow the ux maturity within your organization request a consultation on their website additionally sandol is also proud to announce their fresh new website which is now live you can find that with the link in the show notes or you can type in san dollardesign.co into your browser to find that new website so due to covert 19 ux joburg is going to be a remote meetup for the foreseeable future these are going to consist of monthly meetups that are going to be roughly one to one and a half hours we're going to be working through topics which you have suggested so please feel free to reach out to us on twitter meetup facebook or linkedin to decide the content we will be using in future ux joburg meetups now this session is being recorded so don't worry about being able to remember everything that's said that darren shares with us this evening so sit back relax get some coffee and enjoy and you'll be able to find these recordings in one of two places firstly the ux joburg youtube channel now we're viewing the youtube channel as more of a long form content so this includes everything including the introduction slides uh the speaker's talk the q a as well as the closing information from the from the meetup next up we have the ux joburg podcast now we're viewing this as it's a bit more short form and this is going to be focused purely on the speaker's content what would a meetup be without a prize so we're going to be giving away a prize for the most engaging questions and posts on twitter using at ux joburg as well as the hashtag hashtag uxjoburg now winners will be winning master digital product design ux research and ui design by rob sutcliffe and that's going to be a udemy course so send through your questions on twitter using at uxjoburg hashtag uxjobing and you stand the chance to win this udemy course the cbnex meetup is going to have three broad categories to it there's going to be talk where we're going to hear a master class presented by darren hood we're then going to have a q a and we're going to use those questions that you send through on twitter and we'll use that to ask darren hood questions and then after that we're going to move into the networking part of this evening so without further ado let's get to today's speaker darren hood darren is extremely passionate about all things user experience darren holds 20 plus years in experience in human computer interaction and interaction design with the last 16 years working full-time in the world of ux he also speaks regularly at various conferences and events darren's professional professional footprint spans organizations such as ford motor company general motors bosch rider united wholesale mortgage quicken loans cengage learning usa networks name a few now on and on he serves as an adjunct professor for kent state's university ux design masters program kent ohio usa as an adjunct at lawrence technological university southfield michigan usa and leads user experience workshops at grand circus in detroit michigan usa darren is currently pursuing a phd in educational leadership from north central university in addition to all of this darren also hosts his own podcast the world of ux according to darren hood now guys i've been digging deep into the world of ux over the past month and a bit ever since i heard that darren hood is going to be coming onto ubex joyberg and i highly recommend this podcast it is high quality uh he's about about 12 episodes in now i don't know but the quality is high and it's an absolute pleasure to listen to you so give it a look but for now we'd like to welcome you darren welcome to ux joburg you can go ahead and share your screen are you with us hello everybody and thank you for coming to today's talk on ux strategy thanks to the folks at ux joburg for inviting me i'm i'm honored and of course i take a great deal of of joy and and sharing with the ux community so we're going to go ahead and dive right in today a little bit of an introduction for those of you that don't know me i've been doing ux now for over 20 years full-time for 16 but i was a freelance web designer before that and was actually doing things associated with new with with ux and before i even realized it then i started reading a lot of the books and self-studying early on so been around pretty much from the very beginning in the days when we were mostly information architects uh you see a picture of my lovely wife angela there i do believe she's on the call as well i've got a master's uh from syracuse the masters from kent state i get around the circuit hence the world usability day logo there on the left my wife and i have four cats i'm big into photography been seriously into photography for the last few years i have a ball there love bike riding and i'm a big avid bowler and i am a former member of the professional bowlers association just a little bit of trivia about me just in case you didn't know that it's a picture of my first 300 on the screen there here's my footprint as jonathan mentioned that's why i won't spend any time here but i've got a pretty large footprint in the ux community and so i'm pretty proud and happy about that so we will get right into the agenda know more about me let's get into the agenda today for this uh ux strategy master's class i'm going to give you an introduction it's sort of a broad introduction though because i want to lay a solid foundation and make sure that we're level set with regard to how we are looking at ux in general and a little bit about the history of ux to lay the foundation for getting into the topic of ux strategy then i'm going to spend some time defining what ux strategy is talking about some of the common definitions that are out there some of the common mindsets and then i'm going to be presenting to you my perspective on ux strategy leading us into what i call a holistic ux strategy model won't say anything more about that till we get into it once we're done with all that i want to do a little exercise i'm going to get into what i call an evaluation challenge where we're going to look at the holistic ux strategy model again and have you rate yourselves so i've also got some visual cues on the screen to make sure you don't have to worry about the definitions i gave you earlier they will be on screen and i'll continue to to reinforce those and share those again as we go forward and then we're going to ask you to get into a little planning i know you're not ready for that you're probably not thinking about it but we want to at least start everybody uh to get the wheels turning so to speak with regard to how to apply a ux strategy in your own ux practice and your own organizations then of course we'll wrap up and that'll take us into the q a so let's get into the content so our introduction for starters and for those of you who are familiar with me you've seen this before you know my mindset with regard to this i call this the landscape of ux if you've been listening to the podcast and i talk about the four pillars this is what i'm referring to a lot of us you'll get into conversations from time to time and someone will ask you what ux is what do you do for a living what is u.s can you help me to understand it and a lot of times we are like deer in the headlights at that point we're a little shocked we don't know what to think we don't know how to describe it because the question doesn't come up a whole lot not to the point where we're away from ux professionals and i have to explain it and then we recognize the challenge over the course of the last few years i've been putting this illustration together to help ux professionals understand what ux is now if you can't read it don't be alarmed you're going to get a uh to be able to look at the you're going to be able to look at this later on video if you want to dive into it i share this a lot on social media so you can get it and then zoom in on it and look at some of the specifics the purpose of this illustration is to show people how broad ux is the four pillars being heuristics and usability information architecture research and interface and interaction design with a lot of subsets deliverables methods methodologies are spattered all throughout this illustration but it's critical to understand how broad ux is if we trivialize it if we minimize it if we discount what ux is that is going to pose a problem for you and your business it's going to pose a problem where you're trying to get buy-in from your executives from your leadership your c-level people when you're trying to illustrate how critical it is that you get the right person in it you can't just have ux done by anybody and that it's very complex then we do ourselves a service a disservice and we do the discipline of this service so i share this just so people can see how broad ux is when we talk about the history of ux we go back to the mid-1990s when ux really began to take its its first foothold upon the world that's when don norman became the first person to have anything related to ux in their job title he was working for apple and he wanted to be called a user experience architect and that was a nice vision into the future because that title really didn't become mainstream until about 2007 somewhere 2007 and 2010 that you started seeing it uh from a broad perspective but after that when the everything began to take off in the late 90s and everybody was starting to jump to the internet whether it was individuals or whether it was companies who wanted to have an internet presence ux began to shift uh people began to see having ux people on board or at least having the practice applied to what they were doing they started to see it as being important however you look on the bottom where you see the digitized lbi the mri mccann and the sapient nitro logos the the creative agencies pretty much led the way with regard to ux and companies were bringing in the agencies to help people with the ux work not too long after that roughly somewhere from 2003 to 2005 ibm and nasa both published some some very what became some very popular research where they found that for every dollar you invest in ux you could get anywhere from 100 to two hundred and fifty dollars so the roi was pretty attractive and so a lot of the corporations began getting on board with regard to to ux but what was interesting was that while the agencies were on board and the agencies understood ux and where it fit in their teams and in their organizations and with the value they were bringing their clients a lot of the corporations did not they just saw the roi they started adding people in i love how someone put it once they started decorating their teams with with people holding positions but not necessarily understanding the work at large that contributed to the last two illustrations the one on the bottom and the one upper right where you have a lot of people trying to fill these positions as articles are everywhere talking about how big of a future ux has and how this is one of the hottest disciplines and you got to get involved in us but there's a problem because people are feeling the positions but a lot of companies don't know what ux is and what you're about to see is that ux strategy is starting to get lost any ux strategy that was that was taking place starts to become minimalized and we start to get to a point where ux strategy is being completely overlooked for the most part is that i use the word completely loosely you are hard-pressed whereas you might have some ux strategists that you know and sam dollar has ux strategists on board with their team but that's because they understand the importance of ux strategy organizations and individuals for the most part people don't understand the importance of ux strategy and so what i want to do today is really spend some time stressing what ux strategy is helping to likely tweak everyone's definition or what we see uh strategy to be and then challenge you to make sure that you start looking at ux strategy and putting it at the forefront of your ux operations it is it is critical so what is ux strategy well here are some common definitions the first one from a company called mentormate they say they state that ux strategy is simply the plan and approach for a digital product and i'm not slamming anybody's definitions per se but i will tell you up front these are a little on the short-sighted side because if you just focus on planning you're going to run into some issues foolproof says that ux strategy is a long-term plan to align every customer touch point with your vision for user experience this is a little bit better it's a little bit broader i would say that if you embraced this definition that would get you a little further along in your ux strategy efforts but i'd say we're still not where we need to be the third one from nomensa says an experienced design process that plans identifies and underwrites the implementation of the necessary value differentiators a brand needs to create sustainable competitive advantage if you're a seasoned us professional like me you also you realize that while this might get the nail on the head a little bit more it's also very complex it almost sounds like you're reading tax paperwork or some some legal documentation so i'd say that this one is not very practical though i understand what it is that they're trying to to illustrate from there let's look at what i consider to be a more reliable and a more practical definition it's still on the short side but at the same time while it's on the short side it still lends itself to practicality so i define it as the overarching plan to manage ux operation and project-based engagement for the business so if you i hope you're already noticing i'm already branching outside of your basic project planning and now we're looking at management of the ux operation as a whole to give you sort of a hint of where we're about to go so why is ux strategy important then well from a project perspective you need to be able to prescribe the right tool for the right job that's a key part and a critical aspect of ux strategy not all but it's a critical part if you fail to plan which is all really all strategy is you're likely going to deliver something everybody delivers something if you put code in and bring up that code in the browser the browser is going to interpret the code it doesn't mean that you succeeded it simply means that the browser can interpret code but the browser is not going to let you know something will or will not work so you will deliver something but it's likely going to fall short of what it could have been had you not planned uh in a little more approach things from a more methodical standpoint ux strategy also helps you to determine your levels of preparedness and capability so again this is a part of ux strategy that goes beyond the stereotypical norms and the assumptions about what ux strategy is because if you decide what needs to be done on a particular project and your team doesn't have the skill sets associated with it then you have to plan accordingly so that you can have somebody on board to execute that part of your plan so it's not just getting the work done but it's how you're going to get the work done and whether or not you're prepared to do the work the right way so critical engagement factors include information being gathered in order to gain a complete understanding of the work that you need to do key part of ux strategy you want to identify human and information elements so you can confirm who will be impacted and involved both inside the organization as well as outside the the organization that's part of ux strategy as well again broadening the scope a little bit desired outcomes and timelines have to be vented out in order to confirm what the goals are for this for this initiative whatever you're working on and whether or not they align with what you as a ux team can reasonably deliver you don't want to say you can do something and you can't so ux strategy also then again it leaks over into your own personnel your own human resources capabilities so i hope that we're starting to broaden your perspective a little bit now we can't talk about ux strategy without talking about the person who's likely the most known the most famous person the most recognizable person in ux strategy spaces and to my knowledge jamie levy is the only person who has published a book that is dedicated to the subject of ux strategy i highly recommend the book i'm going to be talking about some things that are a little broader but this book is an absolute gem it's a treasure and jamie though she talks about others people who are practicing ux strategy in her book and some of the things that they do from a ux strategy perspective she focuses on four tenets one is business strategy and from a business strategy perspective that is simply from her perspective it's all about understanding the vision of the company so that you can through your ux engagement help to drive competitive advantage for the organization so it's a business mindset but it's the business mindset it's not your business mindset and you'll see what i mean by that in a few moments the value innovation is number two this has to do with the simultaneous pursuit of differentiation and low cost so you're trying to be cost effective in what you do you're keeping your eye on the dollars you're you're uh already looking beyond standard ux operation i bought her for that i love the fact that she brings that up and you're looking at your impact from a financial perspective you have your finger on the pulse of the impact that it's going to make and that you're going to do it in a cost effective manner tenant number three is validated ux research or user research verifying that you're on the right track with what it is that you're proposing to be done so you're basically validating your designs validating design direction and so user research to me is a part of strategy yes but it's also a standalone mechanism that's just part of your ux operation and then all these things lead up to what she refers to as killer ux design taking advantage of innovation opportunities while applying best practices and being mindful of the critical touch points with a product or with a solution so that's what you roll out at the end that everything else that you've done should pave the way that you deliver an absolutely optimal ux experience that's what sound ux strategy will afford you that's the door that it will open up instead of people just doing the work instead of people just getting something done and pushing something out because the client wants something we don't want to be satisfied just delivering something we want to deliver the best possible thing that we can do and that requires engagement from a ux strategy perspective now here's where i'm going to shift and and i'm going to introduce a different model one that i think is a bit more practical and it's definitely more holistic because it applies to not just the work that you're doing but it applies to your operation how you fit within an organization and have some mindsets behind how you do that and then the ux maturity management which is one of the things we want to stress during this talk today if you do the work but you don't run your ux operation like it's your business you're going to look at things differently you're going to apply yourself differently there are things that are going to get overlooked because of course if it's your own business you you take more ownership you're more accountable and you focus a bit more than what you would do if you were just punching a clot and going home so number one project focus selecting the right tool for the job this is base ux strategy that no matter what definition you see about ux strategy is going to entail include being project focused we all know that but the next one and i was getting ahead of myself a little bit is what i call framework focus so the segment number two is about being an entrepreneur not an entrepreneur not a person that's starting your own business on the outside but running an operation on the inside of someone else's company as if it is your own business so you want to manage your ux team like it's an internal business and then you align that internal business with the businesses needs and goals but as mentioned when you look at something like it is your own business you approach it differently you have more pride you're more accountable you're more astute you drive harder you you you just the effort that goes into it it just far exceeds a basic operation as a basic ux professional or a basic team that doesn't have that mindset number three is being organization focused and i'm going to be getting into these in a little bit more detail shortly but with the organization focus now you're looking at how that is a bit different than the framework focus because it strictly focuses on us maturity instead of grouping ux maturity in with the entrepreneurial mindset i i recommend and i suggest that you separate your operation and that you identify where you are from a ux maturity's perspective you look at your current state you implement a plan to progress and then in so doing you're going to bring greater value to the organization and we'll get into that a little bit more detail as we go so let's start going through the model one by one so we're looking at the holistic ux strategy model number one project focus again this is about getting the job done that's it base ux operations what every ux group should be doing the question is are you really planning for it or are you doing everything in a haphazard fashion we're trying to recommend that you be more methodical that you be more structured and and that structure that operation is something that will help to fine-tune it to streamline what it is that you're doing what your team is doing how it's operating and how it's going to be viewed by others in the organization so you want to make sure that you're selecting the right tool for the job and make sure that's in accordance with your team's skill set this is what being project focused is all about so and i'm going to talk about three critical aspects associated with each one of these each one of these elements the first one is importance so the what's what's important about project focus why do you need to do this well having a structure by which you approach your products or projects sorry is products too is the most based type of ux strategy as mentioned without it everything you're doing is by happenstance here's what's deceiving about doing work without doing it with a strategic mindset someone will come to you and say that they need work done you will of course you will want to step forward and you want to do the work and you will agree to do the work and you'll do the work and you might even do a great job if you're good at what you do you're going to do a great job if you don't have the structure around it what you did is not going to be repeatable you're pretty much doing everything from the hip you're fortunate if you're able to execute without any planning and so you while you are achieving a certain degree of success you're also experiencing a certain amount of risk you just because you don't have the structure not only do you not approach things the same way but your clients your stakeholders they don't know they don't have any real expectations they don't have a set way to approach what's going on so putting a a a a structure in place is going to help you and it's going to help them it's going to help the business it's going to save you a lot of money it's going to drive profit so that's why it's really important that you have structure around it so from a status perspective look at your current approach to projects including your design process test itself what are your strengths and and start thinking about what you could do to approve to improve how you're operating when it comes to the hailing of your projects internally and so that leads us over to planning so after you examine how your team handles the work the the different requests that you get the different projects you need to commit to optimizing how you approach it some people when they see the structure a lot of us frankly there are a lot of people working in ux today who have an article mindset they don't like rules we're not talking about rules we're talking about being organized that's it so if someone has an anarchical mindset they don't like the rules they like to go outside the line they like to color outside the lines then make coloring outside the lines part of your process you still just need structure because when you have something that you can repeat that's how you achieve success i mentioned earlier that i'm a former professional bowler and a lot of us if not all of us have bowled before the difference between the person who comes out to the bowling alley grabs the ball off of the rack and just goes out and throws the ball and the person who makes anywhere from 50 to 300 000 a year bowling is that the person who's bowling at the professional level has learned that success comes through repetition and so that's the difference between the professional and amateur is that and that's the same thing that we're trying to instill in everyone here today when you have something that you can repeat something you found works well something that you find brings value keep repeating it and you'll find that everybody wins in the end so that's how you address the project focus perspective and here's a um one type of an approach that you could use that i put together you want to start with your projects by understanding business goals you want to identify who the target users are you want to confirm the current status is this a design is it a redesign what are we doing because you have to approach it differently and then you should have a process associated with either if it's a new design or if it's a redesign then you want to approach both uh from a best practice perspective so that you can optimize what you're doing and even identify who the best people on your team might be to work on that particular project you may need to perform a competitive analysis you want to do this all the time but performing a competitive analysis is key because it can help identify ways to innovate and help ways to drive competitive differentiation so that you can get that competitive advantage that's the purpose of it next and this is where this is your big bang for the buck for ux strategy determine which ux method is remember the big illustration i showed you with the four pillars which of those methods will best serve the initiative that you're working on now that's what's key then you execute and of course you iterate as necessary so this is just a quick idea of a way that you could just have a plan so see how simple this is this doesn't box anybody in it doesn't it doesn't monkey wrench anything that anyone is doing depending upon your working style it simply gives you guidelines but it leaves room for the way that people work working styles and different types of approaches it leaves you room to flex a little bit and and do different things so this is a very flexible model and not a rigid one rigid models don't work and it's always going to create a problem but one that allows you to flex a little bit that does work so i highly recommend this so in recap for this area don't just do the work embrace the value of process and as you're planning for handling of design projects make sure you know the importance of identifying which ux methods and methodologies best serve what it is you're that you're working on now and that's going to help you have a workshop with your team or a little working session with your team to help identify what should we do here should we do ethnography or do we have to should we just send a survey to get started what what research methods as a quick example so and as an addendum your products your project strategy breadth how broad your strategy is and the potential impact that you can make it's going to be limited again to the combined skills of your team this includes soft skills don't leave that out don't leave that out so make sure that you're evaluating everything including the soft skills of your team before you go assigning someone who may not have a good bedside manner or lacks a little diplomacy and if you lack diplomacy just improve on it we can all get better at whatever it is we're doing number two framework focus this is where you have the business mindset where you're managing the team like an internal business so here again from a standpoint of important status and planning to have a successful ux operation you can't just come to work and go home please treat it like it's your own business if you want to excel at what you do this is critical i've done it for years and it's why i've been able to excel when allowed to and and it's but don't just come to work and go home because not only will you bring more value if you approach work like it's your business but there will be a higher perceived value because of all the different benefits and all the different achievements that you make as a team and as an operation even if your team is one people will value you more because of the effort that you put into it they will value it so understand where you are currently you want to see your status identify these strengths weaknesses how good the leadership buy-in is and what your desired operational flow and impact is make sure you're aware of all those things and from a planning perspective work to establish the equivalent of a business plan just like you have business plans in the world in order to foster success you need a business plan for your own ux operation your own ux team and this will foster greater attendance if needed to your operation success it'll pave the way for doing better and getting more done here's an idea for those who are wondering okay so how do i achieve this what can i do well look no further than the good old swot analysis identify your strengths what your team what you do well identify your weaknesses where you have opportunities to improve don't be afraid of where you fall short face it head on and and challenge it and engage in that thing purposely so you can get better work on getting better don't just say see a weakness and then do the wrong thing see it attack it opportunities where are the favorable circumstances where are the open doors for your team identify them and make sure you take advantage of them and walk through them because they could close if you don't and then lastly threats what are your biggest challenges and impediments that your team faces because when you identify your strengths your weaknesses your opportunities and your threats it gives you an opportunity to now step forward and manage those things and achieve victories so pinnacle ux success not just success if you're achieving success what if there is a higher degree of success don't you want it so that's what this affords you it's dependent upon the vision of every member of your ux team so not only should you have it if you're leading the team but you want to make sure you infuse that and everybody else on your team those who approach their ux practice as if it's a business those are the people who will exceed those who treat it like it's just a job and they are viewed differently than those that treat it like it's just a job you approach a ux practice like an entrepreneur it'll foster behaviors attitudes and practices that would escape you otherwise you simply wouldn't achieve it and then lastly a business that fails to capitalize upon strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats this is basically from a business perspective this is an act of negligence that precedes defeat so i highly recommend that you embrace that perspective the third and final segment of my model is the organizational focus this is where you're looking strictly at ux maturity this is something you you purposely have to engage in on a regular level because it will not manage itself you have to be hands-on to manage your ux maturity level so again important status and planning from an importance perspective the ux maturity level management it helps identify and maintain awareness of how your team is valued and its impact a team that's just floating through the office like a leaf can also blow out of the window like a leaf you want to be aware of who you are where you are and how you can impact everyone and then you always want to have plans which we'll get to in a moment so that you can always not only maintain your ux maturity level but always be in the business of keeping it moving forward some some organizations get involved in what one of our professors at kent state dr paul sherman refers to his ux backsliding i coined that phrase from him you see organizations that are going backwards some organizations that used to be at the pinnacle of ux operation five years ago today are really struggling and they're delivering terrible user experiences because the maturity level either they don't have qualified people managing it they don't have anyone who cares about it no one's paying attention to it and you know what happens to the grass it doesn't get watered or mowed and trimmed properly it really looks terrible doesn't it it's the same thing view your ux operation like grass in front of your home it needs somebody to take care of it or it's just going to grow wild know what your current status is where are you currently and make sure you put together a plan to maintain and grow your team's operation and then lastly for planning there are several ux maturity models out there in the wild that everywhere you look there's a model pick one it doesn't it sort of kind of doesn't matter then again it sort of kind of does uh and i talk about this on my podcast uh there are some bad ones out there but there are some great ones out there too and so use some critical thinking look at the ones that are out there find the one that best fits your organization and put it to work and if you find that five months down the line you know what this one really doesn't work then throw it out and go again find another one or better yet create your own you don't have to embrace something that's already out there if you don't find an exact set you can create your own which is what i did so this is the ux uncensored ux maturity level just to share an example with you the type of thing that you can do one of the issues i have with some ux maturity levels is that i find that they're not they're either not practical or they're just not doable as you notice in this model there are no timelines associated with them you just dive in identify where you are and you just continue to go forward there are measurable elements at each level number one is apathy so if you if you're at an organization just to start going through this here if you if you're in an organization where there's no genuine interest people don't understand it leadership's not buying in people fight against you i'm sure a lot of us have experienced that they fight against you when you start trying to recommend certain ux practices or certain ux best practices you're trying to put in place you're trying to implement things or looking at things heuristically and you give somebody inputs and recommendations and they just fight you you're likely at the apathy level when you reach the exploration level there are some people that are starting to give thoughtful consideration to ux uh so they're willing to engage but they're not fully committed just yet so you're starting to get some traction but everybody's not on board but at least you're not at level one you're not at the apathy level so that's good then you have adoption you get to the point where it's now garnering attention and regard throughout the organization so people are valuing it and you got people that are starting to come to you to get input so we're getting somewhere now this is great the next level beyond that is that of saturation where ux now has recognizable traction within the organization so it's not just you a lot of people including leaders are starting to recognize how important ux is and you're being included in an increasing number of projects i would say at this level you're beyond the fifty percent level to get to level four at level five this is the pinnacle level assimilation where ux is now a standard throughout the organization and is tied directly to profitability at this level companies would not dream of doing any work without engaging with the ux team and engaging with the ux team in a timely manner so i think this is basic if you need somewhere to start by all means you can use this and if you find out that later you need a little bit more detail again there are other ux maturity models out there that you can embrace but this is just an example for someone who would like a starting point or a suggestion so here are your closing points reminders about the organization focus level companies that embrace user center design practices again they outperform competition by anywhere from 218 to 228 these are the actual numbers that are out there between the design management institute and there's another there's a creative agency whose name splits my mind at the moment that give these numbers studied as more recently as or as recently as a year ago so these numbers are valid and so the maturity level these are the companies who have the higher ux material levels these are the ones that are achieving it so it does have a dollar figure associated with it there is a huge benefit there but you cannot achieve higher maturity u.s maturity levels by osmosis it's not going to take care of itself as i said earlier it takes a concerted committed and focused effort so and leadership buy-in is also critical to be successful you can't get anywhere leadership is going to keep shooting you down so if you have to manage up or you have to spend time talking about ux and helping them to understand that's part of the maturity level management process so get busy on that as well so again you've got project focus getting the job done the framework focus where you look at things from an entrepreneurial perspective treating it like it's your own business and the organization focus number three where you're strictly focusing on managing the ux maturity level this is what i call the whole holistic ux strategy model it's something that covers everything associated with ux strategy and not just doing the work so let's move into our evaluation challenge here this is where i put you all to work today so you've got your project focused you've got your framework focused and you've got your organization's focus so really quickly uh and don't don't get too detail-oriented right now to something you can always do when we're done here today and get into a lot more detail get into the weeds totally with this and i highly recommend that you do because the benefits are tremendous but rate your organization currently whether you're a team of one or a team of many we're on a scale of one to ten good old likert scale are you on the lower end of the spectrum the way that you are structured not getting the work done how structured are you about the way you go about doing the work do you have a repeatable mechanism in place to get the work done so rate yourself there number two and with framework focus how would you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten with low one being low and ten being very high how would you rate your your entrepreneurial focus on your current ux operation and then lastly organization focus how would you rate not your your ux maturity your managing of the ux maturity and the planning that you have in place to manage your ux maturity remember it won't take care of itself you have to have your finger on the pulse of that and you have to have a plan that you're executing to get it done so there that's your evaluation and i'm just going to give you another 25 seconds or so to give this a little bit more thought and let it resonate a bit because i'm i'm sure some people are are debating but you can give yourself a quick and dirty rating here for the purpose of this it's not being graded we just want you to start being introspective about this topic and what you're doing and how you can put it to work and so that's about 20 seconds so i hope everybody is good and that we're done here and we'll move to the next segment where now we want to go a step further what could you do no matter what you rated yourself at on the previous screen what could you do what types of things do you feel you could do to begin advancing your organization across the project focus area the framework focus area or the organization focus area and i have some examples here uh generally just put together a repeatable approach for project focus formalize the work order process do when people need the ux help do they just come over to the team i know a lot of us have experienced that over the vast majority of our careers they just come up to you they just need you they come get you and you go and you do the work and everybody's happy and and you create some kick butt ux solutions and it rolls out and everybody's happy and then you just do it again when we do that we're missing the benefit of the structure so come up with a process is it going to take some work of course but it's going to save you a lot of work on the back end and it's going to help you represent your ux operation better within the team as well as externally with the framework focus we showed you the swot analysis perform one where does your team stand now what are the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats that your team is facing develop a leadership communication plan or do you already have one i venture to say that most do not how well do you communicate what your team is and what it's accomplishing to those in leadership if you don't have a plan in place and you're just letting them pick up on things as they go and there's nothing structured or that that's presented whether it's through an internet or an email or regularly scheduled meetings you have to communicate what who you are and what you're doing to those in leadership so that you can continue to demonstrate your value so when they're in their meeting that you're not invited to by the way they can stand and advocate for your ux operation which really comes in handy when you're trying to get that that that paperwork sign to get some usability testing software or to add members to the team when you engage from a leadership communication plan you've laid the foundation for that you're helping get those things accomplished and you're running it like a business when you do that and make sure that you establish a talent retention plan i venture to say a lot of ux operations have no talent retention plan it's hard to find especially today and those of you who know me on linkedin know what i ran about a lot of the things i read about there's a lot of people in ux positions today and that have ux titles that are not doing the work and there are people who are skilled at ux you want to make sure you don't want to get into the frame where you're starting to to recruit and see all of these fuzzed resumes and and i mean i've been through in position when i was a ux manager it's not fun to go through 100 and 200 resumes uh you want to make sure that you don't have to do that until you absolutely have to so you have to establish a retention plan like somebody who has their own business who values your employees who your team members and you're trying to keep people and you give them reasons to stay and you make it fun for them to do work you make it engaging you have a department that's just overrun with fantastic intrinsic benefits that's when you retain talent it costs too much money to find another person so this is part of ux strategy so as you can see it's not just the work it's how you manage your operation and then lastly what would you do to help drive your organization focused what kind of things could you do i hope you're writing down some ideas here but take the ones i've got here too if that works for you but you need to come up with a plan identify your current ux maturity level agree upon a maturity level to model in your organization and get get to it get busy if you need to as we stated earlier create one but make sure that you are executing plans to drive these things forward because if you don't plan everything's going to fall apart you can only float along like a leaf and be successful for so long at some point in time you have to put your feet on the ground and you have to get busy and you have to approach work a different way you have to embrace holistic ux strategy so that said here's our recap and closing notes and only four ux strategy is more than planning how to do the work please know and understand that if you want to be successful if you want to be at the pinnacle of ux operation if you want to have an envied operation and have people just who just would love to come and work with you and for you because they know how your team operates they see what your team does and they hear all the stories about how wonderful it is to operate and to work there and how wonderfully mature and enriching of the environment you have the more holistic you look at ux strategy the better uh and the more likely you will be to achieve such a thing so in addition to project handling you must focus on how to properly oversee your business in the organization where you are and put a concerted effort to manage your ux maturity level it is critical that you do that overlooked by many and make sure you take a more holistic approach to ux strategy because this will help you ensure stability as well as a success for your team and it can vault you as stated i keep saying this that's the word of the day uh pinnacle levels of operation i think we all would love to achieve that level of success so that is what i have to present today and we've reached a time where i'm ready for qma fantastic okay first up we have jen blatz jim batts says do you present a small medium and large ux strategy when you need to scale around based on budget and timeline maybe you thought you had six months but now you have two how do you adjust your strategy oh god one of the things that i've done over the course of my career and of course a lot of us have experienced that always have a contingency plan and there's a plan a then you have plan b have a plan c have a plan d make sure that the word i use is liquid i like extensible planning and i like contingencies so that it's good for us in our strategy as we as we have a plan for how we're going to do the work always have an offer amp so to speak if this happens i'm ready to do x uh and and when we do think that's another reason when you have a repeated process something that's repeatable it's easier to implement uh the contingencies it's easier to implement the alternatives so from that perspective hey let's uh we only have we don't have as much time as we need it to what can we do what can we deliver in this shorter timeline i actually had a situation yesterday where i was doing some work for someone and they actually i was so busy looking at so many things that they needed to accomplish things they need to change because of course we're not order takers right so we're not like the the if you never heard that uh it's like people think that a lot of people who don't know what ux is they figure they're going to ask you place an order as if they were in a restaurant and they see you as a waiter or a waitress who comes up and takes the order and brings them back exactly what they ordered that's not what we do in ux so somebody threw me a curve uh and um i initially did the work realized that they needed 10 things beyond what they asked me for when i delivered the the prototype it had all those things in it and i actually forgot to do the one thing i was so engrossed in all these other things need to be fixed that i didn't i just admit the error and i own it i i didn't do the one thing that they wanted more than anything else uh fortunately because i designed everything in such a liquid fashion i was actually able to implement that one thing that i overlooked my fault i was able to implement it quickly and easily i actually implemented it like in three minutes and it's sort of a really rudimentary uh example but it just goes to show how we need to be have our head on a swivel because i wasn't ready for that but the way that i designed it i was able to incorporate this other it was just a drop down they wanted a drop down for a form to select an option and and so i designed everything in such a way and laid everything out in such a way that it was very easy for me to implement the drop down so again very rude rudimentary example but it just goes to show when we when we are not rigid in what we do we have room to move if we're overly rigid then we leave right we back ourselves into a corner and we don't have room to move so so have a plan b have a plan z a plan c have the plan d and be ready because you might have to use them and you may end up on plan d depending upon how a client shifts cool okay thanks daryn next up we have from ignatius ferreira hi darren what advice would you what would what would your advice be to a junior or intermediate designer who works under ux lead or strategist that does not have any experience in ux how can they identify fake ux oh man i love that question and i'm gonna i'm gonna focus on the last part first people who uh i'm sure we may have heard this before but it's an old uh concept there are people whose job it is to identify counterfeit money right guess how much they guess how much time they spend focusing on on what counterfeit money looks like zero they spend all of their time focusing on genuine currency they spend no time looking so they're so well versed looking at genuine currency that it makes it easy to identify counterfeit money the same thing applies to us as as we and that's why i constantly and those of you out there who know me i i constantly tell people this is what ux is i didn't spend a lot of time because i knew i would lose time if i didn't and it's easier for me to go down that rabbit hole when i'm talking about the four pillars and the landscape but that's what ux is it it it's it's usability it's heuristics and heuristics how many people don't know anything about heuristics today not good considering that's at the very foundation at what we do how many people today do not do not study information architecture or don't even know what it is and so how many people don't know what they think that ux research is asking somebody what they like that's not even research it's not just research because you ask someone what they like do you realize that there are over 90 different types of research that we could use to do our ux work although only 9 to 12 of them get used regularly and i'll share that later on on social media i'm going to be talking about it uh soon too but on the podcast uh how many people think that ui is ux when ui that's it stands for user interface it's just an interface there's no way that ui and ux are interchangeable their ui is a subset and i group it with interaction design because when people interact they interact with the interface so i group the two of them together and that's what you see on that on that four pillars grid so that's what ux is the more you know what ux is the more you will recognize it when you see someone going in in another direction and you don't have to you don't have to like get belligerent or anything like that with them you just want to recognize what it is make sure you go the right way make sure you keep bringing um the value that you need to bring the the really crazy thing is that not just the person that's over you man and some of you again you know me you see how i seem to move around a lot and uh have over the course of my career and i don't want to but i've gone to a lot of organizations they bait and switch you they bring you in to do ux and they want you to do something else or the organization has such a poor ux maturity level and if you know what ux is they're going to have a very difficult time you're going to have a difficult time interacting with them and vice versa so build yourself up know what ux is for you is going to help you bring more value and if that organization doesn't mature and if that team lead doesn't mature then you just uh and they can't they don't know how i've had bosses that are not ux people and the best boss i ever had was not a ux person but they knew how to communicate with me they knew how to value me so you don't you don't necessarily write them off because they're not a ux professional they don't know how to to do the work but if they don't then you will have benefited yourself because now you've established yourself make it easy for you to go somewhere else where somebody will appreciate you okay fantastic there'll probably be people sitting in this evening's meetup they're asking the question okay so i want to i want to start applying real ux strategy i want to start applying a real ux process in my day-to-day job how can you go about upskilling and educating yourself using valid and useful resources that's a great question as well back in the day when we first got started we were all self-taught none of us got into ux by choice everybody who got into ux pretty early for the most part there's some exceptions they're outliers though we all happened into it there was very little formal education available you had to get books you had to go to websites it was easier to find reputable there weren't that many first and it was easier to find reputable and trustworthy information so that you could take the the self-learning path at one time can you still take the self-learning path today in a sense you can but because there's so many of us out here that that are knowledgeable and are willing to share i highly recommend that you piggyback there's so many podcasts there's so many um so many different folks who have resources available that you can tap into i give a shout out here to debbie levitt phenomenal resource for learning about what's going on in the world of ux you can find her delta cx channel you've got ux joburg you've got the interaction design foundation is the one that i recommend the most if you're looking for something a little bit more than than self-starting because for the mayor i believe it's 195 u.s annually not only are you a part of the organization now not only do you have a membership you get access to their entire education library you can't find a deal like that anywhere and the vast majority i say of the information that's there is is great it's it's been well cultivated well curated and and so it's something that is dependable so so i highly recommend interaction design foundation you have universities that are offering certificates grant certificates undergrad certificates in ux so if money is an issue then it doesn't cost that much to get educated in ux uh there and there's a undergrad programs are popping up at universities i teach and i teach in a master's level program at kent state university i think it's one of the best programs around not just because i teach there i graduated from there and i studied several i won't give you the names of all the other schools that i attended during my what i call my quintessential ethnographic uh research project where i went to a lot of schools just because i wanted to see what they were like and i was willing to get into debt to do it which i did quite well but the there's different ways for you to get on board i also recommend two other things build a solid ux library get good books on subjects that will help grow you as a ux professional uh if you go i have a list on linkedin i actually deleted my my recommendation slide at the end follow me on twitter connect with me on linkedin i have a book list on linkedin of books that i do recommend that you go out and get i have i have one on ux and i have one on um emotional intelligence and one on cognitive psychology get some books build your library all worth their weight in gold uh so yeah definitely some things that you can do to to build up your prowess from a from a learning standpoint and i will say i am not a big uh many of you know so yeah i'm going to say i'm not a big boot camp person at all but i won't get into that today thank you for that thorough answer i think we've got a lot of homework and i get to the next question uh has design thinking taken the focus off of ux strategy in the boardroom and at a strategic level within organizations do you think that that's the case you ever said that uh kudos to you yes it has uh design thinking is not what it originally was intended to be every instance i have seen and heard about uh and i will say something else i said this on linkedin earlier today i'll say it again now is design thinking going away no it's not is there a way for it to be successful yes there is is it what the person just mentioned in their question in the average instance yes it is it has there is no more strategy uh the way that design thinking is run today it's nothing more and i'll repeat what i usually call it it is a yes research and strategy is a great resource jen thank you for that too forgot about that it's nothing more than a glorified genius design session where people who have a bunch of of biased ideas come together and throw them around people didn't leave there they didn't check their bias at the door they bring it into the design thinking session they brought their politics into the design thinking session the ux person manages bias as part of what we do we we manage politics that's what we do when you have your average design thinking session those are in the room and those are a threat to advocating for the users they're a threat to finding the sweet spot between business needs user needs and constraints design thinking if it is led by a ux person that's the only chance you have of that design thinking accomplish anything but outside of that it's not design which is a science and neither is it thinking it's a bunch of of people yelling and screaming and trying to get their way about something and so if you ever go to a certain ux when you're trying to learn how to do design thinking the average ux design thing or design thinking workshop to help you learn how to do it they're doing arts and crafts since when is arts and crafts help you design anything and so it's it's really sad and it's insulting and i know people who have lead design thinking workshops and i've never heard a single solitary thing about ux come out of their mouths not a single solitary time it's all about those arts and crafts and helping everybody learn how to do stuff and but it doesn't they don't leave the session and design great things so yeah it's exactly as you said it was it's it's getting traction but it's not generating as as as um jamie levy said you cannot design your design think your way she says this in her book you cannot design think your way to a killer ux design you simply can't be done okay so we're gonna head into our last question uh so this is by mohan says what is the role of the product designer slash manager in this whole strategy creation oh boy um the i didn't spend time talking about a lot of time talking about that history illustration but in other talks i do and um i talk about how one of the things that the corporations have done when they came on board never bothered to get to drive their ux material level i'm sure a lot of us on this on this call right now have have encountered leaders who still don't know what ux is and that's where you see most of these product designer positions popping up ironically um if you look at the job description of a product designer and a a well-written job description not the one where people just copy something else they saw on linkedin or glass door when you look at the job description sans the titles is nothing but nomenclature it's nothing but but uh i mean it's all semantics it's a somebody's called a product designer or somebody else is called a is called a uh a ux designer or whatever whatever they are the question is what work are they doing so really product designer has what i have seen in my observation it is the corporation's attempt to drive down salaries like they've been trying to do for the last 10 years the more that they the more corporations have been adopting ux somebody came up with design thinking yeah let's do that some someone said hey we need let's how about we call them we don't know what to call them how about we call them product designers and instead that's really where it came from yeah let's do that and that title also existed outside of ux so the title has been brought into ux but it's a way to drive salaries down because you don't expect as much from a product designer as you do from that person who said they wanted to come on board as a ux person so it's mostly it's a semantics game uh but it's also a strategic move by by corporations at large that's uh part of as is design thinking dumbing down the world of of ux and i hate to say it that way but that's what's happening they're dumbing down the world of ux and they're turning it into something that it is not and which i was an instructional designer before i got into ux i left instructional design for the same reason because they started filling the the instructional design world with what we call powerpoint jockeys all they were doing was creating powerpoint presentations but they knew nothing about instructional design they knew nothing about how to best educate people and it just became a complete it's just a complete laugh fest as a it's a joke so product designers can get but you know it is what it is sorry yeah fair enough no no no darren thank you so much for joining us on umex job this evening i have loved this q a it's been fantastic and your your unpacking of ux strategy is going to become a useful resource that i'm sure many of us will refer back to on future projects guys i'd like to encourage you to go and download darren hood's podcast you can find it wherever you listen to podcasts whether it's apple podcast google podcast spotify wherever type in darren hood or type in the world of ux and you can find it there and this is a fresh new podcast it's it's brand new and darren hood is unpacking these meaty topics relating to ux on a weekly basis so i really recommend you guys go and check that out additionally reach out to him on twitter he's also active on linkedin so reach out to him there i definitely am going to ask for that book list so i encourage the rest of you to do that as well but yeah darren we really appreciate you making the time and uh thank you so much for joining us this evening thank you thanks for having me guys thank you darren wonderful okay cool okay so next up our next speaker is tom cotterill tom cotterill is working with businesses to grow and scale design he's also the co-founder of fearless i went on to tom cotterill's linkedin just before this call just go and do some research about him and i pulled out two recommendations from his profile one from a lead ux designer at amazon another from a recruiting manager at uber the lead ux designer at amazon says tom is so much more than a recruiter he is a thought leader challenger mentor and more the recruiting manager at uber says tom is one of the best recruiters i've ever worked with he really genuinely cares about his candidates and truly believes in working with the internal talent function hiring managers so tom is going to be talking to us about remote work and how that's going to affect working with companies going forward i think it's going to be a meaty topic and i'm really looking forward to it but yeah tune in next month for tom coloral i'd like to thank our sponsor sam dollar design i'd like to remind you about send dollars promotion that they're currently running in which you can book a free consultation with their teams ux strategists researchers and designers to review your app website or system or get advice on how you can grow the ux maturity within your organization and check out our new website senddollardesign.com but yeah guys thank you so much for joining us this evening i'm going to close things on this side and we'll see you in the rooms in a bit cheers

Channel: UX Joburg

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Length: 71min 47sec (4307 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020