Dynamics in UX maturity

In my organization, I chaired a talk on ‘UX Maturity’ as part of ‘Influencers talk’ series. Based on the discussion following are my observations and understanding.

About UX maturity

As per the NN group, UX Maturity is a measure of how much an organisation prioritises design. It follows different stages, starting from a complete absence and moving towards a User-driven culture.

There are four factors with sub factors involved in raising the UX Maturity. That helps organizations enhance their maturity levels while driving UX activities.

My understanding

We all know organisation are not static. In fact, they are quite dynamic. Regardless of size, organisations are constantly changing, with diverse teams, evolving processes, and forming products.

They make their presence felt in the markets through their products and approaches. UX maturity is no untouched by this dynamism. Instead, it reflects in stages of it.

Agile Ball

Consider an organization composed around agile method. It resembles to a wool ball a deformative shape which changes in its form as per tangling of the threads.

Now, the first three factors — strategy, culture, and process. All of them have a close relationship and intertwine, making them suitable to be part of the ball.

Whereas the fourth factor, Outcome, which is ROI (Return on Investment), works as the path on which the tangled ball untangles. That helps understand the impact of design on the overall shape of the ball.

I prefer to call outcome as ‘Design Dividend’ because its more design centric rather than parameters such as market share, gains, etc. It also helps in thinking how design is bringing value to the organization’s composition.

A design dividend helps an organization climb up the maturity levels while been effective in measuring design centric changes along with understanding impact of design process across product teams and organizational structure.

Design dividend brings in fresh view on adaptation of design and its corelation with associated work method. That is streamlining of strategy, processes and culture over a period.

Building UX maturity

UX maturity is not absent in any organisation. Rather, its opaque and usually individuals who first step up to clear this opaqueness can be called as UX advocate. They are the one who understand both organization composition and recognize the value of UX design. The assumption is that their primary goal is to identify UX issues early in the product’s life cycle.

Their initiation helps the organisation by hiring UX enabler with design knowledge. Bringing in basics of UX such as design process, design standardisation, etc. They work together to create awareness to normalise design within an organisation.

By collaborating, teams reflect dynamism within an organisation. With the continuous growth of work, teams also expand. With more precise UX enabling roles with better UX advocates at high in hierarchy.

Together they work toward untangling the agile ball by building design strategy, culture and process. Which provides better design dividend.

Starting the climb

After an organization conceives the product, it enters an early stage of UX maturity. A stage where an organization trying to make a place for themselves in market. They lack a UX mindset and cannot prioritize planning it because absence of it or being limited. Here, a UX advocate motivates the team to adopt UX practices in requirement analysis, planning and implementation with minimal effort.

To amplify his effort, he hires the UX enabler to instil a design mindset and introduce a process. Together, their effort extends beyond just the aesthetics. Instead, it focuses on how design can facilitate fresh changes and streamline the agile process.

On the Slope

Later, when an organization achieves a stage of emergent or structured UX maturity, it decreases the complexity of work. There are active UX roles who take efforts to include UX in entire development process. Making organizations delusional in a trap that UX is present.

Most times it happens because of a lack in realizing potential of design as such. Here, the UX advocates’ job is to bring diversity into the team. His focus shifts from building a team to build a culture by covering different aspects of design. To achieve this, the UX advocates employs diverse roles such as researchers, writers, etc. together they strategize and build a design system.

A design system which provides better design dividend by being more focused on design process. That helps UX awareness and best practices by simplifying product development.

At the peak

Once, when the design system is in place, teams are aware of UX and its nuisances. Then an organisation gets one of the peak stages UX maturity. By being aware, the integrated stage results from UX prominence in the agile process. Whereas design being part of the culture and thriving from top to bottom helps an organisation achieve a complete user-driven stage. Where all teams embrace user centred design and integrate UX research into the strategy and project prioritisation.

Now at these stages UX advocate plays a prominent role of holding up UX for product innovation. For this, he fosters creative talent and together they experiment with design process and develop new tactics. In order to propose fresh approaches, languages, and forms of design by themselves to become a leader in the field.

At its peak of UX maturity, an organization achieves a streamlined agile with higher design dividends. So, user feedback not only flows through them but also pushes teams to come up with innovative solutions. Fulfilling user needs and enlarging business canvas.

Understanding the complexity,

Besides organisation and its process, the UX maturity is more challenging because the market is always changing. An organisation delivers product to a market and in return it provides its demands. This simple cycle creates a push-pull relationship between them, which further raises UX advocates and enablers effort to maintain it.

Moreover, there are more similar type of organization competing for similar type market demand with familiar products. Most times organizations try to introduce a product which just serves diverse need of the users finding product market fit. Rather than conceiving a new product for a new market.

The fluctuation

At first, most UX advocates face the challenge of promoting and providing benefits of UX. Though a UX enabler helps him but keeping a resource active for the entire product lifecycle is difficult. Further, balancing a resource and product needs diverts his aim of increasing UX maturity. Also, changing resources fluctuates design dividend that leads to a decrease in advocating for UX within teams and organizations.

For a new organization, keeping resources itself is a challenge. Above that, changing UX advocates and enablers destabilizes UX priority and affects product itself. This fluctuation many times restricts them from being limited with UX maturity.

With increasing UX maturity, the impact of the fluctuation becomes less pronounced, though it is still observable. By the release quality of products and the accomplishment of project objectives.

The force

Market forces also bring forth new challenges for organizations. Advancements in tech, growing competition and user expectations force an organization to look into new avenues, neglecting UX maturity. This also poses a challenge to UX advocate as they’ve to adopt to this constant change and help UX enablers as well.

Despite having a streamlined agile process, an organization may still encounter difficulties. New tech adaptation in different teams or products produce a ascending challenge of UX maturity. There is a reasonable slope to be climbed before, as UX knowledge is absent or limited to start with.

The mix

Organisations may begin with a single product, but frequently diversify to survive or expand. An established design system or guidelines can resolve variability in UX needs for that diversity. However, it’s important to note that this can also present a unique set of UX challenges.

Such as understanding domain knowledge, product tech, competitors, and user requirements. Which puts maturity backseat and requires UX resources to get involved more in product strategy and process for the releases. Which reflects in culture that gets affected because most UX resources are not at the same level with each other.

Summing up,

Organizations and its UX maturity both are dynamic. They influence each other with unique challenges regarding strategies, culture, and processes at each stage.

Therefore, the roles of UX advocates and enablers go beyond just UX design tasks and involve fostering a design culture in an organisation.