What Is Holding User Experience Back Where You Work?

A couple of months ago, I referenced variations of a boat metaphor (see Changing the course or pace of a large ship) that I have found is often used by User Experience management personnel to describe what it feels or felt like to build and establish a corporate User Experience function, get it understood and valued, enable it to contribute to a business to the extent that it can, etc. As I stated in that blog entry, one director described the pace of change he has been able to achieve as akin to the pace of an oil tanker rather than a speed boat.

During our recently completed Managing User Experience Groups course, I used a part of that variation of the metaphor to learn about some of what is holding User Experience back or propelling User Experience forward in the rather wide range of companies represented by the students. More specifically, I used two forms of the Speed Boat exercise described in the recently published “Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play” (see The way we work has enormous power).

For one exercise, I drew a speed boat and several anchors hanging from it on the whiteboard, and asked everyone to write onto post-its whatever has been holding User Experience back where they work and then place those post-its on the several anchors.

Some of the “anchors” holding their User Experience “boats” back:

lack of an executive user experience role

lack of leadership

an unclear business direction

inconsistent impact of User Experience on the business

lack of senior management and other key stakeholder understanding of the importance of user experience to success

lack of understanding of user experience roles

lack of understanding of user experience process

user experience process is considered to be overhead

different processes for different projects

last-minute changes made by executives to user experience strategies

an inability to develop innovative ideas

too many people need to be OK with an idea or a solution

a splintered user experience group

excessive workloads

shortage of user experience personnel/resources

inadequate support

resources applied to addressing features rather than wholistic design

no continued evaluation of products (i.e., there is never a phase 2)

fear of change; fear of users (who don’t like change)

no explicit budget for user experience activities

inappropriate balance between strategic work and implementation work

nature of the physical work environment

inadequate measurement or sharing of user experience success

Are any of those akin to “anchors” holding User Experience back where you work?

To learn what the students believe has been key to propelling User Experience forward where they work (to the extent that it has been propelled or is being propelled forward), I shifted the focus of the Speed Boat exercise from the anchors to — you guessed it — the engine propellers (see nearby photo). Interestingly, in several cases, “propelling forward” encompassed “moving upstream,” to use yet another metaphor which, at least on the surface, is moving in the opposite direction! ;-)

Some of what has been key to propelling their User Experience “boats” forward:

adding team members & expertise

an executive champion

situations in which user experience team input saved the company money

executive support (which has enabled bypassing bureaucracy)

exaggerations of the successes of the user experience organization

hard work

a dedicated prototype team that helps “show” what user experience personnel mean

socializing personas to the rest of the company via large posters and information booklets

good client feedback to design

flexibility: a willingness to do “a little” (rather than a full-blown research-design process) so to prove value

What a diverse collection of “propellers”!

In the course, we examine all sorts of “anchors” and “propellers” — including many not appearing in the above lists — to help students figure out how to move user experience further forward where they work.

What is holding User Experience back where you work? Why is that the case? What is needed to disengage those anchors and to propel User Experience further forward?

Why bother with the speed boats and the anchors and the propellers? There are several reasons, but one of the most interesting, in my view, is how they appear to help tap what participants actually “experience” in their workplace.

Note that at least one student plans to use a speed boat game akin to that described above to help in his process of working with others in his workplace to figure out how to move User Experience further forward. Perhaps you would find it of value to facilitate such a collaborative effort where you work.

About the Author(s)

Richard Anderson is a 'user experience' practice, management, and organizational strategy consultant with international management, cross-organizational development, and more than 20 years of experience. He started and directed the Experience Center at Viant, as well as the User Research & Experience Strategy discipline at Studio Archetype and Sapient, and has held and supported other management roles in an assortment of companies. He was Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine from 2008 through 2010. Richard can be followed via Twitter @riander, Riander Blog, and Riander, the latter to be reappearing soon.

Comments

May 21, 2007

Thanks for the great article!
I think it’s important to talk about use cases and prototyping to coworkers and managers to get them accustomed to the lingo and so they realize that it is a part of your process.
This has given me some other ideas for a usability presentation I’m planning for my work group.

1. Lack of differentiation between your user’s user experience and the user experience as you experience it. Everything’s clearer, easier, and more obvious to those who were involved in developing the product but I see so many UX leads ignoring this pitfall.

2. Making the ‘right’ user experience decisions only when it aligns with your business goals. It baffles me when people act surprised and wonder why their users don’t tolerate half dozen ads slapped on otherwise carefully crafted site.

Fantastic article! Other than a general lack of understanding about user experience design, and a confusion of user experience with usability, we seem to be held back by a lack of vision and empowerment among the ranks of our product managers, who are responsible for initiating changes in our products or the development of new products.

Hopefully ongoing education by myself and others will open them up to the world of user experience design and give them motivation to become visionaries.

Fantastic article! Other than a general lack of understanding about user experience design, and a confusion of user experience with usability, we seem to be held back by a lack of vision and empowerment among the ranks of our product managers, who are responsible for initiating changes in our products or the development of new products.

Hopefully ongoing education by myself and others will open them up to the world of user experience design and give them motivation to become visionaries.

1. Lack of differentiation between your user’s user experience and the user experience as you experience it. Everything’s clearer, easier, and more obvious to those who were involved in developing the product but I see so many UX leads ignoring this pitfall.

2. Making the ‘right’ user experience decisions only when it aligns with your business goals. It baffles me when people act surprised and wonder why their users don’t tolerate half dozen ads slapped on otherwise carefully crafted site.

Thanks for the great article!
I think it’s important to talk about use cases and prototyping to coworkers and managers to get them accustomed to the lingo and so they realize that it is a part of your process.
This has given me some other ideas for a usability presentation I’m planning for my work group.