UX Maturity Model E-Book

Juan Manuel Carraro

• Herausgeber: Editorial Autores de Argentina
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 128

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Let's imagine we're in a job interview, applying for the position of UX Leader, and we want to learn more about the company where we might work. What's the best question to quickly assess the level of maturity of our potential future employer? Or let's imagine we are a customer experience or digital transformation consultant and we want to quickly find out what practices our client has adopted and what they still need to build in their organization to provide memorable experiences for end-users. This book proposes a model to understand the stages in which a team or organization can find itself in relation to UX practice, ranging from "We don't know what UX is" to "UX is part of our culture." It describes diagnostic techniques, develops methods to understand at what stage each company is, from quick surveys to multi-week consulting initiatives. It addresses how UX practice is first incorporated into an organization, how UX professionals mature the practice, and how to move from early stages with an incipient and theoretical practice to more mature and robust stages. It outlines the most powerful tools that will help them move from one stage to another. This book tackles all these questions and many others through a pragmatic approach, with exercises and techniques proven by the authors' experience applying this model in very diverse contexts for organizations, teams, and UX professionals in Latin America. "UX MATURITY MODEL: How to Mature User Experience (UX) practice in a Team or Organization" is a permanent reference piece in the toolbox for digital transformation and customer-centric companies.

Leseprobe

JUAN MANUEL CARRAROSEBASTIAN FERNANDEZ QUEZADA

UX Maturity Model: How to mature the User Experience (UX) practice in a team or organization

Carraro, Juan ManuelUX Maturity Model : how to mature the User Experience -UX- practice in a team or organization / Juan Manuel Carraro ; Sebastián María Fernández Quezada Valía. - 1a ed - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Autores de Argentina, 2024.

Libro digital, EPUB

Archivo Digital: descarga y online

ISBN 978-987-87-4968-6

1. Administración de Empresas. I. Fernández Quezada Valía, Sebastián María II. TítuloCDD 658.1

EDITORIAL AUTORES DE [email protected]

Índice de contenido

Who is this book for?

Introduction

UX is not UI

How are UX and digital transformation related?

What is the impact of UX on the organization?

So what is the User Experience Maturity Model (UXMM)?

The User Experience Maturity Model (UXMM)

Description

How did the UXMM come about?

What do the levels mean?

Structure of each level

Level 1: Unintentional

Introduction

Description

Main features

Diagnosis

Barriers to Advancement

Actions

1. Incorporate review instances and iterations with other areas of the organization.

2. Describe the requirements from the end user's perspective.

User Stories

3. Provide introductory UX training

Formal Training

Informal Training

4. Identify the specific reasons for UX rejection and design actions to counteract them.

The 5 Why?

Conclusions

Level 2: Self-referential

Introduction

Description

Main features

Diagnosis

Barriers to Advancement

Actions

5. Create wireframes

6. Creating user profiles

7. Set a SINGLE priority for each feature

8. Define the main and alternative workflows for task resolution.

Conclusions

Level 3: Expert

Introduction

Description

Main features

Diagnosis

Barriers to Advancement

Actions

9. If it's not yourself or your team, identify a person with potential to drive UX adoption.

10. Do Usability Tests

11. Incorporate a technique that complements user testing.

A) Techniques that require the direct or indirect participation of users:

Usability Testing

Qualitative interviews

Contextual survey

Iterative prototyping

Card sorting

A/B Testing

B) Techniques that do not require user participation:

Benchmark Analysis

Heuristic Evaluation

12. Select a project to extend the UX practice

Conclusions

Level 4: Centralized

Introduction

Description

Main features

Diagnosis

Barriers to Advancement

Actions

13. Regularly incorporate user testing

14. Demonstrate the value of UX to sponsors

15. Incorporate UX activities into the formal production process.

16. Nurture the UX team with multiple profiles

Conclusions

Level 5: Distributed

Introduction

Description

Main features

Diagnosis

Barriers to Advancement

17. Create a historical record of UX metrics

18. Relate Marketing information to UX metrics

19. Link UX indicators with the organization's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

20. Start measuring the UX return on investment (ROI) on each project.

Conclusions

How to diagnose the maturity level of a team or organization.

Colloquial Method:

How do you detect in an interview with a client or stakeholder at what level could they be?

Checklist:

How do you detect which practices at each level an organization is following?

Checklist Method:

Kit:

How do you detect in a workshop the collective opinion of a team about the maturity level of an organization?

Consulting:

How do you precisely detect the maturity level of an organization and design a tailor-made plan to allow its evolution?

Step-by-step consulting project

What to assess?

Week 1

How to research the organizational structure?

How to survey deliverables?

Week 2

How to conduct interviews?

Week 3

How to present the conclusions?

Action Plan

Action Plan for Colloquial Method

Action Plan for Checklist Method and Kit

Actions:

Sponsors

Required resources

Workshop for diagnosis and action plan

Face-to-face workshop

Part One: Diagnosis

Part Two: Action Plan

Virtual Workshop

Four tools with special powers

1. Training

2. User testing

3. Metrics & Quantification

4. Link UX variables to business KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Closing: UXMM in the real world

Decentralized Teams and DesignOps

Geographically Distributed Teams

Improving the UXMM

To my son Nicolás for bringing home all the happiness in the world. To the profession that has given me a lot but above all friends.

Juan Manuel

To Mariana, Mica and Borja, to my parents, and to all those who taught me and helped me to learn.

Sebastián

To you who, like every UX professional, seek to promote UX practice within your team or organization day by day. To Santiago and Federico, fundamental pieces of this maturity model.

Juanma y Sebas

Who is this book for?

This book is aimed at those who are formally leaders of User Experience (UX) teams or, although they are not formally one, fulfill that role within a team or organization. That is, those who are driving or want to promote the adoption of the UX practice in a certain area.

For the writing of the book we have focused on two archetypes of readers:

• Collaborator in an organization: That person who works in an organization (small, medium or large) and needs tools that help them promote the adoption of UX techniques and methodologies in their own field (team or organization).

• External consultant to an organization: a person who provides UX services and needs tools that help them understand the maturity level of a client company and, from there, establish an efficient work plan and have better tools to help their client achieve progressive maturity in the domain of User Experience.

This book can also be useful for professionals directly or indirectly interested in understanding the impact of User Experience on product design, the way teams work, and the culture of organizations, regardless of the industry or field in which they work.

We make a particular effort to be able to provide a context that explains in detail and from multiple angles the problems we describe, as well as the solutions we suggest for each situation.

The structure we designed for this book allows sequential reading, but also random exploration that will allow you to discover the themes at the pace that the reader prefers.

If you are not yet working in the User Experience field, this book will provide you with a framework of concepts, common situations, typical techniques and tools.

Whatever your level of knowledge on the field, we hope that this book can be a guide to interpret the disciplines and, finally, organically incorporate their scope into real-world problems.

Introduction

We let ourselves sink into one of the soft armchairs, choose the music that will accompany us for a long time, open our laptop and immerse ourselves in our world. Just before the battery alert message appeared on the screen, we just had to stretch out our arm and plug the charger into the wall to be able to continue. We've been on the couch for more than an hour and we’ve already finished the Mocha Blanco Venti a while ago. But what a memorable experience we had at Starbucks!

We can all feel it, but sometimes we fail to explain it. We usually say, "It's everything" (that definition can be accompanied by a wide circular movement of both arms), when we want to refer to the Experience. We know that the Experiences Economy is the game we've been playing for decades. We know that those who provide memorable experiences outperform those who only provide services. We know it, and yet when we have to explain it, we say, "It’s everything. The experience isn't just the product, it's the whole thing."

It is true, intuitively speaking, the experience is "The whole thing".

To approach a definition, we should turn to the one provided by Don Norman. According to history, Don Norman was the first professional to assign the title of User Experience Architect to his role at Apple between 1993 and 1997. In his own words: "[...] at Apple, [...] we said the experience of using these computers is weak: The experience when you first discover it, when you see it in the store, when you buy it, when you, can't fit into the cars in this great big box that doesn't fit into the car, and when you finally do get it home; opening the box up it looks scary: I don't know if I dare put this computer together — all of that is user experience; it's everything that touches upon your experience with the product. [...] it's a system that's everything."1 In this context, Don Norman states that Usability or Interface were incomplete terms to describe all those aspects that influence the customer-brand-service-product relationship.

But such a natural definition is extremely elusive. We can't work with it. We cannot transform an organization or its processes. We can't design a service or a product with Thewhole thing in mind. We need to be able to design experiences and implement them, but we also need to be able to measure them, communicate them, replicate them, and all that with multiple collaborators, partners, suppliers, customers, etc.

User Experience, we could say, has three large groups of definitions and many more derived from them:

• Definition of UX as an extrinsic factor:

○ "User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products."2

○ Let's imagine that there are several dimensions that can be investigated:

○ WHAT is consumed from my product/service.

○ WHO consumes it.

○ WHERE they consume it.

○ HOW they consume it.

○ WHY they consume it

○ And other similar questions.

○ This definition refers to these aspects, in addition to all the channels and points of contact between the user and the organization.3

• Definition of UX as an intrinsic element:

"User’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and/or anticipated use of a system, product or service."4

This definition is clear, but at the same time it hides an aspect that, in execution, is ambiguous, difficult to manipulate and, at times, frustrating:

It is highly complex and unpredictable to want to measure and generate specific perceptions in users.

• Definition of UX as Design Methodology:

"User Experience (UX) design is an evidence-based methodology that engages users through a creative process."

This definition emphasizes various aspects of UX in order to build products, services, and organizations focused on users in a repeatable way given that it contains four indispensable and recurring aspects in the UX world:

1. Methodology: A set of industry standard practices.

2. Evidence: observation and measurement.

3. Involve users: a user is the one who consumes or operates the product/service and is not, necessarily, the one who pays for it.

4. Creative process: designing to create something new. Generate something non-existent.

It is often said that there is no such thing as User Experience without users. Referring to the fact that it is essential to come into contact with real users in order to design their experience. That's partially true given that it's possible to collect evidence, rely on a methodology, and develop a process without necessarily coming into contact with users.

Beyond the particularities of the previous definitions, we can synthesize the three definitions in something like:

"User Experience (UX) refers to how individuals engage with an organization, the effects of that interaction on them, and the processes we employ to observe, measure, and design these interactions efficiently."

UX is not UI

At this point, you may notice that we haven't made any reference to User Interfaces (UIs). That's because they don't really matter that much. If our digital product must differentiate itself from the competition by having a more refined, attractive or "Wow Effect!" interface, it is because the elements that stand out are ephemeral in duration and their differentiation is easily replicable.

Of course, user interfaces are important and effectively communicate (or not) interaction models, information, and so on.

The real problem is when we expect the UI to define the UX and not the other way around.

Again, in the words of Don Norman: "Today, that term (UX) has been horribly misused. It's used by people to say 'I'm a user experience designer, I design websites or I design apps' [...] And they think the experience is that simple device. [...] It's a system, it's everything."5

How are UX and digital transformation related?

Digital transformation isn't really about gaining technological capabilities and migrating from analog to digital processes.

Effective digital transformation is really about shifting the attention of companies from management to end users.

End-user-oriented or "People-Centered" organizations don't just listen to users, that would be a waste of resources and further confuse decision-making; they observe them, quantify their relevant behaviors, understand their contexts, and then understand how to deliver value. By focusing its decisions on users, the management of organizations becomes a facilitator to be able to bring value where the user requires it, at the time they require it and without any waste in doing so.

The disciplines and knowledge that UX brings are, we could say, the mixture that makes a single thing possible: Understanding what is value for end users and being able to provide it at the right time, cost and place. UX allows the value stream to be funneled efficiently. UX is resources optimization and it is also service differentiation in the market.

Our goal is for this book to provide concrete tools to carry out digital transformation projects and programs that have the user at the center. In a concrete way, through our proposal of a maturity model and its components, we will provide ideas that can be extrapolated to everyday practice.

What is the impact of UX on the organization?

• UX is the definition of the price of a product or service, but it is also the value proposition.

• UX is the packaging, the website and instructions.

• UX is the relationship between the products within our portfolio, but it is also the name with which users identify them.

UX is a cross discipline, because the user is.

The end user is not interested in the internal organization of the company, the label with which the management is differentiated or the technical reasons that explain the different silos within the company.

Companies that understand this quickly are those that achieve memorable experiences.

It's very easy for most companies to modify their user-facing pitch and suddenly start declaiming the benefits of their product in every communication piece. "Our product is the easiest to use", "Our interfaces are very intuitive" or "We are the company preferred by our customers", are slogans that are not usually supported by concrete evidence.

But when user expectations collide with reality, organizations often crunch from the inside trying to justify the gap between perceived value and actual value. "Do our users not understand us?", "Is it the responsibility of the Product areas?", "Did Marketing generate excessive expectations?", "Is our user not worthy of our effort?".

There is a path by which User Experience design takes its natural course, is adopted by organizations and generates positive effects on the final product. This path is:

1. Business Objectives

2. Resources and power distribution

3. Team

4. Processes

5. Techniques

6. Discourse

In other words: