This article delves into strategies for how user researchers can effectively work and increase value recognition in organizations with low user experience maturity. The article provides an instructive article on how to address challenges at the organizational level, at the product team level, and at the individual researcher level, and is an enlightening article for professionals working to drive UX research. In this article, you will find practical advice on how to improve your UX maturity at different levels.
Peron's core view:
1. The Six Key Stages of User Experience from 0 to Best Practices by The Nielsen Norman Company (NN/g) point us in the direction that the most mature user research organizations must have been born in companies with a "user-centric, user-driven culture" where many companies talk about users, but there is no such thing in the corporate culture
2. There are three conditions that a mature user research organization needs to have: a user-centered corporate culture, and the decision-making level recognizes the value of user research and provides resource support; Systematic and comprehensive user research (not just confirmatory research; It's not just about doing research at the micro product level, etc.); Experienced and professional user research team.
3. In order to gain the support of decision-makers, it is necessary to ensure that your user research results have company-level value and impact, that is, strategic user research. In order to carry out systematic and comprehensive user research, it is necessary to ensure that there is a trinity of strategy/industry, data, and user research, such as the strategy/market insight department. Building a professional user research team requires guiding team members through industry best practices and stepping out of their comfort zone.
The following is the main text:
Many people in the user research community share their experiences on a regular basis, either through text or sharing sessions. We wanted to find the most rigorous and engaging way to share our insights with team members, fellow researchers, and the rest of the company.
But this drive to strive for excellence is not entirely applicable in our work scenarios.
If companies don't understand the basic principles of research, it can be very difficult to practice cutting-edge research methods, especially in organizations with low UX maturity.
This article describes several ways UXR leaders are addressing these challenges.
1. What is a company with "low user experience maturity".
In 2006, Jakob Nielsen created the earliest UX maturity model called Enterprise UX Maturity. The Nielsen Norman Company (NN/g) has since updated this model, naming six key stages of user experience from 0 to best practice.
In general, different companies are able to measure their performance based on these stages. We can think of a low-maturity organization as being at one of the first three stages, between "absence" and "emerging."
Nielsen Norman's UX Maturity Model covers UX design across the entire process, but in this article, I'm specifically talking about UX research.
If your company hires user researchers, then at least the company has some degree of acceptance of user research. Considering the sheer volume of work, we can at least classify this type of company as "emerging".
According to Nelson Norman, the nascent maturity stage is when "the user experience of the company is present, but the direction of the work is inconsistent and inefficient." ”
A key part of assessing UX maturity and development is understanding the four key factors: strategy, culture, process, and outcome. All of these factors need to be addressed if you want to drive UX maturity.
Your company's UX culture, i.e., knowledge and attitude towards user experience, determines how the company responds to your work. This is also often the hardest to change and is the most common encounter in the day-to-day work.
Let's take a look at some of the scenarios that a UX Researcher (UXR) leader might encounter in a company that is emerging to maturity, especially as it relates to knowledge and attitudes towards research. We can look at these situations from different perspectives, namely at the organizational level, at the product team level, and at the individual researcher level.
2. Attitudes and challenges at different levels
Organizational level: Lack of trust in the value that UXR brings
- You might hear, "I don't need a researcher, like [other product teams], we're already experts in how customers use our features." ”
- The challenge of research leadership: Finding ways to emphasize how research can provide insights across user groups, not just a single product. Use your insights to complement the product manager's decisions, rather than override or counteract the product's insights
Product team level: Use UXR to support or fine-tune product ideas
- You may hear, "We need to do some research to prove that I'm right." ”
- Research Leadership Challenge: Use evaluative UX research projects to identify knowledge gaps or biases, emphasizing how insights from user research can lead to overall strategy and prioritization.
Researcher: Don't know how to improve your company's UX maturity
- You may hear, "We just follow the product roadmap that the product manager told us to do the project." ”
- Research Leadership Challenge: Discuss your views on research with fellows, motivate them to explore their potential, clarify your expectations, and build a research community with other visionary UX researchers.
3. How to address these challenges
1. How to improve user experience maturity at the company level
Researchers often find different responses to their work at the company level. One product team may embrace the insights while the other ignores them. Researchers are struggling because the product and company leadership do not have enough buy-in to guide or encourage the full implementation of product research practices.
One way to solve this problem is to communicate that research leads to the best insights when focusing on user populations, often across multiple product teams (or even entire companies) rather than focusing entirely on individual products or product teams.
This means researchers need to revisit individual research projects and highlight insights that are relevant to user groups and not just specific products. By sharing insights in this way, you can supplement the product manager's existing knowledge of the customer and show them how your work can be added to their existing information, while creating consensus among the product teams.
2. Improve user experience maturity at the product team level
Let's say you're working closely with a specific product team, and the product manager thinks the research is the best way to validate the features that have just been rolled out. For them, research can provide insight into how users or customers react to a feature, and that insight can help them decide if and how to iterate on the feature.
This is indeed a service that user researchers offer in their extensive toolbox. But if they only see research as a contribution to development and design validation, your partner will miss out on a lot of critical information. Sometimes, when used for vision or strategy creation and prioritization, user insights shine the brightest and have the most lasting impact.
Are you stuck in a usability testing cycle and feel discouraged thinking you'll never be able to delve into a strategic research project? In fact, you may not realize that usability testing can also reveal insights into customer needs and behaviors. Keep track of these additional insights and find an opportune moment to share them to contribute to a larger goal.
Your partner may not even know that your initiative may become a better for your work, as well as theirs. This momentum is then leveraged to encourage research to be brought forward to an earlier stage of the product development process.
3. Raise UX maturity at the researcher level
Low UX maturity can be an issue at the organizational or product team level, but it can also be an issue within your UX research team. Some researchers may simply be accustomed to working in low-maturity organizations and are unwilling or don't know how to move their work forward.
This is arguably the most challenging aspect of increasing UX maturity because it starts with your own team. This relates to the legacy of broader management challenges. Teams need to be actively guided to show them the possibilities of user research.
When developing a vision, you need to incorporate your existing team and make sure everyone can support your goals. You need to listen to your researchers and their needs with key collaborators, give them advice, and step in if necessary to challenge their assumptions about the study.
Finally, whether it's at the organizational, product, or researcher level, whether you're dealing with a cultural change or not, get a seat at the table. Changing organizational culture is a challenge, and UXR leaders need to ensure that the team leadership sees and internalizes the contributions made by the Institute. This is the fastest way to increase organizational maturity.
Originally published in Dovetail and written by Janelle Ward, Principal Consultant at Jennil Ward Insights.
This article was published by Everyone is a Product Manager Author [Liu Peilong], WeChat public account: [Peron User Research], original / authorized Published in Everyone is a product manager, without permission, it is forbidden to reprint.
Image from Unsplash, based on the CC0 license.