Column: Enterprise UX

When thinking about service design, we might envision seamless customer experiences, digital products for consumers, or frictionless interactions. But what if the customer isn’t a consumer but a refugee seeking asylum, a scientist trying to communicate his research, or a volunteer struggling to find a meaningful role within a nonprofit. In the corporate world, service design can be a huge competitive advantage. In the nonprofit world, service design can be a force multiplier—yet organizations often overlook its value.

Magda Jagielska, a Customer Experience System Manager at Rockwell Automation, joins me for this column. We’ll take a rare detour outside the large, for-profit, enterprise environments that my columns typically cover. I believe that Magda’s insights can benefit any UX design professional, working within any context. Magda will describe her experiences applying service design within two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) focusing on science communications. Her goals were to enhance customer engagement, reduce inefficiencies, and create lasting impact. Magda will take it from here. The rest of this column is in her words. Read More

In Part 1 of this two-part series, I presented a strategy for multidisciplinary UX designers who want to grow their career in enterprise environments—where User Experience is often immature. This immaturity frequently results in designers’ having to take on activities and responsibilities that do not support their long-term growth. After describing the importance of understanding why you want to grow your career in User Experience, I provided some tips for determining how you should grow your career, including the definition of what T-shaped growth means for you.

Now, in Part 2, I’ll discuss some specific tactics for achieving that growth, as follows:

• deprioritizing unnecessary skills, knowledge, and activities
• prioritizing necessary skills, knowledge, and activities
• taking specific actions Read More

You’ve probably heard the popular saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. As UX design professionals, we make our living by communicating clearly through the use of visual elements and affordances, thus, enabling the productivity of others. If we do our job well, we seldom need to rely on using many words. Instead, the visualization skills that we hone through our profession benefit not only the users of the products we design; if we leverage them correctly, they also make our colleagues, stakeholders, and ourselves more productive.

Productive teams are typically teams that communicate well and have a shared understanding of what they’re trying to accomplish. Their shared understanding often stems from expressing their ideas and concepts in unique ways that gain stronger footholds in the minds of others, which fuels the team’s greater productivity. While there are many methods of expressing ideas and concepts that could aid our productivity, we’ve found that creating mind maps is one of the most effective techniques because of its versatility and scalability. Read More