Column: Selling UX

These days, it seems that everyone is all about design thinking—scrambling to jump on this runaway train and ride it for what it’s worth before the next big thing hits. There are design-thinking classes and certifications from premier management and technology consulting firms. However, UX professionals who focus on delivering amazing user experiences to people have always been design thinkers—for very good reason. After all, everything we do and experience in life is designed. From the applications we use, to the way we purchase a cup of coffee, design is everywhere. These things don’t just happen. Product teams don’t just write and execute requirements. Business analysts don’t just dream up these experiences. We design them by following design principles and business strategies. So, by employing the same design strategies to real business problems, we are bound to be able to come up with better solutions.

Digital transformation is another popular term that describes the journey companies are undertaking today as they look to integrate digital technologies into every aspect of their business. These transformations consider people, process, organizational culture, the how, what, and why around the ways customers engage with their business. While every major company is engaging in digital transformation, their progress and maturity in this endeavor varies greatly. Throughout what are often multiyear transformation programs, they’re grappling with legacy processes, technology, and culture. As a result, many are still struggling to deliver tangible business outcomes. In fact, it is hard to find any company that will stand up and say, “Yes! We have reached the end of our digital-transformation journey, and we succeeded!” Why is that? Read More

Recently, in speaking with various members of my team, as well as UX professionals from other companies, the expression proper UX has come up a lot. A common refrain is: “I did not get to do proper UX at my last company, so I left.” Everyone nods knowingly, offers words of encouragement, and we move on to a different topic.

But what exactly is proper UX practice? How should we define that? There is a lot of information out there about exactly what proper UX practice is. However, almost everyone’s conception of proper UX practice suffers from one glaring omission: flexibility. Read More

My UX team consists of highly skilled, outgoing UX professionals who live and work all over the world and engage with a diverse set of customers—both rewarding and challenging. Generally, our consulting style is a blend of directive and collaborative consulting. By this, I mean that we provide thought leadership on how to create successful user experiences for our software products, but we do this with a customer rather than to a customer. This is a common and effective approach, blending leadership with a desire to be inclusive and get everyone on board with our ideas and see them come to fruition.

Recently, after an engagement of several months, one customer told me that one of my consultants was almost too adaptable to their needs. This struck me as a bit odd because adaptability is what we are all about in the consulting world. We lead people without commanding them. We adapt to and work within a customer’s culture, while still exposing them to new ideas and methods that will make their project a success. Since my team and I work for a software vendor and are the subject-matter experts for all things relating to the user experience of our products, I expect our engagements to consistently require thought leadership around best practices for using our products. This is sometimes a new experience for our clients, who just expect us to enable them to do what they want to do rather than learning how they can do something better. Read More