Common Problems UX Leaders Encounter

A Lack of Understanding of User Experience and Design

“In my personal experience, the single biggest hurdle I’ve encountered throughout my career is a lack of understanding of design and its vocabulary,” answers Leo. “More often than not, I’ve found myself working in deep engineering firms, focusing on industrial tools and B2B engagements. Such organizations barely discuss design, in the broadest sense of the term. Most individuals in these organizations have never had a design class of any type—particularly those working for large companies that were established 15 years or more ago. Lack of a proper design vocabulary leads to superficial design discussions and an impoverished culture of design. Instead of having meaningful discussions, teams often engage in parallel monologues, by which I mean, as a designer, I’m having a completely different conversation from the person with whom I’m speaking.

“An organization’s lack of a design vocabulary means it is up to me to shift the conversation into areas my audience both understands and is motivated about—such as improving profits, increasing user adoption, or disrupting markets. While many of us in the UX domain recognize how our skills contribute to such strategic efforts, my peers who are unfamiliar with User Experience need help bridging that gap.

“The bottom line: In larger, more established firms, things progress a lot more slowly than any of us would expect or could imagine as we attempt to bring an organization up to speed on the value of User Experience. A lack of velocity for User Experience is a key outcome of the underlying problem of not having any vocabulary around design and User Experience.

In smaller firms, a slightly different problem occurs because of the lack of a design vocabulary: There is a lack of focus and confusion about outcomes. For example, many firms I’ve worked with lump UX design under the umbrella of Visual Design—which is confusing to UX professionals because we know the difference between the two disciplines. When we hear visual, we might begin to think the problem under discussion is about the surface-layer treatment of a user interface when a stakeholder actually meant UX design. So, again, it is incumbent on us to overcome that misunderstanding. However, the result is essentially the same: a reduction in velocity as we work through the basics.”

A Failure to See User Experience as an Essential, Strategic Function

“The most common problem I’ve seen is User Experience not being situated at the right level of the organization,” replies Warren. “Why is this a problem? Because the further down the food chain you are, the greater the chances are that the organization will view you as an execution function rather than a driving, or strategic, function. User Experience is commonly part of either Product Management or Engineering. While I’ve seen User Experience operate successfully in both, the best situation is for User Experience to be a peer of these groups—allowing us to have a say in strategy and project prioritization; to be closer to the business and exert more influence.”

“Some organizations have identified User Experience as a critical role, but not one that requires a large department,” responds Jordan. “In some cases, this results in User Experience being a one- or two-person show. When a UX leader is the only UX professional in an organization, he or she is essential to every project and probably too busy to focus on any leadership work. Establishing a UX department is tough enough when the whole organization wants this and understands its value. But it’s next to impossible if an organization isn’t ready for it.”

A Disconnect with the Mindsets of Other Roles on Product Teams

“Often the objectives of IT (Information Technology) or development organizations are to keep projects on time, on spec, and on budget,” answers Gavin. “In contrast, product management worries about sales, churn, returns, calls to the contact center, customer loyalty, and repeat purchases. User Experience focuses primarily on understanding and meeting the needs of users. People in these different roles must align their goals so they map to business needs—not work in silos that drive their own goals.

“But, at forward-thinking companies, User Experience exists in a new world, in which user friendly and usability are words that receive more than lip service. Such companies understand that User Experience can drive user satisfaction and loyalty and a better brand experience. We need to measure user-experience impact and use these metrics to drive design.”

“A common problem I face within some organizations is their questioning the need for certain processes and the costs that are associated with them—in resources, time, and dollars,” replies Mark. “Thus, the challenge is to clarify the return on investment (ROI) for UX design. While there isn’t a single, simple answer for how to do this, a first step could be to identify key performance metrics (KPIs) within an organization or to create a user-satisfaction metric. Track that metric before, during, and after a project so you can align user-experience impacts to business drivers.”

Resistance to Change

“We often hear organizations say, ‘But this is how we’ve always done it. Why should we have to change?’” replies Ben. “Change, in general, is hard. Changing the way an organization—especially a large one—has always done things is incredibly hard. A great way of creating an environment that is open to change is to get everyone pulling in the same direction. Creating goals-oriented personas and realistic supporting scenarios is a great way to do that. By including many different people or even groups in the process of creating and vetting personas and scenarios, you can ensure that you hear many voices, which helps you get buy-in. Once a team agrees on who the people are on the other side of the screen—along with some of their goals and painpoints—it becomes a bit easier to take steps in the direction of change.”

“Assuming an organization is structured in such a way that UX leadership has the time and mandate to lead the organization’s UX practice, the biggest problem UX leaders face is a lack of original thinking,” adds Jordan. “The onus is on UX leaders to inspire original thinking on product teams. It’s all too easy to get into the habit of approaching the same problems in the same way once you’ve thought through a solution that works. In my experience, it’s valuable to think through similar problems within their unique contexts—regardless of whether you may already have a solution that works.”

The Belief That Everyone Can Be a Designer

“There is a pervasive belief that everyone can be a designer,” responds Baruch. “I’ve often noted that, if an enterprise or cloud architect speaks, very few people who are not well versed in such matters would question what they say. However, many do not afford a UX architect the same respect. The fact that what we do seems so accessible to everyone means they all have opinions—and perhaps even feel they can do it better. This is frustrating for designers and translates to real leadership challenges within an organization. To overcome this problem, we need to show, not that our way is better, but that we have a unique ability to look at a business problem holistically and either solve it or contribute to the solution with a solid design. The goal for User Experience within an organization is to be so ingrained in the organization’s culture that we can continually shape and expand that culture—not to have our peers look upon us as design gurus. Setting ourselves apart as design gurus ensures that we’ll always be on the outside looking in.”

Organizational Pressure to Skip Essential Steps of Our Process

While I am very encouraged that more and more organizations recognize that User Experience is important, I still see organizations skipping steps that are essential to the process of developing good UX designs for their products. Too many companies still think UX design is something that can be done late in the development process. That UX design is not much more than adding a cool-looking user interface, then claiming that their product has a strong user experience in both their marketing and recruiting materials.

The reality is that organizations need to consider User Experience very early in the product development cycle, and a product’s user experience must provide a strong foundation for that product. How many companies say, “Our products need to look like Apple’s,” without ensuring their products work as well as Apple’s—not even close. Even in this day and age, when User Experience is at the forefront, many companies still fail to achieve the basics. Looking good is not enough. Products must also work well. People really do expect that now!

As a consequence of organizations’ trivializing the effort it takes to create a great user experience, many products still fall short of Shneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design.”

Even though many UX leaders do not receive adequate support from their organization’s leadership, they still have to deal with their idealistic team members who expect better.

Nevertheless, it is such an exciting time to be a UX professional! Many finally acknowledge that our work really is important. We now have so much more opportunity to get our great ideas implemented and make the world a better place. For more about this, see my recent Ask UXmatters column “Making the World a Better Place Through User Experience.”

On the other hand, UX professionals sometimes contemplate pie-in-the-sky ideas without paying enough attention to business considerations. In the excitement of creating the world’s greatest experience design, UX designers may forget the reality that, if an idea won’t be profitable, it’s not practical. It is essential that UX designers verify that their design is practical and feasible from a business perspective. So, while UX leaders must encourage innovation and creativity, they must at the same time ensure that the resulting design solutions can succeed within the constraints of the business.