Business: UX Maturity

This story describes how Huxley, a new hire at Delta Market—a fictitious chain of more than 500 medium-to-large, high-end grocery stores—boosted the organization’s competitiveness by raising Delta’s UX maturity from low to high. Their journey, which required nine steps that any organization could easily pursue, took them from 2012 to 2019.

This is Part 2 in my four-part series that describes Delta’s long, winding road from the UX Swamp to UX Paradise. In Part 1, I presented the state of Delta Market in 2012, as well as the personas and the UX maturity model that I’ll use throughout this series. Now, in this article, I’ll use specific examples to explain what I mean by UX strategy, business strategy, UX vision, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and other terms that UX professionals should understand to communicate effectively with management and executives. Read More

In a perfect world, companies would take a systematic approach to product design from their very first days. But, in reality, early product design efforts can be sporadic for various reasons—for instance, because a product must launch as soon as possible, there’s not enough money at the start, the user base must grow at the fastest rate possible, or the product idea changes constantly in trying to discover an effective business model. Why is this?

Product-growth and market-penetration rates are critical in a company’s early days. In fact, they’re more important than perfect technical solutions or high-quality designs. This is true especially for lean startups that employ the minimum viable product (MVP) concept. A team first needs to validate that they're solving the right problem for the right audience, in the right market. Only after that should they polish their product. At that point, a company understands that good design is important to the product’s success. Read More

Many professionals who focus on User Experience (UX), Customer Experience (CX), and innovation describe the maturity of these practices within their organization as elusive muses that are perpetually out of reach. It’s challenging just to build awareness of these practices much less to bring them to maturity—that is, to get them to the point where they’re woven into the fabric of a company’s charter and business objectives.

At Rockwell Automation, we’re forging a path to UX, CX, and innovation maturity by using several tactics. One of the most impactful tactics has been cultivating communities of practice (CoP) throughout the organization. These communities of practice focus on design, innovation, and related best practices. Making our various communities of practice successful requires a concerted effort—a big part of which is establishing strong, dedicated leadership. Therefore, I’ve asked the following CoP leaders from Rockwell to join me in a Q&A-style discussion for this column:

• Krystal Thibault, Innovation Program Manager and Innovation CoP Leader
• Daniel Zinzow, Senior Lead UX Strategist and Design CoP Leader
• Magda Jagielska, Customer Experience (CX) System Manager and CX CoP Leader   Read More