Business: UX Maturity

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

This is Part 1 in a series of four parts about the fictitious organization Delta Market and its journey from the lowest to the highest level of UX maturity. Part 1 of this series provides an overview of the series, presents some personas representing people who work for Delta Market, and outlines the UX maturity model that forms the basis for this series.

In subsequent parts of this series, I’ll describe some scenarios in lieu of actual case studies because case studies are hard to find. Often, organizations are unwilling to share such information because a good user experience is a competitive business advantage. Scenarios are particularly helpful because they have their basis in storytelling and are condensed and easy to grasp. My hope for this series is to encourage discussion and help organizations define their vision and set goals for their UX development. Read More

Making a fresh start with a new organization is always an exciting time, isn’t it? Especially when that organization is a startup. During your interviews with the startup, you didn’t just tell them about your approach to user experience and your past work experiences, you were already evaluating the problem they were working to solve, trying to decide what potential the company really has. Before you even began working in the startup, you were thinking about the customers and what their current experience is or could be. You were already sold on the startup’s vision and their product’s market potential—and the whole company was growing.

The startup had made it this far without a dedicated UX professional, but it was time for someone to step in—to begin creating a process framework that would evolve healthily over time and help the company produce amazing user experiences. Read More