Session notes: A Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale

Vasileios Xanthopoulos, Lead UX Designer at THE LEGO Group spearheads the creation of design solutions for colleagues around the world, from factories through board rooms. Since 2015, the UX team operated in relative obscurity with limited support in a siloed, development centric culture. In 2018, the team made strong progress with 300 colleagues having gone through UX training and personas informing projects, however, they still had to fight with stakeholders at every stage of the design process. The team realized they lacked vision and strategy–often caught themselves in the projects and missing the big picture. Then came the…

The UX Reboot

The LEGO UX team cleared their calendars for 3 weeks in order to…

  • Detach and look at the big picture
  • Run the department as a business (rather than a charity that provides value for free)
  • Designed their vision
  • Service designed their offering

How might we…

With only 7 designers to tackle 400 products, the team realized they had to make a change. Enter their how might we statements:

  • Leverage the executive support that we have in a more impactful way?
  • Ensure UX is not an afterthought when decisions are made on a leadership level?
  • Support as many different product teams as possible, at a satisfactory level?
  • Increase the User-Centric mindset organically, from within?

Introducing the “UX Sandwich”

The answer to their prompts came in the form of a food-inspired diagram: the UX Sandwich.

lego sandwich diagram

Top-Down: UX Partnership

This refers to a UX designer partnering with a Director level colleague to provide:

  • Domain knowledge and strategy
  • UX Vision
    • Short term framework: Monitor + Measure + Change
    • Long term: Raise the level of usability and experience of all products
  • Stream-wide guidelines and direction:
    • System Usability Score as KPI for all products
    • Vendor selection requirements based on configurability and usability
  • Help set up meaningful value measures: facilitate design thinking workshops that keep the business and end-user in mind.

lego holding a megaphone

Bottom-Up: UX Academy

A program focused on identifying non-designer ambassadors from cross-functional teams and giving them the tools and knowledge to carry out day-to-day UX activities and spread the user-centric mindset. The steps:

  1. Find ambassadors from product teams: developers, product owners, scrum masters, IT consultants
  2. Secure time on their calendars for UX work
  3. Craft a cirriculum to teach them

lego class cirriculum

  1. Determine the method for sharing; in LEGO’s case:
    1. They had both in-person and online options
    2. The course took up to six months (equivalent to a university semester)
    3. Encompassed classroom teachings, assignments, mentoring, and hands-on training

class agendaassignment example

Achievements

The results? Increased products shipped, user satisfaction, and UX academy enrollees. outcomes

Consider following Vasileios’ recommendation and taking a bite out of the UX Sandwich!