Session notes: A Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale
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.
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.
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:
- Find ambassadors from product teams: developers, product owners, scrum masters, IT consultants
- Secure time on their calendars for UX work
- Craft a cirriculum to teach them
- Determine the method for sharing; in LEGO’s case:
- They had both in-person and online options
- The course took up to six months (equivalent to a university semester)
- Encompassed classroom teachings, assignments, mentoring, and hands-on training
Achievements
The results? Increased products shipped, user satisfaction, and UX academy enrollees.
Consider following Vasileios’ recommendation and taking a bite out of the UX Sandwich!