Tripnotes: The Tale of Two Companies: Building a Successful UX Practice in a Century-Old Enterprise

Ford Motor Company

Ford Motor Company is a 117-year-old company based in Dearborn, Michigan whose mission encompasses driving human progress through the science of movement.

In the last ten years, their UX team grew from a small group operating as a shared service within the waterfall methodology, to a team of over 50 UX designers and front-end developers seen as subject matter experts who are enabling UX at scale across the organization. This transformation began when Rob Mitzel, presently DesignOps and Enablement Team Supervisor at Ford Motor Company, came in as an outsider to lead the UX team.

It began with tears. When a project team requested wireframe files and expressed a desire to do design work made a UX designer cry during a one-on-one, Rob realized that the UX team’s culture was wrong: they were too focused on protecting their craft and did not want to collaborate.

slide with a "wrong way" sign

This resulted in a focused effort to transform the team culture in three key dimensions: Share, Fill the Void, and Look Forward.

Share

Expose: The practice of UX and help others. Provide artifacts that describe what the UX team does, what UX is, and the benefits of UX. Store these on an internal shared drive that’s easily accessible.

Example: The Ford UX team published its usability patterns despite concerns these would make the team obsolete. This resulted in both partners who already have buy-in to the UX process and those who do not work with the team better understanding their work.

Teach: increase awareness and advocacy for UX within your team and beyond. Strengthen skillsets through classes led by your team members on core principles like Heuristics, Usability, and Visual Design.

Examples: Presentations, lunch-and-learns, and internal usability testing events. For greater effect, invite project team members to share testimonials on the impact of UX on their projects.

Partner: establish alliances with cross-functional partners. Build bridges by holding conversations to understand the needs and perspectives of your partners to establish the foundation for faster progress and improved buy-in.

Example: Hold social events between your team and cross-functional partners to share stories and challenges.

Fill the Void

Identify gaps beyond core project needs and fill them. Start small and get wins. Examples include:
  • Web Center of Excellence: assemble subject matter experts for front-end coding to assist with web projects. This initiative became very successful and eventually spun-off into a separate team.
  • Component Library: a resource that matches components with usability patterns to streamline work for front-end developers. What we now know as a Design System.
  • Reference application: an application that exemplifies best practices, like in responsive design and mobile.
  • Design tools & resources: understand and satisfy the needs of your team. This has grown into the implementation of DesignOps.

Looking forward

Anticipate and be ready for change.

Examine Options: evaluate available solutions and be prepared to make tough decisions.

Example: The Ford UX team retired their component library–even though it was their baby–in favor of external solutions to free up resources for other projects.

Seize Opportunities as they arise

Example: UX Coaching emerged as a program pair UX team members with business analysts to share UX concepts, tools, and usability patterns.

Get Around: learn about your organization.

Examples: Go to other buildings and connect with other people. Encourage spontaneous conversations. Build a network and perceptive.

Keys to Success

  1. Passion for UX: believe in its power. People will sense your enthusiasm and energy.
  2. Support and develop your team: grow and let go. Build your design network.
  3. Learn: and apply those insights.
  4. Look forward: with the willingness to experiment and change.

Canadian National Railway (CN)

CN is Canada’s largest railway with over 24 thousand railroaders and has transported $250 billion worth of goods.

Sébastien Malo is Sr Manager of UX & Business Process Optimization at CN. He began working there nearly three years ago with the goal of implementing and leading an end-to-end User Experience practice. When he first joined, the team…
  • It was composed of two permanent designers and several consultants
  • Reported into the Design department
  • Disconnected from the business, primarily receiving requirements and operating in waterfall
  • Pixel focused

Within two years, the organization transformation and moved Beyond the Pixels!

A man diving with the captions "Beyond the Pixels"
  • Stakeholders understand that UX is more than designing screens
  • UX shapes initiatives and is involved earlier in the process through user research and design thinking activities
  • The team now reports to the Chief Digital Officer

Beginning with a vision

When executives invited UX to the table for conversations on how to user CN through a Digital Transformation, Sébastien emphasized that the UX team’s abilities to frame and solve problems meant an impact way beyond their present responsibilities perfecting pixels. Defining a vision creates a clear picture of where to go and supports decision making along the way. One sells a vision to teammates and an inner-circle…For the rest of the organization, prove the value of UX through results. In other words, show, don’t tell. 

Implementing the vision

  1. Establish core team principles: such as “be an expert but act as a collaborator” – remember that design is a team sport.
  2. Be an ambassador to the UX practice: keep in mind that since collaborating with you might be someone’s first exposure to UX, your attitude and behavior influence the perception of the practice as a whole.
  3. Compromise: though most UX practitioners are idealists who want the best for our users, in the real world, you have to stretch and balance your priorities with your stakeholders. Think of it as a healthy tension. 

Managing across and up

  1. Enable your team: then get out of the way and let them do the work!
  2. Build your network: ask a lot of questions to a lot of people (over a lot of coffee). Understand the landscape of your organization and build a mental model where/with whom UX could have a greater impact.
  3. Be on the lookout for stretch opportunities: both in terms of reach (new projects) and depth (new activities your team can tackle – like User Research or Service Design.)

Introducing the impact of UX

  • Use workshops to bring clarity to teams: facilitated discussions between cross-functional stakeholders and UX can be effective when rigorous user research is not an option
  • Translate requirements to user stories into personas and journey maps. Highlight the power of design thinking by identifying steps of the user journey that lacked requirements and other areas where excess features/effort were planned.
  • Plant the seeds for impact: through bringing structure, clarity, and a fresh perspective into project planning efforts.
  • Brought structure, Clarity, and Fresh Perspective

Expanding past our comfort zones

As the impact of CN’s UX team grew, Sébastien and his team found themselves needing to grow their responsibilities and expand beyond their comfort zone. While the core mission remains, the journey of achieving it evolves. As is the case with growing the culture UX in our different organizations: timelines, paths, and structure may differ. However, as a leader, we owe it to our teams and organizations to continue growing the practice and vision.