Project Overview

In September 2021 I proactively started to conduct research on UX maturity in order to find people inside the company, who will be willing to educate themselves and carry out the UX principles in their day-to-day work. This research was aimed at Account (AM) and Project managers (PM) only. In a digital agency where managers sell services to the client, they should be aware of UX design and should know what to suggest when the client does not know how to proceed with the project. Many times managers did not know how to do this right which resulted in poor tasks and projects that we needed to design. Therefore by enhancing the efficiency of all employees in the company who were directly involved in creating the project, the project’s quality may be enhanced. By finding the right employees who want to learn more about UX design, the company will create advocates of UX design in departments other than the UX team. From there they will be able to promote UX design to their colleagues in their department. This project is still ongoing and is currently in the second phase: Interviews.

Hypothesis

There are people in AM and PM departments who could be UX advocates.

Goal

Find UX advocates inside the company, create self-paced materials on UX design, educate them, and work with the closely. With this long-term goal cross functional collaboration as well as project delivery can become more efficient and of higher quality.

Process

Survey

Summary

In order to discover levels of knowledge in the AM and PM departments, surveys have been sent to each individual college in the company. Surveys were different depending on the department the participants is working in.

Goal

The goal of this survey is to see employees’ potential understanding of UX.

Participants

29 of 70 (41.4%) employees have participated in phase 1.

9 AM’s out of 17

20 PM’s out of 53

Findings

From those in the survey, there were 12 / 29 (41.4%) participants with above-average answers. 2/29 had below average answers and 15/29 had average answers. Participants with above-average answers for understanding UX have gotten an invitation to the second phase (interview) which is currently ongoing. Based on Nielsen Norman Group’s 6 stages of UX maturity in the researched company the stage has been defined between Limited and Emergent.

Conclusion

12 participants have been chosen as employees with a great understanding of UX.

Interview

Summary

Interview employees from the AM and PM departments who have the highest level of knowledge about UX from the survey sample. Interview questions were different depending on the department the participants is working in.

Goal

Detecting reasons for being able and unable to push UX design into their work.

Participants

5 of 12 (41.7%) employees have participated in Phase 2. 12 employees had above-average results from the survey in Phase 1. An invitation for the interview was sent to all 12 employees.

2 AM’s out of 6 (33,33%)

3 PM’s out of 6 (50%)

Findings

Lack of education What participants have highlighted so far (5/5 100%) was the lack of education in UX design but also in other areas as well. Participants have said that UX is important, but they need to understand its principles in order to utilize it. The lack of education exists inside the company as well as with the clients with whom the company works for. Also, all participants (5/5% 100%) said that they would apply for educational lessons in order to learn UX design inside the company.

Invest in education

The company needs to invest in its employees in learning UX. In that way they will know what the scope of work is, is it feasible, what services need to be included, and what do UX specialists do in their line of work. In this way, PM would know if the feedback is something that should be forwarded to the UX specialist or not (for instance changing the text in the paragraph).

Higher quality briefs

Clients do not want to invest in strategy or project planning. Briefs are made in a way that the discovery phase is skipped or deemed unnecessary. In order to get better-prepared briefs (it is interesting that only AM suggested this), the company needs to invest more in the client, know the needs and focus on potential solutions (2/5 40%). Meetings with the UX specialists and the clients should be more often in case of bigger projects or when deemed necessary (4/5 80% - all AMs said this).

Low budgets

Another barrier that has stopped participants from promoting UX in their departments is the budget (3/5 60%). As suspected both AMs answered that the budget is their barrier.

Reactive behavior

When selling services to the client, the company’s employees are reactive. Participants agree that they need to change their mindset. Employees are afraid not to say something wrong to the client so that they don’t ruin the relationship with the client. Interestingly enough they did not.

PM should have more self-esteem

If they think that the project is not possible to do by some urgent deadline. (160 page designs in 2 weeks then PPM should not accept these terms. A balance needs to be made if the PM does not want to lose a client but also gets a project that can not be done in such a short time. Be more transparent in that matter. Do not say Yes to all.

Be more project-oriented not task oriented

As wanting to earn more money and having to choose money and profit over substance it is not easy to change the mindset of having more higher quality projects than more tasks altogether. There needs to be a change of mindset. This also includes that the task should be written in greater detail so the UX specialist no what they need to do. (not just copy-paste a brief that the client has sent). This needs to be organized from the ground up for all employees who work with specialists and write tasks and/or projects.

Sales strategy

A sales strategy needs to be planned to increase the level of quality and the type of projects that the company receives.

Personas

Summary

Define personas from people with a good understanding of UX from AM and PM departments in the company after interviews have been conducted. Summarize the former phase in order to create personas. Most of the info is with regard to UX design.

Lecturing

Summary

Phase 4 is the most time-consuming phase. In this phase, I needed to create materials for further education in the UX field. I have created 7 themes.

1 What is UX? Contains 63 slides in Figma

2 User research methods Contains 80 slides in Figma

3 Prototyping methodology Contains 63 slides in Figma

4 Design Thinking Contains 26 slides in Figma

5 UX for all users Contains 42 slides in Figma

6 Mobile and Desktop UX Contains 103 slides in Figma

7 UX design methods & specialist Contains 60 slides in Figma

Goal

The goal is to educate 12 participants or less, from phase 2 who do want to learn more about UX design. They will become UX advocates in their own departments and will further promote UX. Lectures have been prepared and modified from my previous class where 12 participants wanted to become UX designers.