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Put a UX vision before your UX process
Without a compelling vision, people will push back on your process.
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“They won’t follow the process I’ve laid out.”
I had just asked a UX leader what her biggest frustrations were. She didn’t have to think hard about her answer — she already knew.
She’d spent her first months at her new job defining her new UX process. They’d hired her to increase the organization’s UX maturity, so she did that. She put order to the chaos with a shiny new process. Yet now that she’s told them what they need to do, they’re not doing it.
That’s when I asked, “If you convinced everyone to follow your process perfectly, what would be different, say, three years from now?”
“Um, well, the UX, development, and product teams would work effectively together,” she responded.
“Ok, but what would be better about your company’s product and services?”
“I assume the UX would be better because our teams would work together more efficiently.”
I tried a few more times. Yet, none of my follow-up prompts could get her to focus on how her products and services would improve the lives of her company’s customers and users. She was only interested in talking about her new process and the resistance…