Put a UX vision before your UX process

Without a compelling vision, people will push back on your process.

“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 she received.

Encountering stakeholder resistance to UX processes.

In her new position, she started with the process. She could see that having no process was holding her organization’s UX maturity back.

They weren’t doing the right things. They were skipping essential steps. They were squeezing other necessary steps into the end of their delivery projects when doing them earlier would’ve been more effective.

This UX leader did what many do when they discover their organization has low UX maturity: She focused on the UX process and described a better way for UX to work with the product and development teams, complete with the right steps happening at the right times.

When she started her new job, every stakeholder told her they were excited about an improved UX process. When she presented her process, these same stakeholders…