The Growing Demand For UX Managers

UX Strategy with Jared Spool, a Center Centre — UIE newsletter focused on bringing UX to a strategic level inside your organization.

The hot UX job right now is User Experience Manager. It’s a sign that things are changing for the better. UX is growing in importance inside many organizations.

Organizations only need managers when they’ve been growing their design teams. They only grow their teams when they value design.

However, there’s a problem. There aren’t enough experienced UX managers to fill all open positions. Experienced UX managers are often happy where they are. It takes years for new managers to get the requisite experience to manage growing teams.

UX-Design-as-a-Service teams drive the demand.

It’s the teams at the UX Design as a Service stage of our UX maturity model that are driving this growing demand for UX managers. This stage happens when an executive within the organization believes UX is important enough to start making serious investments in people and teams.

The two stages before UX Design as a Service, UX Dark Ages and UX Spot Design,don’t warrant UX teams. In these stages, the organization has yet to realize the value of delivering well-designed products and services, so they aren’t investing in a team…