UX and project management- How do you work?

I went to a convention a little bit ago and, aside from catching some con plague, I had a blast. However, there seemed to be a running theme with a lot of the UX professionals I talked to- dissatisfaction with how UX was integrated into the existing project process at their workplaces.

So I decided do a bit of research and have thus put together a short, 5 minute survey for UX designers, UX researchers, and UX developers. My hope is to gather data on what currently works for people and what doesn’t, and how satisfied or disatisfied they actually are with various project methodologies.

I plan on making the results freely available for anyone to use, but with all references to specific individuals, workplaces, etc edited out.

If anyone is interested in helping out with this project, the survey can be found here. And feel free to pass it to other people if it’s a subject that interests you.

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Absolutely an important to pic to be discussed here. Great survey @redrobinmeyer, I’m very interested to see the results.

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Thanks! To be honest, it’s been difficult to find people to participate. Given my field you would think I’d have an easier time… but UX professionals seem to be very spread out, and there aren’t many online communities like this out there.

If anyone has any suggestions for how to find more participants, I’m all ears.

Great work! nice!
Art-
Senior UI/UX Design Architect @ Teradata

Status update for those interested: only 14 responses so far. But a nice spread of experience within those responses! I’m going to hold out a while longer and hope for more responses before I release data.

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Completed!

I also have a survey I am currently conducting, if you could help me out by completing it (6 questions) that would be great! Here’s the link: The learning habits of digital designers

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Much appreciated! I’d be happy to return the favor.

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The Twitter machine

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I can help out with that. I’ll tweet to our audience. :slight_smile:

Fantastic! That will help so much!

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I’m glad that you’re doing this. It’s something that is at the forefront of my thoughts and I have been doing a lot of talking and writing about it.

There is not nearly enough help for managers of UX. PMs get thrown in at the deep end and told "UX is the PRIORITY on this project’ without defining exactly what those priorities are - and often have no idea what its activities and deliverables or how to integrate them into a project plan. Happy to chat.

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Or even what UX is. I often wonder how UX might have an easier time being integrated into project processes if the PMs understood what it did… a lot of the rest of its requirements would be logical. Like doing research before you start constructing things (except maybe for Lean, but even then you start prototyping before development starts in).

We talk a lot about onboarding for websites and services. Maybe there needs to be onboarding techniques for when UX is introduced.

Heh heh, yes. What even IS UX? Now there’s a question I don’t get asked nearly enough. Or ever.

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I find people often don’t want to ask because they think they will look bad. Often times when I ask them if they know what it is (couching it in terms to make sure it doesn’t sound like I think they SHOULD know), I get sheepish responses. It takes a gentle hand, but if they’re willing to listen with an open mind I have had some luck.

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