Developing a User-centric culture

lewisjonessm · 7 June 2018 21:10

Hi all,

Would love to hear your views, ideas, experiences on developing a user centric culture within your organisations.

A little bit of background, I work for a decent sized financial org in the U.K. with an existing way of doing things and the one thing I would love to develop is a more user focused mindset/culture.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Lewis

dopamino · 8 June 2018 10:55

hi @lewisjonessm

what do you exactly mean with “decent size”?
I’m asking because I’m struggling with the same topic, building/evangelising a user-centred design culture within the company I work for (+1500 employees in 6 countries).
I think that to add value to the community feedback, is important to have a clear picture of what is your actual environment

Have a great weekend

lewisjonessm · 9 June 2018 21:34

Hey @dopamino ,

Sure happy to clarify, company has ~2,300 employees, all based in the U.K. but spans across 6 offices and ~70 regional locations.

Malin · 8 June 2018 15:02

This is such an interesting subject. The company I’ve started working for (a store chain and online retailer) base all their decisions on “What makes us profit?”. All the content that goes on the web, all images, all copy, are chosen after what has the highest markups. I understand this mentality; ultimately, to survive, a company need to make money! BUT, I believe that customers notice that in our communication; they’re not stupid. In fact, they get smarter every day, because of all the new information we have access to online, not to mention easy access to our competitors. They can read between lines and see that we don’t care about them; we only care about their money. I believe if we shift focus to the user, get to know her, all about her needs/wishes/aspirations, we can find a specific problem they have, and show them that our service/products can solve this problem. Or help them towards their dreams and aspirations. That way we can make them trust us, connect to us, and ultimately (in our case) – convert.

dopamino · 11 June 2018 08:08

hi @lewisjonessm

I’ve stumbled on this post maybe it will give some food for thoughts.

As I wrote before, I am struggling with this topic with the company I work for. As the article says, one of the most challenging tasks is to have a seat at the decision table. Having the seats doesn’t mean you can be sure that the design topics are really taken into the consideration by your stakeholders. What I’ve found helpful is to understand who can be a kind of “sponsor” for the topic you care about. Receive support from someone that is not part of the “design circle” could trigger a different way to look at the design culture.

What is your experience with this scenario?

Have a great week

lewisjonessm · 13 June 2018 05:11

Hi @dopamino

Thanks for sharing, it’s a useful read. The part of the article that I really related with was:

Even at companies with an established design team, some people will still think of design as an aesthetic practice.

So my role (and team) focuses on the ‘experience’ of the companies online platforms, and the existing (Marketing) design team approaches things from an ‘aesthetic’ point of view. It seems for us to succeed with developing a user centric model we first need to stitch these delivery teams together and shift that mentality. From there we can start to push user centricity at the ‘table’.

What do you think?

dopamino · 13 June 2018 07:24

hi @lewisjonessm

you’re more than welcome, I’m glad you liked it.

After reading your comment I was thinking that an alliance is always a good idea.

For a couple of reasons:

designers working in different teams/BUs can struggle with the same issues from different angles. You could easily find out, for instance, that a specific UI pattern is used in the same way by different design teams, this could be a great starting point to have a consistent library to rely on it doesn’t matter which team you belong
process-wise, you could define the main contact points that trigger the design tasks (eg customer issues, product enhancement, R&D) in this way together with the other team you could define a proper way to handle the requests based on the skillset of each team

In my experience, it was always a great idea to work together with the marketing and the corporate communication design teams. We were able to help each other to increase the consistency and to boost the process by figuring options/roles/responsibilities out since the early stages.

At the end of the day, the one who will benefit from this attempt will be the user. And if the user has benefited from it, the whole business will have a benefit too, am I right?

Good luck with it and let us know how it goes

lewisjonessm · 15 June 2018 15:23

Thanks for such a great response @dopamino.

Lots of valuable info, I was listening to UIE.fm podcast (can’t recall the episode) this week and it reinforced your second point.

I just read this article too, which I found useful: https://uxdesign.cc/https-medium-com-palebluejen-design-culture-6cc8015a90e9?source=linkShare-2d2db3e519f4-1529075824

Thanks again for sharing!

Piper_Wilson · 15 June 2018 16:47

Interesting article @lewisjonessm.

dopamino · 18 June 2018 08:15

hey @lewisjonessm

thanks for sharing the post, I will read it ASAP
I jus stumbled on this video by Don Norman, short and intense!