Design Chat: Jaap van den Beukel, Idean. The Institutionalisation of UX Design.

Meet Jaap van den Beukel. Jaap is an experienced Design Manager, with expertise in all things user centric - focussing mainly across User Experience and Service Design. With his understanding of the digital market his vision is to help to create the best user experiences, and most user-friendly solutions possible across all projects.

Jaap is currently working as a Design Manager at Idean, a design agency part of the Capgemini Group. Previously, as a UX Designer he has done a lot of projects in different organisations and is lately more busy with hands on managing and coordinating UX Design work.

In this piece we chat more about the institutionalisation of UX Design.

What is this movement about and what does it mean?

There is this shift happening from UX designers who are hired for doing a project to the awareness that most of the projects won’t suddenly stop, however transform in a continuous improvement effort. That’s particularly visible in the larger organisations, and also at a smaller scale. Take a look at developing an app or website: it’s never really done and doesn’t stand alone - these will become products and services which need continuous development. Besides the maintenance, support is needed and new requirements will pop up. That’s inherent to this time of high-demanding, high-expecting customers, users, people. When you don’t adapt and improve your product or service, it has no future in this fast paced world.

Some organisations are naturally more mature than others, and I see this trend from organisations to attract people with this UX expertise to work in-house. Which, by the way, I think is a good thing. It means that this expertise becomes a constant within an organisation and in fact is highly needed, a true differentiator is the experience you offer as a business. User experience design skills will focus primarily on the people, that’s You, which is good, right? 

Now to the point, how is this experience for the UX designers who work for the people? Is there a proven way of working, do we speak the same language when we talk about UX, how do we encourage designers to grow and stimulate ambition? Etc. That is where institutionalisation of UX Design comes in. Addressing and establishing the needs in a sustainable way instead of an ad-hoc approach in the way of working. Enabling designers to simply do their job, and hopefully excel because of the lack of frustration which comes if things are not properly arranged.

This is more said from an employee viewpoint. At a strategic level it is about having a vision, clear measurable goals and purpose of the organisation about what you’re standing and striving for. This trickles down to the workplace.

"In the end, in a more ‘UX-mature’ organisation, business benefits because good UX Design has a major impact on the value, and therefore should be a key business goal."?

Where to start? How to begin? What is indispensable, absolutely needed?

Good questions, which I have to start with saying that you have to realise it differs from organisation to organisation, however main lines can still be drawn. Secondly, it depends on the type of possibility; budget and timeframes, which depends on the client-question, and your role. This is ideal when the organisation is committed to change in a more user - or customer-centric way. The strategic level will always be the driver and guiding the transformation. For a follow up and tactical point of view, processes and support needs to be done so that the operation can perform in a consistent and professional way. Mind you, that is not a one-person-show. 

With that said, you can also start bottom-up when you are a designer working in a team. If you haven't already done so, bridge team islands, give oxygen to cluster vacuums or break squad silo’s. The solution you work on with your team is likely just a part of the whole customer/user journey. Ensure you make this as good as possible and put it in context in the whole journey. This means collaborating with other departments, like marketing, data analysts, corporate identity, compliance, etc. In my experience you will find people who are at the same level and together you bring this further. Before you know it, you have set up a community of practice about UX.

From there you can make more impact and work more efficiently on reusable assets; setting up research facilities, requesting software licenses, agreeing on standards etc. A huge plus is the knowledge transfer. You’ll be better informed about the developments in the organisation and can influence this positively. This is also changing the mindset, or organisation culture. 

From a more high-level approach, if you have the chance to make this happen you are to congratulate. It means that you have management or C-level support and that those people see the benefits for setting up a good UX practice. This doesn't mean you can stop spreading the word, adapt your message to the different types of people and especially show it’s value. That is still one of the keys to institutionalise UX. This takes time, so endurance and tenacity is needed. That’s because the organisational structure and culture will change. However, if you align the UX mission and vision to that of the business, it is a consistent and clear communication.

In a short amount of time, you have a lot of things to do. Not going in detail but part of the institutionalisation is the strategy, a way of working, guidelines and design principles, facilities and tools, hiring expertise, design career possibilities. That’s all while you work to deliver products and services with a user-centric design approach. 

Can you mention some pitfalls?

Pff, where to start? Maybe the first one to mention is going fully in with tools and templates. That is purchasing every tool and developing every template you can think of. Instead of this you should make a well-considered decision on the toolset and let the templates-base grow more organically.

Another, is that people see UX Design as UI Design. This skews things and makes it hard to actually get the right things done. For example, someone can question the fact that a UX Designer is advising the product owner about prioritisation based on research and insights because in his or her mind the designer needs to only make the solution look nice. I think the word “design” is a blessing and a curse, but in this, it is definitely the latter.

Last but not least, UX Design is an appealing trade. It attracts people, and people want to work in this area. You have to explain what it takes to be a good designer and show the value constantly. Some think it is just common sense and if you master the tools, you’re a designer. It’s not, it is a profession for which you have to study and practice, and practice a lot.

How can businesses benefit from keeping a traditional set up with a UX agency partner? 

For that, you need to look at what an agency, or so you will UX agency, is. Agencies have certain properties and habits which makes them distinctive. There is this strong competitive area in which they have to operate, so having thorough and up-to-date knowledge is essential and naturally leads to innovation. As well as this, agency partners bring experience and insights from other sectors and companies. Also, people from the outside your organisation are more free to talk about what is actually needed.

Related to these points businesses will always benefit from such collaboration. Specific to UX is that they can fill in the role really with the end-user in mind. They are less prone to bias when it comes to company specific services, boundaries or preferences. I experienced this once when redesigning a form, it was overwhelmed with data fields which needed to be filled in. It was part of a bigger redesign and business had in mind it was just a simple transfer, ‘make it in line with look and feel’. When I asked questions about the data fields, and what we (read: the business) wanted to do with it, the answers were not all satisfying and by that we could remove some. Not to speak about the mandatory fields, which were not all really needed to be mandatory. So, let’s test it, do research. 

What can we expect from the near future?

Like I said, I think agencies can help and speed up things in this movement of setting up good UX practices to help internal design teams thrive and improve. I expect that this will be a growing demand for which a good client partnership is needed, which is more than doing one or two projects. The transformation is big and different from a regular design cases, however the challenge of doing that in the context and culture of the organisation makes that a very interesting, great and demanding job!