Why do you think companies struggle to integrate UX into their product cycle?

Madison Rear is a UX expert based in Southampton. I first met her when she was looking for a solution to help her scale and accelerate her ambition to put insight at the heart of every business decision. Madison started as a UX Designer in her native Canada, honing her skills at Canadian travel operators FlightHub and Justfly, before joining Ordnance Survey, where her passion to dig deeper into user behaviour recently led to a transition into user research. Outside of UX, Madison is passionate about fitness, the Vancouver Canucks, dim sum and her doggo Bear.?

I recently caught up with her to explore some of the key themes from The State of UX 2022 - Bridging the gap between UX insights and business impact. In a climate where ROI is becoming pivotal to securing organisational buy-in, we chatted through why, despite UX being a clear business growth lever, too many companies - 45% - are failing to properly integrate user research into the full product development lifecycle.

Why do you think companies struggle to integrate UX into their product cycle? Is there a clear way for the industry to change this?

“We’re in an almost Wild-West type phase where not a lot of people know exactly what UX is… some just think of it as design. They don't realize that there's so much more to it right? There are still a lot of unknowns and I don't think a lot of organisations fully understand the value of UX.

The industry and organisations themselves have to choose to value it. Importantly, UX’ers really need to shout about the consequences of not doing it.?

I've had a lot of success with this tactic in the past. After going through discovery and completing my research, I present the facts and follow up with ‘So what? What if we don't do anything? Someone else may come along and fill the gap! Our users could go elsewhere because their needs are still not being met which means we could lose subscribers… a loss of revenue!’?

The behaviour here is understanding the negatives of not doing it more than the positives of going ahead because I find the negatives can sometimes be more motivating.?

Organizations aren’t linking the power of great UX design to revenue. Just 13% of organizations have a UX leader in the C-suite. Overwhelmingly, the most senior UX leader is a middle manager. What will it take for this to change?

I heard this quote recently, and I absolutely love it. ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’? If you're at a company that doesn't believe this then nothing's gonna happen. It needs to be a combination of having a clear UCD strategy and aligning that to the organisational culture to understand the benefits and values of UX research.?

There are so many UX leaders out there. They just might not be in your company. There are so many meet-ups and mentorship groups. Maybe not the sort of people you’ll see in the C-Suite yet but definitely, the sort you can really learn and take inspiration from.?

In years to come, we're gonna start to have a lot more C-Suite leadership and UX representation. In the meantime, persevering and continually trying to show leaders the value of doing UX versus not doing anything will bring change.?

One of the other key insights from the study was that for most businesses, time is the leading obstacle to creating a culture of user-centricity. Is that something you agree with?

I encourage slowing down to do things properly but I don't accept time being an obstacle. The results are infinitely better than ignoring the risks and then ending up having to do expensive remediation.?

Insight is everyone's problem and it shouldn’t be down to just the user experience team. It should be the responsibility of project managers, designers, and even the developers to have an understanding of UCD and why it is important so they can take ownership too.?

There are no excuses. Using something like UserZoom means everyone can be involved. It’s easy to run rapid tests at volume. And, when you do, immediately the light bulbs switch on and people have a clear direction.

#uxdesign #userresearch #userexperience