Shell, Experience Design and how I got here.

So last year, much to many of my network's dismay, I joined Shell. I promised an update on both why I joined and what I found. This is it.

Anyone who has ever worked for such an incomprehensively large organisation knows that HCD is not a natural fit, knows that ways of operating were set in stone so long ago that fossils can be found in them and are near impossible to change. Why would I go to that sort of organisation?

What were you thinking?

First a bit of background, just so you know where my mind was at before joining.

If you read through my past posts, you’ll know I’m no cheerleader for the current state of Experience Design <insert UX, CX, BX or initialism of choice here>. Like the vast majority of people who have actually worked in the industry for a decade or more I’ve experienced first-hand how the incredible growth in demand for the discipline, yet conversely also watched the incredible reduction in effectiveness and definition (which is weird anyway you come at it) that it has had.

Where the Experience Design industry is now compared to even ten years ago is unrecognizable bythe original definition coined by Don Norman, the first UX Architect:

"User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

From that it’s become: “UX is about how users operate a website or app” or even a synonym for UI, or at its most granular someone who knows how to use Figma and will do as they’re told.

We’ve seen Experience Design go from being a cohesive approach, creating a joined-up strategy putting the user first to precisely create unified emotional engagement solutions for brand, product, service and comms, to being sliced and diced and siloed to eliminate any glimpse of a joined-up strategy.

The change has been so fundamental that even NNg have changed their definition, CX is Experience Design over the long term, UX is Experience Design in the short term. It make sense but if you’ve been doing this from the start it does hurt a little.

It also means that for the vast majority of orgs that UX sits under Dev or Product, CX sits under Marketing and Sales, Content, Media, Brand, often operate from market insights and perceptions of ‘Best Practice’ rather than from user insight, and don’t get me started on accessibility being a target to be aimed for rather than a foundation to built on through real understanding of user needs.

Here’s the unpalatable truth, that we old-timers seldom admit to: We’re as much to blame for this situation as anyone.

When the boot-camps started we welcomed them, they were spreading the word, creating awareness of the fundamentals in ways that Universities were not. By the time we realized they were setting false expectations, taking money to churn out juniors to an industry that even now largely has few opening for juniors it was too late, we’d missed the ball.

Instead of challenging the roles offered and the siloing (is that a word, pretend it’s a word) that was part of that, we took them on in hope of challenging perceptions internally and didn’t learn fast enough when we didn’t manage it.

When UX/CX started to get a seat at the table, we were just glad that the discipline had arrived and turned a blind eye to the fact that the people sitting in the seats didn’t have the first clue about what Experience Design is or where it came from.

If you remember just how incredibly effective Experience Design was, when handled by a truly driven, passionate, knowledgeable, practitioner, it is painful and frustrating to see what it has become.

The term UX is everywhere, yet Experience Design, true UCD, which joins up the entire relationship people have with an organisation at every level, is almost impossible to find outside of dedicated CX/UX agencies. Finding someplace that does it ‘old school’ that knows Experience Design doesn’t even need a product can be done but finding that place is next to impossible.

That was me, I hold my hands-up and freely admit that I was burned out, physically and mentally worn down by Covid, my own poor health and the state of the industry I’ve worked in for decades.

If that was the case, why would you dive into the deep end at Shell?

This is where Joel Gill comes in. I’ve known Joel professionally for a decade (we looked it up) it’s not like we meet up for drinks or swap Christmas cards or anything, but we’ve followed each other’s careers with interest, often with sympathy, occasionally with cheering, and frequently with a great deal of taking the mick out of each other. While seeking the same goals we are very different people with very different methods of working.

I’m a hothead creative; I try to shift any obstacles in front of me though sheer bullheadedness. Joel is an engineer; he plans everything out and is happy to take a step back if he makes two steps forward and if he can’t move an obstacle, he goes around it.

I’d watched what he had been building at Shell, slowly under the radar, with a mixture of awe, appreciation, jealousy, and frankly hysterical disbelief at the insanity of what he was attempting to do with Experience Design.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe it for a second. I’ve known too many people who had worked at Shell, BP and other places that I trusted implicitly, who found the politics, the immovability or the structures impossible to work with, against that background how could I believe what I was hearing?

I didn’t!

I’m a UCD. I believe nothing until it is proved to me!

So, when he approached me to join as a freelancer, to see what he had done, to check the feasibility of where he wanted to go… what could I say other than "Call me Grand Poobar and sign me up!"

From day one it was a step back in time, like walking into a CX agency, but one that was scattered across the world. Without Shell noticing he’d slowly created a joined-up capability that had User Research, Service Design, Product Design, Content, Accessibility, Creative etc. all in one place, all working together. I spent months working anonymously, hardly appearing in the team org charts, hardly making a ripple in the greater scheme of things, trying to work out where the pain-points were, who the HiPPOs were, who was all talk and no walk.

I’m a cynic, shooting holes in things too good to be true is what we do. I think the best Experience Designers are, if you’re not challenging perceptions, not challenging untested solutions (indeed untested problems), working from verifiable data, you’re probably in the wrong profession.

What did I find?

The EXD department Joel has created and grown is unbelievable. The capabilities are astounding, the quality of knowledge in every member of the team makes you happy to just sit back and listen. The fact that this team has the lowest employee attrition rate in the company speaks volumes. I’ve worked in more markets than I care to remember, more organisations both in the public and private sector than I can remember, and I’ve never known a set-up quite like this.

There isn’t a challenge in the 3 years that Joel has run this team that hasn’t been met. There isn’t a demand made of them that can’t be met. More than that he’s played an absolute blinder by ensuring that UCD processes are written into compliance. Not compliant, you don’t get resource. How he did that I’ve no idea, but it is beautiful to behold.

A team of this size (around 180 people I think) with this sort of passion and drive and expertise… I don’t know of anyone other Joel who could have done it.

Is it all ice cream and fairy cakes?

No.

If I’m honest, the financial rewards aren’t exactly industry standard, but the working conditions, the culture, just being surrounded by like-minded people who want nothing more than to drive home user-first in everything, makes up for that. It’s also the case that with that sort of team growth, that level of success, comes a huge amount of politics and issues over who controls what and how (meh, Shell is no different to other comparable sized orgs in that regard).

For all that Joel has created the largest and most successful design capability in the business, filled with people whose specialist knowledge dwarfs my own, it’s still hardly a blip on the radar to the scale of the org and the education piece the team will have to take to engage and educate the org is incomprehensible, but it needs to if it is to scale rapidly and scale rapidly it will.

That’s a massive challenge. One that last year, honestly, I would have run away from. Instead, this time I moved from contract to perm. I didn’t want to, Joel and the Shell EXD team didn’t give me a choice. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this energised about a role, about my entire industry to be honest.

Earlier in this piece I wrote. “Finding someplace that does it ‘old school’ that knows Experience Design doesn’t even need a product can be done but finding that place is next to impossible.” I stand by that, by I think I’ve found it. I think Joel created it.

Damn I wish it had been me!

So why did I decide to work for Shell? The truth is that I don’t, I work for Shell EXD and while collectively we work at Shell, we all work for our users.

That’s a good place to be.