Working as a UX designer in a corporate innovation team

As I’m celebrating my fifth anniversary inside a big aerospace company, I’m still surprised on how people imagine what is the duty of a designer inside such a big player, what is the mission of a UX designer in such an environment, and what are the drivers of a senior UX designer inside an innovation team. Let’s give a quick 360° feedback of these 5 years.

A designer inside a corporate environment

Most of the designers (in the european meaning of the term, including product designers, service, UX, UI, and all the related job roles such as sound designers, motion designers,…) usually work as freelancers, or in design/consultancy agencies, organized as small squads, dedicated to a single project for a short but intense periods of work. And being hired for a UX position inside a big corporation (not dedicated to design) is not an obvious situation in the UX/UI/design landscape. Especially because the current trend for contract-based positions in UX/UI seems to pair a UX researcher with one or two UI/UX/visual designers.

It means that most of the time, people around you are not as aware about your skills or job role as it would be inside, say, a design agency. In my team, we have venture creators, project leaders, program managers, engineers, procurement people, colleagues from Legal, … And each of them have a different understanding of the potential value of UX (is it related to Quality? Is it process improvement? Is it about the colors of the GUI? Is it Production? Is it development?).

Said differently, being a UX designer inside a big corporation isn’t an already established situation, but rather something you’ll have to explain, demonstrate and evangelize day by day. But it gets better every year as more and more colleagues have already experienced the true potential of a proper UX integration.

But what is the mission, then ?

Most of the time, you’ll be assigned to projects driven by the production teams. So, if you’re working for an aerospace company, say, in the IT dept, you should expect to dive into IT apps topics during most of your working days. The good thing is that the research will often be done once a year, since your customers do not change that much over time. Another nice aspect is that you will master in a short time all the in and outs of your production lifecycle. Plus, depending on the diversity of the projects, you should not feel bored every single minute.

But these big groups have more to propose, like Branding, Systems, Design studios, VR/AR entities, Strategy, Subsidiaries…So, if you are attached to the Branding Dept., you might work on the design system, if you are attached to the Systems dept., you’ll work on the human factors,and so on…

Finally, I observed that the UX profiles are no more centralized (one big UX/UI team fits all), but are rather dedicated to the purpose of the upper organization, and the UX/UI task force is more focused on two or three close topics, rather than on long-trend, company-wide missions.

And working for innovation ?

Innovation is always a key differentiator inside an organization, since it is naturally based on creativity, independence and freedom. After all, the commitments are to disrupt, create new markets, improve yours, imagine new processes, new products, …

Being a UX designer in such a setting implies a lot of research, interviews and surveys, since the user is by definition a new audience. A bit more of quantitative research than qualitative, for me. But it has soon to be balanced with the innovation processes in place? that often require a fast pace (fail fast).

So pretty quickly, you will get your hands dirty with prototypes and mock-ups. The good point is you have a lot of freedom to translate your ideas. You do not need to comply 100% with the corporate branding since your prototype will never escape in the outside world : You are working on Proof Of Concepts, or Minimum Viable Products, not on the definitive version of an item (if such a concept still exists, nowadays)..

As you are exploring, you can also be less concerned (I said “less” not “not concerned”) by legal outcomes, or security issues, because these are the things that you want to escape from at this stage (notion of gravity in the Think Wrong methodology).

And the best part is still to come: You have a completely open field in front of you every day, allowing you to choose what to do next. Today, I’m working on a search engine interface. Tomorrow, I’ll be creating some 3D objects for VR purposes, and the day after, I'll work on a user workshop for a HR project.

The downside of it, is probably that you have a high ratio of projects that get killed in the process (not in the right market, not profitable enough, not a core activity,...), but you won’t have much time to cry on your abandoned ideas.?

Another bottleneck is that your creativity requires a bit of extra freedom that is somewhat even unknown in other parts of the company (specific IT needs, specific devices, specific operating model -open to the outside-,...).

What’s next ?

After 5 years, I have learned a lot about the industry I’m working for. There is so much to understand here, from space transmissions to aircraft passengers, from safety standards to airplane ground operations. But I also learned a lot about what UX/UI is made of in the innovation context (being adaptable, catching every idea around and building on it,…) and in a corporate environment (freedom implies budgets, how to overcome bottlenecks,...).

I also learned a lot about myself, and I can tell you, I’m not done yet here and I still have good challenges to face, the main one being a better communication about the real value of UX design, an honest user-centric technical proposition, in a deliberate chase for creativity through the dense air of a corporate establishment.?