Director, User Experience Design
Inspired by Design Thinking practices found at similar organizations, the UX Playbook was intended to help stakeholders better understand, and utilize, UX resources.
In my role as UX Director, I needed to define our UX levels-of-service.
Our UX Playbook would help Executives, Product Management and Technology teams collaborate and contribute to the UX process. That way the entire organization could derive the most value from our Design and User Research work.
Design Thinking
To best solve our complex problems, let's first define the problem space (in human terms) before creating any solutions.
Scaled Agile Framework
Use SAFe as the mechanism to introduce UX standards across all levels, teams and contexts inside our organization.
Pragmatic Marketing
UX activities and deliverables used to inform and produce Pragmatic execution templates
UX work was pilling up.
But all too often, the design requests were confusing to the actual designers.
Questions like, "Why are we being asked for that?" and "How did this idea become the highest priority?" became frequent. In an attempt to be more agile, internal stakeholders only asked to tackle very small and focused challenges.
No one was asking for larger UX Strategy, vision or context. The entire organization suffered from a lack of alignment and common vision.
I knew Design Thinking could help the business become...
At the very start, let's make sure we should. And deeply understand why we should?
SAFe EPICs require significant investment.
UX professionals can best quantify the desired impact on our experience.
Let's include customers and users into our process.
A human-centric view should provide us with a validated direction (north star).
At the very start, let's make sure we should... and why?
SAFe EPICs require significant investment. UX professionals can best quantify the desired impact on our experience.
Let's include customers and users into our process. A human-centric view should provide us with a validated direction (north star).
UX to understand business need, collect existing documents and statistics. Set preliminary schedule
UX Research will determine research methodology and recruit accordingly
If required, lightweight design concepts are created to support research script or larger UX hypothesis
UX hypothesisResearch methodology is deployed, involving as many members of the group as possible
Shared UX deliverables are presented. Determine if any additional UX work is necessary
UX Deliverables
EPIC Support
Hey Executive Leader, unfortunately I don't think many people are reading your EPIC Hypothesis Statement.
Can the UX team help?
We think humanizing the story may help folks understand the vision and business goals.
We have documented your target persona. We have video diaries from study participants. We have light-weight designs and journey maps.
Could any of these UX deliverables help inspire the organization and align them to your goal?
Play 02
A collaborative effort to articulate the full customer/user problem (UX, PM and Tech)
At this time, our UX activities will inform the product roadmap, innovation streams and value proposition. We should also derive clarity in our Measurement Strategy.
Review past findings to involve voice of customer. Map out complete user flow (start at end) and set target for scope of work.
Diverge and envision what could be; Sketch ideas separately and bring back to working group. Remix and iterate.
Goal is to focus on small set of really good ideas (fail bad ones quickly). Take good ideas to higher level of visual fidelity.
Go to work building a light-weight but full-flow documentation of agreed upon UX approach (prototype or build)
Learn from actual customers/users. Debrief on findings and document conclusions. Focus on future measurement strategy.
UX Deliverables
Capability Support
Hello again Business Stakeholder. I see you have a capability in the backlog.
Do you need any help defining the list of MVP features and measurement strategy?
We have customer feedback on which aspect of your plan is most desirable. We have prototypes to communicate our UX approach direction?
Could any of these UX deliverables help you refine your features, budget and timing?
Play 03
Let's move into the solution space. With a full understanding of our UX approach and now intentional focus on our high-fidelity UI patterns. Let's get feature ready.
At this point, important Contraints are introduced and documented (content, WIP, etc.). We can assume variability and preserve options through set-based designs and experimentation
Review past findings to involve voice of customer. Map out complete user flow (start at end) and set target for scope of work.
Diverge and envision what could be; Sketch ideas separately and bring back to working group. Remix and iterate.
Goal is to focus on small set of really good ideas (fail bad ones quickly). Take good ideas to higher level of visual fidelity.
Go to work building a light-weight but full-flow documentation of agreed upon UX approach (prototype or build)
Learn from actual customers/users. Debrief on findings and document conclusions. Focus on future measurement strategy.
UX Deliverables
Feature Support
Hello Product Manager I've heard you are refining an important feature for the backlog.
Do you need any help defining your Acceptance Criteria? Would you like UI designs to visually describe the value this will bring to the customer?
We have a set of hi-fidelity designs that have already been tested with users.
Could those UI designs help you refine and plan your feature? Could they help communicate intent and value the development team?
Play 04
It's about process, but people can have greater impact.
Let's embed design professionals into the development team/cadence to ensure product quality. This should lead to more effective communication with focus on reuse and scalability.
UI design and development aligned, speaking the same language and aligned to the same focused goal.
UX Deliverables
User Story (and Feature) Support
Hey there, Product Owner, are you planning or delivering a Feature or User Story?
Need any help organizing the front-end components? Any questions on how to deliver code that matches the designs (aka pixel perfect)?
We have a design professional ready to help. Our designer can embed onto your team, attend your ceremonies and remove any design blockers.
Could an embedded UI designer help you deliver better quality code? Could we help get you there faster?