Business: Culture Change

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss whether they are seeing companies’ business models change from being engineering driven to being design driven. In addition, our experts explore what it means to be a design-driven organization and how all members of a product team can impact a product’s UX design.

While some of our experts believe that we are seeing a shift to design-driven organizations, others on our expert panel think we’re actually observing a very different phenomenon. Several of our panelists encourage UX designers to acknowledge the equally important roles of Engineering, Design, and Business, or Product Management, in designing optimal product user experiences. Read More

Shifting trends are forcing technology companies to reimagine their value proposition. IBM has chosen to create disruption through design. In embracing the future, the company is essentially invoking its past. Back in 1956, IBM was the first large company to establish a corporate-wide design program. But this time, the company’s goals are more ambitious.

Recently, we interviewed Karel Vredenburg, Director of IBM Design’s worldwide client program and head of IBM Studios in Canada, who told us, “We’ve put everything into this transformation.” The company is investing more than $100 million in becoming design centered. Read More

The term culture describes the behaviors of people in organizations. Sometimes, as UX professionals, we are outsiders and organizations invite us in to observe their organizational culture. In other cases, we are insiders who work within organizations and experience their culture daily. An organization’s culture can influence any of us, depending on our interactions with it.

The challenge is that we never fully understand cultures because they are constantly in flux—whether because of the movements of people or the changing times, places, and practices that are at play. Who is responsible for explicitly fostering and leading a culture to ensure that people not only deliver their transactional work outputs but also attend to achieving meaningful outcomes and nurturing the cultures within which people work?

In this article, we’ll describe how well placed UX professionals are to become cultural leaders, by helping to track people’s potential, defining behavioral outcomes, and influencing organizational culture, strategy, and direction. Read More