Business: Role of UX

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel considers the contributions of UX designers that are most and least important to the product-development process. Can we generalize about the value of UX designers’ contributions to product teams? Or is the value a UX designer provides unique to that designer? How can UX designers exponentially increase the value of their skills and contributions by inculcating an experience-first culture into a multidisciplinary product team? How can product teams make meaningful work?

The panel discusses the importance of UX designers’ being involved in the product-development lifecycle from the very beginning of a project, engaging entire product teams in the UX research and design process, and applying discoveries from research throughout the design process. Our expert panel also contemplates how UX designers can take a more active role in the development process, as opposed to simply executing requirements from product management. Read More

We discuss two topics in this column:

• using verbs as nouns in user interfaces
• UX roles in organizations

Ask UXmatters is here to answer your questions about user experience matters. If you want to read our experts’ responses to your questions in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions to: [email protected]. Read More

Should UX designers be able to facilitate teamwork and engage in organizational design? A few years ago, the most likely answer would have been: No. We have process consultants, Human Resources (HR) consultants, and all sorts of coaches to help organizations organize their people and processes. But today’s businesses are confronting some significant changes that impact the role of User Experience, as follows:

1. Design challenges have become more complex. Some prominent. independent design firms have decided to join bigger collectives to address such issues. Recently, IDEO joined the kyu collective, Adaptive Path was acquired by CapitalOne, and there have been many other instances of this trend.
2. The role of the UX designer is shifting from merely imagining and executing on solutions to fostering collective creativity and engaging all sorts of professionals in a co-creation process.
3. Just as the impact of the design discipline has gradually expanded from products to services, over the last few decades, it continues to expand to process and organizational design. Branding agencies like Wolff Olins and transformation consultancies like SYPartners are leveraging the power of design to help companies re-imagine the way they work and organize themselves.

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