Business: UX Maturity

In a perfect world, companies would take a systematic approach to product design from their very first days. But, in reality, early product design efforts can be sporadic for various reasons—for instance, because a product must launch as soon as possible, there’s not enough money at the start, the user base must grow at the fastest rate possible, or the product idea changes constantly in trying to discover an effective business model. Why is this?

Product-growth and market-penetration rates are critical in a company’s early days. In fact, they’re more important than perfect technical solutions or high-quality designs. This is true especially for lean startups that employ the minimum viable product (MVP) concept. A team first needs to validate that they're solving the right problem for the right audience, in the right market. Only after that should they polish their product. At that point, a company understands that good design is important to the product’s success. Read More

This is Part 1 in a series of four parts about the fictitious organization Delta Market and its journey from the lowest to the highest level of UX maturity. Part 1 of this series provides an overview of the series, presents some personas representing people who work for Delta Market, and outlines the UX maturity model that forms the basis for this series.

In subsequent parts of this series, I’ll describe some scenarios in lieu of actual case studies because case studies are hard to find. Often, organizations are unwilling to share such information because a good user experience is a competitive business advantage. Scenarios are particularly helpful because they have their basis in storytelling and are condensed and easy to grasp. My hope for this series is to encourage discussion and help organizations define their vision and set goals for their UX development. Read More

UX regression—that is, a step back in the quality or usability of an application or Web site’s user experience—can occur whenever a design diverts from an existing workflow because of a technology or design change. Some refer to this phenomenon as UX backlash. As designers and developers, we subject users to UX regression to some extent every time we embark on making a design change.

Historical Context

User Experience is a moving target. Just ask Google. Design experiments around their Search toolbar over the years have demonstrated both forward progress and regressive patterns in their search experience.

For example, in 2007, Google introduced universal search, integrating search results from a variety of sources such as Web, images, video, news, and maps. A tabbed navigation bar in the upper-left corner of the Google home page and search results pages allowed users to search for, then view results for each of these types of content. This navigation bar remained part of the user interface for about two and a half years. Read More