Business: UX Maturity

This story describes how Huxley, a new hire at Delta Market—a fictitious chain of more than 500 medium-to-large, high-end grocery stores—boosted the organization’s competitiveness by raising Delta’s UX maturity from low to high. Their journey, which required nine steps that any organization could easily pursue, took them from 2012 to 2019.

This is Part 2 in my four-part series that describes Delta’s long, winding road from the UX Swamp to UX Paradise. In Part 1, I presented the state of Delta Market in 2012, as well as the personas and the UX maturity model that I’ll use throughout this series. Now, in this article, I’ll use specific examples to explain what I mean by UX strategy, business strategy, UX vision, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and other terms that UX professionals should understand to communicate effectively with management and executives. Read More

Methods for measuring the various aspects of a Web site’s information architecture are hard to find. In this month’s column, I’ll demonstrate how we can use the six tiers within the information architecture (IA) vertical of the DSIA Research Initiative’s UX Design Practice Verticals, shown in Figure 1, to create an IA maturity assessment tool. The benefit of this method is that it helps to quantify IA solutions in a more tangible and actionable manner. Read More

In this article, I’ll describe a typical day in the life of Huxley, the UX manager at Delta Market, an organization that is at the highest level of UX maturity, and explain how functioning at this high level of UX maturity affects Delta Market’s employees—in particular its UX professionals. The purpose of this article is to encourage discussion and to help organizations define their UX vision and set goals for their UX development.

This article is the third in my four-part series “UX Paradise,” which relates the journey of the fictitious Delta Market toward UX maturity. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the company’s state circa 2012 and presented personas for their team, as well as their UX maturity model. In Part 2, I chronicled their journey from the lowest to the highest level of UX maturity—from the UX Swamp to UX Paradise—outlining the steps that Delta took to change the organization and its UX culture. Read More