In recent weeks, several of my friends and former colleagues have asked me about my experiences as an in-house user experience advocate. Specifically, they wanted to know how I evangelized, hustled, and led the formation of a UX team within an organization that was initially very reluctant, if not downright hostile towards UX. So here I am to recount my story, and hopefully someone out there finds these lessons helpful (I’d love to hear your comments!)

The back-story:

It all started as a skunkworks side project. I was eagerly looking for an opportunity to put my HCI training to the test in the real-world, and as the Product Marketing Manager for the Consumer Software and Web division, I was keenly aware of where our products could use improvements. But there was a huge problem: “User Experience” had become a dirty phrase within the organization. The company had invested in a much ballyhooed User Experience department the prior year, and due to various reasons (misplaced within the org chart, high cost, waterfall approach, etc.) to the fault of no one, the department quickly fizzled out and was dismantled. From that point on, “User Experience” was openly ridiculed throughout the org, something I suspect many companies face after an in-house UX department does not live up to expectations.

So how did I battle and overcome the organization’s mistrust of user experience? Well, to be honest, I didn’t. I circumvented it, as I knew facing it headlong was not a battle I could win. For starters, I didn’t refer to my efforts as “User Experience”, and went out of my way to use its abbreviation “UX”, or its layman-friendly cousin “Usability”. It seems stupid, I know, but this tactic proved quite useful in flying under the radar of the most vocal critics of UX. But perhaps the most important tactic: I started small. No big company-wide announcements. No big investments. No expensive software. It was just me, dabbling on a skunkworks side project with zero resources, converting skeptics one at a time.

This was, in essence, “Lean UX” before it had become a buzzword. My focus was on building grassroots support while fitting UX into the realities of the business, instead of trying to force the business to fit into the ideals of UX. So now that we’ve covered the back-story, let’s move on to everybody’s favorite: a step-by-step list!

Steps to evangelizing, converting skeptics, and building a team:

Pick the right project or product: in short, you want to go for “quick wins”. Our company was in the midst of releasing a new video technology standard, and I knew our software products would need new functionality to support this new standard. Change is a great opportunity to inject some UX, so I chose our flagship software products as the starting point for my grassroots UX efforts. Understand and align with business goals: this should go without saying, but I’ve seen cases of UX work being done for the sake of doing UX. This won’t get you very far, and certainly won’t yield “quick wins”. What I did in my case, was pitch my UX research and design activities as delivering results that would help drive adoption of our new technology standard in a significant way. This was our division’s number one business goal at the time, so by aligning my UX efforts with this goal, I was allowed more leeway and time to evangelize colleagues. It also makes it a lot harder for colleagues to say “No” to you when your UX activities are aligned with the top business goals of the company. Identify key internal influencers and get them involved ASAP: this point cannot be emphasized enough, you need to get your colleagues involved in the UX process! The worst thing you can do is disappear into a “lab” and return a few months later with a report of your UX design recommendations. Why? Because it’ll be way too easy for your colleagues to second-guess (and therefore ignore) your findings. It doesn’t matter if you have the best supporting data in the world, if you didn’t involve your colleagues, they will ignore your recommendations. So what did I do? I identified the Product Managers of the respective software products I had chosen in step 1 because they would be the final decision-makers on whether to act upon my UX recommendations, and also because they had influence within the org. Understandably, they started off skeptical thanks to bad experiences with the company’s previous “User Experience” experiment. To get past their initial reluctance, I made it super easy for them to participate by asking them to simply be an observer during a short 20-minute usability test session. By the end of that first session, they were clamoring to sit in on future usability test sessions. The next thing I knew, they were asking for wireframing tips and I was coaching them on how to be moderators for usability test sessions. Word was starting to spread within the organization, and soon I was having C-level execs asking to participate. Open up and allow your colleagues to participate in the process with their own two hands, and you’ll turn UX skeptics into UX evangelists. Simply give them a report of the results without involving them in the process, and they’ll continue to be UX skeptics, if not UX antagonists. Publicize your results: not everyone enjoys giving large presentations and tooting one’s own horn (I certainly don’t). The good news, is that by collaborating with your colleagues during the UX process, they can help you publicize the results of your UX work. It’s simple math, the more voices, the more internal publicity you’ll generate for UX. Once you’ve strung together several “quick wins”, you’ll start to have enough momentum within the organization to ask for the resources to assemble an in-house UX team. Assemble the team: hire a few folks and voila! You’re done! Okay, not really. As you can see, the groundwork you lay before assembling the team is critical to growing and maintaining org-wide support. Jump too soon at assembling a team, and you risk having too many skeptical colleagues who may perceive your UX efforts in the wrong light. Just as entrepreneurs should “validate” their idea before further investment, UX evangelists should “validate” UX within the org before assembling the team. Even after you’ve “validated" UX within the org, and assembled an in-house UX team, your evangelizing efforts don’t stop there. Your entire team needs to continue to collaborate with colleagues and teach them basic UX competencies. The more versed your colleagues are in UX competencies, the more successful your in-house UX team will be in the long run.

Lessons Learned:

First gauge the company culture, then craft your internal UX strategy: how does the company run its product development process? Agile product teams will expect the UX team to run at the same pace (if not faster), otherwise the UX team will get left behind. What is the company’s attitude towards UX? If colleagues are reluctant, hesitant, or skeptical, you’ll need to embark on a grassroots campaign to convince influencers one by one. Even if the company is throwing it’s full weight behind a new UX team, you still want to be prudent in your efforts. The worst thing a new UX team can do, is to over-promise then disappear into your "lab” for months. Recognize that UX goes through a maturation process within an org (see Sean Van Tyne’s infographic on the Corporate UX Maturity model). Your goal in the beginning stages of introducing UX to the org, is not to be perfect in following user-centered design practices (as valiant a goal as that is). Rather, your primary goal should be to string together enough “quick wins” to grow internal momentum and to show your colleagues why they should take an interest in UX. Make it easy for your colleagues to say “Yes”: we’re all human. Everyone- customers, colleagues…we’re all looking for the “easy button”. So when you unveil your 78-step UX process to your colleagues, don’t be surprised if the only thing that registers in their mind is “more work”. Don’t be that guy or gal. Make it super easy for your colleagues. Make it impossible for them to say “no”. Doing this requires you to have a good understanding of the company’s culture, processes, and individual personalities. For in-house UX teams, your real customers are your colleagues: only when you have served your colleagues’ needs, can you begin to fully serve the needs of your company’s customers. Ideally your colleagues’ needs are aligned with serving the needs of your company’s customers, but that’s not always the case for organizations who are very early in the UX maturation process. Strive to understand your colleagues just as you would strive to understand your company’s customers. BONUS TIP: Recruit your colleagues as usability test subjects: This isn’t going to work for every organization, and you’ll need to use some common sense to determine if your colleagues are a “close enough” representation of your target customers (see why Steve Krug’s mantra is to “recruit loosely and grade on a curve”), but it’s a neat little trick to evangelize UX within the org because: (a) it’s a great forum to educate your colleagues on UX, (b) demonstrates to your boss that you’re being resourceful and budget-minded, © it’s an easy and fun experience for your colleagues. During my experience, this trick worked out so well, that I scheduled more test sessions than was needed in order to fulfill the demand from my colleagues who had heard about it and wanted to join in on the fun.