The guys back with a new installment in their Business Value of UX series. Chris & Mustafa kick off the conversation by discussing the various ways businesses measure success and systematically set strategic goals. The guys wonder if these traditional practices apply to UX teams. Mustafa thinks that OKRs should become the industry standard, mesh well with the nature of UX work, and talks about how KPIs are becoming a thing of the past. Chris thinks that traditional business success metrics and measures (like ROI) may not be able to be applied perfectly to the more creative, experimental, and knowledge growing work that human centered R&D teams do and might be a main reason why it sometimes becomes difficult to justify UX work in purely financial terms.
After their short digression on success metrics the conversation switches to making businesses design-led or customer-centric via reorgs and transformations. They both believe that company structures and high-level goals are imperative to get right if embedded Design teams are to flourish. Following the teaching and principles outlined in the CX book Outside In they march through the 6 main themes that are necessary (according to the authors) for any company to get right before they can confidently call themselves “customer-centric”. Those themes are:
Strategy
Customer Understanding
Design
Measurement
Governance
Culture
Buck up for this one. It’s a marathon! And look out for Part 3 which will be coming soon!
