Beginnings of a UX handbook for my department
Last week I started a preliminary outline to answer to the question what is the UX department at my company responsible for. This is by no means comprehensive, it’s just a start.
1. Backlog grooming
Backlog grooming is just the Scrum way of saying make sure there is always a bunch of designs ready to go. My boss should never come to me and say he doesn’t know what to give the dev guys next sprint because there are no designs ready.
2. Continuous UI improvement on the site
This is the really tricky one at a small company like mine simply because at the executive level we never have the time and resources to do anything that doesn’t have a large ROI. I’m still developing a strategy for this, but for now it ends up being skunkworks projects in collaboration with the HTML guys.
3. Monitor and drive the A/B testing
This is where UX gets its monetary value. I finally realized that the only way I could sell usability improvements to my bosses was under the guise of A/B testing. Now they are anxious to try new things. Improvements inside our application are called conversion rate a/b tests, and improvements that get people to sign up are called trial-taker a/b tests.
4. Create, maintain and own the sitemap of the current site
Site-mapping a large app like ours always seemed too overwhelming and time consuming to be worth the effort. But I’ve since realized it helps managing the entire experience so much easier. I don’t build it all at once, that’d take too long, so day to day I add a little more until I have it all charted out. And now that I have it I don’t forget all the little pages that are out there on the site.
5. Get involved at the top and influence company direction
This one is still in development, but the way I’m accomplishing this is two-fold. First I get involved with as many executive planning meetings as I can. And second I spend time pouring over the same reports, stats and email discussions the executive team have so that I’m not only in the loop, but forming a mental model of how they think and why they make the decisions they do. At some point I’m going to be able to understand exactly where they are coming from and what they are trying to do, even if I don’t agree.
6. Never be invisible
The most important lesson I learned from the book Never Eat Alone was to never be invisible. I’ve also learned that executives love useful statistics and reports. So my goal now is to regularly deliver useful reports and statistics they wouldn’t normally have so that I’m never invisible and so that I’m adding value to what they do.
7. 20% time envisioning killer ideas for the company
After 4.5 years I quickly realized we are never going to do anything revolutionary unless I make it happen. And the easiest way to do this is to say screw it and spend about an hour every day working on some concept sketches of killer ideas for the company. Once people can actually see ideas drawn up then they start taking the ideas seriously and they start to kindle a desire of their own to pursue the ideas.
