Well, that is a satisfying conclusion! I managed to fit the study for this into some of the busiest months of my career earlier this year. The result is a nice payoff of course, but the syllabus alone was worth it.
This will not be my last experience with the Open University. I commend it to anyone considering distance learning.
In the latter category is the fact that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has established principles that characterise a human-centred organisation. ISO 27501:2019 “provides requirements and recommendations for managers and the actions to be taken in order for an organization to achieve human centredness.”
It’s worth considering how your organisation – or team – stacks up against these.
I was fortunate to speak this week at the latest event from Ladies that UX Belfast, ‘The Winding Road to Design’.
My theme was growth through self-awareness, which featured a model for self-reflection adapted from the ‘Making-of’ model by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschappeler To reflect on any given situation (a project, an objective), think about:
What strengths did you bring? What qualities or experience did you draw on?
What support did you have? Was a particular person(s) involved? Particular resources?
What resistance did you meet? What challenges or obstacles were put in front of you?
How did you grow or develop? Was it incremental, or substantial?
For successful situations: what can you reproduce to achieve a similar result next time? What patterns do you see in successes you have had?
For unsuccessful situations: what factors need to change in order to achieve a different outcome? What have you been lacking, and how can you introduce what is needed?
Thank you to Ladies That UX Belfast for inviting me to speak, to all who attended and listened, and to co-speakers Anna Murray and Conaill Hyndman.
Four years ago to the day, after a significant portion of my career working in agencies and consultancies, I made a shift into enterprise products. To be specific, I now work in the complex world of infrastructure automation.
It was a jarring transition, not only from UX project work in an agency to product – but to an enterprise product.
Like many designers, I used to sit on the sidelines of enterprise UX, muttering “why is design over there so bad?”
There are many differences between enterprise UX and B2C, or even much of B2B. One of the key differences is the level of tolerable complexity.
Enterprise products are more often used by teams, not a single individual. The dream of a single user who gets up and running quickly, who is delighted by the experience, and who converts to a product evangelist is a distant one.
Working in an agency, you are hired for expertise or for an outside perspective, possibly to overcome internal politics or inertia. You contribute, your client pays you, and you move on, possibly with some great material for a case study.
There are times when I doubt what I’ve actually achieved; forgetting, of course, that some of the achievement has been to deliver work that is not easily reflected in a portfolio piece. In those times, I find this thought from Jared Spool, one of the most respected voices in the UX community, so reassuring:
“When I talk with UX design leaders …they’re shocked (and a little disappointed) when I tell them it’s likely they won’t see any real movement for months. It could even be years before they’re close to accomplishing their objectives.”
Working in the enterprise means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable with your design output. Outright ‘wins’ of old are hard to discern, and only after some time.
But this discomfort need only last as long as it takes you to realise that what matters, more than ever, is thevalue you have helped to deliver.
Your work is unlikely to raise gasps of “cool!” from other designers. You realise you are now in much more of a team sport, and part of something bigger.
Enterprise is very different to agency, but it feels like growth and development. I won’t side with one or the other. I’m just grateful to have experienced and understand both worlds.
