Establishing a User Centered Design Culture Throughout the Organization

Richard Dalton, Jason Bootle, Jane Saputra, Amy Lobé at UXDX EMEA. Video: https://youtu.be/TjZR9RNUP4s

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Can culture be changed?

[00:00:00] Richard: Good morning, good evening, good afternoon everybody, wherever you are in the world. I couldn't be more thrilled to be helping facilitate this panel with Amy, Jane and Jason. It's going to be pretty rapid fire, I think we have about 25, 30 minutes, so we're going to get straight into it. As we just said, I think over the past 10 or 15 years all of us would agree that customer experience has become a major differentiator within organizations large and small. And I think the other thing we can probably all agree upon is that having a small team of design or product or engineering people within those organizations responsible for the customer experience alone is probably not going to cut it. It requires everybody in an organization to contribute towards the customer experience.

[00:00:51] Richard: So the question really is, how do we change the culture of some of our organizations to really embrace customer centricity, or human centricity, user centricity, whatever word you want to put at the beginning of centricity there. And that's really what we're going to talk about here. So without further ado, let's get into: can culture be changed? How do we encourage a culture of experimentation, of setting north star goals, to help organizations evolve? Let me go first to Jason and get his thoughts on some of the challenges that he's seen with the organizations that he's been in around can culture be changed, and what he's seen be effective. Jason.

[00:01:43] Jason: Yeah, thanks Richard. I think it's very hard depending on the organization and the structure. Having worked in a variety of different organizations, from government to small startups to large enterprise organizations, I think you will find that feeling of risk, the appetite for risk, and that leads into experimentation and how much people want to adopt that sort of mindset. I think it's very hard to change culture from the bottom up, and you need to find allies at a senior leadership level.

[00:02:21] Jason: And I think also it's about how you frame what you're trying to achieve, and it's framing it in a way of, we want to learn more about our users, we want to de-risk things, we want to make these business values better. So I think you're trying to look for allies and trying to align people to it, you're trying to achieve company objectives, but also you're trying to educate people around the benefits of doing these sort of things, focusing on the user and how it's going to benefit the business.

Creating space to take risks

[00:02:52] Richard: That's great. You mentioned risk there. Amy, maybe I'll come to you and talk a little bit about how we encourage our companies to create space to take risks within our organizations.

[00:03:06] Amy: Yeah, absolutely. You have to take risk in order to grow, it's just a matter of fact. I personally have learned to embrace it and love it over the years. Interestingly, you should talk about the kind of top-down help that's required to change culture. I completely agree, I can see that particularly in large companies. But what I have found is that if you ask people who are in the squads, in these kind of cross-functional teams, if they want a change, and if they want to have the knowledge needed to push for those changes, they will without a doubt answer yes. If they're answering no, then you have to ask, why are they in the company, type of situation.

[00:03:53] Amy: But people are going to want to know all the information they can in order to make those risks seem, I don't know, more sensible, or something that they could advise on. So, ask your teams: what knowledge do you think you're missing, what situations do we need to have you having access to, in order to drive this cultural change? I don't want to jump the gun a bit, but getting things like customer empathy into teams, you just ask and then facilitate. Once you know what is needed to drive that cultural change, I think you as the leadership, or even the people in the teams, can push the right direction to make those changes.

[00:04:45] Richard: Yeah, I think encouraging the broader organization and the people in it to get more awareness and have more empathy for the customer, I think is pretty key. Jane, can you share with us maybe some successful techniques that you may have seen or used to really help embed that knowledge and kind of emotional awareness within the company?

[00:05:16] Jane: Yes, of course. And I think it's actually really interesting, because you asked before about how do you then get the company to give you space to take risk. And I think the answer is, not particularly the only answer, but one other thing that I saw, is actually to showcase, if you don't do this, if you don't try to understand your customers, if you don't do your research, this is what could potentially happen. And of course, depending on the companies that you're in, you might want to surface things like, right, you can have reputational damage, or profit loss, or those kind of things, that might make more sense to your particular companies. So I think it's all about tying it back again to their bottom line as well, basically talking the language that they can understand.

Getting the whole company close to customers

[00:06:07] Richard: Yeah, that's great. I think when I was at USAA we used to do, we called it Y-coding[?], where we had days where everybody went and sat with a phone associate and kind of plugged your own headset in and listened. When I was at Vanguard, though, actually the mutual fund investment company in the states, there was a thing called Swiss Army, where everybody was actually expected to serve on the phones and answer questions and take real calls. And it was in part terrifying and in part really, really helpful, on a regular monthly basis, to be able to do that. Amy.

[00:06:46] Amy: Yeah, I just wanted to dive in there. I've seen real success across several companies with that type of stuff. So for example, there was actually a study done by Marks and Spencer years ago around seating plans in their shoe departments. Head office would send down these seating plans and be quite strict about which way they should be, and then when a head office operative went to one of the stores, they'd laid out differently, and they asked why, and it was because the people on the floor knew exactly how people wanted to sit in those seats. So at Clarks, actually, they send people back to the floor every year from head office, you go and work a stint in the shops. I personally had my first job in the Clarks shop, so I knew all about that.

[00:07:37] Amy: And at Secco[?], what we do, we have kind of empathy sessions with our customers, where we invite one of our clients to almost vent, a guided vent, on things that are frustrating them, or even things that are making them really happy. And in that session we have our engineers, we have our head of product, we have people from all across the company listening in and helping to kind of guide the questions to get the insights they need. We then just share that out across the company, and it's completely fascinating to hear from real people, not just talking about one small element of a product that you're building as a feature now, but as their whole job and everything that they have to cope with. It's really eye-opening and I would encourage anyone else to do the same.

Sharing research so people actually absorb it

[00:08:34] Richard: I'm curious how you share that out across the company, because that communication of research to broad communication, I've seen done quite effectively, I've also seen it be like, hey everybody, here's a 45-page research report that you should read between your meetings, which perhaps isn't the most effective way of doing it. So how have you seen, and anybody else as well, Jane and Jason, how have you seen that be successful at kind of really spreading that out in a more accessible way?

[00:09:10] Jason: I'll jump in there. I think it's testing it, trying it. I think there's no one way. Certainly it's storytelling. If you want to gain empathy around user stories and users, people using your products and services, you really need to tell stories. I think one of the good things about storytelling is that if you can ignite the senses, taste, smell, feel in your storytelling, then people can relate to that and they'll take different things, and it becomes memorable that way. And that's really what you want to do through storytelling, you want people to remember, so when people are working on a piece, maybe a tricky problem, there's a reminder as to the stories that are being told.

[00:09:58] Jason: At Babylon we've been having sort of voice of the patient, showing stories from our people using our products. We have decks, we invite pretty much everyone from the company to come to these sessions, playbacks. There's a variety of things. I think it's around that content design as well. People have different schedules, so you need to adapt to that to pass it out, so it isn't a document just hidden in a Google folder.

[00:10:30] Richard: Right. Jane.

[00:10:32] Jane: Yeah, so I think what I found really useful as well, when sometimes it does have to be in Google Docs, or any kind of documentation really, is to sort of hit it to the right persons at the right time. And that's because, particularly for very large companies, everybody is working on very specific pieces, for example. And if you have a very broad research, foundational research, and then it hits them at not the right time, the effect would be like, well, that's great, but I can't really actually do anything with that, what do you want me to do? So it becomes rather useless, for lack of better words. But if we can highlight, right, these are the pieces that you might want to pay attention to, because this might be related to your projects, or your areas of expertise or interest, it becomes slightly more actionable.

[00:11:39] Richard: Yeah, for sure.

[00:11:41] Amy: Yeah, couldn't agree more actually. I see that as the design function's, one of our jobs basically is making sure we get the insights into the projects at the right time. On a practical note, we also host watch parties for our sessions, because watching them, or being there live, is probably the best way for you to interpret that information. And yes, appreciate the hidden nature of a Confluence document in our case. So it's really nice to invite people, have some time set aside in their diary specifically to digest those insights.

[00:12:24] Richard: Jason, I can see you've got something to add.

[00:12:26] Jason: Yeah, I mean, a hundred percent on that. Getting different people from different levels within the organization, why not inviting senior leadership? The best way to understand the customer, and I think Richard you've spoken about this, is being involved, getting people on the support lines, listening to calls, all that sort of stuff. It's so rich when you have that firsthand experience. And again, making sure engineers, product are at these research events too, because again that's the way of seeding those stories. When people have seen it firsthand they can tell that story, and then things go on, oh yeah, but you remember I saw this, the user was using it like that.

[00:13:06] Richard: I totally agree. I think I've been involved in design leadership for about 25 years now, and I've never seen as many kind of aha moments from people from all sorts of backgrounds, whether it's executives, technology, legal even, as when they're sitting behind that one-way mirror, watching, or monitoring these days, watching a live usability test or research session go on, and actually really observe and go, oh, I get it now, this is how that decision, all these sets of decisions that I make, are going to impact real human beings. Jane, did you have something?

[00:13:44] Jane: Yeah, I was just going to emphasize the nature of collaboration when we were doing research, and having people outside of just design and research to follow it. In my other life we had projects where we bring the engineers along, that build the products, to see firsthand how users use it. At that time we did it because there was a difference in opinions between the different departments on the particular projects. And it's only when they are face to face with the customers and they see the customer struggling, and they're like, oh, okay, I get it, I know. And surprisingly it actually becomes sort of a bond for the team as well. So it's not just bringing the customers to the front of the team, it's actually become a bonding moment for the different departments that were previously slightly on edge, for example.

Levelling up skills across the organization

[00:14:48] Richard: Yeah, it could be really quite powerful, I think. So, I think customer empathy and understanding, kind of walking in the shoes if you will of the customers, is one thing. I think there's another component, which, Amy, I think you touched on earlier, so I'm going to come to you first, which is around education and knowledge of our employees, and how we can help them to kind of almost level up, to become more of a T-shaped type of skill set, to really broaden the top of that T in terms of design and experience education and techniques that they can, if not use all the time in their jobs, at least participate in and leverage. So can you, Amy, talk a little bit about successes you've seen there, and then Jane and Jason, we'll come to you.

[00:15:42] Amy: Yeah, of course. It's almost like you've seen the topic of my talk, it's stunning really. So, the reason I was saying that we have people from other areas of the business in these empathy sessions, or usability testing, or depth interviews, any type of research, is because we've actually been running little mini skills exchange sessions with the people in these other teams. Now obviously Secco[?] is quite a small company, but I've seen this work in larger companies with thousands of employees as well.

[00:16:18] Amy: You simply offer up your skills for exchange and invite anyone in the company to come along. You give them a brief kind of title and synopsis of what they are. So I've run sessions around how to conduct usability testing, how to look at card sorts, and in those sessions I'm very much sharing the basics of what they are, when you use them. We do a little kind of practical session on how to use them, which is always fun and silly, and then we talk about how you would report on the findings that you get.

[00:16:55] Amy: And so by having that shared knowledge and understanding within your squads, they will seek out that validation that us as the user experience designers or researchers would normally look for ourselves. You will find the engineering team calling up, can we validate that, I think that's an assumption, or, have we run this past some real users before we build it, because we don't want to have to do another iteration.

[00:17:26] Amy: And it works the other way around. I've picked up a whole bunch of knowledge around our coding and how our setup works, so that I can design things that are going to be — I mean, I'm still learning — going to be much more sympathetic to our build, but still provide great user experience. It's amazing. We're measuring our success with it, we're kind of asking people to fill in questionnaires about how confident they feel in these skills, and I'm reaping the rewards basically. It's fantastic.

[00:18:00] Richard: That's great. When you have your engineering partners asking if we can do another usability test, that's a huge signal of success. Jason, how have you seen this been successful at driving education throughout the organization?

[00:18:16] Jason: Yeah, it's a good question. I think, to Amy's point, it's that team sport, isn't it. If a team's functioning really well, everyone owns the design, and then you open with that. If the product fails it's because of everyone's efforts, a line of code, or bad usability, or whatever it might be, product market fit. So everyone should be inquiring and challenging and going, is this the best, why are we doing this?

[00:18:45] Jason: And I think from my experience in terms of embedding that knowledge and that user-centered approach — I learned this from some work I did a few years ago working with elite coaches and sports people, and also this is something that surgeons often talk a lot about — is that see one, do one, teach one. You see the thing, you see how to do something, you do it yourself to learn the techniques, and then you teach it to other people. And it's that knowledge transfer within teams, like engineers coming to usability testing sessions or research sessions and then understanding the questions that we're asking. I love it when a developer is actually going to me, so why are we doing that, and they're playing back the questions I'd be asking a user when they're doing that stuff. That's great, that for me is a result, challenging that we make the best products.

[00:19:43] Richard: That's great. Jane, I know you've got something to chat here.

[00:19:46] Jane: Yeah, so I completely agree with Amy and Jason, I think definitely it's like a team effort. And I think what I see successfully is also to, how do you call it, be very strategic in terms of the items that you wanted to use as a sample, for example, or that first project, that first thing that you start to insert that first bit of education, and not just come across as, right, these are all the suites of toolkits that we need to use, and we need to use all of them regardless of the timing of our product. So I think the strategic and conscious decisions on when to input particular lessons would be very important as well, because again, we are working together, we're not better than everybody else in the team, for example.

Aligning on shared goals and measures

[00:20:49] Richard: Yeah, I love that, Jane, that idea of kind of purposefulness and selecting the right, helping people to understand what the right tool for the right job is, rather than kind of a blind application of every design and usability technique that we teach in all situations. Finding that right tool is key. We're approaching the end of our time here, but there is one more topic I'd like us to touch on just briefly, and Amy, I think you mentioned this when we were talking about the education piece. There's the idea of how do we align the organization upon shared goals and shared systems of measurement, so that we can all be rowing in the same direction, trying to achieve the same thing, and kind of almost have the assist mentality. And what I mean by that is, I don't get rewarded for scoring a goal, I get rewarded for, if I may use a football metaphor, I get rewarded for assisting with a goal. So how have you all seen that within your organizations, successes or failures in terms of aligning on shared goals? Jane, maybe come to you first on that.

[00:22:02] Jane: So, sorry, how do you measure it?

[00:22:06] Richard: Yes, how do we align functional goals, what are some signs of success that we're being successful at spreading this culture within our organizations?

[00:22:13] Jane: Yeah, I think one other thing that I see interestingly is that when, at the start of a project for example, everybody agreed, right, these are what good looks like for our project, what success looks like. And so when we released it and see the difference in the metrics, or drop-offs[?] or whatever it is that you agreed on upfront, it becomes sort of a celebration for everybody. It's not just like, design, you did this, or, oh development, you're really great, thank you very much for your hard work. It's just also mindfully mentioning everybody that had worked on that particular project as well, and not just sort of golden child one particular department. I think that sort of worked really quite well so far. But I mean, I can see that you have something to add as well.

[00:23:10] Amy: Yeah, I think at the very start of a project, all the way from like the idea or generation, invite everyone to the table. It's about getting, it's that empathy thing: I care about this, I have been involved in the delivery, I've helped work out the solution design, I've been part of the design sprint or design workshops. I'm very, very attached to the idea that great design doesn't just come from the designer. And in fact I'm probably the worst designer in the room, because I've got these other five or more people around me who are helping to generate the really cool ideas.

[00:23:53] Amy: And then you find when it comes to fine-tuning those ideas, they've all been in the room when you've watched that usability test going on, when you've spoken about that idea and how you should build it. So one of my squads in particular is just performing so highly, because we all understand the problem, the solution, and now we're all able to fine-tune the solution, and it's like a quick Slack conversation about, oh, should we filter this way or that way, discussion done, and then it's implemented. And it's so good to see.

[00:24:30] Richard: Yeah, I love that. And you just made me think that we talked a lot about driving empathy for the customer, but you really need to practice empathy in general, for ourselves and our other employees and everybody in the organization, not just for the customers. Jason.

[00:24:49] Jason: Yeah, it's exactly what I was about to say actually. I talked about this in my presentation. A hundred percent, Jane, it's making sure we double down on measurable outcomes, like what are we actually trying to achieve, but then looking at that end-to-end service proposition journey, what's happening, and then getting cross-functional teams together. So it's not just about the product teams, it's also around the operational teams, in our case in Babylon it's also around clinical teams who are delivering the service to patients. So making sure you have a good cross-section of people that are involved in the delivery and the building of that service, to understand what demands there are on each of us, and then how we can pull together, get that alignment, everyone can then understand what pains and constraints we have, to then build the best experiences for the members, for our users, but also for our internal users as well, so we can deliver stuff.

[00:25:49] Richard: Two of my past CEOs from large organizations have both said something along the lines of, the customer experience can be no greater than the employee experience, and I think that what you just said there really encapsulates that.