Nestlé's Design Org Transformation

Dil Gabriele Dell'Aiera at UXDX Community: Leading Design Innovation: From Teams to Market Impact. Video: https://youtu.be/snfUllXymr0

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.

Nestlé and the IT UX team

[00:00:00] Gabriele: Hello everyone. My name is Gabriele, and I'm also very excited to be here, my first experience as a presenter at UXDX. Today I will share the story of how we transformed our service delivery model within the Nestlé IT organization, to expand our product reach and enhance the UX maturity of our organization. In the key content of this presentation, I will give you more understanding of the environment and of what our mission is; how we successfully manage design demand and increase our services at speed; how we even provide UX services at zero cost, reaching any type of team regardless of budget or speed. And finally, I will conclude by highlighting our efforts on reducing low-maturity requests and focusing strategically on maximizing UX value within the organization.

[00:01:04] But first, let me give you a bit of clarity on Nestlé's size and the environment. Nestlé is a company with more than 155 years, more than 2,000 brands worldwide, around 275,000 employees, more than 188 countries where we sell our products, 77 countries, and 94.4 billion in group sales in 2022. To put it in simple words, Nestlé sells one billion Nestlé products every day. These are the most famous products that you might have recognized. My favorite is definitely Nespresso [?], which I have with me, and water, mainly San Pellegrino.

[00:01:58] A bit of background on the environment here. I would like to provide you a bit of information to make the next slide a bit easier to understand. Nestlé has been undergoing an agile transformation since 2020, which led to the creation of the UX team. Since 2020, the IT Vision to Life manifesto has consistently emphasized the agile mindset and user centricity as fundamental principles. Then, within the IT stream, there are numerous products and product streams, resulting in a high level of diversity, which includes services, not only products. And lastly, it's important to know that the presentation that I'm going to show you represents the collective efforts of many people in my team, and my role here is to provide you a glimpse of the amazing work that my team has done.

[00:03:02] Introducing my team: we are organized, and we operate, in a way similar to what Nielsen Norman describes as a centralized team, as we are the only design team in IT Global. Each member of our internal team is dynamically assigned to one of multiple product developments, with the benefit, on one side, of working on a very wide product diversity, but also seeing UX at a high level. So in essence, our team has a dual role. On one side, we act as an internal design agency for the most strategic IT products, while we also serve as a gatekeeper of the employee experience across all IT Global products. Therefore we also act as a sort of design center of excellence, responsible for establishing and maintaining design standards, as well as sharing knowledge and best practices.

The requests we couldn't serve

[00:04:09] Now let's have a look at the common requests that we received three years ago, and the problems that they caused. It was quite common to receive requests such as, "I have an interesting project to propose to you for next month. Can you assist?" And unfortunately our response would often be something like, "Sorry, we don't have capacity at the moment." The situation is an example of the typical chargeback drawback, where resources are allocated specifically on time and on budget, so we cannot help if we are not organized in that way, and we are limited by the number of people in the team.

[00:04:56] Another typical scenario was a statement like, "I'm very interested in UX, but we don't have budget." This was painful to hear, because thanks to the agile transformation there was a growing curiosity about UX within the IT departments, but we couldn't fulfill those needs at that stage. And a third example is a consequence of agile practice in a negative way, where product teams are required to deliver continuously and rapidly, and in this context UX was increasingly reduced to merely validating assumptions, rather than being given the opportunity to do our job better.

[00:05:39] As we encountered these challenges, we realized that the problem did not lie in the requests per se from our customers, but rather in our ability to effectively enable and elevate these requests, bringing them to the next level of UX maturity.

Mapping the maturity of requests

[00:06:02] The questions that we received at the beginning were mainly such as, "What's wrong with my design?" or, "Could you help me compare two products and tell me which one provides a better UX?" or, "Can you help me tell my customer that my product is good?" At that time we were asked to provide the typical approval stamp. But later on we also realized the potential political impact that our work could have in the organization, so storytelling became an intriguing avenue to explore in this regard.

[00:06:46] The interesting fact, though, is that even if at the beginning we were being asked these low-maturity questions, the good news was that our customer retention rate has been consistently high from the beginning. After working with some of these initial requests, customers came back to us with different, more mature inquiries, demonstrating a greater willingness to incorporate UX methodologies from the start. These types of requests were like, "What do people expect from my product? Why do people struggle with my solutions? How can we effectively design a service with multiple complexities within it?" This change in mindset has helped us gain more insight into how we have been maturing the UX mindset, by performing our job well but also maintaining an open mindset.

[00:07:43] I shared these insights with my team by mapping the most frequent requests, and we noticed a certain pattern in the UX service needs. Different teams with varying levels of maturity were going through an overall customer maturity request life cycle. And please, don't take this graph as something statistical; it's just a summary of our internal conversations and considerations.

[00:08:19] Some teams approached us with requests like, "Can you help me create a logo?" We had to maintain a professional attitude and say no most of the time, but there were cases where we instead said yes. The reason we said yes is that we saw that moment as an investment in a long-lasting relationship. We knew that working with these customers would increase our impact and presence within the organization. So in some cases we said yes, with the intention of explaining and training the customers.

[00:08:55] Overall, we mapped three different stages: visual requests, tactical requests and strategic requests. In the visual stage we encountered lower-maturity requests, such as logo design and quick UI fixes. In the tactical stage we found requests related to product comparison, storytelling and feature design, with the highest level being product design. The third one, the most strategic one, consisted of requests related to product strategy, or UX at a high level, involving initiatives or domains across multiple products.

[00:09:37] The other interesting aspect is that the quantity of requests was not evenly distributed across the board. We observed that the majority of the requests fell under the tactical category, while our aim was to prioritize our efforts in the strategic areas as much as possible. So we understood that we had to establish a framework to address the most frequent requests, while simultaneously fostering UX maturity within the organization, generating more demand for the strategic initiatives.

Services built around maturity levels

[00:10:11] So finally, we started building our services around our customers' needs and maturity levels. By doing so, we created capability-building plans and guidance for the various user groups, including enthusiasts and product teams. This allows us to continuously communicate and engage with the IT community, emphasizing the importance of designing user-centered products and integrating UX methodologies into the product development life cycle.

[00:10:47] Then, in the second stage, we developed a more flexible, on-demand UX service model. This enabled any product team to quickly and temporarily add a UX expert to the working group, providing them with the necessary support and expertise. And last, as a centralized UX team, we focus our expertise primarily on the strategic areas. We supervise and guide execution in other layers, but we ensure that our knowledge and skills are utilized where they can have the greatest impact.

[00:11:26] We also have a dedicated individual who continuously works on evolving UX maturity from both a top-down and a bottom-up approach, and this person is responsible for elevating UX maturity as an end-to-end service within the organization. And by the way, if you're interested in this position, please note that we are currently seeking someone for this role. If you are interested, contact me via LinkedIn, and you will see how to apply via our portal.

Core, adjacent and transformation layers

[00:11:57] Now let's have a look at how we created more flexible services. To continuously evolve our services and portfolio, we mapped our ambitions and customers into a canvas with three different layers: core, adjacent and transformation. This innovation model ensures that our services remain relevant to the company objectives and have a significant impact.

[00:12:22] Simply put, the core is our core business: Work for 360 [?]. It's where we stay in the organization. We can do incredible things in every other stream, but if we don't make Work for 360 happy, if we don't create impact here, we don't contribute to the IT objectives. Therefore our strongest efforts and the majority of our internal resources are dedicated to this area. These are the products where we build the intranet, for instance, or the more strategic portals, et cetera.

[00:12:57] The adjacent one instead is a layer that consists of all the products and services that revolve around Work for 360. Often these are the most important partners and customers, such as HR, finance, procurement, marketing and sales. These streams involve the development of numerous digital products and services, but sometimes it can be challenging for us to keep track of every development in this area. And finally, transformation is the layer that reaches any corner of the organization, including anything that happens in the markets, and the developer community, for instance. Reaching these layers means that we have succeeded in creating a user-driven organization.

[00:13:46] For each of these layers, we have organized our efforts. When it comes to creating top-notch Work for 360 products and services, that is managed end to end by the core team, with the assistance of contractors. In the case of adjacent products, we want to ensure that even if they are not directly designed by us, they still adhere to the UX standards and values. To achieve this, we enable our design partners to easily onboard and work on behalf of the UX core team.

[00:14:21] How did we do that? Through our pre-aligned costs, they can provide quality UX services while maintaining the necessary know-how. Before this, we noticed that external design agencies lacked decision-making power and often focused solely on visualizing business ideas, without incorporating research and usability testing into the product life cycle. On the other hand, this is because agencies wanted to sell their services and continue working with those customers, which limited their ability to challenge the design process, or to help mature the UX mindset within those teams. Which is natural: product teams were paying for those people. "I pay you, and you do what I want." There was friction in them challenging that aspect.

[00:15:13] By having contractors from our team, they are empowered to have a say and express their opinions without hesitation, because we can help them, we can empower them, and we can defend their choices based on the principles established in the organization. And lastly, we have recently established different communities of champions. I will also show something about this. This is because our goal is to bring UX capabilities to product teams regardless of the size of budget, availability to anyone.

Why an internal service beats an external agency

[00:15:50] Here are some benefits of why external agencies cannot compete with internal services. I'm telling you this because sometimes people ask me, "What's the difference in going through your services, if I can choose to directly ask an agency and do whatever I want designed?" These are some of the points. Selection: because we are experts in the field, we know who the good ones are for that project, so we act as a filter. We select the best ones for each product, reducing the risk of working with unable or unqualified contractors. Quality control: we supervise and guide, and we are the best ones to do that, so we make sure that the outcome matches the design standards. Consistency: we ensure consistency across digital products. When it comes to finding trade-offs in how to use the design system, we help them still find that consistency.

[00:17:02] We also have an in-depth understanding of the organization. Imagine someone coming from outside, who is new and just jumping into a new project. There's a lot of know-how lacking, and understanding of how things work. Thanks to us, we speed up the process of onboarding people and provide process, tools and learning on how to align with the organization's needs. And it's not only about organizational know-how; it's also providing previous research on similar data or similar products that can be interesting. We also provide the technology platform that I will show you a bit later, so we can improve productivity thanks to technologies such as UserZoom and Figma.

[00:17:53] Additionally, thanks to this model of industrialized services, we have included our services in the IT product catalog, to increase visibility for the customer. Imagine the product catalog as a sort of supermarket where everyone can scroll and see products and services. This is the way we simplified the packaging of our products and made people understand what we do better. It doesn't mean that they can just put what they want in the cart, but it's a way of aligning our UX terminology more with the IT environment and raising more awareness in the product catalog.

Scaling research and design at zero cost

[00:18:35] Now let's talk about how we scale services at zero cost. To enable the ambitious goal of enabling research at zero cost, we had to create an environment to democratize research and design in a sustainable and controlled way. To do this, we enabled two different platforms: UserZoom, now part of UserTesting, and Figma. You might think of these merely as tools for productivity, just another example, but we view them as fundamental platforms for scaling research and design across the organization. UserZoom, along with consultant services, ensures that research is well understood, well trained and well executed, and provides capability at scale, while the Figma enterprise license lets us supervise design across applications and scale the design system more efficiently.

[00:19:39] Here are some examples of how we look at the platforms compared to the typical development life cycle. UserZoom and Figma basically cover the whole development life cycle, from idea to deploy, and enable different channels of champions to be empowered: with a user testing boot camp, which is a matter of providing a laboratory experiment for them to learn research capabilities; with enabling QXscore, which is one score that measures attitudinal and behavioral data at scale; but also, on the Figma side, providing empowerment such as a UI kit library, guidelines and templates. And we keep growing and giving new skills to the organization through UserTesting University, NovoEd courses and Figma trainings.

[00:20:47] Here is a really brief explanation of the communities we are building. On one side we have the explorers, a select group of people that will undergo a learning program, so that they will be self-sufficient in creating and running research. On the other side of the same coin are the contributors, the ones willing to share and provide feedback to the IT product owners. And on the other side we have a new one, the prototypers. They are the ones driven to explore new ideas, and create user interfaces and designs that are ready for development.

Strategy by altitude, and results

[00:21:34] To recap a little of what we've been saying, and to show how we are focusing on the highest view, here is a presentation of our strategy in a graph. On one side we have the three innovation dimensions: core, adjacent and transformation. On the other side we have a representation of the altitude of impact that we can deliver within the organization, with the street view being the most detail-oriented one and 30,000 feet being the most strategic one. In this perspective, the UX core is primarily positioned in the core business, with a stronger presence in high-level initiatives, closely designing all the key Work for 360 strategic products. In the adjacent dimension, we have contractors through the design partners, focusing on activities ranging from sub-initiative to street view. And lastly, in the transformation dimension, we have UX champions, who primarily work at the user story level. All of these people are empowered by our design platform, which provides governance, scalability and quick enablement. This platform enables our team to provide what Gartner refers to as total user experience supervision.

[00:22:53] And finally, just to close with a few numbers, and then I'll leave you for questions. Thanks to this new approach, we saw research increase 46% compared to 2022, in one year. Demand increased more than three times in the last three years. The Work for 360 core business dedicated up to 10% of its budget to UX activities, and we had more than 2,000 people involved in our research, which also had an impact in other adjacent work in HR, marketing and sales and so on. Thank you very much for listening, and I'm open for questions now.

Q&A

[00:23:39] Host: Thank you very much, Gabriele. That was really insightful. I was writing down questions and you were answering them as you were going through. Just a reminder to everybody out there: if you have any questions for Gabriele, please do write them in on whichever platform you're watching on. I have one that I was a little bit unsure about. You mentioned that you were being over-requested, people were asking for too much and you just didn't have the capacity for it. Then you mentioned that you were splitting up into your core focus and trying to train people, and you went into the tools. But are you spending more of your time now on training? What percentage are you putting into making people able to self-serve, versus doing the work yourselves?

[00:24:37] Gabriele: That's a good question. The majority of the team is focusing not on training, but mainly on really working at initiative and domain level in the strategic areas. We want to focus there. I have eight people in the team, and basically seven of them are focusing 99% of their efforts there. I have one person mainly dedicated to the overall picture, making sure that we do have those programs running. And these programs are not necessarily run by us. For instance, we also leverage capability in the organization coming from the learning experience team, but also from the consultants from UserTesting and Figma, so that we can reuse what we already have and just reshape it into our program.

[00:25:29] Host: Awesome. So you have external help. Is that one person coordinating the effort of other people? Because, as you mentioned, you have your user testing, you have your champions, you have your Figma thing. Are they the person who's creating all of that, or is some other team helping you out?

[00:25:48] Gabriele: We have one person supervising and guiding the overall strategy, where we want to go in terms of maturing the organization to the next level. But then for each platform we have a product owner looking at the success metrics, measuring how things are going, and providing feedback on the performance. But it's not a full-time job. It's someone acting temporarily and looking at it from that point of view.

[00:26:23] Host: Excellent. And the last one, I guess, on this trend of my three questions: are you worried that, as the maturity goes up, because as you were saying, as maturity goes up the requests become more strategic, you'll find you have a bottleneck again?

[00:26:44] Gabriele: Yes, it might happen, also because we structured the team three years ago with a certain type of expertise. The more we go up, the more we will need service designers, for instance, and I don't have so many. So the spirit is to remain flexible through design partners: having a really strong relationship with them, a strong way of managing design requests, and becoming one team, even though they are people with a different contract, basically.

[00:27:17] Host: Okay, excellent. I just saw a question come in from O [?], I hope I pronounced that correctly. How does an aspiring UX designer navigate improving weaknesses and join the UX composer [?] community?

[00:27:34] Gabriele: That's an amazing question. We inspire them through different types of activities. Within the communities, we have different types of engagement. It can be online: we have someone in the team dedicated to sharing some new pills of knowledge, or opening up a new conversation and having people share in that conversation. But we also have some events where we gather based on a topic. For instance, we have an accessibility day where we talk about accessibility. It can also be scattered, depending on the platform. We have conversations and knowledge sharing among researchers within the UserTesting platform. We have conversations in the Figma community, sharing, for example, how Nespresso [?] is handling the design system compared to Pina [?], and we have this conversation and we learn from each other.

[00:28:35] Host: Awesome. I think that's about to bring us to time. Thanks very much for sharing. It was really great to get an insight into the journey that you're on. And actually, where do you see yourself going? What do you think the future holds for your transformation?

[00:28:53] Gabriele: You know, we didn't mention AI, right? So that's the first presentation without AI, and it's very likely to be really disruptive. Let's see. I think with AI we will see ourselves more and more in the governance perspective, becoming the design center of excellence more than being directly involved in any design execution. So I think that role will be our next transformation.

[00:29:24] Host: Excellent. That was an exciting one, AI.

[00:29:29] Gabriele: Yes. Also scary, guys.

[00:29:31] Host: Well, thank you once again, Gabriele. I hope everybody out there enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you.