This is a short presentation I recently gave in Sydney, Australia. In this talk I discussed the 5 key elements behind changing the behaviour of our UX team at 3 Mobile. This was a case study discussion, and hence there was far more discussion on the journey, than prescriptive recommendations you can take from these slides. I have a larger presentation on Managing UX Teams which you can find under the "More by user" tab. Enjoy.

1. People First
Maturing your UX team
Dr. Rod Farmer
Director, Mobile Experience
Twitter: @rodfarmer - #aimiaux
AIMIA Digital Future, 24 February 2010

2. What I’ll be sharing
•My story at 3 Mobile
•Growing a strong UX culture
•Why people matter
•5 things that worked for us

3. Head of UX / Digital Strategy @ 3 Mobile

4. UX had some issues ...
•Ineffective collaboration and communication
•Very low moral - withdrawn and under-appreciated
•Extremely creative people exhibiting a severe lack of
creativity
•Very poor team engagement

5. Fix? Skills-based UX Maturity
http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/images/ux.jpg

6. unrecognised No awareness of the importance of User Experience
recognised ad-hoc - Importance of UX has been recognised; Supporting processes are being put in place
considered repeatable - Understanding of ʻgood qualityʼ UX; Importance of user focus
implemented documented - Users are being involved in processes; Build-up of UX skills and technology
integrated managed - UX is fully integrated; process & methodologies are being improved & evolved
institutionalised cultural - Processes are UX-led; UX is fully embedded in culture
Fix? UX Maturity Models

7. Focus: People-Centric Focus
Source: Symplicit.com.au

8. Building UX teams
Imagination lies at the heart of creativity
and innovation. If you can’t share that
imagination, you’re simply dead in the water.

9. Building UX teams
More than skills, tools and techniques,
arguably the most important thing you can
do is to get your people in the right roles

10. Traditional silos disappeared
UX team feedback signi cantly improved
Signi cant improvements in innovation (measured)
UX buy-in (funding, participation, strategic role)
Industry awards
Signi cant improvement in team healthcheck

11. 12 mth turnaround
If you could engage your design
team like this, what sort of designs do
you think they would produce?
Before: After:
Perfectionistic, Competitive, Aggressive, Avoidance, Still slightly Perfectionistic, Self-Actualised,
Approval, Conventional Humanistic, Affiliative

12. So what did we do?
Well, nothing that special. We just focussed on people first.

13. 1. Go the Gemba
http://gorton-machine.org:8080/family/images/chas_dor/batch4/shop1_large.jpg

14. 2. Forget about ideal archetypes

15. Do’ers / Carers / Marshalls / Generals
http://kualistudentux.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/j0435883.jpg

16. 3. Set the bar: Design and Quality Circles
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bunnyrel/4289783249/sizes/l/

17. 4. Take a long hard look in the mirror

18. 5. Share the magic
http://cf1.themoviedb.org/backdrops/6f4/4c6ebe725e73d65f7c0006f4/penn-and-teller-off-the-deep-end-original.jpg

19. Finally, Protect and measure culture initiatives

20. At the end of the day ... People first.
Source: Symplicit.com.au

21. Follow me on Twitter - I promise to say something interesting every once in a while
@rodfarmer
Mobile Experience
Rod Farmer
Director, Research and Strategy
E: rodf@mobileexperience.com.au