 How do you build a UX culture in a company that doesn't value UX? What if you're the only designer? What about if you wanted to get promoted in the same company, how would you do it? Okay, so I picked up big time because I did not record on this camera and I just recorded the Zoom call, so the quality of this is gonna be terrible. Sorry about that, folks. Hi, I'm Chris, previously the head of design and now founder of UX Playbook. Today, I'll be speaking to one of my mentees about her two struggles. UX is not valued in her company and how to get promoted. I'll share tactics that I've used and a step-by-step process. Hopefully, she can get her promotion soon. Now, let's jump on the call. So, we have two main topics today. One is build a UX team and the second is career development. So, the company was founded 25 years ago and it's very engineering-driven. They built the whole product without a designer or nobody really values UX. Therefore, they don't really know how to do it and then you're expected as the lone designer to change the world, but you don't have a team. You're a team of one. To prove to your manager or that UX is worth investing in, you need to make an impact but it's hard to make an impact when there's just so much work and the only measure of success is how many mock-ups you deliver on a weekly or daily basis. That loop just goes around. So, it's like, well, I want to do some of this other stuff but I can't because I'm just producing and executing and there's basically no way to get out of this loop unless you actually slow down and have some more time. Well, the first is it's really hard to change company culture unless it's driven down from the top. That's just some of the realities of company building but that doesn't mean that you can't drive it from the bottom. So, the first example here is what we did in the previous places I worked which is training. We called this UX onboarding. It's important because one, you're saying expectation for engineers who have started, you know, just started so they're fresh, right? They have no idea of anything company culture, how the team works, but you can actually just quickly swoop in and be like, hey, you know, I'm from UX team. This is what we do. This is why we do it and this is why we're important. This is how we can work together better, right? So that's a really good ground that you're laying or foundation you're laying to the new people that are coming in and you don't even have to do this with new people. You can actually do it with older folks. So, folks that have never done this training before, right? Because it really depends on how much you're hiring at our last place we're working at. We're bringing on a lot of engineers almost weekly. So we did 250 people in one quarter, I believe. However, you know, it really depends on the size of your company and how ambitious you are, but basically give everybody a level set. Hey, this is a training I'm doing. It's only one hour. It's gonna be fun. Include some activities in it. Just kind of explain the whole concept of like design thinking and UX and how it works in software and why it's important. So one is training and that can help with the newbies, but also existing people. So some kind of training. The training doesn't stop in one session because I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of people coming up to you or just kind of asking you questions, but really you have to reiterate that message that you said in the training, right? Like every chance you get, basically. That's one idea. The other idea of kind of affecting company culture is bringing them into the design process. So I remember I read a while ago that Google did this big initiative where the user researchers actually required engineers to sit in on a usability testing session or any sort of test that they would run or customer interviews to really see how their work will be judged, I guess. So I think it's more about usability testing. So that is one. I mean, bringing them into the process is easier said than done, but there's multiple ways that you could bring them into the process where it's in the discovery phase. Maybe engineers don't care about the discovery phase and that's okay. You can bring them into the ideation phase because of course we wanna know our constraints right off the bat and they might like some of that. And then the prototype phase, they're probably involved in any way or you can do kind of quick and dirty tests around the office and be like, hey, can you test this? Is it easy? Like, can you do this specific task, right? Just super, like, what do you think of it? So use them as your testing subjects and then finally involve them in the actual testing with customers. If you do that, if you don't do that, that's still okay. You can use that earlier phase. So those are some ideas of like how you kind of make people understand what good UX is by bringing them into the process and kind of being like, isn't this useful, right? Like before pitching to them about joining a brainstorming or ideation session, you need to pitch the value and really sell it, you know? And it's good practice for you because if you ever think about going into consultancy as a UXer, then you have to sell the client on why ideation is important. So this is just practice for that. So that would be my two ideas. One is training and the other is bringing them into the process. One thing you mentioned, which is how do I prove the impact of UX, but I'm so busy, right? This is a classic one. It's really hard. Okay, so let's talk about how do we provide enough evidence for your manager to be like, oh, it is worth investing in. And there's a couple of ways. I think training and bringing people into the process will help because what you'll find is that people will start talking more about UX and bringing you into these conversations. So as soon as your manager sees that, it's like, oh, if an engineer says to your manager, like, oh, we should speak to you when it's anything to do with UX, then you've already won, right? So first it's like winning these, what we call friendlies in the company that really believes in that process and UX in general. Another thing you can do is evidence, right? Like provide evidence. So how do we do this? Let's just say you don't have enough time to kind of analyze what you have already with the products out there. You can do another way where you can look at competitors or adjacent products. Why is one product winning over another? And what you could do is analyze who's better than you in one specific thing that you're working on, right? What did they do and how did they do it? That's basically proof that there's a product out there that maybe focuses more on UX or that's how you could spin it. And you can say, look, they're like huge in this niche that we're in. Why aren't we doing as good? Clearly they're doing something better. And that's fundamentally, that's the real value, right? Like your business wants to win. So if they look at other people winning, then that's a clear sign of they need to move closer to what they're doing to win. For example, if you had like, what's their UX team like? What's their development team like? What's the ratio of designers to devs? Do they publish their design system? Do they write a lot about it? Do they write articles about their users? And what are some successful case studies that they've shown? So I think if you do some more diving around, I think every single company has a competitor. Look, boss, they're doing so much better. Why? Like why have we failed? And that's kind of a good way. The other one is proof of success case studies, which I've already spoke about, but there are wider researchers out there from firms like Envision, McKinsey, and they do a lot of research on how design impacts the business. So like the ROI of design, there's a bunch of research out there already done, you know, dating probably five years ago. So you can kind of bring that as a argument for what you want. But when you do kind of put together this evidence, you wanna be really, really clear on actually what you propose and what you want to do. So it's gotta be aligned with the appetite of your manager. Like some things you propose might never happen. So you've gotta be quite realistic on like what you would do. So I think the first thing you're asked for is more people, no? And then what more people means we can tackle more projects, but also you can focus on the important things like design ops, right? Like how we do research, how we analyze data, how we, you know, fix our process or make it better, anything like that. So come with recommendations that are realistic, but also be hyper specific with your ask right to your manager. Another point I have about you being overloaded. Sure, I think you, I'm not sure if you've had this, you tell me if you had, but you should have a frank conversation with your manager about your workload and how it impacts everything else you do. Have you had that conversation? You'll be surprised how dumb people are. Like even if he knows, he's like, oh, well she's dealing with it, but you're not dealing with it. Like you're not happy with it, right? You're dealing with it, but you're not happy with it. He's just like, he just cares if you're dealing with it. But if you tell him you're not happy with it, then he'll take it more to heart, no? Like in a relationship, if you don't tell your other half that you're not happy, how the hell are they supposed to know? It's completely, you know, it's a, we can't read minds, right? Like we just want the work to get done, but fundamentally, if it's really affecting a lot of other stuff and you're saying, look, I literally have no social life. I can't even cook a meal at home. I have to order. You know, I'm not even working out. Like, you know, I go to sleep at 3 a.m. and I wake up at nine. It's like what you want me to live like this for like the next 10 years. Like that's not going to happen, man. Like basically the impacts of it is you'll just quit. If he doesn't understand, you'll just quit. And he'll be in this shit if you quit, right? He'll have to find and replace you. Replacing someone is really hard. Like all of these reasons that he'll want to keep you happy is enough for him to make some of your recommendations come true. So you need to have that frank conversation. Communicate that, look, if you do this for another six months, it's going to be really hard for you to see a long-term future with him as a working partner, but also the company as a place to come to. Because if nothing changes, then it doesn't really make sense for you for career growth or whatever the reasons are, right? Like, but fundamentally, yeah, just be honest with him and just tell him because he should be the number one person you go to if you can't solve the problem yourself. And it seems like this problem of hiring and doing a bunch of other stuff, you cannot solve, right, without him. The next point here is you should ask your manager about being more involved in strategic roadmaps or some of these more strategic decisions because you're trying to change the culture, right? So you want to be in there in order to change the culture. I think very hard to change a culture from afar. So you need to be in these conversations. And so that means taking time away from you actually designing, but having being on the desk and at the table when it comes to some of these decisions, really like why would he involve you is one of the questions that he will think. And it says like, oh no, like if I involve you then I'm taking time out you to do like design work. But actually you can pitch it to him like, hey, I love to be involved in these strategic conversations when there's a roadmap discussion, when there's a feature development, because I can help you de-risk this project earlier so we don't waste resources, right? There's no point spending three months on planning this feature and we're not gonna build it. Or if we build it, it's gonna take six months and then we release it and nobody likes it, right? So let me help you de-risk it earlier by actually being involved at the beginning. I can think of ways to help you guys kind of come to a good decision. And that's it. If you're interested in UX mentorship, let's jump on a call. Link in the description. Or, or, or, hit the big red button. Here I think, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay, bye.