UX Inter-disciplinary Meetings & Workshops
A simple, elegant way to present user sentiment across common, well-defined journeys on a site. Using a body of user research which we already possessed, I spearheaded the design of a graphic that could easily communicate how our users felt about commmon journeys. (For example: finding a doctor on a healthcare website.)
Problem & Goals
The UX team lacked effective buy-in across the department in UX challenges, goals, and involvement. Too often we were brought into projects either too late or not at all. We wanted to ensure that UX became an essential part of the process for everyone across the organization.
Role & Team
Role: UX/UI Lead
Collaborators: UI designer, developers, content writers/creators, a traditional graphic desiger, a marketing manager, and a data analyst.
Tools: Presentation software (Powerpoint or Keynote), white boards
Process
- Inviting stakeholders and specialists across disciplines.
- Establishing a regular (weekly) meeting to discuss UX.
- Holding design workshops with the entire inter-disciplinary team.
- Handoff & adoption
Solution
I, as the UX/UI lead, established an inter-disciplinary team across all teams in the marketing department to discuss UX matters: both specific to our organization and, barring that, general UX concepts, patterns, and trends; in addition to building towards a regular (at least quarterly) design workshop to come up with novel solutions to some of our most pressing issues.
These were defined through years of user research...
Interdisciplinary Team Members ("UX Super Friends")
We organized members (whom I dubbed the "UX Super Friends") with myriad roles and talents within the department:
From the web/digital team:
- Content specialists/writers
- Front-end developers
- Back-end developers
- UI designers
From the marketing teams:
- Graphic designers (who create signage, print ads, etc.)
- Data analysts
- Marketing managers
- Content creators (such as podcasters)
The wide variety of expertise in the group ensured that we were able to discuss UX matters from many perspectives, which often led to vibrant and constructive discussions. The regular (weekly or bi-weekly) meetings (45-60 minutes) ensured that not only was UX top-of-the-mind with the group members, but also that they discussed with their teams these topics.
Design Workshops
The regular UX meetings would generate many problems on the site that we would need to design around. So, to take advantage of this group who was now becoming better versed about UX, we held semi-regular design workshops (3-6 hours) to discuss the problem, brainstorm ideas, and create mockups/wireframes that bring it all together.
Outcome & Impact
- Increased awareness of UX matters across the department and organization as a whole.
- Brought UX to the forefront of conversations surrounding departmental and organizational priorities and projects.
- Helped design novel solutions that would not have be generated without the myriad perspectives.
Through this group, we not only spread the word about the importance of thinking about our users in all of our work, but we also were able to come up with creative solutions to design problems that we had struggled with or avoided for a long time. Including, but not limited to: doctor profile pages, find-a-doctor search, top navigation, etc.