In many companies, UX's value is not understood by stakeholders and management. At The Economist, we also faced this challenged. In the past few years, we've been able to make a good progress in communicating the value of UX and also in shifting the product development culture to become more user-centric. When we started this journey, the question we received was "How is UX different from BA?" Now, the question we get is "Can we validate this with real users?" In this presentation, I shared a little bit about our journey and lessons learned so you can start implementing this in your own company. Presented at Digital Customer Experience Conference in Chicago 9/13/2016

1. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Unlocking the potential of
your UX team
Danny Setiawan, Lead UX, The Economist | 13 Sep 2016

2. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Agenda
• Quick Introduction
• At The Economist
• Empowering your UX team
2

3. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
My Background
3
15+ years of experience in Product Design and UX
Has worked with established brands (The Economist,
Yahoo!, Microsoft) as well as startups
C U R R E N T LY
• Lead UX at The Economist
• UXD Instructor at General Assembly
• Product/UX mentor at Starta Accelerator

4. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Empowering your UX Team
4
At The Economist

5. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
2014
• UX was seen as a
blocker/approver
• UX was included at
implementation stage
• “What’s the difference between
UX and BA?”
TODAY
• UX is seen as core member of
Cross- Functional Team
• UX team is included at every
stage
• “Can we validate this with real
users?”
5

6. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Pivotal Project 1/2
• Platform migration for our flagship app in 2015
• Biz benefits: Significant cost savings and “free” features as the
platform gets updated
• We chose the platform used by our colleague (diff. department)
• Process: Migrate then get UX to review (approve)
6

7. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Pivotal Project 2/2
• UX raised potential risk or losing subscribers due to usability
issue/habit disruption
• To mitigate, we proposed an approach we call Usability Test
Driven Development. Usability Test to define feature prioritization
• We decided to measure usability by using System Usability Scale
(SUS) with beta users
7

8. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
The Wins
• Proof of how UX activities deliver business value
• The cross-functional team is aligned on a common goal to
optimize UX to achieve business goal
• UX team is empowered to contribute more and stakeholders
understand what UX team offers
8

9. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Empowering your UX Team
9
Empowering your UX team

10. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Empowerment
To give ability and opportunity to make a difference
PurposeProcessPeople
10

11. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
People
• Assess your UX Team’s capability,:
• User Research
• Interact Design and Information Architecture
• Visual Design
• Prototyping
• Build towards teams of T-shaped UXers to optimize flow (1 UX
responsible for end-to-end process)
11

12. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
T-Shaped UX
User
Research
Interaction
Design/ IA
Visual Design PrototypeLevel 1
Level 2
Level 3
Visual Design
Visual Design
12

13. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Process
• Include UX in every step of the process: to define problem, ideate
on potential solutions, prototype and testing them (not just to
implement pre-defined solution)
• Challenge UX to measure effectiveness of their work (part of
testing solution)
• Get other cross-functional team members involved in UX activities
(i.e. observe usability test)
13

14. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Design Thinking Process
14

15. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Lean and Design Thinking
Empathize
Define
Ideate Prototype
Test
15

16. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Purpose
• Everybody wants to make a difference (including your UX Team ).
• Align what UX does to a business goal. Choose a metric to
measure baseline and end-goal.
• Bring every conversation back to that metric.
• Share the progress regularly and give access to everyone in your
team to view it in their own time.
16

17. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Pirate Metrics
Acquisition Activation Retention Revenue Referral
Source: Master of 500 hats - Dave McClure’s blog
From leads to
trying out product
From new user to
returning
From returning user
to paying
From paying user
to advocate
17

18. | @dsetia_1 | #UnlockingUX |
Empowering your UX Team
18
Thank you!
dnys tw n@ gmail.c om | ds etia.c om | @ ds etia_1