If you work in a big enterprise, you may have found some design success within individual teams, but it’s time to scale up. How do you expand your UX foothold in the Enterprise, and make it consistent everywhere? We’ve been on this journey for a decade at ExxonMobil, progressing from ad hoc UX with no dedicated designers to embedded design on key projects with a few dozen UX professionals. In this talk, we’ll share our successes and failures, and the forces that made them succeed or fail. We’ll talk about how we used time and corporate culture to build influence and grow organizational literacy. We’ll share how we leveraged different funding models to grow UX, and ways we made real progress through incremental change.

1. Moving Forward
Expanding UX in a Large Enterprise
Wayne Miller
September 2017

3. “My team gets it, but no one else does.”

4. “Nothing is happening.”

5. ExxonMobil’s UX History
2005 20172011 20152014
Upstream
Downstream
2013

6. Where did everyone come from?
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20172010 20152007

7. Facets of Success Maturity Affects Strategy Recent Challenges

8. Facets of Success

9. Business success is the best kind.

10. The work was successful because so many
factors were in our favor.
PM Dev UX PO
1:4
UX:Dev

11. It was an opportunity;
we didn’t engineer it.

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Very large projects are risky.
20172010 20152007

13. Tiny design projects haven’t helped much.
20172010 20152007
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14. Speak in terms of business value.
OK:
“We improved adding wells to the simulation models!”
Better:
“The well planning workflow is 100x faster.”

15. Showing design as a cheaper way to build
products is also important.

16. Prototyping is
cheap and
measurable.

17. Research focuses scope and
prevents waste.

18. Trust is a kind of success.
Part-Time
(Few)
Part-Time
(Many)
Full-Time
(Growth)
Full-Time
(Instead Of)
2006 2009
Full-Time
(Trial)
2015 20162013

19. The first one is free.
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20. Get design a seat at
the table is success.

21. Business pull is success.

22. Maturity affects strategy.

23. Nielsen’s UX Maturity Model
Hostility to
Usability
Developer
Centered
Skunkworks
Dedicated
Budget
Managed
Usability
Systematic
UCD
Integrated
UCD
User Driven
Corporation
2-3 Years 2-3 Years 2-3 Years 6-7 Years 6-7 Years 20 Years

24. Hostility to
Usability
Developer
Centered
Skunkworks
Dedicated
Budget
Managed
Usability
Systematic
UCD
Integrated
UCD
User Driven
Corporation
One could abstract this into three stages.
No UX Mostly Usability Testing More Mature Activities

25. Usability Testing was essential early.
20172010 20152007
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13 Other Projects

26. Individual contributors became managers.
20172011 201520142007
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27. Mature activities required to proceed.
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28. Build organizational literacy.

29. Education is a way to
get people energized.

30. Recently, organizational literacy has
mattered much more.
20172011 201520142007
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31. Be ready to help students with next steps.

32. Recent Challenges

33. Sourcing is critical to success.
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20172010 20152007
X

34. Networking was relevant
in 70% of contractor hires.

35. Finding good suppliers took
practice and patience.

36. Building a career path can take years.

37. Collect UX data for tomorrow.

38. Quantitative data may take
a while before you can use it.

39. Take photographs of everything.

40. Track lost opportunities for
future headcount discussions.

41. References
• “Finding the Perfect Fit” by Kim Goodwin, AYCL Library
• “Hiring the Best UX Designers” by Jared Spool, AYCL Library
• Hire with Your Head by Lou Adler
• “The Enterprise UX Journey” by Catherine Courage
• Corporate UX Maturity by Jakob Nielsen

42. Thanks!
wayne.c.miller@exxonmobil.com
@wcmille on twitter