COMMUNICATE: Discussion
Summary
In this session, several UX professionals including JD and others share insights on navigating communication challenges in complex enterprise environments. They emphasize the importance of gaining stakeholder buy-in early and involving teams collaboratively to foster ownership and alignment, rather than solely relying on research data. JD explains the rigorous approach to measuring UX ROI through multiple metrics like NPS, SUS, and task success rates, while acknowledging the slow and patient nature of transformation. ADP's three-year UX transformation journey highlights the need for perseverance, team cheerleading, and periodic regrouping to maintain momentum. The speakers also explore how UX practitioners can extend their skills to social impact work, noting that opportunities often arise unexpectedly and require proactive outreach, patience, and adapting design thinking to NGO contexts. They suggest strategies like storyboarding ideal experiences to keep teams motivated and celebrate small wins to sustain resilience. The conversation closes with reflections on lessons learned, such as the value of patience, continuous improvement, personalized communication to stakeholders, and balancing passion with digestible messaging.
Key Insights
-
•
Gaining stakeholder buy-in upfront is essential to prevent research being ignored.
-
•
Collaborative involvement increases team ownership and reduces resistance.
-
•
Successful communication is about ongoing engagement, not just presenting static artifacts.
-
•
Enterprise UX transformations require patience and fortitude, often taking years.
-
•
Mapping both current and ideal user journeys supports motivation and clarity.
-
•
Measuring UX ROI involves multiple quantitative metrics and statistical significance over time.
-
•
UX skillsets provide immediate value in social impact settings, unlike some technical roles.
-
•
Social impact opportunities often come through personal initiative and serendipity.
-
•
Sustaining energy in long projects can be supported by revisiting original goals and sharing wins.
-
•
Effective UX communication requires tailoring language to stakeholders’ values and metrics.
Notable Quotes
"How can I know what I think until I see what I say? EM Forster."
"Ignore the research: it’s ultimately a business decision."
"It’s not about the map, it’s about the mapping."
"People tend to be less critical of something they have ownership of."
"You have to keep the fight, keep looking back at where you started."
"Create a storyboard or journey map of the ideal experience and use that as inspiration."
"UX skillsets let us add value from day one in social impact contexts."
"It takes patience—brick by brick—to move things forward in large organizations."
"Sometimes you have to give permission to yourself and your team to try something different."
"Fight to communicate your passion in a way that is digestible for other people."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Managers were asking for user stories but hadn’t done any analysis or design — they didn’t understand the scope."
Carl TurnerYou Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
March 28, 2023
"Performance management is really about the employee experience; avoid surprises by coaching continuously on both what and how folks are doing."
Karen PascoeDeveloping Experience Teams and Talent in the Enterprise
June 8, 2016
"We share the inconvenience of meeting times across time zones, alternating so no one team always bears it."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed Design Operations Management
October 23, 2019
"Designers contribute experimental patterns back to the design system early, making their work visible even before full validation."
Shawna Hein Kevin HoffmanCreate a Cohesive Civic Design Practice Across Agency, Vendors, and Contracts
November 17, 2022
"I still kind of pause in my tracks when I see our corporate vision: a world without fear of cancer."
Barb SpantonDoing Work That Matters: A Look Beyond The Idealistic Notion of 'Doing Meaningful Work'
June 10, 2022
"Michael became our farmer maintaining steady flow; Davis our forger bringing world-class UX; Dana our gardener cultivating quality work."
Briana ThomasThe Quiet Force: Uncovering Hidden Leadership in High-Impact Design Teams
September 24, 2024
"Provoking and reframing perspective helps teams get unstuck by thinking in new and surprising ways."
Gina MendoliaTherapists, Coaches, and Grandmas: Techniques for Service Design in Complex Systems
December 3, 2024
"Being fluent in multiple data languages and understanding behavioral and attitudinal data will be essential."
Lija Hogan Milan Mijatovic Sam Proulx Louis RosenfeldThree Years Out: Perspectives on the Near-Term Future of User Research
March 15, 2024
"Be human first when creating new roles; treat them with the same care as hiring new team members."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanTwo Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
January 8, 2024
