Summary
In this session, speakers Sam, Frederick, and Russ tackle the complexities of enterprise UX and product management. They stress starting design work by leveraging personal hypotheses and delivering value within existing constraints, as Sam advises, while Frederick highlights the importance of culture change over pure design. They debate the tension between radical and incremental innovation, concluding that incremental changes combined with strategic connections, like open APIs, often yield the most sustainable improvements. Russ shares insights from 18F’s federal government style guide, emphasizing flexibility to allow agency-specific customization while maintaining consistency. The panel discusses balancing legacy systems with future development, recommending separation of teams and clear migration plans to avoid perpetual firefighting. Sam points out that enterprise UX transformation relies heavily on creating grassroots momentum alongside strategic support, leveraging internal social fabric, and storytelling via communication channels like email or Slack. They also emphasize being honest about temporal constraints, technical debt, and the need to work with organizations culturally ready for long-term transformation. Overall, the talk presents pragmatic strategies for managing complex enterprise systems and culture shifts to enable meaningful UX improvements.
Key Insights
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Start UX projects by proving hypotheses on yourself before expanding to larger organizational contexts as Sam suggests.
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Enterprise UX work is primarily about culture change rather than just design, as Frederick emphasizes.
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Only work with organizations that are culturally ready for long-term innovation to deliver effective enterprise transformations.
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Radical innovation exists but is rare; incremental and connective innovations like open APIs create massive downstream impact.
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Separating teams working on legacy systems from teams building future systems is crucial to avoid perpetual firefighting.
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Managing dual systems during migration requires clear product plans and timelines, acknowledging a long transition period.
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Users of complex enterprise systems often find pride and identity in mastering that complexity, which can resist simplification.
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Creating internal momentum through storytelling, distribution lists, or memes can build grassroots support for UX changes.
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Measuring and communicating success metrics helps demonstrate unmet needs and rally organizational champions for UX.
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Flexible design standards, like 18F’s web style guide, allow agencies to customize while maintaining usable, accessible patterns.
Notable Quotes
"Start with yourself. It’s a great place to get a hypothesis, and then prove yourself wrong or right."
"This is actually culture change. We don’t think of it enough as culture change."
"Only work with the companies that are willing to invest the time needed for meaningful transformation."
"Radical innovation is not the main form of change; connection innovations like open APIs have massive impact."
"If you create a separate team to work on the future, make sure they stay focused and don’t get distracted by today’s fires."
"Users often enjoy the sense of accomplishment managing complex systems, even when outsiders see them as a hornet’s nest."
"Insert yourself into the social fabric of the organization with things like success story emails or memes."
"Software needs to be subjected to performance review just like any employee."
"We want as much freedom and flexibility for agencies as possible, so they can customize and still feel familiar."
"Your task is to connect the champions of innovation wherever they are and demonstrate that network exists."
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