The Tale of Two Companies: Building a Successful UX Practice in a Century-Old Enterprise
Summary
How do you establish a thriving UX organization in a century-old company? Our opening presentation is a tale of two organizations and two different UX leaders. They followed very different paths and come from different industries, yet their stories of success and lessons for others have a lot in common. Rob Mitzel spent his entire career at Ford, starting from a Safety Engineer and changing roles to evolve into a Design Ops Manager, as the company evolved. Sébastien Malo parachuted to CN (Canadian National Railway) only a couple of years ago, but has already changed the course of his organization. Rob and Sebastien compare and contrast stories of how UX adapted and iterated their teams, skills and service to meet the needs of an evolving enterprise IT organization and the business at large.
Key Insights
-
•
At Ford, shifting from protecting UX turf to a culture of sharing and collaboration was key to UX team growth and success.
-
•
Creating and sharing usability patterns internally can increase UX advocacy even among non-UX staff.
-
•
Establishing a UX Club and informal meetups helps build internal UX networks and culture.
-
•
Building a component library aligned with usability patterns paved the way for a design system before that term was widely used.
-
•
Filling unaddressed enterprise needs proactively can lead to new service areas and team spin-offs.
-
•
Letting go of tasks like front-end coding allowed CN’s UX team to focus on core design and strategy.
-
•
A clear UX vision must be sold internally and then demonstrated through results to gain broader organizational buy-in.
-
•
Managing up and across by building networks is crucial to identify UX opportunities beyond the team’s immediate scope.
-
•
User story mapping and journey workshops can transform waterfall requirements into agile backlogs and broaden UX impact.
-
•
Expanding leadership roles beyond UX (e.g., business analysis) can amplify the influence of UX in an enterprise.
Notable Quotes
"My job was to insulate my team from the pressures and not let anyone else do UX work. That was wrong."
"It was like publishing the family secret recipe, but sharing usability patterns was crucial for advocacy."
"We created a UX Club to talk shop, share struggles, and build ideas across teams."
"We didn’t know what a design system was, but by combining component libraries and usability patterns, we built one."
"Sometimes you have to fill a need even if there’s no formal name or structure for it yet."
"UX must operate beyond the pixel to have real impact in enterprise transformation."
"Be an expert but act as a collaborator. It’s a team sport."
"Managing up and across started with lots of coffees and questions to build a mental model of the organization."
"The team brought structure and clarity by mapping requirements into user journeys and stories."
"You owe it to your organization and your team to grow the practice while staying true to your vision."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Flexible and staggered schedules help people not get burned out."
Lavy Kumar Kat Temple Shan Sebastian Tara Jensen Jenn ChouFuture of Work
June 9, 2021
"The pandemic pushed us to be creative, and it’s been fun for users to participate remotely in the design process."
Andreas Huebner Amy Takata Craig BrookesWhat Is It Like To Be Part of The UX Team at Compass?
March 11, 2021
"Customers can answer what the researcher wants to hear in surveys, making attitude only 28% predictive of real behavior."
Ricardo MartinsUnlocking the power of advanced quantitative methods
March 12, 2025
"We changed the culture by changing the language, introducing common terms like hypotheses and experiments."
Monty HammontreeThe Future of UX Research
December 3, 2020
"We didn’t explain the philosophy behind the design ops activities, so others didn’t understand why some activities couldn’t be done outside design."
Benjamin RealShowing the Value of DesignOps by Not Having a DesignOps Team
October 21, 2020
"It is impossible for one research ops person to do all the things expected in job descriptions."
Kate TowseyAsk Me Anything (AMA) with Kate Towsey
April 2, 2025
"Enterprise UX is still nascent—businesses worldwide are just beginning to figure out where UX fits."
Steve Portigal Chris Chapo Kelly Goto Christian RohrerDiscussion
May 13, 2015
"Offering the ability to save your progress allows users with disabilities to complete tasks on their own time."
Sam ProulxOnline Shopping: Designing an Accessible Experience
March 28, 2023
"Most of the work on accessible prototyping for screen readers is still in early or mid research stages but is improving rapidly."
Sam ProulxPrototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You
October 1, 2021
