Be Strategic About Using These Principles

The principles we look at in this book are great and all, but how do we put them into action? Since the first edition of this book was released in 2018, the number 1 question I’ve been asked is a variation of “How do I put these principles into practice in my day-to-day work?” The best intentions of a principled UX professional are one thing, but the messy reality of working in a modern business is quite another. Here are the best tips I’ve successfully used over the years:

1. Fight for the user. Day-to-day business involves competing departments and priorities. KPIs and OKRs are fine for marketing and sales departments, but your job is to fight for the user—putting their needs front and center of the plans. Sometimes this will mean clashing with other teams, it’s unavoidable, and you won’t win every battle—but it’s important you’re there and your voice is heard. The sales team has goals to hit, but your job is to convince them—with best practice and data—that a full-screen unskippable video advert will do more to drive customers away than engage them.
2. Build allies in your organization. The most effective way to “get UX done” in an organization is to build allies across the business. Product managers, developers, and senior stakeholders (yes, including the “C-level” suits) all need to be onside and understand the value of UX. Take them along on your process.
3. Understand the business goals. You’re the voice of the user, but you can’t work in a vacuum—you need to understand the business goals and the plans for your products and services. You won’t survive for long if you’re just the voice of the user without enabling results for the business. Engage with product managers and help shape the roadmap and business plan.
4. Build a culture of user research. Involve your colleagues in user research, bring them to testing sessions, and disseminate your results to a wide group of people. UX designers and product people alike should be thinking about user needs and testing ideas with them every step of the way. Finally, bring these ideas back to the stakeholders in the business: there’s nothing as powerful in changing a CEO or CMO’s mind than presenting them with a trove of research findings from real customers.
5. Drive data-driven decisions. Use data to steer your high-level decision-making—this point is less about qualitative data (data you can describe with language, not numbers) from user testing, and more about quantitative data (data you can measure with numbers) from analytics and other metrics. Use this data to help you make better decisions in terms of product features, missing services, and whole approaches to doing business.

Learning points

• Fight for the user
• Build allies in your organization
• Understand the business goals
• Build a culture of user research
• Drive data-driven decisions