Design Maturity Assessment
Dec. 2017
A product that assesses an organization's design maturity and readiness for design transformation
My Role
Researcher/UX Designer/Strategist
The Team
A team lead, a researcher
and me
Duration
4 months
The Context
The initiation of this project was because our service team was needing a better way to sell design thinking and transformation services to organizations. This project is the first step to understand the client's company without a significant investment from a client.
The Challenge
This project started without a clear vision or strategy. And none of us have any ideas about how to assess the design maturity of an organization or what design maturity really means. To learn more about the context, I conducted secondary research to understand more about the field. I read about design maturity assessment and organizational development and reached out to internal experts to gain more knowledge.
Proto-personas
There are strict rules about how to recruit clients for interviews. For a while, we could not connect directly with real clients. However, after speaking with internal sales partners and key stakeholders, we created proto-personas based on our conversations. Since they are the people who work closely with clients, they provide a lot of helpful information to us.
Feedback
Sales partners and internal stakeholders provided us with helpful feedback because they work with clients closely. They also pointed out a few concerns as they see and how to ask the client company to take the assessment.
Vision & Strategy
After interviewing key stakeholders and two potential clients (recruited through the sponsor user program), we started to see the real business problem and their needs. And based on our understanding, I helped create a draft product vision, UX strategy, Design Criteria, and Success measures and shared it with stakeholders to gain feedback.
Competitive Advantage
IBM has a great design thinking program and Watson technologies. And this was one of the projects we believe could leverage the company resources to create a descriptive, prescriptive, and predictive assessment tool that helps drive sales for the IBM service division.
Competitors
Not only did we researched the frameworks and user needs, but we also studied similar products that are already out there to understand the competitive landscape.
The Frameworks
We needed a solid foundation to start. I read three books about organizational development and various journal articles to find existing frameworks for creating a better corporate culture and creative work environment. And I was able to find five to six credible models for reference.
The Model
Based on the models we found in research, we combined it with IBM's Design thinking framework—People, Places, and Practices into one comprehensive model.
Content Design
Based on the structure we created in the model, we facilitated a workshop to gather creative questions based on the structure in our model. The results were fascinating. Not only we're able to collect a variety of questions about the dimensions, but we also received many original and creative ideas.
Paper Prototype
After creating the first draft of the questions, we created paper prototypes to test it with internal users quickly. One main feedback we received was the evaluation is very lengthy.
Digital Prototype
We decided to keep the evaluation under 10 minutes. To test the timing and the content, I developed two digital prototypes, and we conducted an A/B testing together. Eventually, we were able to tell the version where it has multiple questions on one page was able to reduce the completion time by 3 minutes. By using a proper layout, users would be able to complete it within 10 minutes and wouldn't feel too long.
Visual Concepts
Although I am not a visual designer for this project, and no one has been assigned to this project to help with visual, I created two design concepts to visualize what this product could be, which helps sell the idea internally.
The Outcome
Many internal stakeholders became very interested in this product and were willing to advocate for the realization of this product. However, due to various organizational reasons, this project didn't become a real product, but the experience of initiating, strategizing, and designing for this product was a valuable experience for me. It was the first product that made me experience a business mentality when planning for product design.
“When we started to work together I assumed you'd be bringing excellent UX skills but you've brought so much more to the project. Your dedication + focus + advocacy on the experience for each potential user has kept them positioned as our north stars. The way our statements are starting to take form and support a model of delivery for the assessment, the quantification of the input to form a point of view on output, and a lot of the fun in how the statements are phrased and engaged are much thanks to you and your input...
...Since we started it and even with the shifts and changes, you've remained steadfast and focused and that is truly appreciated and noted along with your strong user advocacy, rigor in research + execution, and the overall enjoyable experience it is to work with you.
Thanks for being you.
”
– Team lead
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