Turning the Tides : A case study about integrating UX practices within a UX-immature organization

In an era where the customer has the power, creating not only usable but also satisfiable systems and applications is of importance. However, research shows that software development practices do not always allow user experience design to take place and gives little guidance regarding how to conduct and integrate UX work. Despite UX’ increased popularity, gained recognition and prior research efforts, organizations and companies still encounter challenges when trying to embrace this change to offer customers more than just a system that ‘works’. Much recognition has gone to the UX field of late, however organizations that lack knowledge, strategies or personnel can often feel powerless. Therefore, we set out to explore what an in-house IT-department without UX practitioners perceived as challenges when integrating UX work and practices. We conducted interviews with developers and project managers within an IT-department to get their opinions. In our study, we identified factors that seem to play a part when integrating UX – such as communication, UX maturity, prioritization and attitudes. Based on these findings, we visualized these factors in what we call a maturity map