Organizations centered on customer experience achieve better results. And it isn’t just us at Soho saying so, as specialists in customer experience design and therefore biased, but every study carried out over the last 4 years by the world’s big consulting firms. Some claim that companies that reach the highest levels of customer-centered design maturity can expect up to 300% better results than their counterparts (McKinsey 2019, The Business Value of Design). In this article we’ll explain what it means to reach these high levels of design and what companies, managers and teams should consider in order to keep growing and improving.
A brief history
It was 2006 when Jakob Nielsen, founder of Nielsen Norman Group (nngroup.com) and considered one of the “gurus” of experience design, developed one of the first maturity models for experience-centered organizations, defining 8 stages of maturity. Each stage described the presence of human-centered design (HCD from here on) in different organizational circumstances, from companies that did nothing to those that achieved a total customer focus as part of their business strategy.
Where we are today
Much has changed in the field since the impact of digital transformation, the acceleration brought about by COVID and the new tech startups that burst onto the market. Now we can all tell, from the quality of the product we receive, when a company really designs with people at the center and when it doesn’t. With these changes in mind, the Nielsen Norman team decided to update its maturity stages, incorporating the new trends, norms and ways of working that have evolved in recent years.
The 6 stages of human-centered design maturity
According to their latest update, we can set out the following 6 stages in which an organization can be identified:
- Absent: HCD practice is ignored or nonexistent.
- Limited: HCD work is rare, done haphazardly and lacking importance.
- Emergent: HCD work is functional and promising but done inconsistently and inefficiently.
- Structured: The organization has a semi-systematic HCD-related methodology that’s widespread, but with varying degrees of effectiveness and efficiency.
- Integrated: HCD work is comprehensive, effective and pervasive.
- User-driven: Dedication to HCD at every level leads to exceptional design outcomes through the development of a deep understanding of customers’ needs, motivations and journeys.
Factors that improve design maturity
Improving involves, as in any process of introspection before change, reviewing “how we’re doing it” in our organizations today. To do so, Nielsen Norman suggests that an organization should look at itself through four lenses:
- Strategy: leadership, planning and prioritization of design resources
- Culture: knowledge, practitioners, teams and career development for design professionals
- Process: the systematic use of HCD design and research methods
- Outcomes: intentionally defining and measuring the results produced by design work. Although they’re presented as distinct lenses, all these points feed back into one another to create a virtuous or vicious spiral, depending on the direction. You need to make progress on all of them to move from one level to the next
Obstacles to overcome when HCD maturity is lacking
The main obstacle is a lack of education; to move beyond this stage, organizations must focus on raising awareness of HCD. The second problem is process, which means implementing methods for doing HCD work, organizing a team of several people and starting to establish routines and resources. The third barrier to overcome is building a culture that supports HCD at every level, so that every project moves forward with a shared vision.
To keep advancing, teams will need to define new metrics that are aligned with HCD and support the data-driven decision-making leaders need. Finally, the last barrier is continuity: keeping what has been achieved and not losing your way. That requires continually educating new team members so the organization doesn’t slide backward.
Conclusion
Understanding the maturity level of the organization you work in or lead is only the beginning. It lets us understand our starting point, identify strengths and areas for improvement, and set out action plans and tracking metrics that make sense to us. If you’d like to assess yourself, the team at nngroup.com has created a free basic quiz for that purpose. If you have questions about what this means for your organization, how to approach these changes and how to carry out the activities that will take you to the next level, we’re here to help!
At Soho we help leading companies across Latin America improve their human-centered design practice day by day, to have an impact on processes, products, services and teams.
Interested in talking? Contact us.
Until next time!
Martín Picerno
