Episode #90: How to Create a User Obsessed Company Culture with Jared Spool
For episode #90 (🎉) UX legend Jared Spool explores the challenges organizations face when adopting a user-centric approach. He emphasizes that the biggest obstacle is often the organization's own resistance to change. Jared highlights the importance of focusing on users' needs and experiences, making them the center of decision-making. He shares strategies for winning over skeptics by aligning UX with key business outcomes, such as increased revenue and reduced customer churn. Building a thriving UX culture involves comprehensive education and training, continuous feedback loops, and strategic thinking. Leadership at all levels is crucial in driving this culture change, with an emphasis on creating a vision that inspires and involves everyone in the organization.
Jared also underscores the importance of measuring success by the impact on users' lives, rather than just traditional metrics like revenue or customer satisfaction. He advocates for spending time with customers to gather valuable insights and identify areas for improvement. The future of UX, Jared suggests, lies in learning from organizations that excel in user experience and understanding the reasons behind their success. By adopting best practices and continuously improving, companies can create exceptional user experiences that drive long-term success. Listen to the full episode to gain more insights from Jared Spool on fostering a user-centric culture and overcoming resistance to change.
Takeaways
The biggest roadblock to embracing a UX-focused culture is often the organization itself, as people are resistant to change and believe they have to innovate everything.
To win over skeptics, focus on the outcomes they care about and show how UX can help achieve those outcomes, such as increasing revenue or reducing customer churn.
Creating a thriving UX culture requires a focus on users and their experiences, making them the center of decision-making and involving the entire organization in understanding and meeting their needs.
Education and training are crucial in getting everyone in the organization to adopt a user-centric mindset and prioritize UX.
Leadership is not limited to managers; anyone can be a leader by having a compelling vision of a different future and gaining followers who believe in that vision.
Resistance to change can be overcome by emphasizing the goal of making people's lives better and involving stakeholders in understanding and improving user experiences.
Keeping UX at the top of the agenda requires ongoing communication about the importance of user experiences and their impact on the success of the organization.
Measuring success in UX initiatives should focus on the impact on users' lives and experiences, rather than just metrics like revenue or customer satisfaction. Improving the user experience should be a priority for organizations, and success should be measured by whether the experience is actually better for users.
Feedback loops are crucial for understanding the impact of decisions on the user experience. Organizations should strive to gather feedback and make improvements based on user insights.
Spending time with customers and having real conversations can provide valuable insights and help identify patterns and areas for improvement.
Building a user-focused culture requires hiring the right people and providing training and resources to develop the necessary skills.
Strategic thinking is essential in UX, and organizations should focus on understanding the specific needs and experiences of their users.
The future of UX lies in learning from organizations that are already doing a great job and understanding why others are not able to achieve the same level of success.