UX is not a department

UX has been a buzz word for many years now, which has lead to UX departments being created with UX designers, researchers, writers and many other titles.

While initially this idea was to help draw attention to the importance of user experience (which it’s been successful in doing) its actually gone too far and started to hinder the experience in the long run.

Why?

Because it’s created a silo.

UX has slowly replaced what has traditionally been a Digital Design department, and other functions have shifted the user and customer responsibility onto the UXers and the "UX department".

This shouldn’t be the case. UX is a mindset - not a department, and everyone is responsible for a user or customer experience. We should all have this mindset. Everyone has the ability to do UX.

Departments often don’t understand the common thread. Image Credit : Honey Badger Clan Ltd

Your Digital Design department would be a team of UI designers, interaction designers, UX designers and researchers. Your Engineering department would be a team of developers, testers, UI design engineers, UX engineers and accessibility specialists. Your Marketing department would be a team of brand designers, researchers, UX designers... The list goes on.

If every department was trained in UX Design Thinking we could eliminate the need for a single UX department and instead have UX specialists peppered throughout the business, advocating for the users and being a glue to hold the commonalities together.

User/Customer Experience is the golden thread that holds departments together. It’s the one thing that all departments have in common - the user / customer.

Experience is the Golden Thread. It’s what each department has in common. Image Credit : Honey Badger Clan Ltd

We need to stop thinking of UX Design as a single department that takes care of the user. Instead see them as partners and work alongside them. Everyone in the company is responsible for the user and customer experience, wether you design a user journey or answer the phone in a call centre.

What can you do to help create great experiences?

Reach out to the UX people in your company and have a chat with them. No matter what part of the company you work in, your role is important to the users and customers - your ideas matter, we are in this together.

If anyone would like to chat more about this, please reach out :)