Establishment of a UX practice in a $10B industrial technology business (leader in industrial automation, advanced materials, renewable technologies etc)
Challenge: Leverage human centered design in a traditionally tech forward business to solve for increased growth, lower costs and higher customer satisfaction
Impact: Several successful projects launched (links below) 3 UX studios established globally. UX methods integrated into core product development
Situation: Given the nature of the business there were several key challenges
- Product development tended to be heavily solution/technology first
- Overall culture generally skeptical of new methods that were not ‘technical’ or seemed fuzzy
- A large global organization and several individual business units and staff to convince of the value of UX/design methods
Approach: There was a large scale change that needed to happen, so this had to be treated like a change management effort
- The first step was immersion in the existing businesses culture and processes. This was heavily engineering and technology driven
- Communication about UX and design had to be framed in terms of what people understood – e.g using scientific hypothesis driven approaches
- Value of change had to be core to the message to convince business leaders to get behind this. This involved finding a few examples from the B2B industrial world where UX/ design thinking had made a measurable difference
- Had to dispel the myth that UX is only for consumer apps and software and doesn’t apply here
- Picked 1-2 pilot projects and demonstrated the value of UX and design thinking
- Socialized wins and developed sponsors and ‘champions’ in each of the business units
- Recruited and built a design team – with a common culture that design had to be applied in a very mindful and relevant manner and always demonstrate tangible value
- Authored a company wide monthly newsletter on relevant trends for the company on Design and UX which was a regular read for the CEO David M Cote
Impact: By means of relevant value driven application of UX and design thinking I have been able to achieve the following
- Several successful commercial launches of new offerings driven by UX and design methods (E.g. Advanced Operator Control Room Cockpit , Connected Field Worker, Supermarket Refrigeration Analytics, High Performance Engineered Fibers for Outdoor Apparel )
- Successful investment and building 3 global studios for UX and Industrial design in N.America, Bangalore and Sydney with over 20+ designers and researchers
- Incorporation of UX and design methods into core new product development processes
- Reportage and part of Chief Commercial Officers leadership team
