Starting a UX Team

Standardizing UX Practices across an international organization
Summary
As part of the inaugural UX team at Dimensional Insight, a data analytics SaaS company, I helped a team of designers and product engineers create a Style Guide and Design Library to increase usability and brand conformity of all products and public facing content.

The Style Guide was successfully integrated into all departments, and UX Research & Design standards were established and utilized to test and iterate on the flagship product.
Process Overview
  • Compiled & Analyzed UX Standards across company
  • Codify UX Standards into Style Guide
  • Establish UX Research & Testing Standards
  • Use the new standards to Test & Iterate
    ‍    the companies products
My Contributions
Team Lead
  • User Research Standards
  • Usability Testing Standards
  • Customer Journey Maps
Team Contributor
  • Compiling & Analyzing Internal Design Standards
  • Designing Company Style Guide
  • Contributing graphics to Design Library
Context
Dimensional Insight was founded in 1989 by two US military engineers. While their products have always been user focused and well designed they did not have any formal UX team or UX standards... until 2016.

I was part of this inaugural UX team, tasked with compiling and analyzing the UX practices across the company and codifying them into a Style Guide and Design Library, used to maintain high usability and brand conformity across all products.
First Steps
Planning company wide standards
  • Coordinate content review and interviews with every department
  • Consolidate each departments used Styles and Usability Standards
  • Determine best means of communicating Design and Branding Standards


While the company previously had no formalized UX team or UX standards, each individual department had talented creators and subject matter experts that integrated their own usability standards into their work. Similarly, each department had some version of our branding established in their designs as well.

At our first meeting, we decided that the best way to improve usability and cohesion would be a two-pronged approach: researching the different design standards already used internally, and the needs and expectations of our established user base. Half the team began the internal research, while I lead the other half of our team in researching user needs.

My team conducted user interviews and leveraged already available customer insights (i.e. notes and reflections from Consulting and Implementation teams, as well as filed customer comments and bug reports). Through our research and data synthesis we created Personas and Customer Journey Maps, which we presented  to the CTO and CEO before getting the green light to create the Style Guide.
Design Library Creation
Creating a Master Guide
  • Coordinate content review and interviews with every department
  • Consolidate each departments used Styles and Usability Standards
  • Determine best means of communicating Design and Branding Standards


Once user research and internal review had been completed, we began creation of the Style guide and Design Library. After creating our draft versions, we presented them to high-level employees in each department for in-person feedback sessions.

After iterating on multiple feedback sessions it became clear that one of our main barriers to establishing an effective and usable Style Guide was the knowledge and usage of basic design psychology principles. Many employees, especially in non-design roles, were unfamiliar with core usability heuristics, so we decided to include six gestalt principle design heuristics in the Style Guide, with simplified explanations and graphic examples using our brand and UI style.

After another round of feedback and iteration we finished the final version of the Style Guide and presented it to the entire company during an 'all-hands' meeting.
Outcomes & Reflection
Learning from a company wide implementation
  • Keep it simple and straightforward
  • Use universal language and context specific explanations
  • Keep Testing and Iterating



After creating and distributing the Style Guide and Design Library, departments slowly began implementing it as they updated existing products and developed new ones.

After observing on the implementation and getting feedback on the style guide, we established a UX Team server to store insights and next step ideas for maintaining the guides. We also established a usability testing schedule to record measurable outcomes via end user responses.
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