Confession: I’ve probably spent more time thinking about stages of UX maturity in my career than any other concept. You may be familiar with the UX-Maturity model created by the Nielsen Norman group; The chart, which is often discussed in UX curriculums and conferences, covers the 6 stages of user-centric organizations from absent to user-driven.
This model bounces around in my brain regularly because I have often found myself in organizations that fall in the first 3 stages of UX maturity. I have found that organizations low in UX maturity require a fair amount of “UX-evangelism” to break the spell and begin reshaping their culture. At the end of the day, change is hard, so the case must be made over and over again why change is necessary. I often think of these case-making conversations with colleagues less familiar with UX as “planting seeds” with hopes that someday the seeds may grow into beautiful user-centric ideas.
UX professionals that find themselves being one of the first of their kind within an organization face unique challenges to doing the work they’ve been trained to do. One can’t simply jump directly into complex, multi-phase user-research when leaders need to be trained on the basics of what a user-researcher’s job entails (including resources needed to make research happen). Of course, leaders also need to be informed of the value user-research can bring, and taking every opportunity to prove oneself through intriguing research that helps to answer questions about long-standing institutional challenges is essential.
I’m a natural rabble-rouser, enjoying the push-and-pull of working to shift professional cultures towards more user-centric practices. I’ve ultimately made a niche of working to reshape organizations that are lower in the scale of UX maturity towards a more mature approach. Through engaging, informative, and inspirational presentations given at strategic times to the right people, I’ve seen that I’m capable of moving the needle over time.
In recent months, I’ve begun to think about digital accessibility in the same way. In the organization I worked at previously, you could say digital accessibility was prioritized greatly due to the fact that they had been hit with legal requirements to do so. Working in an organization scrambling to respond to a digital accessibility-related lawsuit taught me so much about what needs to be done to create a more inclusive digital landscape.
When I began in my current role last year, I quickly noticed that these sorts of revelations around the importance of digital accessibility had yet to be absorbed by the organization. Thus, I’ve been leveraging some of my strategies for moving the UX needle for digital accessibility: hosting zoom and in-person training on the basics of digital accessibility for as many relevant groups as I can. 150+ individuals within Marketing, IT, and Communications have attended at least one of my training sessions within the last 6 months.
In just one year’s time, I’ve definitely seen the way in which the culture has shifted towards more accessible digital practices. From encouraging the addition of alternative text wherever possible, to informing individuals about proper color contrast ratios with our brand palette, to sharing information on adding closed captioning to zoom meetings, my colleagues now know that prioritizing Digital Accessibility is essential to performing our roles right. Most importantly, now my colleagues at the institution know that there is someone they can reach out to when they have questions related to accessibility, and they are encouraged to spread the word to their colleagues whenever they can. May the culture continue changing!
