Final Remarks
Why Methodology Matters
I believe it’s important that when we witness success, we attribute the success to its proper cause. When a person or a company has serial success stories, very often there’s a method being followed. This can be demonstrated in a great deal of business case studies.
I mentioned earlier in this document that I enjoy studying the case studies of products that win UX awards. When the winning teams share their stories, what’s virtually always revealed is that they used good UX methodology. The story is never that the team hired one magical hero who did all the work. The team never reports that they just knew all the answers and did it. Instead it’s always a fast moving (but not rushed) process of research, ideation, design and iteration.
Some companies or software departments achieve big success once; yet don’t know how or why they achieved it. Perhaps they were lucky! The lucky ones spend years frustratingly trying to recapture a success they can’t seem to repeat. Teams get assembled and disassembled; people get hired and fired without knowing how to recapture a victory similar to the one previously experienced.
What teams really need is the ability to achieve success reliably and repeatedly. This comes from method, which happens to have a few nice very nice features! First, methodology exists outside of personalities. It can be taught to teams of people, and is not attribute held by one person alone. Second, methodologies are fluid on application, while fixed on principles. They incorporate new innovations and adapt to our changing world, while having a firm basis in a sound and reality-oriented ideology. So one good question is: how do we embed this methodology into teams so that we can create great UX departments?
Building Your UX Department
You want to end up with a well-constructed UX team, which will have the following skillsets fully covered: research, UX design, visual design, and business strategy. It’s best if this team has an advocate who ranks high in the organization. A fitting lead, manager, or director of this team will be someone who is experienced in software products, knowledgeable in human-factors, and well-networked within his or her trade area (this will help them actually hire people and build up their team).
If your organization exists at an early stage of design-evolution and has no idea what UX is, then this is a process that will sometimes require a bit of patience and growing pains. In the end however, what you end up with is great products and a reliable method of achieving success. It’s well worth it!
In this portfolio, I didn’t want to just assemble a bunch of screenshots of work I’ve done. I like to provide context. Therefore, I’ve shown a collection of my work, but within the context of UX methodology. If you’ve enjoyed or have learned something from reviewing this document, you may feel free to contact me for business opportunities! Thank you!
Reaching Me
I may be reached by:
LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/watkinsthomas (social links also showing at the bottom of this website)
Email:
thomas@3Leaf.Consulting
Phone:
713-955-8842