Treating User Experience (UX) as a job position is actually a misconception of what UX truly is. However, this misunderstanding is quite common. In reality, UX is an ability, and not just a specialized professional skill, but a higher-level composite skill.
On one hand, “User Experience” itself is an interdisciplinary field. It is rooted in psychology, but it also has close connections with business, sociology, and management. Its knowledge encompasses a wide range of areas, including psychology, user research, behavior design, information architecture, interaction design, user testing, product development, service design, team consensus, and business design.
On the other hand, user experience involves all work related to users. It is not only a core competency for designers, product managers, and project managers, but also a crucial skill for marketing, operations, services, and development roles. Moreover, the success of user experience relies on close collaboration across functional departments. It cannot be achieved solely by individual departments or individuals.
It is particularly important to emphasize that the experiences of many successful companies in implementing user experience have shown that senior management’s grasp of UX is crucial for innovation success. A prime example is Steve Jobs and Apple. Brian Chesky, the co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, also stated that user experience was the key to their entrepreneurial success. Senior executives’ understanding of user-centered design principles drives the redesign of organizational processes and performance metrics, thus leading the transformation of user experience from top to bottom.
Therefore, in practice, enhancing user experience in an organization is a multi-level system engineering process. Good user experience needs to be built on user-centric values. It requires a cultural transformation within the organization. Hence, for most companies, implementing user experience is essentially a change process. To embark on this journey of change, organizations often need to conduct relevant training. By providing training tailored to different levels and departments, ensuring that everyone understands the principles and practices of “user experience,” a shared language in the field of user experience can be established within the team!