Every UX Designer strives to put the user at the heart of the work they do. You’re probably familiar with those companies that are fully embracing a user-centred approach to their business; Duolingo, Spotify, Airbnb, Fitbit, Netflix, Apple. These companies are examples of the highest standard when it comes to integrating their users into their products, whether those products are digital, physical, or both. It may be your dream to work for them one day - or perhaps you already have - but there are only so many truly mature companies when it comes to their approach to UX design.

The highest levels of UX maturity have fully integrated user-centred design approaches and procedures, and become user-driven corporations as a result. This is the top end of the scale, where those aforementioned household names reside. What about the rest? Where does your company sit on the scale of UX maturity? Are you in the envious position of the user-centred corporation, or do you encounter hostility towards anything you do to try to bring your users into the process?

Neilsen’s UX Maturity Model

The Nielsen Norman Group updated their original stages of UX maturity model from 2006 to a more simplified model of the 6 level of UX maturity. Here’s the graphical representation of the model taken from their article:

A scale of 6 stages of UX maturity starting from the bottom and working it's way up; Abset, Limited, Emergent, Structured, Integrated, User-driven.

I wrote about the original UX maturity model in UX for Developers (2018), summarising the then 8 stages into 3 main grouped stages consisting of low, medium and high levels of UX maturity.

A diagram taking the original 8 stages of UX maturity from the NN/g model and grouping them into low, medium, and high levels.

I still strongly feel that the 3 stages, although not inspirationally named, still hold up against the revised NNG model with its 6 levels. The measuring and understanding of the level of UX maturity in your organisation is transient; people in the organisation are constantly learning and adapting to the challenges they face, and one area will never be completely aligned with another.

This messy nature of working with multiple teams or departments consisting of multiple human beings with their own drivers and goals will rarely see everyone aligned and at the same level of understanding when it comes to user experience.

Although the three stages encompass a set of specific levels, they can provide a broader categorization to help understand where your organisation sits in terms of its level of UX maturity.

Low level of UX maturity

In the updated NNG model, the low level consists of Absent and Limited stages.

Here you’ll find that the work of software development teams will focus on the business requirements and I.T. constraints. There may be hostility towards usability meaning that the end-users are essentially deemed irrelevant to the process, and the goal of the development team is simply to build features and make them work to the provided specifications; often referred to as a “Feature Factory”.

Any considerations towards the user experience will essentially be self-referential design. The teams will rely on their own intuition and experience to decide what constitutes good usability. The only time this may be successful is when the team are building tools for themselves, but for building out products for external users, not so much.

You may actually have people aware of UX and actively attempting to practice user centred design whilst having to ‘fly under the radar’ to establish good practice. You may even have a fully-fledged design team, but with a lack of support and understanding at a higher organisational level, they’re not afforded the time or space to do their job effectively, again resulting in a Feature Factory.

Medium level of UX maturity

In the updated NNG model, the medium level consists of the Emergent and Structured stages.

The organisation will begin to manifest an appreciation of the value that UX activities bring to the business, enough for them to create a dedicated budget. This tends to happen when those who have an individual focus on improving the user experience of the software demonstrate the value of their process to the business, working towards convincing them of the value they can provide, and proving that they can deliver that value.

With additional investment, the ability to generate a greater return over time becomes possible, with more and more success stories of reducing business costs, increasing productivity, and improving conversion rates, which pushes the organisation towards creating a more structured UX function.

Even with structured UX teams, an organisation will still have some conflicts which need to be resolved if the organisation is to move to a high level of UX maturity. User-centred design is still not a core part of the process and may clash with organisational strategy, a lack of support from leaders, being measured in ways that don’t accurately reflect the aims of user-centred design, and continuing to focus on the delivery of features rather than outcomes that benefit the user.

High level of UX maturity

This consists of the Integrated and User-Driven stages in the updated NN/g model.

Here UX is integrated and valued across the organisation. Everything within a project is driven by user data which comes from the now commonplace, and far more prominent, user research activities.

The foundations laid in the medium level of UX maturity evolve to produce valuable quantitative data that can be used to measure against usability goals. The vision and strategy of the business are completely aligned with the user-centred approach.

Unlike the previous levels, there isn’t really much you’re looking to change. But what you are looking to do is maintain a high level of UX maturity.

The only way is not up

Unfortunately reaching the top end of the UX maturity scale over a number of years isn’t the end of the journey. Reaching a stage where your organisation is truly user-driven was the original goal, and now that goal has to change to maintain that level.

Over time the organisation will change; new leadership, team members coming and going, shifts in organisational culture, these and many more factors can have an impact and potentially result in the organisation’s focus slowly shifting away from the users to the more traditional measurements we had to fight so hard against in the low and medium stages to bring the organisation to a become truly user-centred.

How mature is your organisation in UX?

Why not take the NN/g UX Maturity Quiz and find out where your organisation sits on their scale?