GC Maturity Score Margot Lagendijk Charlotte van Lijnden

When you are talking about growth and maturity, it is clear to everyone what you mean. Explaining the meaning of User Experience is a little more complicated, it can mean different things, to different people in different contexts.

GC Maturity Score First, let’s introduce ourselves: We both work for the Dutch government., Charlotte is/I am a UX designer at the IT department of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, situated in Utrecht, and Margot is/I am a UX researcher at the Dutch Ministry of General Affairs in the Hague. We’re both part of “Gebruiker Centraal” = “User Needs First”, which is a Dutch community, that consist of (IT) professionals, who strive to make the online/digital government as user friendly as possible, by sharing knowledge and experience. We see a lot of difference both between and within organizations, when it comes to UX and user involvement. We get a lot of questions about user involvement and user centred design like: what kind of research can I do, where do I begin, how do I convince management that we need to do research…. Margot Lagendijk Charlotte van Lijnden

Being practical people, we started looking for something simple to help us answer these questions. And now we want to show you what we found and developed to help ourselves and other organizations to monitor and improve their user friendliness. After we’ve shown you, we’ll give you a chance to score the maturity of your own organization. But first: how do you measure UX maturity, what does it mean. An internet search for maturity models, turned up different models, some useful models, but none of them exactly fit our needs. There was always something that needed to be improved or added to the existing model…

Johnny Holland: To general, how do you get to the next step? We’re probably on level 2 or 3, but how do we get to the next level? http://johnnyholland.org/2010/04/planning-your-ux-strategy/

Nielsen Norman Group https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-1-4/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-maturity-stages-5-8 A lot of levels, but if e.g. your organization is tracking user experience quality, but it’s still adhoc, not structural, are you on level 6? Or still on 5? Nielsen Norman group

Human Factors International: They suggest you need champions and certification. We find that in reality it is usually people within an organization who start thinking about the importance of user experience and user needs. They usually wait some time before they try to convince and involve management.

Stéphane Hamel: Interesting graph, might be understandable for both managers as well as workers, but it is very web analytical.

GC Maturity Score: first version We researched different existing models. After comparing models and figuring out, what the different situations could be, should be and where and how improvements could be made. The first version was a description of different possible situations in Excel. User testing showed the Excel table to be difficult to understand. Doubts were raised if it was really a model or something else. Tried to find a better way to present the information.

GC Maturity Score latest version Tried and tested another way of presenting the information Started with a Beta-version consisting of a short questionnaire with 9 questions. Latest version has 15 questions. User testing during workshops

Goal of the maturity score: Determining where your organization stands/ Determining how user centred your organization is. Discussing in how far users are being involved at the moment, and if you’d like to improve user involvement Tool to determine what you next step might be to improve user involvement Way to make your organizations development/growth in user explicit and measurable to convince management.

Dimension: resources and processes UX? UX? Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 How much money and how many employees are available? Is UX embedded in the process, and, if so, where?

Dimension: management and governance incl CXO? Department X Department Y Department Z UX Department? ? Does the organization have a vision? Make UX measurable by using KPI’s. In which part, if any, is UX embedded within the organization? KPI’s UX Department? ?

Dimension: methodologies and measurement What methodologies do you use? Do you only have a hammer, and are nails your problems, or do you have more options? What do you measure, do you measure continuously and structurally, do you still measure the right things?

Dimension: knowledge and (business) culture What’s the business culture like in your organization? Are employees being trained, is knowledge shared, or is knowledge just something that sits in a book on a shelf?

Dimension: understanding user needs Do you talk to users? In all phases? Do you really listen?

The questionnaire A quick and dirty way to determine the maturity of your organization is by using this questionnaire with 15 questions: (We won’t have time to day to fill in the questions, so we suggest you try to fill in the Resource and Processes, and Management and governance sections)

Your score 5 domains x 3 questions = 15 questions Every first answer = 1 point, Second answer = 2 points Third = 3 points Fourth = 4 points Fifth = 5 points Calculate the average of the 3 questions per dimension for your dimension score. Add up all points and compare with the following to find your overall score: 5-25 = ★ 26-40 = ★ ★ 41-55 = ★ ★ ★ 56-65 = ★ ★ ★ ★ 66-75 = ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Plot your dimension score per axis to draw the radar

The next step? Now you know where your organization is positioned where user involvement is concerned, how do you take the next step? Determine your ambition: where do you want to be in x years? Determine on which of the dimensions (knowledge, management etc.) most improvement can be expected to be made. Look at the tips and determine what improvements you could possibly make. Develop a plan of attack, what do you need to do to reach the desired level? One year on, check to find out if you’ve improved (as planned). You could also compare the UX maturity in different parts of the organization, and see if you can learn something from you colleagues Future development of the GC Maturity Score: Online tool: digital version of the questionnaire, that calculates the scores for the different dimensions, and makes a few suggestions/tips on how to reach the next level. Perhaps develop it into a benchmark: use it to compare organizations Tips!

Online tool Online version of questionnaire to calculate UX maturity is being developed: Compare your score with colleagues Compare your score with comparable organizations Tips on how to improve your score on different dimensions

How was it? This is the beta-version of the GC Maturity Score, we’re still improving and testing the score. That’s why we’d like to know if you have any suggestions or remarks. What’s you opinion on the score? Did you run into any difficulties when you were trying to determine your organizations maturity? Did you run into any problems when you tried to determine the next step(s)?

Questions or suggestions? Feel free to contact: Margot Lagendijk: m.lagendijk@minaz.nl Charlotte van Lijnden: cacvanlijnden@gmail.com More information on Gebruiker Centraal (Dutch!) http://www.gebruikercentraal.nl/