This article is part of a series of customer-centricity culture, which explores what it means to be customer-centric and how to get there.
You have studied UX design, read books and blogs, taken workshops, and attended conferences. Your LinkedIn timeline is filled with content about UX processes, showing you what’s the ‘new’ way of doing UX design.
The pressure in the design world is tangible, and you must ensure you are better than a machine at design. AI is coming to steal your job.
But, if you want to find the proper way of doing UX - whatever that means - you better not google it; the internet is a jungle.
It seems that the only way to achieve great results as designers is to aspire to implement an outstanding design process. The pressure on processes is also evident during interviews when we are asked about it constantly.
What if we move away from processes and look at other factors to improve our design practice?
Following the correct process is not a symptom of a customer-centric business.
Let’s start from the beginning. As part of the series, we first analyse what we mean by design processes, then we explore the concept of design maturity and why it is vital for businesses; in the end, we uncover practical steps that we can take to create a customer-centric culture and I share more about my experience.
If you have wondered what process to use when doing UX, the answer is straightforward. All the processes you find in books and online are the same and are all based on User Centre Design (UCD). Debbie Levitt’s article explains it incredibly well by exploring (and mocking!) ten different processes.
As long as you stick to a few main principles, the name doesn’t matter.
The most well-known design process is the Double Diamond, created by the Design Council. This is based on UCD, providing clear phases to take you from problem to solution.
The fundamental of this process is like any UX process: