Engaging Stakeholders in UX Activities

UX Insights - User Experience Leadership and Strategy

Last week I talked about marketing UX within your organization and how you can use internal marketing strategies to build awareness and executive support. This week, I want to dig into a more hands-on approach: getting your stakeholders directly involved in UX activities.

If all my talk about guerrilla marketing and PR stunts felt a bit overwhelming, this is a simpler path. The more you can expose stakeholders and colleagues across the organization to real users, the more user-centered their thinking will become. It really is that simple.

Why bother getting them involved?

I know what you might be thinking. Do I really want stakeholders hovering around during user research? What if they derail everything with their opinions?

Fair concerns. But here is what happens when you do invite them in.

• It builds support. The more stakeholders are involved, the more invested they become. And the more likely they are to support UX initiatives when it matters.
• It builds empathy. When stakeholders interact with users, even indirectly, they begin to empathize with their frustrations and genuinely want to improve the experience.
• It builds relationships. By involving your stakeholders, you get to better understand their motivations and needs. And what will actually influence them to be more user-centered.

Start with the basics

At the most basic level, you can get stakeholders trying UX activities themselves. Sit with them and let them experience what card sorting feels like. Or walk them through a usability test as an observer.

Then you can teach them how to run these processes on their own. I have done this countless times, and watching someone run their first usability test is genuinely rewarding.

While this may seem obvious, remember that we are looking at how to influence others and change the culture. Getting hands-on experience is powerful.

Expose them to real users

One technique I use constantly is recording sessions I run with users and then creating short videos afterwards.

Low-light videos (sometimes called horror videos) are 90-second compilations of all the frustrations and irritations a user has had with an experience. Watching someone struggle, get confused, or openly curse at your interface is deeply uncomfortable. And deeply effective at building empathy.

Highlight videos are the opposite. I use these when I want to show stakeholders how improvements we made to the system really do work. There is something very powerful about allowing stakeholders to see real users interacting with the system and actually succeeding.

Both types of videos work because they make the user real. Not a persona slide or a data point, but an actual human being trying to get something done. Circulate these videos to stakeholders and watch how quickly conversations change.

You can also invite stakeholders to attend live usability sessions. Provide lunch as an incentive. Steve Krug's book "Rocket Surgery Made Easy" describes a brilliant approach: run three morning usability testing sessions that stakeholders observe, followed by a lunch meeting where you brainstorm improvements based on what everyone just witnessed.

Another option is including users in stakeholder workshops. Pay users to attend and provide their perspectives during planning sessions. This creates situations where stakeholders interact with customers in ways they may never have before.

Think about it. Many people in organizations rarely have face-to-face time with customers. Marketers, senior executives, compliance officers, developers... they operate based on assumptions and secondhand information. Any direct exposure to users can fundamentally shift their thinking.

Turn engagement into advocacy

Once stakeholders are interacting with users and believing in the process, they can become advocates. People who influence others in their departments and across the organization.

Build communities of people who care about UX. Provide them with tools to promote it, such as branded materials or how-to guides they can share with their teams.

And remember to reward their advocacy. Celebrate those who promote UX best practices. Invest time in making them feel valued. I try to publicly recognize people who are championing user-centered thinking, even in small ways. It reinforces the behavior and signals to others that this matters.

In essence, we need to involve our colleagues across the organization to help them understand users and become user advocates. Getting people hands-on with real users changes everything.

Next week, I will look at how to break down business silos that often hinder user experience and limit the kind of cultural change we have been discussing.