uxstudio

The concepts for this post were taken from an interview given by Erica Payne on KPFA radio. Payne holds an MBA from Wharton School of Business and is founder and principal of the Tesseract Group–a boutique consulting firm that specializes in strategy and communications for foundations, philanthropists and organizations engaged in the public policy arena.

Payne’s interview focused on the US presidential elections of 2008. She described politics as essentially a supply chain problem. Payne went on to describe how we ought to conceptualize political change through the metaphor of the skipper, the boat, and the river. Her message has a direct application to User Experience teams.

The skipper is the Ux team leader. The skipper is responsible for charting the course of the boat, steering it, and ensuring the well being of the crew.  The skipper must be attentive to whether the boat is well maintained and cared for.  They are the “face” of the Ux team to the broader company.

The boat consists of the  Ux team members, the artifacts the team produces, and the internal processes used to produce those artifacts. The skipper is nothing without their boat.  The Ux team members (the crew) are important representatives to other teams at the company–most typically at the project level.

The river is the company’s culture–how it approaches design, production, and marketing of its products. Shaping and changing the nature of the relationship between the Ux team and the company’s processes is key to ensuring the Ux team’s ongoing success.  The Ux team must be constantly attentive to how its activities are leveraged and plugged into the overall activities of the company.