You'll learn: - A realistic approach to product improvement in large enterprises - How to create and execute a pilot program for overcoming “product stagnation” - How to scale the program to a growth team dedicated to improving existing products

1. Walk, Don’t Run
Incremental Improvement in Enterprise UX

2. Louis Elfman
UX/UI Design Lead @ CoreLogic
@lelfman || me@louiselfman.com

3. What is CoreLogic?
● Market Cap: $3.3bn*
● Operating in 8 Countries
● 6k+ employees worldwide*
● Principal markets: US & Australia
● Principal Businesses: Property Intelligence & Risk Mgmt Workflow*
*As of May 20 2016

4. CoreLogic Innovation Lab:
● Transforming how products are built in CoreLogic
● Entirely User-Centered
● Proper and Thorough Discovery Phase
● Ships Enterprise-Ready MVPs
● Paired programming AND DESIGN
● Consumer-grade processes and designs

5. My Team:
● Insurance Underwriting Product
● 2 PMs
● 1 Product Owner
● 5-8 Devs
● 1-2 UX/UI Designers
● Distributed between Los Angeles and Austin
● Leadership distributed all over the country

6. Working in Enterprise means
playing the long game

7. THIS THING TURNING
AROUND IS A SLOW
PROCESS...
THIS THING TURNS SLOWLY...

8. ...OTHERWISE THIS

9. Things move slowly in
Enterprise for many reasons.

10. In 2 years we shipped this many things:
1

13. You can’t fix all the things
#RealTalk

14. Working in Enterprise means
playing the long game
Remember:

15. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

16. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

17. 5.7%
Percent of US employees in tech (2016)

25. BUT FIRST...

26. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

28. New Coke beat the original
formula in 200,000 taste tests
Fact: it tested very well with users during research sessions.

29. New Coke was gross if you
tried to drink a whole can.

30. Just because it tests well,
doesn’t mean it scales.
#RealTalk

33. Don’t forget the impact of
adapting to your new flow
#RealTalk

34. Story: The Safety Blanket

41. Users get attached to things
we might consider friction
#RealTalk

42. Empathy for users means respecting
they might not change easily
#RealTalk

43. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

44. Ways to not freak out your users (an abridged list):
1. Consider starting with a straight redesign as a means of “priming” users for change.
2. Get clear: are you primarily looking to get new users or sustain existing user base?
3. Use parity as a starting point, look to fix the biggest problems first.
4. DON’T try to fix all the problems at once. Just because you can fix it, doesn’t mean you should.
5. Try a pilot program first (yes, that is easier said than done).
Bonus: Read the Google Drive change aversion research paper*.
* Sedley and Müller,“Minimizing change aversion for the Google Drive launch” 2013.
https://research.google.com/pubs/pub41221.html

45. Our “Early Adopter” Pilot Program:
1. Identify smaller clients who use a reduced feature set.
2. Build an MVP suited to their needs.
3. Onboard them gently.
4. Monitor all support calls.
5. Establish an “Out of Box”* study: repeat sessions with key users to see how they’re adjusting
6. Build out more features as you onboard more clients.
* Based on the work of Nadyne Richmond

46. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

51. LOL I generate 35%
of your revenue

53. #RealTalk
“Iterative” often means comprising

54. Story: How Moving (Too) Fast Cost Me A Job

57. A HUMBLE PROPOSAL: ONE ORG TO RULE THEM ALL

59. ORG POLITICS
MY OPPORTUNITY

60. Silos aren’t disappearing
tomorrow
#RealTalk

62. Sales has no idea what we do
#RealTalk

63. Sales has no idea what we do
#RealTalk
Most of the org

64. Today’s Lesson Plan:
1. Why Enterprise UX is awesome
2. Why your users can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
3. What you can do about it
4. Why your org can’t handle “Move Fast, Break Things”
5. What you can do about it

65. Phase-based product development structure:
1. Ask the Board for a bunch of money to build a thing.
2. Design the thing.
3. Build the thing.
4. Ship the thing.
5. Put the thing in “Maintenance Mode”.
6. ...
7. Wait 12-24 months for next Phase.

66. Maintenance Mode:
1 PM
2 Devs
This many UX: 0
This much research: 0

67. UX Half Day Pilot Program

68. Ongoing UX =
● Team has more impact
● Smarter allocation of effort
● Team can react quicker
● Less risk
● Less $$$ over time

69. How I won the team over:
1. Offered myself for one half day a week - no strings attached!
2. Worked with PM to make priority list (largest impact vs cost/effort)
a. Made my own priority list - reviewed support, heuristic eval, design audit
3. Started delivering on requests (to build trust)
4. Once trusted, pitched collaborative priority list
5. When I got pushback on testing, invoked the (UX) Trojan Horse

70. Story: The (UX) Trojan Horse

71. UX Trojan Horse
/ˈyo͞ ozər ikˈspirēəns trōjən hôrs/
(noun)
Conducting usability testing as a means of showing an otherwise hostile
stakeholder the value of user research...

72. UX Trojan Horse
/ˈyo͞ ozər ikˈspirēəns trōjən hôrs/
(noun)
Conducting usability testing as a means of showing an otherwise hostile
stakeholder the value of user research (preferably by means of a user
crapping all over their pet ideas).

73. UX your org
#RealTalk

74. Where can you UX your org or process
TODAY?

75. Evangelizing isn’t just talking
#RealTalk

76. Where things stand today:
● Design is now dedicated to projects as needed
● PM and Design teams collaborate weekly
● Design empowered to help products as needed
● Design advising numerous teams outside of Innovation Lab

77. You are the vanguard of UX in
Enterprise

78. YOUR ORG
UX

79. Thanks!

80. Q & A

81. THANKS!
Louis Elfman
me@louiselfman.com
@lelfman
Designerhangout.co: @louis
Product-tribes.com: @louis