Transforming the traditional: the challenge of user-centricity for large organisations

At Lighthouse we typically work with well-established enterprise organisations, helping them gain the competitive edge in their market with expert UX design and deep understanding of their users.

Part of this work involves assessing and improving their robustness of process and capability to deliver user-centric products and services.

This is what we call product maturity – something we’ve been talking a lot about lately.

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How user-centric is your organisation?

Learn about using a product maturity framework to measure and improve your organisation’s user-centricity 🔎

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We know from long experience that businesses who put users at the heart of their operations reap benefits across the board.

We also know, however, that making changes from organisational models originally rooted in the running of factories, rather than in creative thinking and user-centricity, can be challenging.

Behaviours honed in a more industrialized economy (that is, a desire for certainty, a love of detailed plans, and a penchant for control) can be the enemy of key future digital business success factors.

Why is becoming a user-centric organisation difficult?

It sounds an obvious thing to say, but well-established businesses tend to be large, complex ones with an abundance of moving parts and a top-down chain of command.

There are a few problems this can cause when it comes to becoming a user-centric organisation.

Working in a large company means there are amazing opportunities to do big things that impact many people. But it also means that sometimes we get in our own way too. It’s difficult to be agile and nimble when there are so many of you.

Siloed departments 🧑‍💼

This combination of size and complexity naturally leads to a traditional departmental structure, with strict hierarchies and fewer opportunities for experimentation or collaboration.

A top-down approach is far more common here, partly out of habit.

It’s easy for silos to develop in this atmosphere, both within and across teams. Such structures can make it very difficult for modern, user-centric ways of working to gain any traction.

When everyone is beavering away on their own thing vital knowledge gets trapped, and only those employees who come into direct contact with users have the faintest idea of their needs and wants.

Enterprise companies tend to be large and siloed, with each silo containing dispersed expertise.

Resistance to change what works ⛔

It’s human nature to be risk-averse, especially if you have been doing things a certain way for a long time and nothing has ever exploded as a result. Continuity is often highly valued within traditional organisations, and with good reason.

Psychologists call this phenomenon ‘loss aversion’. Discovered by Daniel Kahneman, loss aversion explains our tendency to keep what we have rather than gain something equivalent or possibly even better.

We’re all hard-wired to value what we have more than what we could have, and this in-built resistance can make it challenging to adopt new user-centric practices, both on an organisational and personal level.

Often, there’s also a lack of understanding within the wider organisation as to what modern design practices are really all about, making this resistance even more likely (and understandable!).

This can stem from and feed into a lack of design culture. Whilst many enterprise companies have design resource in-house, design can frequently be treated as ‘a department that produces nice looking things’ rather than something to embed and ultimately guide the wider organisation.

Fast deadlines, slow changes ⏱️

Traditional businesses often have legacy systems and processes that are not designed to prioritise user needs. These systems are often difficult to modify or update, making it heavy work to incorporate new user-centric practices.

Where organisations have willingness to change there can still be a frustrating struggle to adapt long-established systems.

Paradoxically, enterprise companies may have these slow-moving and complicated ways of working, but at the same time tend to think in the short-term and impose hard, short timelines.

A business where the focus is on meeting deadlines means that it’s speed rather than user-insight informing the decision making process.

How can an enterprise businesses become a user-centric organisation?

If you’re in an influential position at an enterprise business and curious about putting users at the heart of operations, you might feel a bit gloomy having read all those challenges.

The good news though is that there are loads of things an internal champion like you (yeah that’s you, the champ 🏆) can do to help user-centricity get established in even the most traditional organisation.