Leading Strategic Initiatives with Bosch’s Central UX Department
During my time at Bosch’s Central UX Department, I drove a strategic UX initiative, creating a UX maturity tracking tool. This tool, available on the company’s Microsoft Teams platform, lets each division at Bosch see how UX maturity of their division is progressing. The central UX team can also track every division’s progress with the help of this tool.
My Mega Learning
staying user focused even while balancing them with technical considerations.
Team
UX Consultant(Me)
Senior Strategy Consultant
Software Development Team
Why this tool?
Building a UX-Aware Culture at Bosch
Bosch is making a concerted effort to empower its teams across the organization to be independent in UX design and to cultivate design awareness for creating increasingly better products. The UX Maturity Level Model is a program that awards teams at Bosch with a UX maturity level from 1 to 5. This assessment is overseen by the central UX department.
Managing UX Maturity level allotment
Bosch’s UX maturity levels range from 1 to 5, each with specific criteria. Tracking progress in spreadsheets is challenging due to the non-linear nature of achieving these levels. For ex, a team might meet level 5 criteria before completing level 4. This complexity necessitates a digital tool to effectively manage and monitor the assignment of these levels.
Who will use this tool?
This tool helps UX owners and UX consultants at Bosch work together more efficiently. UX consultants evaluate how well each department is doing in terms of user experience, and assign UX maturity level to UX Owner’s division upon request. The tool records and tracks this information, making it easier for everyone to see where improvements can be made.
UX Owners
People responsible for user experience in different departments
UX ML tool
UX Consultants
Experts in user experience at Bosch’s Central UX Division
When exactly is it used?
1. UX Owners upload the evidence
Check UX ML criterias and Upload the evidence of UX training completed
2. UX Consultants check the evidence
Review the evidence and approve/ reject the allocation of UX maturity level by commenting
3. UX Owners track progress
Check comments by UX consultant, and continue progress with next UX MLs
What was the strategy?
Comprehensive UX Platform
The UX Maturity Level platform provides more than just descriptions of the criteria for each level. It features dedicated pages for each criterion, showcasing examples of best practices from other departments. This approach not only increases departmental interest but also offers flexibility, allowing teams to explore any criterion at their own pace.
Customised Dashboard for all
This platform provides a unique, department-specific dashboard for each Bosch user. Due to the non-linear progression, UX owners and consultants can track their percentage of completion for each criterion within every level. This offers a clear overview of progress. The dashboard also shows the status of submitted evidence.
How did we design it?
From mapping journeys and IA
to creating wireflows
Mapped out the journeys of UX consultants and UX owners as they navigate the process of applying for and achieving UX maturity levels. Created an information architecture (IA) for the tool to establish a solid foundation for wireframing efforts
Wireframes were iterated extensively to meet the needs of all stakeholders, with ease of use as a paramount concern. Once finalized, the wireframes were handed off to the development team, accompanied by detailed user stories to clearly articulate requirements.
Where is it placed?
This tool is designed to be a Teams application within the Bosch workspace. Research into the feasibility of developing it using Power Apps revealed several potential benefits, including:
✔ Enhanced accessibility
✔ Simplified data integration
✔ Shorter development timeline
✔ Reduced development budget
Impact
✔ Easily accessible tool for everyone at Bosch to learn about UX Maturity Levels and their critrias
✔ Efficient management of approval tasks for UX consultants
✔ Transparency between divisions in terms of criterias, and past evidences