Achieving UX Maturity through diversity
Not too long ago we had the amazing opportunity to participate in a session for the graduates in the UX Bootcamp organised by Laboratoria, where we spoke about a topic that is going to have more importance in the near future: UX Maturity.
However, before we address the session’s topic, we should speak about Laboratoria.
What is Laboratoria?
Allow me to make a small summary about what Laboratoria is and what it consists of, something our CEO has already talked about on his Twitter account (in Spanish), but that it is worth mentioning again:
- Their mission is clear-cut: incorporating as many women to technology as possible so that Digital Economics are much more diverse, inclusive and competitive. We will come back to this in a moment.
- At the moment they are present in Peru (where it originated), Brasil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.
- Their impact is obvious: graduates receive an average of an extra US$ 35,000 in five years. And they are over 2,000 at the moment.
These three main ideas are the cornerstone. In fact, it is one of the main reasons why we always defend training’s potential of transformation: it allows us to change many people’s lives.
UX Maturity model
This was the topic addressed during the session with these future graduates. We have already talked about UX Maturity and its phases, but allow me to remind them to you with a graphic:
Even though some companies where the graduates work in could be placed from the 3rd phase on, throughout their careers they might have to face cases that could be on the first two stages.
This means that they must face a challenge: gradual transformation of the organisations to advance towards achieving complete UX Maturity.
When a company knows at which level of maturity they are at, it is much easier to identify and understand what they can do and how they can work towards achieving the next level. If you want to learn more about the concept of user experience maturity you can get registered in the UX-PM International Certification. (This certification is in Spanish)
But, what is it to really transform?
We cannot talk about transformation towards maturity unless all the pieces involved take real and effective steps towards it. Laboratoria’s mission is founded in facts: women are less than 10% of the development community in Latam.
Leaving out of the equation half of the population is not an option and we cannot seriously assess transformation of anything unless we incorporate diversity in our workspaces.
UX is a branch where everything is doubted constantly, where we cannot work with biases or limitations. Diversity is enriching because it encourages debate; diversity is a creativity catalysing tool and an approach towards project efficiency.
This is why incorporating people to our workspace that have different capacities, sensitivities and social or geographic origins helps the UX research conclusions to be richer and much deeper. It also helps improve design and its processes, since incorporating many aspects to less diverse teams could come unnoticed.
Actions like Laboratoria’s work towards executing this real and pending transformation: turn UX into a global vision of the world. This vision can only be achieved if we work with global teams which incorporate people that also receive a guaranteed training that will assure that great products of the future will be really inclusive.
At the times we are living in, nobody can be left behind. Because Laboratoria’s return on investment is tangible: US$ 4.57 for each invested dolar.
Let’s think about the impact that this inclusion may have in the global economy. And in all the lost opportunities that this means. Let’s work towards transformation, supporting initiatives like this one to achieve the maturity that involves centering the user in the focus of all our work.
This article is a translation of the following one published on our corporate website:
