You Need Your Own Definition of Design Maturity
Summary
How do we advance design maturity in the enterprise space, particularly in the B-to-B space where we often struggle to distinguish between the buyer’s and the user’s needs? What doesn't cut it: traditional capability maturity models, created through massive surveys to determine the organizational characteristics that contribute to business success. After more than two years of the collective traumas and personal emergencies caused by a pandemic, a racial reckoning, and other existential crises, designers are deeply tired, worn out, and looking to work in organizations that are "mature", where their contributions are understood and supported. You need to forge your own definition of design maturity, based on understanding and care for the people in your design team, the specifics of your organization, and the state of UX as a profession. With this deep understanding you can start the experiments and gain support for initiatives to increase the impact of design in your organization.
Key Insights
-
•
Existing design maturity models may fail to capture team-specific contexts and emotional realities.
-
•
Creating a custom definition of design maturity makes it easier to set direction and practical actions.
-
•
Design maturity must balance delivering value to customers, business, team members, and society.
-
•
Pandemic and social justice events shifted organizational focus toward care and empathy.
-
•
Internal team conversations reveal feelings of invisibility and exclusion, especially among researchers.
-
•
Design leaders need to use empathy to understand functional partners and demonstrate design’s business value.
-
•
Four pillars—mission/vision/principles, people, processes, and design thinking—structure this team’s design maturity.
-
•
Pausing team-wide design critiques improved psychological safety and sustained feedback via smaller groups.
-
•
A one-size-fits-all designer-to-engineer ratio does not adequately reflect product or organizational needs.
-
•
Team-defined design maturity fosters greater engagement, visibility, and pride among designers.
Notable Quotes
"We realized there was no way to make sense of the conglomeration of sticky notes."
"You need to come up with your own definition of design maturity based on your team’s understanding and context."
"Design maturity results from behaviors and structures that enable delivering value to customers, business, ourselves, and society."
"Researchers feel like second-class citizens when they’re not invited into early conversations."
"It’s not just about doing the craft of design but also figuring out how design fits into the organization."
"Business is just people who may be working with design but don’t quite get how design helps them."
"During the pandemic, we learned to have awkward and uncomfortable conversations about people’s realities."
"Team members told me they felt really seen for the first time during these discussions."
"We had to push back on the idea that we could just use existing models without understanding our team’s needs."
"Use your powers of empathy to see things from your functional partners’ point of view."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Will you learn to let go? Better yet, will you let go?"
Victor UdoewaBeyond Methods and Diversity: The Roots of Inclusion
March 26, 2024
"You have to design for throw away ability because the majority of experience gets thrown away."
Bill ScottLean Engineering: Engineering for Learning and Experimentation in the Enterprise
May 14, 2015
"People are individuals first and part of communities second, which adds complexity to designing effective personas."
Lija HoganContexts of Use: A Framework for Connection
December 9, 2021
"You can define your own design process, whether it’s Lean UX, Double Diamond, or something custom."
Aurobinda Pradhan Shashank DeshpandeIntroduction to Collaborative DesignOps using Cubyts
September 9, 2022
"Our mission is to support the methods and processes devoted to producing high quality design."
Jilanna WilsonDistributed DesignOps Management
February 26, 2019
"Think of the context window like an intern's briefing document: would the intern be able to answer the question with this information?"
Peter Van DijckBuilding impactful AI products for design and product leaders, Part 3: Understand AI architectures: RAG, Agents, Oh My!
July 30, 2025
"Management consultants sell solutions to problems, not just research data, which is why they command high fees."
Nicole Aleong Michaela Mora Prayag Narula Brianna SylverWhat UX research can learn from other research practices [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
September 14, 2023
"What AI is asking out of every individual contributor is to take on the skill set of a manager."
Beth ChappellLeading through ambiguity: Supporting a design team relearning their craft
June 9, 2026
"Where in your design process is your biggest opportunity for AI adoption?"
Llewyn PaineDay 1 Using AI in UX with Impact
June 10, 2025
