Integrating UX principles and practices into software development organizations: A case study of influencing events

Journal article, 2019

Current studies on User eXperience (UX) integration often do not investigate or reflect on the transition companies go through from only developing Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) to also considering usability and more recently UX. Understanding this transition provides a more holistic and realistic picture of integration and can be a rich source of knowledge for improving UX integration in the software industry. Applying case study and grounded theory research we show that UX integration, like other organizational changes, can include a mixture of planned and emergent initiatives, and is influenced by various intertwined events; not only those that reside inside an organization but also those external to it. We also show that different decisions that are made outside the authority of UX practitioners have an inevitable impact on enabling or prohibiting UX integration. In addition, we found that for a successful integration, practitioners need to explicitly consider and address the characteristics of UX, otherwise, the integration efforts may have a lopsided focus on the pragmatic aspect of UX, consequently, leave the hedonic aspect unaddressed. Based on our findings, we present four lessons learned and five pitfalls companies should consider to go beyond GUI design and usability to also address UX. (C) 2019 Published by Elsevier Inc.