UX Repo: Ideas for internal UX initiatives

Tackling UX challenges within your organisation isn’t just about making things look good or work better - it’s about breaking silos, championing user needs, and proving your worth as a UX powerhouse. This resource includes 15 practical ways to uncover hidden challenges, align with your organisation’s big goals, and make waves by building influence and trust across teams.

Conduct stakeholder alignment sessions
Schedule sessions with key decision-makers to understand business goals, customer priorities, and organisational challenges. Use this information to align UX efforts with broader company objectives, demonstrating how UX can directly support business success.
Assess organisational UX maturity
Evaluate the organisation’s current UX processes, tools, and culture against a maturity model. Identify strengths, gaps, and areas for growth, providing a clear roadmap for elevating UX practices and integrating them more deeply into the organisation.
Facilitate cross-functional customer journey mapping
Work with teams across departments to create a visual representation of the customer journey. Identify pain points, inefficiencies, and moments of delight, enabling teams to collaboratively prioritise improvements that enhance the overall user experience.
Run rapid usability testing cycles
Conduct lightweight usability tests on key product areas to quickly uncover pain points and usability issues. These quick cycles can validate existing designs, uncover new insights, and ensure product decisions are grounded in user feedback.
Host UX awareness lunch-and-learns
Organise informal sessions where you can share UX principles, showcase case studies, or discuss recent insights. These sessions help educate non-UX teams, build cross-functional understanding, and establish UX as a vital part of the organisation’s success.
Create a UX backlog from quick-win evaluations
Gather internal feedback from customer-facing teams and conduct quick evaluations of the product to identify usability issues. Prioritise these findings into a UX backlog, focusing on small, impactful improvements that can be tackled efficiently.
Lead collaborative problem-framing workshops
Facilitate workshops with cross-functional teams to define the root causes of key challenges. Use structured exercises to align on shared goals and develop actionable solutions, fostering buy-in and clarity on next steps.
Audit internal user feedback and behaviour data
Review data from support tickets, surveys, analytics, and other feedback channels to identify recurring user challenges. Synthesise these insights into actionable recommendations for improving the end product.
Shadow customer support teams
Sit with customer support representatives or listen to recorded interactions to understand common customer complaints and usability issues. Use these insights to highlight gaps in the product and advocate for user-centered changes.
Shadow sales or demo calls
Join sales or product demo sessions to observe how customers respond to the product and the sales pitch. Pay attention to questions, objections, and pain points that could indicate usability or feature-related challenges.
Analyse internal tools and employee experiences
Evaluate how employees interact with internal tools that support the product, such as admin dashboards or CRM systems. Identify inefficiencies or frustrations that might indirectly affect the end-user experience.
Develop UX-focused case studies for internal wins
Document and share case studies that showcase the impact of UX improvements on business metrics, customer satisfaction, or team efficiency. Use these to advocate for further UX investment and to inspire internal teams.
Build and nurture an internal UX advocate network
Identify colleagues across teams who are passionate about UX. Provide them with tools, training, and resources to champion UX practices within their departments, creating a grassroots movement that amplifies your efforts.
Review and optimise sales enablement and marketing collateral
Assess customer-facing materials for clarity, consistency, and alignment with the product’s UX. Identify and fix gaps that might confuse or frustrate potential customers, ensuring a seamless experience from marketing to product use.
Establish regular feedback loops with cross-functional teams
Set up recurring meetings or channels for teams to share customer insights, usability issues, and ideas for improvement. This keeps UX front-of-mind and fosters collaboration across the organisation to address challenges proactively.

In any project, it's important to adapt to the specific context at hand. The following provides a general guide on how to formulate/use this resource.

Conduct stakeholder alignment sessions
Schedule sessions with key decision-makers to understand business goals, customer priorities, and organisational challenges. Use this information to align UX efforts with broader company objectives, demonstrating how UX can directly support business success.
Assess organisational UX maturity
Evaluate the organisation’s current UX processes, tools, and culture against a maturity model. Identify strengths, gaps, and areas for growth, providing a clear roadmap for elevating UX practices and integrating them more deeply into the organisation.
Facilitate cross-functional customer journey mapping
Work with teams across departments to create a visual representation of the customer journey. Identify pain points, inefficiencies, and moments of delight, enabling teams to collaboratively prioritise improvements that enhance the overall user experience.
Run rapid usability testing cycles
Conduct lightweight usability tests on key product areas to quickly uncover pain points and usability issues. These quick cycles can validate existing designs, uncover new insights, and ensure product decisions are grounded in user feedback.
Host UX awareness lunch-and-learns
Organise informal sessions where you can share UX principles, showcase case studies, or discuss recent insights. These sessions help educate non-UX teams, build cross-functional understanding, and establish UX as a vital part of the organisation’s success.
Create a UX backlog from quick-win evaluations
Gather internal feedback from customer-facing teams and conduct quick evaluations of the product to identify usability issues. Prioritise these findings into a UX backlog, focusing on small, impactful improvements that can be tackled efficiently.
Lead collaborative problem-framing workshops
Facilitate workshops with cross-functional teams to define the root causes of key challenges. Use structured exercises to align on shared goals and develop actionable solutions, fostering buy-in and clarity on next steps.
Audit internal user feedback and behaviour data
Review data from support tickets, surveys, analytics, and other feedback channels to identify recurring user challenges. Synthesise these insights into actionable recommendations for improving the end product.
Shadow customer support teams
Sit with customer support representatives or listen to recorded interactions to understand common customer complaints and usability issues. Use these insights to highlight gaps in the product and advocate for user-centered changes.
Shadow sales or demo calls
Join sales or product demo sessions to observe how customers respond to the product and the sales pitch. Pay attention to questions, objections, and pain points that could indicate usability or feature-related challenges.
Analyse internal tools and employee experiences
Evaluate how employees interact with internal tools that support the product, such as admin dashboards or CRM systems. Identify inefficiencies or frustrations that might indirectly affect the end-user experience.
Develop UX-focused case studies for internal wins
Document and share case studies that showcase the impact of UX improvements on business metrics, customer satisfaction, or team efficiency. Use these to advocate for further UX investment and to inspire internal teams.
Build and nurture an internal UX advocate network
Identify colleagues across teams who are passionate about UX. Provide them with tools, training, and resources to champion UX practices within their departments, creating a grassroots movement that amplifies your efforts.
Review and optimise sales enablement and marketing collateral
Assess customer-facing materials for clarity, consistency, and alignment with the product’s UX. Identify and fix gaps that might confuse or frustrate potential customers, ensuring a seamless experience from marketing to product use.
Establish regular feedback loops with cross-functional teams
Set up recurring meetings or channels for teams to share customer insights, usability issues, and ideas for improvement. This keeps UX front-of-mind and fosters collaboration across the organisation to address challenges proactively.

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