The 6 Levels of UX Maturity

Stage 1: Absent A company at this stage is either oblivious to UX or believes it does not need it. A company has a user-centered mindset if users are the driver behind its strategy, tactics, and decisions. At this stage, UX work is not planned, let alone incorporated into the organization's vision.

Stage 2: Limited UX work is not done routinely, nor is it consistently well-executed or incorporated into strategy and planning. There's no official recognition of user experience as a discipline. There are no UX-dedicated roles, processes, or budget for this stage in development.

Stage 4: Structured Structured UX means that the organization recognizes the value of UX and has established a full UX team or multiple teams. Leadership usually supports UX and sometimes incorporates it into high-level strategies. There is a centralized definition of design and a shared, iterative human-centered design process.

Stage 6: UserDriven In Stage 6, everyone is fully enlightened about user-centered design. Understanding user needs through research is the primary driver of the organization's strategy and project prioritization. Almost all teams within the organization usually perform UX-related activities in an efficient, effective manner.

Stage 5: Integrated When organizations reach the stage of integrated UX, their UX work has become comprehensive, pervasive, and universal. The organization's important success metrics — that leaders care most about — have a focus on UX or are driven by UX-related work. There is often innovation in UX methods and processes and contributions to the f... See more

Stage 3: Emergent When UX maturity is emergent, organizations exhibit UX work in more teams, engage in some UX-related planning and may have UX budgets. The UX efforts are, however, small, unstable, and based on individual manager initiatives rather than organizational policies. Some teams that use several research and design methods and do multipl... See more

Factors in UX Maturity Strategy: UX leadership, planning, and resource prioritizationCulture: UX knowledge and cultivating UX careers and practitioners’ growthProcess: the systematic use of UX research and design methodsOutcomes: intentionally defining and measuring the results produced by UX work