Strategies for strengthening UX competencies and cultivating corporate UX in a large organisation developing robots

Integrating UX into industry practices is a well-researched topic particularly for software companies. However, little is known about how UX integration and adoption ‘works’ within the robotics industry. This study identifies behaviours impeding UX adoption at the individual, team, and organisational level within a company developing robots. We carried out a one-year long Action Research study in a large, international company during design and development of a service robot. Based on a UX maturity assessment, we carried out six interventions, where the researcher and practitioners worked deliberately with UX competence-development and the company's UX culture. Together we identified six barriers: achieving appropriate confidence levels, trust in UX, commitment and support structures, trade-offs in UX, handover practices, and UX management. To address these barriers, we developed and tested 21 strategies to help foster good UX practices and promote a ‘UX-friendly’ culture that empowers non-UX professionals to drive user-involved initiatives themselves.