Working in a Offshore R&D Captive always is challenging considering the "Factory" mindset of development team. Lack of domain knowledge and the user often elevate problems as the acceptability of the solutions provided is hampered and this causes a lot of rework.

I and my colleagues (initially just 2 of us) tried to explore this problem and bring in a more "Product" centric mindset by helping projects in User Experience and Design thinking aspects. Business, Technology and Design being the key constituents of a successful enterprise, we decided to strengthen the Design aspects as we were doing fine in the other two.

We explored this area using online webinars, professional training and certifications and a lot of hands on activities which helped us apply these techniques to transform the way in which we now approach our development.Integration with Agile principles have brought in various Operational benefits for us. Although this is just a start to a long journey of Ux , We (now a group of 8 colleagues) are proud to say that we are in the right direction to institutionalize Ux not only in our business unit but also trying to collaborate with other groups within the company.

"Institutionalization of Ux within the organization is a phrase coming from Eric Schaffer (Human Factors International) who also has a book with this this name, is the transformation of an organization by bringing in the user centric aspects in the product development process.