| Author: | Wu, Xiuxiu |
| Title: | User experience team knowledge in China’s high-tech industry |
| Advisors: | Siu, Kin Wai Michael (SD) |
| Degree: | Ph.D. |
| Year: | 2025 |
| Department: | School of Design |
| Pages: | 253 pages : color illustrations |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | This study investigated user experience (UX) team knowledge in China’s high-tech industry. UX refers to the overall experience of users when engaging with a product or service. Currently, UX is a significant research area in human-centered design, with existing studies examining aspects such as UX competence, processes, maturity, tools, methods, resources, and user perception. UX designers typically work in teams, honing their knowledge and skills through interactions with team members. Therefore, as design is a collective effort, managing and understanding UX teams are crucial. Despite this importance, the topic of UX teams has not been studied sufficiently. Additionally, the interdisciplinary nature of UX poses a challenge for designers—they have to continually update their knowledge for practice across different industries. To address this challenge, this study proposed the primary research question: "What constitutes UX team knowledge?" This central question guided this study to explore and demonstrate UX team knowledge in China’s high-tech industry by providing a comprehensive understanding of its composition, characteristics, distribution, and utilization. The study employed a qualitative approach through constructivist grounded theory (CGT). In the first phase, interviews were conducted with 16 UX designers in high-tech industries to form the foundation for constructing a UX team knowledge framework and mapping knowledge distribution across four distinct teams. This phase yielded valuable insights into four primary knowledge circles—professional, project, collaboration, and organizational—comprising 24 components that characterize UX team knowledge. Furthermore, two pairs of dimensions emerged through theoretical coding: power-centralized/decentralized and pragmatic/hedonic, representing leadership and reasoning styles, respectively. These dimensions shaped four distinct UX team types, each reflecting different knowledge distributions: performance team, operation team, strategy team, and transformative team. Building on the findings from the first phase, the second phase involved four in-depth case studies to validate and provide real-world examples of the identified team types. Interviews with both team members and managers provided a holistic understanding of team collaboration and knowledge utilization patterns. The study explored four teams' historical development across four stages—beginning UX, constructing UX, realizing UX, and promoting UX. In addition, knowledge transformation, sharing, reflection, and team dynamics also were discussed to reveal UX practices. The case study results suggest that the most advanced and ideal UX team is the transformative team, which maximizes creativity through cooperative and equal decision-making processes, resulting in increased knowledge sharing and reflection. This study proposes a conceptual framework that structures UX team knowledge into four knowledge domains and identifies different team types based on leadership and reasoning styles. While the UX team knowledge framework organizes concepts systematically, it does not aim to predict outcomes, distinguishing it from a formalized model. Furthermore, by focusing on UX teams within China's high-tech industry, the study offers context-specific insights. Building on the proposed framework, this study contributes to UX research in three ways. Firstly, it offers new perspectives for UX management, particularly regarding goals, strategies, and resource planning. Secondly, it provides a structured reference for adjacent fields such as product and interface design, helping to analyze knowledge elements across different leadership and reasoning contexts. Thirdly, it informs UX education by identifying specific competencies and learning outcomes relevant to team-based design practices. In practice, the framework serves as a guiding tool for both managers and practitioners, allowing them to navigate the complex scope of UX management effectively and offering a structured approach to competence development. Overall, the UX team knowledge framework and case studies highlight the different leadership and reasoning styles among UX teams, encouraging companies to reflect proactively on their design management practices. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | open access |
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