How User Experience is Practiced: Two Case Studies from the Field.

In this paper, we present two case studies describing how two organizations practiced User Experience (UX) in the summer of 2017; both were 'in-house' departments in consumer-facing companies in the Chicagoland area of Illinois. We conducted 16 interviews (involving 22 people) with leadership and practitioners, and observations (job-shadowing) with 14 of those we interviewed. Key takeaways included: (a) practitioners came from a variety of backgrounds resulting in multidisciplinary teams; (b) leadership desired UX employees that were generalists; and (c) inexpensive tools designed for UX were common for creating artifacts and facilitating communication resulting in a dynamic tool-scape. These findings have implications for instructors teaching in UX and students in UX programs; we also argue the findings will interest UX practitioners who are curious about sharing and learning from each other.