The Nielsen Norman Group is well known as a an educational source for all things UX. They provide training and certification for anyone interested in careers in UX and are often referenced in publications and message boards.
That's why we were excited when they loved one of our original ideas so much that they choose to take it and encourage their audience to utilize it as well!
What happened?
A few years back a representative from the Nielsen Norman Group was interviewing us for a case study that they were producing about the best UX research practices. We had recently created some new features for our government platform, GovHub, that were generating buzz and they were interested in sharing details about the research that we did that resulted in the designs.
During the course of the conversation we mentioned that we had implemented an original internal initiative called "UX Ambassadors" that peaked their interest. UX Ambassadors were basically anyone within the company, regardless of position, that were interested in UX or design. You could be a developer, an accountant, a C-level executive, work in the call center; your title didn't matter as long as you had at least a passing interest in UX or design.
Our goal was to continually grow the profile and importance of UX thinking within the company and we saw the Ambassador program as one way to do that. Once a month we'd plan a meeting where we'd pick a UX topic, typically submitted by the Ambassadors, and we'd talk about it. Topics could literally be about anything as long as it was related to design:
Talk about a project that the UX team is currently working on
Accessibility and its importance moving forward
What type of research is possible?
The UX of Star Wars (yes this was a real topic)
Dark UX and its impact on users
Where we got it wrong: Lessons learned from previous projects
And more! The discussions ranged from presentation style where walked the group of 40+ Ambassadors through slides and examples, to open group discussions where anyone could share their opinions and we'd have an honest conversation about our thoughts.
We'd regularly survey participants and they rated our conversations as some of the most enjoyable and impactful that they've ever had.
As a bonus we'd always try to end each meeting with a Figjam Design Challenge, where we'd give the participants the opportunity to spend 10-15 designing something new on their own. Some of the challenges included things like:
Create a poster for a local business but you're only allowed to use circles and squares in your design
Redesign an existing feature in a way that improves the existing UX
Create a "Google Maps" style GPS system that works in 3 dimensions instead of 2
And at the end we'd always save time for Ambassadors to share their designs if they wanted (no one was forced to share).
Additionally we'd have a separate slack group where members could share ideas or articles about design in order to keep the conversation flowing on a more regular basis.
Overall the UX Ambassador program was immensely successful in encouraging more people to utilize UX thinking in their day-to-day and was why the Nielsen Norman Group was so keen to encourage their audience to adopt a similar program within their own companies.