UX Maturity
Why most companies are stuck – and what moving up actually takes
Key Takeaways
UX maturity isn’t about having a design team. It’s about whether user insights actually drive decisions. Most companies are stuck at Level 2 – reactive, isolated, undervalued. Moving up takes more than better design. It takes organisational change.
I’ve been in a lot of meetings where someone says “we’re very user-focused here.”
Then the product roadmap has zero user research. Decisions get made based on what the loudest stakeholder thinks. Design is brought in to make things look good after the engineers have built them. And the UX team spends most of its time asking for earlier involvement and not getting it.
That’s not a user-focused company. That’s a company that thinks it is.
UX maturity is the gap between those two things.
What UX Maturity Actually Means
UX maturity describes how seriously an organisation treats user-centred design – not as an aspiration but as a measurable reality. It’s a spectrum, typically described across six levels, from “we don’t really do UX” to “UX shapes strategic decisions at every level.”
Most companies cluster around Level 2. They have designers. They might do occasional user testing. UX exists as a function, but it’s reactive – responding to feature requests, firefighting usability problems, working on things after the important decisions have already been made.
Level 2 isn’t shameful. It’s just genuinely limited in what it can produce.
The difference between Level 2 and Level 3 isn’t a better design system or a larger team. It’s whether research findings actually change what gets built. If you run user tests but the roadmap never moves based on what you learn, you’re at Level 2 regardless of how rigorous the research is.
Having a design team doesn’t mean you have UX maturity. It means you have designers.
The 6 Levels – What They Mean in Practice
Each level describes a different relationship between UX and the decisions that shape the product.
Level 1 – Absent
No UX function. Products built entirely on assumptions.
KPIs: NPS <10 · conversion <1% · high support volume
Level 2 – Limited
Design exists but enters late. Research is rare. Usability problems ship regularly.
KPIs: NPS 10–25 · conversion 1–2% · above-average churn
Level 3 – Emergent
UX is happening but inconsistently. No shared standards. Quality varies by team.
KPIs: NPS 25–40 · conversion improving · design rework frequent
Level 4 – Structured
Defined processes, design system in place, research embedded in some teams. Leadership sees UX as a value driver.
KPIs: NPS 40–55 · 20–30% less rework · faster time-to-market
Level 5 – Integrated
UX shapes strategy, not just execution. Research informs the roadmap before scope is set.
KPIs: NPS 55–70 · +5–12% conversion rate · +2–5% churn reduction · –75% rework costs vs. organisations that fix issues in development
Level 6 – User-Driven
UX is a strategic business function. Design at C-level. Customer obsession is structural, not a value statement. Companies operating at this level include Microsoft, Netflix, Airbnb, Google, and Amazon.
KPIs: NPS 70+ · conversion 5%+ · lower churn than category average · fixing problems in design is 10x–100x cheaper than fixing them in development
Most organisations overestimate their level by one. If research findings haven’t changed a roadmap decision in the last six months, you’re at Level 2 – regardless of what the job postings say.
The Signs You’re Stuck
A few things that reliably indicate a company is at Level 2 or below, regardless of what the job postings claim.
UX is involved after the scope is set. By the time design gets the brief, the solution has often already been decided. The designer’s job becomes making it look acceptable, not questioning whether it’s the right thing to build.
Research findings live in presentations. They get shared once, maybe twice, and then sit in Confluence where nobody looks at them. They don’t feed into product decisions. They don’t inform the AI systems. They just exist.
Stakeholders say “users will figure it out.” This is a specific phrase worth listening for. It almost always signals that a usability problem is being dismissed rather than fixed.
Design quality is inconsistent. Not because the designers aren’t good – because there’s no shared language, no shared components, no shared understanding of what “good” looks like across the product.
It’s Not a Straight Line
It’s tempting to think of UX maturity as a ladder. Level 1 at the bottom, Level 6 at the top, climb steadily. Nielsen Norman Group’s 2025 research challenges that framing.
Their updated model describes UX maturity as a living system, not a linear progression. That means organisations can be at different levels for different capabilities at the same time. Strong in research, weak in governance. Good at visual craft, poor at connecting insights to strategy. Progress in one area can stall or regress if something else shifts – leadership change, budget cut, team restructuring.
It also means “reaching Level 3” isn’t a destination. It’s a condition you maintain. And one that’s always at risk from pressures that have nothing to do with design quality. Understanding that changes how you invest in maturity – not as a one-time initiative, but as ongoing organisational work.
Level 1 → Level 6
Most organisations sit at Level 1 or 2 and don’t know it.
Moving up one level changes what UX can do and what it’s allowed to do.
What Moving Up Actually Requires
The honest answer: more than most teams want to hear.
Moving from Level 2 to Level 3 requires research to be embedded in the product process, not added on top of it. It requires at least one stakeholder in product or leadership who believes in the value of UX and will defend its involvement at the scoping stage. It requires a way of sharing findings that people actually engage with, not another Confluence page.
It also requires patience. Maturity doesn’t change in a quarter. It changes through accumulated evidence that UX involvement makes better products, and through relationships built slowly with people who have the authority to change how the organisation works.
The companies that move up fastest are the ones where UX leaders invest as much time in organisational change as they do in the quality of the design work itself.
Two Companies, Two Different Paths
Two examples that show what UX maturity looks like in practice – one built deliberately, one foundational from day one.
IBM: Level 2 → Level 4–5
In 2012, IBM had around 50 designers for 400,000 employees. UX sat outside the product process. Products were powerful and difficult to use.
The change was structural: a $100 million investment over five years, the IBM Design Thinking framework, and designers embedded directly inside product teams rather than centralised. By 2016 the team had grown to over 1,500. Products using Design Thinking went to market 75% faster. The estimated ROI on the investment reached $300 million.
What made it work wasn’t better hiring. It was organisational redesign – changing when designers got involved and what they were empowered to influence.
Source: IBM Enterprise Design Thinking
Airbnb: Level 5–6 From the Start
Two of Airbnb’s three founders studied design. UX maturity wasn’t something they built – it was how the company thought from the beginning.
In 2013, when growth was stalling, the team didn’t run more analytics. They flew to New York, photographed host listings themselves, and identified the real barrier: low-quality photos. They built a professional photography service for hosts. Bookings doubled in the weeks that followed.
By their 2020 IPO, Airbnb’s NPS consistently exceeded 70. The product was recognisable not just through branding but through an interaction quality competitors consistently failed to match. The lesson: the outcomes of high UX maturity are available to any organisation willing to build the conditions for them.
Source: Fast Company – Airbnb’s Magic Photography Trick
The Ideal State: One Evidence Base, All Teams Aligned
High UX maturity isn’t just about having better research. It’s about how that research moves through the organisation. The pattern that distinguishes Level 5–6 comes down to three operational principles:
Research Once, Not Repeatedly
Strategic questions are researched centrally and findings flow to all workstreams. Less duplication, more consistency – every team draws from the same foundation instead of reaching different conclusions about the same users.
Shared Insights, Reusable Principles
Research is organised around themes, not sprint cycles. Insights are documented so multiple teams can apply them independently. Decision principles become part of how the organisation thinks – not just what one team delivered once.
One Evidence Base. Always On.
Not quarterly research cycles followed by long gaps. A continuously updated, shared foundation all teams draw from. When user behaviour changes, the whole organisation sees it – not just the team that happened to be running a study that month.
This is what moves UX from a service function to a strategic one. Not more designers, not a bigger budget – a different relationship between research and the decisions it’s supposed to inform.
What to Do Next
- Assess honestly where your organisation sits on the UX maturity scale – not where you’d like it to be, but where it actually is today.
- Identify one realistic step up that’s achievable in the next quarter. Maturity grows incrementally, not through a single initiative.
- Find one ally in product or leadership who understands the gap and could sponsor the next step. Maturity doesn’t grow without internal support.
Sources & Further Reading
The UX maturity model I describe in this post is based on established frameworks – most notably the Nielsen Norman Group’s 6-stage model, which is the most widely referenced in the industry:
- Nielsen Norman Group. The 6 Levels of UX Maturity. The most comprehensive UX maturity framework available. Required reading for any UX leader working on organisational change.
- Nielsen Norman Group. When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods. Helps teams at different maturity levels find the right research approach.
- Nielsen Norman Group. UX Research Cheat Sheet. A practical overview of research methods, useful when building a research practice from scratch.
- Interaction Design Foundation. UX Maturity. IxDF. An additional perspective on how organisations build and evolve their UX capabilities over time.
- Interaction Design Foundation. UX Research. IxDF. Foundational reading on research methods, especially useful for teams at Levels 2–3 who are building a research practice from scratch.
- User Interviews. UX Research Field Guide. A practical companion for anyone starting or scaling a research function inside an organisation.
- McKinsey & Company. The Business Value of Design. The source for the –75% rework cost reduction and the 10x–100x cost-of-fixing stat cited in this article. One of the most comprehensive studies on the financial return of design investment.
René Manikofski is a Senior UX Designer with 10+ years of experience in e-commerce and digital product design across Europe. All articles are based on personal professional experience and supported by AI in writing.