Building a UX Community of Practice

Why we started it

UX has a visibility problem in large organisations. The work happens inside design teams, the outputs get handed over and most people outside those teams never really understand how decisions got made or what the research actually said. Over time that creates a perception problem: UX becomes something that happens at the end of a project.

The Community of Practice started from a simple idea. What if we created a space where people could share methods, talk about real project challenges, and build confidence in applying design thinking outside of formal design teams? Something more like an ongoing conversation with structured moments of practical engagement.

What we actually did

The early sessions were deliberately broad. We wanted to raise awareness of what UX practice actually involves before asking anyone to apply it. That meant introductory talks, honest conversations about what works and what doesn't on real projects and workshops where people could try things in a low-stakes environment.

The creative problem-solving workshops on campus were where engagement shifted. Talking about UX is one thing. Sitting in a room and working through a problem using design methods is another. People who came in sceptical left with a clearer sense of what it meant to start from user needs rather than assumed solutions.

The university collaboration

One of the things I'm most proud of from this period was getting involved with a local university master's programme. I signed up to support a one-day sprint with students, and that led to me joining a connected activity tied to a twelve-week industry-led project.

Working with master's students on a real industry challenge was genuinely good for both sides. The students got exposure to how design operates in a large, regulated organisation, the constraints, the stakeholder dynamics, the distance between a research insight and a shipped product.

It also reinforced something I believe about design education: the most useful thing you can give emerging designers is a real problem with real consequences.

What we talked about publicly

In March 2024 we took the community's story to a wider audience, sharing the stage with colleagues at a public event at Eagle Labs in Glasgow. We talked about the journey. What we'd built over the previous twelve months, what went well, what was harder than we expected, and what we'd learned.

The questions from the audience were the best part. People wanted to know how to start something like this in their own organisations, how to get traction without formal backing, and how to keep it going when the novelty wears off. There are no clean answers to those questions, but having them asked in public made it clear the problem we'd been working on wasn't unique to us.

What I learned

A few things stand out.

Start with the people, not the programme

The sessions that worked best were the ones that started from what people were actually struggling with on real projects.

Non-designers are the most interesting audience

The colleagues who got the most from the workshops were the ones who didn't think of themselves as designers. Product managers, analysts, engineers. When someone from outside a design team starts asking better questions earlier in a project, the benefit is much larger than another designer applying a method they already knew.

Visibility requires repetition

One good session doesn't change a culture. Two years of consistent, practical engagement starts to. The cumulative effect of showing up regularly and making the work tangible is what shifts how people think about design's role.

The community was the output

It's easy to measure community activity by attendance numbers or sessions delivered. The real measure is whether people are applying what they've learned, asking better questions, or involving design thinking earlier in their projects. That's harder to count and more important to chase.

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Starting something from nothing inside a large organisation, without a budget or a brief, is its own kind of design challenge. You're designing for adoption. The UX Community of Practice is still going. That, more than any metric, is the measure I care about most.