When you’re growing a UX team, one of the most important factors to understand is your organization’s UX maturity. Without recognizing where your company stands—and where you want it to go—it's easy to misalign hiring, strategy, and expectations.

UX maturity is a measure of how deeply user-centered design practices are embedded in a company’s culture, processes, and decision-making. Companies with low UX maturity may view design as just making things "pretty" at the end of development, while those with high UX maturity integrate research, design, and testing into every step of their product development process.

Why UX Maturity Matters

Knowing your organization's UX maturity helps you set realistic expectations for your team. If you expect to run a mature, research-driven design process in a company that has never done user interviews, you're setting yourself (and your team) up for frustration.

Instead, knowing the starting point allows you to:

• Hire the right people for the environment.

• Set achievable goals for improving processes.

• Advocate for UX in a way that meets the company where it is.

• Build credibility step-by-step rather than trying to overhaul everything at once.

Building Teams for the Stage You're In

When growing a UX team, it’s critical to align your hiring and leadership approach with your company’s current UX maturity:

• Low Maturity: You need UX generalists who are comfortable wearing multiple hats—research, design, testing, facilitation—and who can advocate gently and strategically for user-centered thinking.

• Mid-Level Maturity: You can start hiring specialists—researchers, content designers, interaction designers—because the company values deeper UX practices but may still need help operationalizing them.

• High Maturity: You’re scaling and optimizing. Your hires can focus on craft excellence, advanced collaboration models, and innovation because UX is seen as strategic at all levels.

Trying to hire a senior specialist for a company with low UX maturity often backfires—they’ll feel underutilized or frustrated by the lack of structure, and you risk losing great people quickly.

Evolving UX Maturity Over Time

Good UX leadership includes growing your organization's UX maturity over time. Some ways to do that include:

• Introducing lightweight, easy wins (e.g., simple user testing before launch).

• Creating shared language around UX (frameworks, principles, metrics).

• Building strong partnerships with product and engineering leaders.

• Making user feedback visible to executives and teams.

• Scaling processes only when teams are ready to adopt them.

It’s tempting to try to “fix” everything at once, but sustainable change happens incrementally. Celebrate small wins and build momentum.

UX Maturity and Team Morale

UX maturity doesn’t just impact your processes—it directly affects your team’s morale and retention. Designers who constantly have to “sell” the value of their work without support will burn out. Designers who feel like they’re part of meaningful decision-making processes thrive.

When growing your team, you’re not just filling seats—you’re setting the stage for a culture where design is respected, valued, and empowered.

Understanding your UX maturity level—and being honest about it with candidates—helps you attract and retain people who are energized by the challenge you’re facing, not discouraged by it.