From Startup to Scaleup: An Interview Study of the Development of User Experience Work in a Data-Intensive Company

Abstract

Small startups often do not have the resources or the skills for upfront qualitative user studies and user experience design. Instead, they operate in market-driven environment where requirements are often invented and validated through frequent releases. The research on how startups do this in practice is scarce. Even less is known about what kind of engineering and user experience practices would help startups to survive and grow into successful businesses. This paper describes how user experience work emerged and grew in a data-intensive startup company operating in the financial sector in Denmark. The paper is based on the interviews of four persons with different roles in the startup. The emerging issues in user experience were found to be in the lack of skills in user experience and in balancing between the use of quantitative and qualitative user data. To conclude, it seems evident that startups would benefit from user experience practices but more research is needed to develop practices that would suit for this particular context.