As consultants in the field of User Experience, we at Yu Centrik have all had the chance to see different companies fight their way into the world of UX.

Sometimes this way is paved by brave UX believers that, even without resources or experience in the field, figure out undercover techniques to bring user insight into projects and help design better products and services. Sometimes, it comes from the very top of the corporate hierarchy—VPs and CEOs that recognize the importance of making UX part of the process, culture, and the values of the company. Sometimes it might come from external consultants like us that, once given a small chance to get their foot in the door, do everything they can to spread around the benefits of user research, collaborative design and user validation.

No matter where UX comes from, one thing is common in every project: it needs to be managed.

Project management takes different forms in different companies and also in different types of projects. It’s often handled by professionals— by certified PMs with years of experience in managing complex projects, product owners or account managers, and occasionally there’s no “official” project manager but someone responsible to make sure the project will be well executed from beginning to end.

It’s not surprising to find that people in charge of managing projects are not well versed in UX. Defining, estimating, and orchestrating UX activities is new and strange to their practice, and sometimes they’re only budgeted as an afterthought.

Why are we saying it’s not surprising? If you look around, articles and training target the UX designers, UX researchers or UX wannabes while there’s hardly anything available for those in charge of managing UX projects. Project managers don’t want to know the details of how to moderate usability tests. They don’t want to learn how to do sketches or wireframes. But they need to know what activities must be planned and when, how long they will take to be executed, how much they cost, and who should execute them. They need to know how to manage risks, define priorities and take the necessary actions to integrate UX into their other project management activities. They need to deliver on time, improve efficiency, and at the end of the day make their projects a great success.

This is why we’ve created a UX training program dedicated to Project Managers called UX-PM Certification. We believe that if we want to bring UX to organizations we need to train those in charge of managing projects. We believe that for public and private organisations there’s a lot to be gained from having PMs really understand UX.

UX-PM is a certification program built by UX alliance, the global network of user experience companies with members in 25 countries. Yu Centrik is the Canadian representative of the association and we’ve been working on UX-PM since the beginning of this year. UX alliance experts from different countries got together to create and refine the content you will find in these training sessions. In Yu Centrik alone, these designers and researchers have more than 20 years of expertise in the field.

Whether you’d like to advocate and initiate a UX project in an organization that doesn’t yet have a user-centered design practice, manage a mature UX operation, or make strategic decisions about UX investments and KPIs—you’ll find your place in this training.

The program consists of three levels to match various needs and differing levels of UX knowledge.

The first training sessions, for the Level 1 certification, will take place in December in Montreal, Québec City, and Ottawa. This course is limited to 8 participants per group, so if you’re interested register quickly using the following links:

2 full days training in English, from 8:30 to 16:30,
$1850 + taxes (-20% discount for December sessions)

If you want to learn more please visit ux-pm.com or the training section of Yu Centrik’s website. If you are not sure about which level you should take, email or give us a call at 514-523-5862 #3110 and talk to our team.

We are really excited to offer this UX-PM certification and look forward to empowering project managers with essential UX knowledge.

If you wish to be notified of future training dates please add your name to our list.