What is UX Strategy?
I’ve worked in UX for more than 15 years. More recently helping companies with UX Strategy.
UX Strategy is a thoughtful approach to a user experience initiative. I’ve found some of the best methods for UX strategy come out of design thinking or human-centered design.
Cutting to the chase, here’s the basic UX Strategy Approach.
Define the problem.
Pretty obvious, I know. But too often, ux professionals jump right in to design and solutioning without digging in to learn what is the goal or problem.
Borrowing from design thinking, I usually begin by asking myself the following:
Do we know the problem and have a likely solution?
Do we know the problem but are unsure of solution"?
Are we unsure of the problem and unsure of the solution?
(And the super sneaky) - Do we have a solution but are not sure what problem is being solved? How in the world did we fall into this one? Typically it’s a result of a short timeline and internal politics.
Create a loose plan forward.
Gather things we know or feel confident about like key parts of the current user flow (inroads, off ramps etc), previous learnings or ux research, competitive intelligence, and any voice of customer or user feedback.
Next I ask, “What do we still need to know vs what we want to know?”
Let go of want-to-knows
These are nice to have’s but you may be limited by budget, time or even practicality. If you’re launching something new to your market, you may not have past learnings to draw from. And testing iterations of prototypes from start to launch may not be feasible.
Track down the need-to-know’s.
We must track this down to move forward. I gather the things we know or feel confident about like key parts of the current user flow (inroads, off ramps etc), previous learnings or ux research, competitive intelligence, and any voice of customer or user feedback.
A first pass at your key stakeholders. They could be from in your department or outside. Start with product, data, design managers or leaders and span out to marketing, legal/compliance and lines of business or operations.
Understand the user’s mindset and what they may be trying to do. Work with your UX Researchers. Check into past usability studies.
What do the engineers or developers know? What can they feasibly deliver or do they have any ideas or solutions?
We all know the solution has to meet WCAG guidelines. But it might be good to ask accessibility if they know of any similar projects that took longer or became more involved due to misunderstanding accessibility standards.
We also need to get ask why is this happening and check live site, check web and mobile analytics.
Goals and KPIs are also essential. Without them, your problem and solution become too large because no one agrees on the outcome.
Finally, create a timelines or roadmap - even if it’s a strawman. Getting this down now will help you more in the long run.
