Presented at UPADC March 6, 2014 Discusses my take on what UX Strategy is and how a UX strategy is important to the UX profession as a whole and to us as UX professionals.

1. UX Strategy
What’s All the Fuss about this Rapidly Growing Practice?
March 6, 2014
Janice James

2.  Introductions
 Setting Expectations
 Define UX Strategy
 A Little Bit of History
 Focusing on the Why? How? Or What?
 The Implications of UX Strategy
 UX Strategy Any Time
 Why UX Strategy is Important
March 6, 20142
Agenda

3. March 6, 20143
Introductions
Janice James
User Experience Research, Evaluation
and Training
janice@jjames-ux.com
@janicej29

4.  Interaction Designers?
 UX Researchers?
 Both
 Visual Designers?
 Developers?
 Information Architects?
 Technical Writers?
 Other?
March 6, 20144
Who are you?

5.  Not a “how to” presentation
 Tonight’s discussion is exclusive of any development
methodology
March 6, 20145
Setting Expectations

6. March 6, 20146
What is UX Strategy?
What is UX Strategy?

7. March 6, 20147
Graduate Degrees in Design Strategy
 MBA in Design Strategy
 California College of the Arts (SFO)
 https://www.cca.edu/academics/graduate/strategy-mba
 Strategic Design and Management, MS
 Parsons (New York)
 http://www.newschool.edu/parsons/masters-design-management/
 Strategic Design MBA
 Philadelphia University
 http://www.philau.edu/strategicdesignmba/
 Design Management MPS
 Pratt Institute (Brooklyn)
 http://www.pratt.edu/academics/art_design/art_grad/design_management
 Masters of Arts in Design Strategy + Innovation
 RMCAD – Rocky Mountains College of Art and Design
 http://www.rmcad.edu/academics/design-strategy-innovation
 Etc.

8. March 6, 20148
UX Design Strategy Conference
http://www.uxstrat.com/

9. What is UX Strategy?
March 6, 20149
UX Strategy is about building a rationale that guides user experience design efforts for the
foreseeable future.” – Paul Bryan
UX Strategy is about
context; the experience.
It’s not about the product.
It’s not about the features.
Strategy focuses on
intent, goals, mission,
vision, and culture.
- Nathan Shedroff,
Associate Chair, California
College of the Arts
Design strategy is a collaborative
process to understand what to
design before you design it; a plan
to align business objectives with
design goals; documentation to
align stakeholders, colleagues &
investors with your plan of attack. -
Chris Avore, Managing Director: Product
Design, NASDAQ
Experience strategy is
that collection of
activities that an
organization chooses to
undertake to deliver a
series of interactions
which, when taken
together, constitute a
product or service
offering that is superior
in a meaningful, hard to
replicate way; that is
unique, distinct &
distinguishable from
that available from a
competitor. – Steve Batty,
VP IxDA
Design strategy: defines the design activities within the constraints
of time and resources . . . To help the designer select the best mix of
creative and rational methods. - Richard Branham, Alp Tiritoglu,

10. March 6, 201410
The process of carefully framing a project of what to design before you figure out
how it should be designed. – Brandon Schauer, Adaptive Path
What is UX Strategy?
The reality is that there is no such thing as UX
strategy. There is only product strategy. UX strategy
is part of product strategy. It is not its own thing.
Calling it out as such further isolates designers from
their colleagues in “the business” and does nothing
to actually drive the value of a holistic user
experience into the org’s mainstream conversations.
Instead designers should work to inform a product
strategy conversation that considers not only the UX
but the business’and product’s success factors as
well. - Jeff Gothelf
User experience strategy is
about listening. Both how
intelligently companies listen
and what they do with the
information once they’ve
obtained it contribute to a
company’s ability to implement
a successful experience
strategy.—Jordan Julien,
Experience Strategy Consultnat

11. Which is it?
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UX methods we use to create a good user experience?

12. Which is it?
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Is it the user experience we create, as a result of
our designs, to differentiate our products and
services?

13. It’s Both and More
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 The collaboration of a cross-
functional team
 Implementation of UX activities
to understand the “why” and
create the “how”—to support
the business goals
 The use of data to formulate a
design
 A resulting design that provides
users a useful, engaging product
or service that is delightful
The best way to communicate a
UX strategy is to ensure that
everyone is first involved in
designing that strategy
together.—Dan Szuc and Jo Wong,
Principals and Co-founders of Apogee
Usability Asia

14. But it’s Not an Entirely New Concept!
The Foundation – Current & Past
 User-Centered Design Process
 Implemented during Discover or
Envision phases of development cycle
 Usability Engineering Plans
 Quantitative usability objectives
(metrics) influenced by business goals
 User research activities to better
understand users and their needs
 Design to meet the usability
objectives; measure and iterate
The New & Upcoming
 New name
 Much more evolved
 More UX discovery
methods
 More collaboration
 Embedded UX focus
March 6, 201414


15.  Most organizations focus on the “What”
 Executive or Product Manager gets an idea
 UX Team figures out how to design the “what”
March 6, 201415
Too Often Companies Focus on the “What”
Why
How
What
The Golden Circle,
Simon Sinek

16. UX Strategy IS About Change
 Stop focusing on solving the
wrong problems
 Changing the design process
 Focusing on the “why” and
“how”
March 6, 201416

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Zappos

18. March 6, 201418
Zappos

19. March 6, 201419
Zappos

20. 20
Zappos
March 6, 2014
Video

21. UX Strategy IS About Change
 Aligning our UX Strategy with
the business goals
 Changing UX’s role in the
company
 Changing the business
culture—working more
collaboratively
 Moving toward a customer,
innovation-centric organization
March 6, 201421
Adapted by Renato Feijó from Bruce Temkin’s Experience-based differentiation maturity model
http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/the-customer-experience-journey/

22. No Opportunity to Get in at the “Why” Stage?
1. Become familiar with:
• Business Vision
• Business Goals and Objectives
• Brand Messaging
• SWOT
• Business Values
• Customer Segmentation
• Customer Goals
• Creative Brief
• Key Performance Indicators
• Competitive Market Analysis
• Trend Analysis
March 6, 201422
You can still influence
the “HOW”

23. No Opportunity to Get in at the “Why” Stage?
2. Include UX Activities that align
with Business Strategy:
• Personas
• Journey Maps
• Field Research
• Mood Board Semantic
Differential Study
• Feature / Value Analysis
• Concept Modeling
• Competitive Benchmarking
• Roadmap(s)
March 6, 201423
You can still influence
the “HOW”

24. Align UX Strategy with Business Goals / Objectives
March 6, 201424
Adapted from Lis Hubert’s and
Paul McAleer’s Mapping
business-value goals to UX
Activities
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archi
ves/2013/11/mapping-business-value-
to-ux-part-2.php

25.  Changing misconceptions
 UX = wireframes and usability testing
 User research = usability testing
 Developing trust between product management,
marketing, executives and Uxers
 Accelerating the UX maturity of your company
 Making others “champions” of user experience
 Escalating and establishing your role in the product
creation / innovation process
March 6, 201425
Why is UX Strategy Important to You?

26. March 6, 201426
Design is More
Design is not just
what it looks
like and feels
like. Design is
how it works.
- Steve Jobs