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The term UX Strategy written in the book Mental Models by Indi Young is presented as a solution/formula to help UX Designers achieve a more strategic level of research. In her book, Indi Young presents a mini-manifesto that puts together an equation for experience strategy written by Jesse James Garrett.

Experience Strategy = Business Strategy + UX Strategy

Jesse James Garret

What is Ux Strategy?

Ux strategy describes who your users are, how your product fits into the current market, and how it will achieve business goals. The perfect form, starts with the product vision and ends with a roadmap on how to strategically get there. In summary a UX Strategy is crucial for aligning with stakeholders. But this topic and discipline of UX Strategy has evolved. Now it’s a stronger emphasis on satisfying the user’s needs through user research and design practices.

The purpose of this strategy is to create a plan that looks at your current position and helps you get to where you actually want to be. In the digital product world, the strategy is very important. The chaos, delays, increased costs and bad user experiences can be an exacerbated factor when there is no shared product vision among all team members.

When we talk about shared product vision, we talk about the team and stakeholders having the same mental model for the future.

So, UX Strategy is a plan of actions designed to reach an improved future state of the organization’s user experience over an established period of time.

The Four tenets of UX Strategy?

It’s not enough to design a seamless UX if you can’t validate that users want your product.
It’s like a chess game. You want to think several moves ahead and be aware of how all the pieces can be used to support your game-winning strategy.

Tenet 1: Business Strategy

The top -line vision of the company. It governs the stakeholders’ decision-making process about which initiatives may lead to greater profitability and success.

  • Competitive Advantages
  • Business objectives
  • Revenue Streams

This topic is where things get real between your business strategy and your user experience.

Tenet 2: Value Innovation

Understand how and why people use their devices and what defines a successful and a failed UX. The first user contact with the interface generally determines success or failure. Value Innovation is the key. The objective is to create value innovation in an uncontested market. It’s fundamental when we produce digital products make a continuously research, redesign, and remarket to keep up with the rapidly changing customer values and online market. The true value innovation occurs when UX and Business Model intersect.

Tenet 3: Validated User Research

Sometimes stakeholders are dreamers in that they assume what users value instead of verifying it. User Research is the main and the most important thing to create a good and usable product. Is how you can verify that you are on the right path with understanding your potential or existing users’ goals and needs. Validated user research is a collaborative process that should involve as many members of the product team as possible.

Tenet 3: Frictionless UX

The user experience is how a human experiences a digital product while attempting to accomplish a task or goal. Was it easy or difficult to use? Was it pleasing or frustrating? Was it useful or useless?

Our goal as UX Designers is to remove or reduce the friction across all the essential interactions so that users always feel like they are in control of their destiny.

Recap!

UX Strategy is an empirical practice! It’s not a means of formulating and executing a perfect plan. 

It’s more like this..

👉 Research what’s out there.

👉 Examine the opportunity space

👉 Test hypotheses

👉 Fail

👉 Learn

You will need to take risks and accept failure.

Why is important?

👉 Keeps stakeholders updated on user experience and the benefits of UX Design;

👉 Outlines UX research and design processes;

👉 Defines how to measure UX successes;

👉 Gives the entire organization an understanding and importance of user experience design;

👉 Aligns the brand’s promise with the user experience.

5 tips for creating your Product strategy

  1. Stay User Centered
    An effective UX strategy contains plenty of data about your user, their current and future needs, their perception of your brand, and any plans for continued user research.
  1. Define your business strategy
    Can employee satisfaction and efficiency be maximized? What improvements in company process, structure, culture, and performance can be made? How can we make them?
  1. Consider all aspects of the user experience
    What happens before and after a user interacts with the product.
  2. Keep your goals specific
    The more specific your goals, the easier it will be certain when they’ve been met or not. It will also be easier to track how effective your UX design team is.
  3. Optimize for speed and accessibility
    Speed highly affects a user’s experience and should therefore have high priority in your UX strategy.

Bibliography

  • Levy, Jaime. UX Strategy – Product Strategy Techniques for Devising Innovative Digital Solutions. 2021.
  • Young, Indi. Mental Models – Align Design Strategy with Human Behavior, 2008.


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