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What is UX strategy? I feel there are a lot of different perspectives on what UX strategy is. Lots of designers are now calling themselves UX strategists and it has become a pretty hot topic. Let’s start a discussion on UX Strategy. What it means to you, how are you doing it? To get things started here’s my perspective based on my experiences of working at IBM and Marktplaats, Ebay:

It’s the big picture stuff, the game plan.

UX strategy is where we can really understand the full landscape of not only the product, but the business, competitors, technology and create a vision for the future of what we and our team will achieve.

UX strategy is not meant to take over from business strategy or PM’s project vision but more it is a piece of the puzzle and is used to connect all the dots and gives the team a user focused lens to look through. Designers bring their creative, user centred thinking to the table and help to align the team and create a story of their future vision.

The key is understanding how business needs, user needs and technical capabilities fit together, this collaboration is needed to create a UX strategy and to get a grasp of the big picture, everything we work on should fit into this vision. If we think of UX strategy like an Umbrella, everything we work on should fit nicely under.

This venn diagram is often shown, but I like to also take into consideration the design maturity of the organisation. This will influence stakeholders, budget, etc., and how you tell the your story.

It’s good to note that saying ‘NO’ is also an important strategy to have. This is especially important in organisations that have a young design maturity in which designer are often asked to work on output driven initiatives and not following the ultimate UX process. How can we create a UX strategy for something that is short-sighted and not based on user needs? If the design maturity is low in your organisation, it’s your responsibility to teach and encourage teams to strive for a future proof strategy that solves for user needs. Saying no to initiatives you don’t believe in is part of that.

Often the UX strategy will take the form of a document that is used to connect all of the dots. This is where I like to gather all of the information needed and use it to tell a convincing story. Here are some of the high-level items I like to include and fill in as I go through the UX process .

The current & expected customer journey map
User information (Personas, needs, jobs to be done)
Completed qualitative research
Completed quantitative research
Related projects & insights
Business needs & goals
Competition
Design principles
Project mission

Yes a LOT of information (For those who know me well know that I love to make decks… 🙂 but I do use this insane document as a base to create a convincing and consistent story. I can take the slides I need and the detail I need for different stakeholders. This is where you can really leverage your UX skills in story telling, how can you condense all of this research and connect the dots together to create the story and vision of what you will accomplish together?

At Marktplaats we work in customer journey teams that are focused on creating a UX strategy for their users end to end experience. This allows the teams to make the right decisions, addressing real user needs, business needs and working incrementally towards a future the team believes in.

So in conclusion, for me, the UX strategy is the big picture game plan, this means that the strategy shouldn’t change much as you progress through the project but becomes something that guides you and tugs you back to reality allowing us to question everything that we do: “Does this fit into our UX strategy?”

Ultimately a UX strategy unites and aligns the team to work towards a common vision of the future.

What are your thoughts on UX strategy? How do you achieve it. Have you got any good stories or experiences to share?

Looking forward to hearing your experiences & thoughts on UX strategy 🙂

<a href="https://medium.com/media/8d5e2c740a04faf463af9accfa7e3c31/href">https://medium.com/media/8d5e2c740a04faf463af9accfa7e3c31/href</a>Rochelle Carr | UX Designer, Placing customer journey team, Marktplaats, Ebay. Soft spot for red wine & tries to learn Dutch in her spare time.

This post is part of the #30dayUXchallenge: you can read more about why we started it here, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Instagram!

#30dayUXchallenge [Day 2] UX Strategy was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

#30dayUXchallenge [Day 2] UX Strategy

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