What exactly is UX Strategy?
The term ‘User Experience’ feels new. Though it’s reached significant popularity over the past 5 years, the concept dates back to the 1940s where it was used to describe the interaction between humans and machines. Not dissimilar to the definitions that we use for UX today, the gravity of this concept has grown tremendously in parallel with the omnipresence of machines in our lives.
Unsurprisingly, UX designer is one of the fastest growing job titles. But what does it actually mean? What does a UX designer even do? At FoundationLab, we believe that designing incredible user experiences starts with developing the best strategy to drive design forward. The next question — what is UX Strategy?
In her book, aptly titled — “UX Strategy,” Jamie Levy uses her years of experience as a UX designer/strategist (even before those terms were readily used) to offer a playbook on how to conduct UX Strategy. She describes the 4 tenets that comprise this practice to be:
- Business Strategy
- Value Innovation
- Validated User Research
- Killer UX
As a UX designer, you don’t necessarily have to be excellent at all four of these. Depending on your background and experience, certain areas will come more naturally. If you can master them all, you will be a dangerously talented product person. But for most of you, the UX strategy of your company should be driven by a team of people with complimentary skill sets. Let’s dig a little deeper into each of these tenets.
Business Strategy
This piece starts with the high level vision for the company as a whole. When we work with clients at FoundationLab, they’re sometimes confused by the amount of questions that we ask about their company. But this data is critical to successful UX. Understanding the market and competitors reveals opportunities to build truly differentiated products. In her book, Jamie Levy says, “UX differentiation is the digital-product game changer.” We believe in this idea. The Business Strategy piece of UX Strategy is about finding an unmet need in the market and a way to deliver something that your customers actually want to use.
Value Innovation
The most successful companies are those that understand the power of the status quo. This is the idea that regardless of what you create for someone, it will never be easier to adopt something new and different than it is to maintain the status quo (regardless of what that looks like). To combat this idea, you must build something that is an order of magnitude better and more cost effective than what is currently available. “A value innovation occurs when companies align newness with utility and price,” writes Levy.
Traditional businesses were often forced to determine what they believed the market needed well before they shipped product. As digital product builders, we have the ability to build, test and refine until we’ve found a product concept that provides real value to the user, and is uniquely different from what competitors in the market have to offer. A true value innovation is so valuable, not only because it means building something that people need, but it virtually eliminates all of your competitors .
Validated User Research
As innovators we’re always pushing the limits of what could be. Unfortunately, dreamers can often lose sight of what their users actually want. The best way to avoid building products based on your dreams and assumptions is testing. At FoundationLab, we use a combination of research and rapid prototyping to find out whether we’re moving closer to designing a product that our users need/want.
To effectively conduct user research, we rely on a combination of human-centered design and lean startup methods. Human centered design provides the mental model of thinking about your users first, while the Lean Startup (another must read if you’re a product builder) offers a more tangible roadmap for conducting your user research and iterating around feedback.
Killer UX Design
Leverage everything that you’ve learned about the business that you’re creating, the market that you’re entering into and how you will be different to drive the experience that you create for your users. A truly talented UX designer knows how to put this data into action. It’s not enough to know where the Value Innovation lays and how to get there, you need to actually create it.
Look to competitive UX for inspiration. This doesn’t necessarily meean a competitor in the market. Certain themes are used over and over again in products that may not be at all competitive. An example: the user experience one has while booking a flight might be applicable to building a product for buying concert tickets. Use these existing constructs as a starting point, then improve upon it through iteration until you’ve arrived at what your customers consider to be ‘killer UX.’
Conclusion
You’ve interacted with products that you love. Why do you love them? What do you enjoy about the experience? There are plenty of examples that probably come to mind. You may say to yourself, ‘why not just use those companies as your reference and design something cool?’ UX strategy is about so much more than the final product. Each of these four tenets are required to make sure that you are designing a product that solves a significant problem, in a unique way that can’t replicated, and is directly related to what your users need to the point that they will adopt and engage. Reaching a level of understanding that is deep enough to allow you to design THAT takes work.
Fortunately, the steps outlined above give you a framework for doing that work. Every product is different, which is why this is more of a framework than a process. But it should give you a starting point, and a guide to avoid getting stuck. If you’re just starting out in UX, it may be overwhelming. Through repetition, you’ll begin to see how the pieces fit together and understand UX is so much more than how the user interacts with your product and will forever change the way you think about digital products.
