Increasing UX Impact: A Comprehensive Guide to Crafting and Implementing UX Strategy
Many UX professionals or UX teams struggle to feel their true impact within their organizations. They know they’re doing great work, but they yearn to make an even bigger difference. They see opportunities for improvement, but their recommendations seem to fall on deaf ears. They wonder, “Shouldn’t my expertise have more weight?”
The answer often lies in the absence of a UX Strategy.
What is UX Strategy?
Think of UX strategy as the bridge between user needs and business goals. It’s a comprehensive plan that outlines the current state of your brand’s user experience, defines your ideal future state, and maps the path to get there. Importantly, it extends beyond individual projects and encompasses all user touch points across the organization.
In this article, I want to share with you the three key dimensions of creating an effective UX strategy, each of which you can integrate into your workflow to increasing your impact:
1. Deciding on the best UX work to do on a specific UX project
Deciding on the best UX work to do on a specific UX project is the most micro-level of the three-dimensional UX strategy. The type of the project greatly influences this decision-making process; whether it involves evaluating an existing product for UX issues or generating innovative solutions and prototypes for solving a particular problem. This brings us to the importance of leveraging the right UX tools, such as user research, interviews, persona creation, cognitive walk-through, heuristic evaluation, user scenarios, task analysis, journey mapping, and prototyping.
Crafting an effective UX strategy involves choosing the right tools and activities for a specific project and executing them with maximum efficiency. This entails selecting tools based on the project’s requirements and implementing them carefully to achieve optimal results. In short, the essence lies in making informed decisions about which tools to employ, ensuring a harmonious alignment between the project’s objectives and the chosen UX methodology.
2. Prioritizing which UX project to work on and when
UX professionals or UX teams often face a barrage of requests from various departments within an organization. Given the constraints of limited time and budget, decisions must be made not only on how to execute UX projects, as discussed in the first dimension, but also on which UX projects to tackle first. This brings us to the second dimension of creating a UX strategy.
A recommended and effective method for making informed decisions and pinpointing the UX projects to focus on is the Kanban technique. While Kanban is commonly associated with agile methodologies for streamlining work processes, I’ll elaborate on its application specifically within the context of UX strategy.
Here’s a practical approach for UX professionals to prioritize their work: Create a board with multiple columns using tools like Asana, Jira, Trello, ClickUp, or others. The first column should comprise a list of all potential UX projects in your pipeline. Subsequently, move projects with high priority to the second column on the board. To identify high-priority projects, consider employing two rating scales.
The first rating scale assesses the potential impact of each UX project. Assign a rating of 1 if the project is likely to have a significant impact on the organization or a specific project, a rating of 2 for moderate impact, and a rating of 3 for low impact. The second rating scale evaluates the level of effort required for each project. A rating of 1 indicates an easy project, 2 signifies moderate difficulty, and 3 signifies a challenging project.
Projects with a combined rating of 1,1 (high impact and easy) should be considered high-priority, while those with a rating of 3,3 (low impact and challenging) may not be prioritized. These rankings assist in determining which projects belong in the high-priority column.
Once the high-priority column is populated, select some of these projects to move to a “Planning and Pre-Work” column. This column signifies the stage where you are preparing for a project but haven’t initiated it yet. From the planning column, select a few projects to move into the “Sprint” column, which represents ongoing work. In the context of UX strategy, a sprint refers to the current work in progress, emphasizing that no other UX project will be undertaken except the one in the sprint.
The subsequent column is dedicated to “Finish and Finalizing,” where projects nearing completion are placed. Finally, there’s a “Completed” column to showcase and communicate the achievements of each project.
Effectively deciding what to work on is an important aspect of UX strategy. Utilizing the Kanban method streamlines this process, addressing the second dimension of your strategy in an efficient and transparent manner.
3. UX Roadmap and Action Plan
Crafting a successful UX strategy roadmap requires a holistic approach, encompassing four essential pillars: infrastructure, communication and collaboration, staffing, and UX methods. Let’s delve into each pillars and understand how they contribute to a thriving UX team.
- Infrastructure: Think of infrastructure as the bedrock upon which your UX work flourishes. This includes: establishing standardized guidelines and patterns through shared design principles and UI components, and equipping your team with the right prototyping, research, and prioritization tools to optimize workflows. By building a strong foundation, you empower your team to work smarter, not harder.
- Collaboration and Communication: This category is synonymous with promoting UX within the organization. This involves the effective dissemination of knowledge regarding UX processes, showcasing the value of UX work across the organization, aligning UX goals with key performance indicators (KPIs), and managing perceptions and expectation about the role and capabilities of the UX team within the organization. Effective communication fosters collaboration, ensuring everyone in the team is working towards the same goal
- Staffing: Having the right people in place is crucial for success. This pillar focuses on addressing essential questions related to the coverage of critical UX roles, the skill set and knowledge base of the UX team, and strategic decisions regarding the balance between generalists and specialists. Navigating these aspects ensures a well-rounded and capable UX team within the staffing dimension.
- UX Methods: This pillar focuses on the establishment of robust processes for executing best practices in both research and design. This encompasses ensuring that the team has well-defined methods and procedures in place, contributing to the consistent delivery of high-quality UX work.
These four pillars collectively form indispensable components of a comprehensive UX strategy roadmap. Investing in each area contributes to a more mature, impactful, and sustainable UX team, regardless of your team size. By continuously iterating and improving your roadmap, you can empower your team to consistently deliver exceptional user experiences.
So, let’s revisit the question: shouldn’t your UX expertise have more weight? Absolutely. By implementing a comprehensive UX strategy, you’re no longer just reacting to individual projects, you’re proactively shaping the future of your organization’s user experience. This empowers you to:
- Make informed decisions about projects based on their potential impact and feasibility, ensuring your efforts yield the greatest results.
- Align your work with business goals, bridging the gap between user needs and organizational objectives, demonstrating the value of UX in tangible terms.
- Communicate your expertise effectively, fostering collaboration and aligning expectations across departments, ensuring your voice is heard and valued.
- Build a strong foundation for sustained success, investing in infrastructure, UX methods, staffing, and communication to empower your team and deliver exceptional user experiences consistently.
Remember, a UX strategy is a living document, not a one-time project. Continuously iterate and improve your approach, track your progress, and celebrate your achievements. By taking this strategic approach, you’ll not only increase your impact, but ensure that your expertise is at the heart of shaping a user-centric future for your organization.
Thank you for reading to the end. I appreciate the time you took to complete this article. Kindly clap for this article if you enjoyed it or learned something from it.
