Building a UX Studio from scratch — Ask those 2 simple questions first and have some coffee dates!

These stories are for everyone who wants to start their own service business. Maybe you’re a freelancer and want to take it to the next level or maybe you have a fulltime job and want to start something a bit bigger. I am not going to tell you how. I’ll let you have a look into my process of setting up a scalable UX Studio.

Day 1. It is pretty warm outside here in Amsterdam. Finally. It has been a long winter and one week ago I had a day I won’t forget. A moment of clarity. I knew that it would come someday but I never really knew when. At that moment I discovered a plan I would be willing to pursue in the next 10 years. That idea was the idea for my own business. Plus it had the potential to scale and it was something I love to do. It wasn’t a product but a service. But still scalable.

I asked myself two very simple questions.

1. Jasper, from all the projects you did, which one did you like the most?
2. Jasper, how could you deliver the most value to the world?

By asking those questions I came to the conclusion what my best/most fun project was and how I, with my personality and drive, could deliver the most value to the world.

So there I thought to myself what project was the most fun? Then I remembered all the workshops I gave and the Design Sprint I facilitated. Those were definitely my favorites. Then my other question came along. How can I personally deliver the most value? Then again the idea of some sort of Design Sprint kept coming up. What if used the way of thinking of Jake Knapp (Creator of the Design Sprint) and use these ideas to make a process of my own. I am specialized in User Experience Design so that was a logical step for me.

So at day 1 I had my idea but there were people I wanted to talk to first before starting out. So that is what I did first. Sit down with people that have been in business for a long time. I arranged 6 coffee dates with professionals in all different kind of expertise. I’ll share my learnings in the next blog.

So these are 2 simple steps.

• Ask yourself questions to discover what you like to do the most and how you could deliver the most value.
• Don’t keep it to yourself. Go out! Talk with professionals and potential buyers and they might share some valuable feedback.

Good luck everyone!