Top 5 Points to get you started with UX Strategy & Management

When we talk about User Experience, we talk of usable designs, research-driven, aesthetically pleasing designs, but what we don’t realize is that it is the era of Strategic Design!

There are a lot of incidents that you see and experience around you which helps you in the learning process and thus growing. I’m covering all the aspects of UX Strategy and thus the content in this article is based on personal experiences, gathered from multiple articles/sources and from the related certification programs, which will be useful to everyone who wants to dive into the strategic/Managerial aspect of Design at Organizational level.

We’ll discuss about 5 major pointers to get started with UX Strategy!

1. What is a UX Strategy?

“UX Strategy” is considered as product/service redesign vision & planning, as well as complex changes in an organization itself. Many authors also see it as a workgroup that enhances design infrastructure all over the company, so that any designer could benefit from it.

UX Strategy talks about the implementation of Design in greater detail which includes:

1. Company’s approach to manage design on all levels.
2. Defines each role in great detail.
3. UX research team structure
4. Product redesign and how the design team measures enhancements.
5. Risk management, ROI of UX
6. KPIs, cost benefit analysis, monthly metrics review

“The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.”

— Michael Porter

2. Why do we need a UX Strategy?

Any strategy helps you deal with problems and processes in an organized and Timely manner. and thus same goes with UX Strategy as well. when we’re designing experiences, we should have a plan in scope to analyze the whole thing in greater detail so that we deliver experiences to our users in the areas that matter most to them.

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Following are the primary reasons:

• To keep up with user behavioral patterns. As technology transforms and improves ever more rapidly, so does user behavior and adoption of new tools and features. Companies need to be continue to predict user expectations and deliver digital products that delight users.
• To align different product teams around a shared product vision. This will help teams maintain consistency across UX touchpoints, features, and devices so that the user always has connected, frictionless experiences.
• To ensure that you have a plan to measure your successes and yes, your failures.

3. What are the divisions under UX Strategy & Management?

As we’re already aware of the fact that to become a great strategist, you should have greater managerial qualities and thus all Design Managers should know about the Management divisions that fall under this. I’ve listed a few but there could be more segmentations according to company’s overall structure.

• Organizational UX (Design at all levels)
• Enterprise Design Thinking( to solve complex problems for Company’s internal affairs)
• Product Design
• Service Design
• Roles & Responsibilities ( for better team coordination)
• Hiring
• Brand Interaction

“There is a unique UX strategy associated with every organization, every product and every service for that matter”

— Shubhangi

4. How to get started with your own UX Strategy?

First thing that should come to your mind is your current design analysis

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• The status of your UX as it stands
• A vision of how you wish to improve your UX
• Your anticipated gains from improving your UX
• A list of the metrics you’ll use to measure the ROI of your UX activities
• A plan of your team’s workflow

Second thing to get you started is Identification & assessment

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• Accessing UX maturity
• Identifying areas of implementation of UX
• Roadmap development
• Sponsors
• Qualitative research

Third should be on activities to gain more Insights

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• Insights lab (likes/dislikes/gaps)
• UX Informal Brown bag sessions
• Persona walls
• Journey mapping workshops
• Design studios
• Design sprints

5. Resources and Leaders to follow

Template for organizing teams

A basic UX Strategy guide

I follow Jared M. Spool & Frank Spillers for all the talks and stuff about UX Strategy!

Go and explore as much as you can. This is just a starting point to give you a direction of thinking if you want to land into UX Management & Strategic design. All the very best for your future endeavors :)

Author: Shubhangi Shekhar