UX — Strategy (Part 3)
Strategy has the most impact on the success or failure on the project. It defines strategic goals for both product objectives and user needs.
This is a long series of tutorials. We are going cover:
Most of the failures comes from not answering these two very basic questions:
- What do we want to get out of this product?
- What do our users want to get out of it?
By answering the first question, we describe the product objectives coming from inside the organization. The second question addresses user needs, objectives imposed on the product from outside.
What should be done first
A research should be conducted to know about the problems we need to solve from user & business needs. But, before moving on to the research part, we need to validate the main idea of the proposed product.
Is It Innovative, Feasible, Desirable, Sustainable
Is the idea of the project ….
- Innovative: either hasn’t been created, or, re-use of something that already exists.
- Feasible: can we build, design, afford resources for the idea, under time and budget constrains.
- Desirable: does it matter to the users, are they gonna want it.
- Sustainable: is it something that will grow other than come out and be ignored.
Stakeholder Interview
Stakeholder is anyone who has interest or involved in the project and it’s outcome, like project team, CEO, project manager, and client. We should find out what everyone is thinking and what’s the meaning of success of the project for them, get information about the business goals(i.e. make money, or any success metrics)
Identifying Business Goals
There are questions to be asked to stakeholders to determine the business goals:
- What should the product accomplish for the business(i.e. increase the sales, and sell more products)
- Who are the customers
- How this project fit into the overall business goals of the organization
- What’s going to be different about your product
- What technology limitation for building the project
- Why do customers will use a product like this
- What’s the reason behind customers are using competitive products
- What things customer ask or complain about most often
Competitor Review
We also look for competing products or companies. Competitor is almost trying to meet the same user needs and is probably trying to accomplish similar product objectives as well. So, we look for competitors and see what they are doing, are users complaining about it, what features user complain about so that we can solve, thus we will have the competitive advantages.
User Interview
We get users and ask them questions about what they like, hate, about the product. How would they want to complete a specific task, what they use to do this task(like tools), what they like and hate about that tool, why some tasks are important to them, and why completing them in a certain way is important.
Users are split into two segments: B2B & B2C.
Business-to-Business (B2B)
Selling a product to people who are working in another business or companies. So, business are selling products to other businesses.
Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
A business is selling a product directly to people or consumers, like Amazon.
Strategy Document
Business objectives and user needs are often defined in a formal Strategy Document. It should be simple, and to the point. This document must be shared with all stakeholders to make decisions about their work, and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Takeaways
Important Vs Feasible
We should figure out what needs and objectives worth time and effort. The more important and feasible, the more likely for the objective to add real value to user and business, and it worth time and effort.
Involve different perspectives
It’s extremely important to get involve different people, users and all stakeholders, because everyone has a totally different ideas, so you need to ask them all, and make sure everyone is on the same page, because lack of understanding of business goals and user needs will make the project fail.
Record the interviews
Record these interviews or have someone else to take notes so you can focus on listening and communicating with the interviewee.
Research is expensive and time consuming
Interviewing, then analyzing what people have said costs money and takes time like any other project activity. But, Does it worth the time and money? Creating something without identifying the business goals, and user problems will lead to a poorly designed product.
Success Metrics
An important part of understanding the objectives is understanding how you will know when you have reached them. Success Metrics are indicators we can track to see whether we are meeting our own objectives and user needs.
Engage
As long as you continue to look back to the Strategy, ensure what you are doing(even coding) is aligned with the Strategy and engage what we are doing according to the Strategy during the project life cycle, chances are you are going to succeed.
Successful UXD is born from clear strategy
Strategy has the most impact on the success or failure on the project. If you did well in Strategy, you know the why, who, then it’s going to be valuable for the users. And, if you screw up in Strategy, you will pay for it during the whole project.
