UX Strategy by Jaime Levy

a

UX design and UX strategy are two different things. When you do design, you create something. If you do strategy, you build a plan before you start creating something.

To make it clearer, replace “user experience” with “product”. A product development strategist thinks through all the perspectives of the product and defines it after analyzing potential customers and existing competitors. He thinks about how much it will cost to produce the product, what price to set and how it will be distributed among different customer segments. And a product developer usually creates the product. These are two different disciplines.

b

UX strategy is a process that should be launched first, before starting the design or development of a digital product. It is a solution image that needs to be tested on real potential consumers to prove that the solution is really in demand by the market. And if UX design includes various details (such as visual design, content delivery and ease of user actions), UX strategy defines the “big picture”. It is a high-level plan to achieve one or more business goals in conditions of uncertainty.

a

This is what happens when a new discipline or methodology emerges: different people develop different approaches to the solution, but even within these differences there is a “connective tissue” that binds them together, making UX strategy recognizable and unique.

b

UX strategy = Business strategy + Value innovation + User research + Outstanding UX design.

c

UX strategy — a type of thinking. It is not a way of formulating and executing a perfect plan; it is meant to explore the existing situation, analyze the opportunities, conduct structured experiments, fail, learn and try again until you achieve something valuable that people really need. In the process of developing a UX strategy, you will have to take risks and cope with failures. You will learn how to minimize the damage from mistakes by conducting small structured experiments to test whether your strategy is leading the team in the right direction.

d

To ensure competitiveness, you need to know what already exists, what worked and what did not work.

e

UX design and UX strategy are two different things. When you do design, you create something. If you do strategy, you build a plan before you start creating something.

To make it clearer, replace “user experience” with “product”. A product development strategist thinks through all the perspectives of the product and defines it after analyzing potential customers and existing competitors. He thinks about how much it will cost to produce the product, what price to set and how it will be distributed among different customer segments. And a product developer usually creates the product. These are two different disciplines.

f

UX strategy is a process that should be launched first, before starting the design or development of a digital product. It is a solution image that needs to be tested on real potential consumers to prove that the solution is really in demand by the market. And if UX design includes various details (such as visual design, content delivery and ease of user actions), UX strategy defines the “big picture”. It is a high-level plan to achieve one or more business goals in conditions of uncertainty.

g

UX strategy is a type of thinking. It is not a way of formulating and executing a perfect plan; it is meant to explore the existing situation, analyze the opportunities, conduct structured experiments, fail, learn and try again until you achieve something valuable that people really need. In the process of developing a UX strategy, you will have to take risks and cope with failures. You will learn how to minimize the damage from mistakes by conducting small structured experiments to test whether your strategy is leading the team in the right direction.

a

Even if the product is really needed by key stakeholders (or you), it does not mean that it is needed by anyone else. The failures of most startups are explained by the fact that the product was not in demand by the market.

b

Bring key stakeholders and team back to reality with empirical data. Assumptions should be replaced by facts.

c

Do not take for granted what key stakeholders or team say. To find out what potential customers need, contact them personally.

d

If you don’t want to live on Fantasy Island…
Just follow these five steps, which we will now discuss in more detail:

Step 1: Define the primary consumer segment.

Step 2: Identify (the main) problem of the consumer segment.

Step 3: Create provisional personas based on your assumptions.

Step 4: Conduct research to confirm or refute the initial proposed value of your solution.

Step 5: Re-evaluate your offer based on the information obtained! (Repeat until you get a product/solution.)

Yes, it’s that simple! All you need is to rely on practical experience.

a

Conducting serious market research is like peeling an onion. As soon as you remove one layer, another one is revealed underneath. And tears may well up in your eyes if you suddenly find that your product image is not completely original. But when do you prefer to get information that will help you beat your competitors — sooner or later? And if you don’t know something yet, you risk learning it from your bitter experience.

b

That’s why market analysis of competitive offerings is a vital component of business strategy. You need to know in advance about the bad and good experiences offered by competitors. A carefully done competitive research can provide invaluable information about current trends and outdated mental models.

c

A competitor is a person, team or company that shares your goals and fights for what your product team needs. When you enter a new market, there may not be any obvious “direct competitors”. However, it may turn out that the market niche for your product already exists; you just don’t know about it yet.

d

Direct competitors are companies that provide the same (or very similar) value proposition to your current or future customers. This means that the customers you are looking for are living right now and spending their time and money on the Internet on your direct competitor’s product instead of your product to solve their problem — regardless of whether their interface is better or not!

e

But whatever the competition, direct or indirect, there is fierce competition for the buyer on the Internet. Try to take into account all the competitors, because they will affect the overall success of your product. The reality is that people often use products or their combinations in ways that are not intended by the creators of these products. Gather all the information you can, because it will give you and your team an edge over other players in your industry.

a

In the process of analysis, you are actually trying to transform a large amount of information into smaller fragments that are convenient for practical actions. You are looking for connections between different inputs to draw conclusions about why something happens the way it does and not otherwise. If large tasks are broken down into smaller ones, it will be easier for you to evaluate the conclusions from the “big picture”.

b

Use your analysis to answer the following questions about each competitor in a short paragraph:

• How does it compete with your proposed value?

• If it is a direct competitor, what does it do very well and what does it do very poorly?

• If it is an indirect competitor, does it compete with a similar solution or target a similar consumer segment?

• What is the main takeaway for the key stakeholder who will only read this cell?

a

To get on the right track in finding key aspects of interaction, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is needed for the product to appeal to your provisional personas (fictional customers)?

• What moment or part of the user interaction experience makes the product unique?

• Based on your competitive research and analysis, what scenario or feature fixes a serious flaw?

• What workarounds do your potential customers currently use to achieve their goals?

Your answers may lead you to a key aspect of interaction that will ultimately result in an outstanding UX design!

b

Comparing features can even immerse you in new depths of research. After conducting competitive research, you created and recorded a short list of the most interesting features of your direct and indirect competitors. Try to go back to this list — maybe you will find new inspiration in it.

c

You change when you break your everyday habits, and this opens up new paths and new sensations for you.

a

To start a business and succeed in it, you don’t need to have a degree in economics or even a higher education. You just need to be entrepreneurial.

b

Start small. If you have a great idea, find a way to test it. Act to manage risks. Play for small stakes, but often.

c

Stay in business partnership as long as you have the strength to do your share of the work. And when that time comes to an end, get out of the deal with dignity and a handshake.

d

Here Jared made the experiment even more serious. He insisted that all team members (investors, developers, designers — all of us) test the new service by offering goods or services for exchange until each of us makes a successful exchange. I didn’t have an extra couch or computer that I wanted to trade for something, so I had to trade my UX skills (Fig. 7.8). In my “Exchange of the Day” I offered a two-hour UX consultation via Skype in exchange for: 1) offers accepted or 2) a specific job of converting my old Flash animations into YouTube videos.

It was unusual, but interesting. Moreover, it was very similar to the original proposed value — “a dating site for exchanging all kinds of junk”. Within 24 hours I accepted an offer from Edward, a digital technology consultant from Portland. At that moment I fully embraced the idea. I experienced for myself that by the proposed value and UX the new service was different from eBay; rather it was closer to OkCupid. The exchange went well. Edward posted my videos on YouTube, and I taught him how to get started in UX in Portland, and even arranged an interview for him. The process seemed a little magical.

a

Usability testing checks the overall functionality of the product based on how people use the product in real time. During testing, the researcher looks for answers to the following questions:

• Does the user perform the necessary tasks in the product interface?

• How many clicks do users need to perform them?

• How long does it take the user to figure out the product?

b

In the first phase, you need to set the research goals and determine which aspects of the proposed value and UX will be analyzed.

Ask yourself: “What is the most important thing to know to determine if the product really has a purpose, market potential and viability?

с

Quantitative user research usually relies on a large sample of users. More users — more numbers. Conversely, qualitative research relies on a smaller sample of users (quality is more important than quantity). This is the main difference between them, and your team will conduct qualitative research.

d

Nielsen Norman Group experts believe that during usability testing it is enough to limit yourself to 5 users, because then you will start hearing the same thing over and over again.

e

Questions should not lead the participant to desired conclusions.

g

It is very important that everyone — key stakeholders, product team, everyone else — take this opportunity to talk to the prospective customer in person.

h

Sometimes Researchers recommend finding free volunteers; it is believed that payment can affect the participants’ responses. However, you will not be able to prevent people from lying for money or for free.

i

Conducting a good interview to get useful information is an art that you master with experience. To learn more on this topic, refer to the book Interviewing Users by Steve Portigal. This is an excellent textbook dedicated to the methods of conducting interviews for user research “on the spot”.

a

However, investors and key stakeholders like sums and percentages, so in practice, page views and other “vanity metrics” that represent nothing but your ability to buy or attract traffic to landing pages are often considered.

b

You need to objectively evaluate the results of your experiments to learn whether the release of new iterations by your team leads to user conversion. Specifically for UX strategy, it is necessary to determine whether interface tweaks contribute to user attraction and successful transactions.

c

Demonstrate to other team members your logic of tracking metrics that confirm or refute any important conclusions about customers. Make sure that everyone agrees with the correctness of your results.

d

a

We understood that to integrate interactive technologies and television programs, we needed to think strategically — not just in the context of a specific show, but also in terms of what place it should occupy in the company’s business strategy. And that meant that we had to take a step back and look at the business and content strategies in the context of the market and new opportunities that opened up due to changing technologies.

b

By the way, organizational politics is another problem. It affects what we do and how we do it, which can affect the quality of work. To better prepare for work, I usually try to identify who makes decisions on the project and what factors influence these people.

c

No matter how experienced we are, we always design something for people — for other people, and therefore we inevitably wonder how other people use our product … or don’t use it.

d

An interaction map is a strategic tool that goes back to user research and is designed to reflect the full interaction with a product or service. The interaction map documents the experience of interacting from the customer’s point of view: what the customer does. How he does it. What he feels while doing it. I use interaction maps to understand the essence of the full customer interaction with a product or service. It is useful to see where the product or service creates value for the customer and where it does not. Ultimately, this tool helps to choose the best strategy for ensuring an organic customer experience across multiple touchpoints.

e

Depending on the nature of the interaction, you can also create a service map — an analogue of the user interaction map, but from the point of view of the business. It reflects the essence of customer service at each touchpoint. I overlay this map on the customer interaction map to better understand what the business is doing; this is a kind of way to align the experience of interaction with the context.

a

We didn’t want to design for the sake of design. Our developments had to implement some common interest or goal. It turned out that our customers often did not know the answers to our questions. They never bothered to ask these questions themselves and did not understand how important the answers were for the overall vision of the solution. To answer these questions, we had to do what was essentially strategic work.

b

We did not create personas for this project; we created profiles, very similar to personas, but slightly different from them. A persona is a user model for which you choose a face and a name and which should represent a specific personality. Profiles are more like categories.

a

The strategic work of extracting all these details, predicting where the world will be in 6, 8 or 12 months, and creating a product that will match the market at that point — this is the essence of the UX strategist’s work.

b

As it turned out, even a simple scrolling through PowerPoint slides with wireframes helps to demonstrate the key use cases of the product. This step of the process, where UX begins to take shape, is extremely important — wireframes alone are not enough to effectively convey information to the product team and management. A video with motion analysis is no less (or even more) effective means of communication, and if time and resources allow, this option is preferred.

c

a

Some products are not destined to see the light, and most often for reasons that are completely unexpected and beyond your control. Financial crises, team discord, new technologies, personal motivation, spoiled relationships — there are many more variables at play besides UX strategy.

b

Things don’t always go as we plan. We have to be flexible and look for new opportunities to move forward. Embrace life’s challenges; keep your mind active.

c

Don’t miss the opportunities for new and unexpected uses of everyday technologies — they can improve the lives of users and help solve real problems.

d

Ultimately, we are responsible for our lives. How you live your life is up to you. DON’T WASTE IT IN VAIN.