UX Strategy: Fashionable Expression or Real Discipline?

UX strategy or how to converge business vision, user needs, and technical capabilities. Discover its strengths and the method of implementation.

User experience is at the heart of customer satisfaction issues for companies. Based on ergonomics, design, or even functionalities, UX is a sustainable competitive advantage and today an element of differentiation.

But for a clear vision of the target user experience, it is important to create a UX strategy in order to achieve the set goals. But is this approach effective or is it just hype?

First of all, let’s take a look at the definition of user experience and what are the benefits for a company.

DEFINITION OF USER EXPERIENCE

The user experience also called UX (User eXperience) refers to the journey of a user through a website or a mobile application. It also refers to the user’s emotional feelings about the user interface.

This term appeared in the 1990s by a specialist in cognitive science, Donald Norman, who developed the idea of ​​“user-centered design”.

Unlike ergonomics, UX design takes empathy into account and allows you to put yourself in the user’s shoes during their navigation journey in order to design or optimize it.

UX STRATEGY: DEFINITION

A UX strategy is a long-term plan to align user touchpoints with a company’s UX vision. Let’s separate these two terms – strategy and UX – in order to see more clearly!

UX strategy is the result of product strategy coupled with UX design.

• Strategy: an action plan to be carried out over the medium or long term by a company in order to achieve its commercial and marketing objectives.
• UX design: a practice of designing or optimizing the customer experience during the user journey.

Therefore, this UX approach could result in the following equation:

UX Strategy = Product Strategy + UX Design

The UX strategy, therefore, consists in setting up a UX action plan taking into account the business dimensions and the technical limits of the product or service.

So what is the point of developing a UX strategy for your product or service?

WHY DEFINE A UX STRATEGY?

A UX strategy allows you to go further than UX design. The latter has been very fashionable since the 2000s and in particular the arrival of digital technology. Many companies call on UX experts to make their products or services more accessible to meet the expectations of their users.

However, UX has its limits and usually faces the business strategy implemented in a company. It is for this reason that the UX strategy approach emerged.

The UX strategy will make it possible to unify the UX approach to all of a company’s products or services in order to make them coherent, relevant, useful, and thus satisfy the user.

The UX strategy makes it possible to align user needs, the company’s vision, and technical capacities. In addition, it helps to keep teams focused on concrete user problems and to solve them.

This strategy is a real lever of differentiation in the face of increased competition due to its comprehensive approach. It creates value for the user and for the company.

HOW TO DEFINE THE UX STRATEGY?

To establish a UX strategy, we suggest you use a canvas that allows you, step by step, to define the strategy to be carried out or not depending on the results.

STEP 1: IDENTIFY THE PROBLEM

The first step is to identify the problem and solve it thanks to the added value provided by the company. To define a strategy, we must first get to know each other in order to share the same roadmap.

This step consists of asking the right questions in order to build a common long-term vision. They are based on internal and external research as well as market knowledge.

These questions answer 3 objectives:

• Build and share a common vision internally to get to know each other;
• Define a business goal and objectives in order to know where we are going;
• Put in place an action plan to develop the roadmap to achieve this.

The goal of this step is to understand the positioning of the company in relation to its market and to know its elements of differentiation. It also makes it possible to align the internal vision on the same strategic course. A common vision is then automatically created.

STEP 2: DEFINE THE USER AND HIS NEEDS

In this second part, the definition of the typical user and his expectations on the use of the product or service is essential.

It is not a question of defining a persona but of identifying the user’s interactions with the solution. Indeed, the user is too complex and does not react in the same way during his user journey.

To define your typical user and his expectations, we recommend that you use the customer journey map. This document targets the user journey and all the points of contact are represented: from the perception of the solution to the interaction with the after-sales service.

Thanks to this tool, the user profile is based on his emotional state during his cycle of use. It is particularly effective in finding the solution to an identified problem.

STEP 3: FIND THE SOLUTION

At this point, you need to think about a UX solution to solve the identified problem.

By resuming the writing of the statements of the problem, you must ask yourself the right questions to find the solution. You can use this format:

[name of person] needs a way to [meet user needs] because [insight]

For example;

Jean needs a way to exercise because he is gaining weight.

Go back to the basics of Design Thinking by asking yourself the question: “How could we?” to find a solution to each problem identified.

This workshop makes it possible to find solutions. This step requires the participation of all the teams and makes it possible to take ownership of the solution.

STEP 4: EVALUATE

In this final step, you have to make some assumptions about the functionalities. For this, you can take inspiration from this hypothesis statement template:

We believe that [business outcome]

will be reached if [user]

gets [advantage] with

[functionality]

There are many that could guide you to assumptions and also think about the more serious risks and how to identify their likelihood.

Each hypothesis evaluated with minimal risk enters into the feasible solutions. And each hypothesis with a high risk is either rejected or listed and kept for future iterations.

STEP 5: GO / NO GO?

When all the steps in the guide are finalized, then comes the decision-making step. By answering the 4 questions with YES, you can then get started. On the other hand, if this is not the case, it will be necessary to review your information before launching the prototyping.

In this case, it is better to iterate again to identify the missing information rather than start a design that will be revised or abandoned along the way.

Here is the guide allowing you to set up a UX Strategy:

TO CONCLUDE…

Before starting the UX design, it is best to focus on the strategy to put in place in order to harmonize the UX vision of the solution within the teams. UX strategy involves several areas of design and therefore the different teams in a company.

UX strategy has many advantages. It saves time and therefore performance. This UX strategy methodology is not frozen in time and can be modified according to the evolution of the product or service. A purely Agile approach!

A tool that can help you better understand your business, your audience, and your market. Don’t hesitate to adapt it to your needs!

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