Strategy: Business Strategy

Most UX designers are familiar with and can employ frameworks such as Design Thinking and the Double Diamond method.

The Design Council developed the Double Diamond almost 20 years ago. It is a remarkable tool that guides product-development teams along a clear path. Read More

You’re in a Q3 planning meeting, pitching a vital usability-research project. Across the table, the Head of Engineering is asking for a bigger budget to fix backend stability issues, promising a 20% reduction in server costs. You’ve framed your ask around improving the user experience. You know who’ll get the budget—the person who is fluent in the language of business outcomes.

For too long, the UX industry has focused on vibes such as user delight, happiness, and satisfaction, as shown in Figure 1. We’ve spent countless hours defending our work with compelling user quotations and beautiful journey maps, only to have leaders question our budgets and downsize our teams. The hard truth is: in business, emotions don’t pay the bills. While such soft metrics are valuable, they’re not what gets you a seat at the table. The language of business is return on investment (ROI), and it’s high time we became fluent in that language. Read More

Most UX designers I know are constantly working to improve their craft through learning more about User Experience or experimenting with new and exciting UX tools and technologies. This is a positive quality that may be a byproduct of the UX design process itself, which is heavily predicated on constant improvement, experimentation, and innovation.

However, one of the most important ways of expanding your understanding of UX design is also one of the most underrated. In my experience, novice UX designers tend to avoid trying to understand the business objectives of their clients, which can complicate what are already new concepts to them. In contrast, I observe that most experienced UX designers seek to understand and absorb business objectives—ultimately, making that effort a major part of their UX design process.

In this column, I’ll break down the value of understanding your clients’ business objectives and show how this can not only improve your design process but your designs. Read More