Strategy: Design Strategy

Imagining a world without consumerism is a very difficult exercise. For a very long time, we’ve all been immersed in a socio-economic system that is geared toward maximizing the purchasing and ownership of goods. But imagining a future in which online shopping would be no more—at least not in the frantic, addictive form it has taken over the last decade—would be an interesting speculative experiment for a UX designer today.

However, after all, this might not be such a useless a stretch of the imagination as one might think. On Black Friday in November 2023, the French government launched a campaign to warn people off impulsive shopping to “save the planet and their finances.” [1] Plus, the ongoing climate-change debate is becoming rife with calls to rethink our consumer behaviors. So let’s suspend our rational judgment for a moment to envision a future that would be very different from what we know today. What could the digital landscape look like in a post-consumerist world? What could we take from such a vision to make today’s Web a better place? Read More

In the first part of my series on applied UX strategy, I outlined a UX maturity framework. Parts 2–4 of this series provided in-depth coverage of some operational and tactical aspects of implementing UX strategy, including requirements for product designers, employing platform thinking to ship quality products, setting up a design team, and creating a design culture. Now, I’ll begin my discussion of how to solve business problems through design.

In Part 5.1, I’ll discuss the use of a shared language between business and design, then solving business problems through design. Finally, I’ll consider the transformation of the product designer’s role in depth, which progresses through three stages:

1. Helping product teams identify and solve user problems, which I’ll cover here in Part 5.1
2. Evaluating maximal outcomes for problem solutions, which I’ll cover in Part 5.2
3. Moving from problem solving to innovation, which I’ll also cover in Part 5.2 Read More

User-centric supply-chain systems are now essential for companies who want to give users a good experience. An effective UX strategy is crucial to achieving this goal.

The importance of UX design to the success of a digital product or service is becoming more widely acknowledged. User-interface (UI) design, a subset of UX design, focuses on designing a product or service that is aesthetically pleasing to its target audience.

Designing a supply chain with both the user experience and the user interface in mind ensures that everyone working within a supply-chain ecosystem will find it pleasing and easy to use. Together, UX design and UI design can help you deliver what users want. Read More