Strategy: Product Strategy

When your organization’s goal is to differentiate on the experience, you must start every product-development project by defining the experience that you want people to have with your product or service. Companies that differentiate on the experience do not begin by defining feature sets. They first define a vision for the experience outcome that they intend to deliver to their users and customers. Only once your team fully understands the experience outcomes that you want users to have can you make good decisions about what features and technologies would optimally support that vision.

This is the fourth column in our series about what companies must do if they want to stop producing average user experiences and instead design great experiences. As we have already stated in our previous columns, great UX teams focus on differentiating their companies through design. If that’s your goal, you need to work for a company that shares your aspirations. Read More

This month in Ask UXmatters, our expert panel discusses how to prevent a project whose goal is defining UX strategy from devolving into a tactical exercise. First, our panelists considers how important it is that a project team have a shared understanding of what strategy is, but also acknowledge that, even among UX professionals, not everyone defines UX strategy in the same way. Our panelists define the terms strategy, tactics, business strategy, product strategy, UX strategy, and design strategy.

Our expert panel agrees, only once a business and a product team have aligned on their strategic goals can UX professionals understand how best to support all of those goals. Our panelists also recognize the importance of understanding where UX strategy work fits within a company’s projects and roles. Finally, the panel looks at how to create UX strategy artifacts that support business goals and propel their company toward achieving them. Read More

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel discusses the desire that many UX professionals have to make the world a better place and how that altruistic impulse can align with the profit motive of the businesses that employ them.

To prevent our work colleagues from trivializing UX design, UX professionals must play an integral role in defining product strategy. That is where we can add the most value—to the business and users alike. In describing how User Experience can contribute to product strategy and business success, we’ll debunk some common misconceptions that many product companies have about User Experience and its place in a product-centric company.

In the course of this conversation, we’ll talk about how important it is for UX professionals to work for companies that value User Experience, the impacts corporate culture has on the ability of UX professionals to successfully engage with teams around product strategy, the alignment of User Experience with business goals, the value that UX design can contribute to the bottom line, and what you should do if your organization doesn’t appreciate the value of User Experience. Read More