UX is an umbrella term that encopasses a lot of disciplines and UX strategy lies somewhere at the intersection of UX design and business strategy
You don't want a Noth Star to guide your UX strategy, instead you want a goal or point towar which to steer every time you pivot
UX design and UX strategy are two different things. When you are doing strategy, you are coming up with a game plan before creating something
The UX strategy makes a case for all touch points and weaves them into a semless ecosystem between buyer and seller through the UX design
Aspects of brand strategy can help define aspects of your product's UX design and vice versa
As the company grows and expands its digital properties, you need to constantly pivot and shift your game plan, baking your strategy into all online services effectively, reliably and without friction. A product needs a good UX no matter what
UX strategy is the process that should be started first, before the design or development of a digital product begins. It's the vision of a solution that needs to be validated with real potential customers to prove that it's desired in the marketplace
UX strategy is the "Big picture". It's the high-level plan to achieve one or more business goals under conditions of uncertainty
A mental model is the conceptual model in a person's mind about how a thing works
Customers have to see the value in the new way before they'll consider abandoning the old
Solid problem-solving skills are absolutely critical to mastering UX strategy. Strategy goes beyond the abstract nature of design and into the land of critical thinking
Chapter 2 - The 4 tenets of UX strategy
UX strategy = Business strategy + Value innovation + Validated user research + Killer UX design
The discovery phase is where UX strategy begins. UX strategy is based on four tenets:
Business Strategy
Value Innovation
Validated User Research
Killer UX design
The output of the discovery phase should be based on empirical data, such as getting direct input from target users before going straight from an idea to wireframes and development
How a team executes a discovery phase can be the deciding factor between how a product will ultimately deliver real value through a killer UX and create real value for the stakeholders
Tenet - Business Stratgey
The business strategy is what gives product makers the direction to grow in the marketplace while beating the competition
The most common ways to achieve a competitive advantage: cost leadership and differentiation
The advantage behind cost leadership comes from offering the lowest price for products in a particular industry
With differentiation, the advantage is based on a new unique product or a unique aspect of the product for which customers will pay a premium because of its perceived value
A UX differentiation doesn't necessarily mean big bucks when your product hits the market. Instead, the goal of many entrepreneurs is mass adoption
The process of business-model construction is foundational to a business strategy. "Flow between key components of the company"
Customer segments: Who are the customers? What are their behaviours? What are their needs and goals?
Value proposition: What value (either qualitative or quantitative) do we promise to deliver?
Channels: How will we reach our customer segment? Is it online or offline?
Customer relationships: How are we going to acquire and retain our customers?
Revenue streams: How does the business eran revenue from the value proposition? Are the customers going to pay for it? Or are there other options?
Key resources: What unique strategic assets must the business have to make the product work? Is it content, capital or patents? Is this something we must develop?
Key activities: What uniquely strategic things does the business do to deliver its proposition? Are we optimizing an outdated business process? Are we creating a plataform to bring customers together to transact?
Key partnerships: What partnerships and suppliers do we need in order to deliver pur value proposition?
Cost structure: What are the major costs that will be incurred to make our business model work? Are we trying to cut costs by throwing out the thrills? Are there fixed costs that won't go away?
It's about being able to research what's out there, analyze the opportunities, run structured experiments, fails, learn and iterate until we devise something of value that people truly want
Tenet 2 - Value Innovation
When producing digital products, we must continuously research, redesign and remarket to keep up with the rapidly evolving online marketplace, customer value and value chains that are required to keep our products in production
Value innovation occurs when companies align newness with utility and price
Tenet 3 - Validated User Research
"Validation" is the secret sauce of the Lean Startup business approach. Validation is the process of confirming that a specific customer segment finds value in your product. Without validation, you are simply assuming that customers will find use for your product
Use your research to validate your decisions and ensure that the product vision is aligned with the end user's needs
Intrapreneurship is the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization
Tenet 4 - Killer UX
"If you're doing best practices, you are not innovating"
Killer UX designers work collaboratively with stakeholders and teammates at the idea's inception
They can be involved in designing structured experiments for validation
They help determine the key moments and features that are absolutely critical to your product
They learn everything about the existing market space to identify UX opportunities that can be exploited
They discover and validate its primary utility with respect to the problem that must be solved by talking directly to potential users
They weave the UX through all touch points, enabling an experience that is frictionless
It's only when the UX is informed by and affects the other 3 tenets that mental models are broken
