Dear Reader,
Creating a UX strategy is complex. Strategy isn't just about analysis, market research, and road maps.
It's about not stepping on the toes of other product and business areas and aligning upward. It's about facilitating decisions.
A good strategy is about making big moves. But that requires buy-in, alignment, participation, and collaboration with many different internal stakeholders that are busy and have their own agendas.
Anytime you bring a group of people together to work on strategy, it will be hard.
How do you overcome that?
Let's look at a collaborative process that brings stakeholders together to reach our goal.
Here it comes to save the day!
But does it?
There is no perfect strategy sprint you can copy and paste from someone else, and there is no perfect strategy workshop, canvas, or framework that will work perfectly for your company.
It has to be unique.
That uniqueness is one of the reasons why strategy is so hard. It is unique to your industry, your company, your team, and your users.
But don't worry, that doesn't mean you're alone.
A strategy is a long-term action framework, but it still has to be tended after "delivery." A strategy is at heart a hypothesis, and it has to be checked. That's why a good strategy should be emergent, which means it’s a living thing that you should guide.
A successful UX Strategy plan is a sequence of gatherings between the UX team and stakeholders. The plan should:
But that doesn't mean we ALL need to meet and work together ALL the time. What happens between the group activities needs to utilize individual expertise and work.
These strategy maps are inspired by Sam Kaner's work with participatory decision-making and multi-stakeholder collaborations. I've adapted them to reflect a UX strategy plan.
But this is just a taste of the full process. There's much more involved.
Do you want to learn more about the full process of designing a unique UX strategy for your company?
Join the webinar on June 8th→
Until next week!
Hannah Baker
Educator & Co-Founder
The Fountain Institute
The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.
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