Five Simple Steps

A Practical Guide to Strategic User Experience

By Leisa Reichelt

There comes a time in every UXer's career when they realise in order to really impact their Users' Experience they need to move beyond the interface and into the business.

For most of us, the prospect of taking a seat at the strategy table is an exciting yet terrifying prospect and requires a whole other set of skills, techniques and vocabulary.

Table of Contents

Part 1 - A model for UX Strategy

  • What is strategy - in theory and practice
  • Understanding business strategy
  • Introducing the model for strategic user experience
  • Why step up
  • Being heard

Part 2 - The foundations of strategy

  • What is a value proposition and why does almost no one have one
  • Competitive advantage
  • Designing & communicating a value proposition & positioning statement
  • Designing business models & setting the goal posts
  • Experience strategy from the top down

Part 3. Understanding the Customer Experience

  • Understanding the customer journey (lessons from service design)
  • Countering silos with customer focus ('but marketing has done this already')
  • Properly useful personas
  • Design principles - making them, using them
  • What's measured matters (KPIs and Metrics)

Part 4. Executing UX Strategically

  • Doing the right work at the right time (Prioritisation)
  • Methodology & documentation
  • Strategy driven wireframing (a method)
  • Using personas strategically
  • Evaluating design effectiveness

Part 5. Measuring, growing, improving

  • Facilitating Change
  • Evangelising the strategy
  • 'A good way to get fired' (or when to quit)
  • The pivot (Evolving your strategy)
  • Essential Soft Skills

Leisa Reichelt

Leisa Reichelt is a freelance design researcher & user experience designer who works with global brands, innovative startups and open source communities to help them deliver great online experiences for their customers and community members. She hasn't yet managed to write a book but you may have seen her work on the D7UX project for Drupal, heard her musing on Ambient Intimacy or Agile UX, or seen her writing at Disambiguity.org or speaking at UX London, dConstruct, IDEA, UX Week, the IA Summit. Leisa coordinates the London UX Bookclub and is an active mentor for UX Practitioners in the UK.

www.disambiguity.com