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We like to think high-level planning is for leadership only. But when you suddenly become responsible for strategy (as may be the case in a startup or smaller company), you may get nothing short of goosebumps — and for good reason. When you’re dealing with higher-level work, you’re no longer building behind the screen.

Managing the user experience journey isn’t easy. Often, product managers put us up to the task with a few requirements for success and expect you to do the rest. Simply put, it’s far too common to have little to work with.

User experience strategy isn’t child’s play. But with an adaptable mindset, you too will understand that strategy is simpler than it seems. The first step is to develop a sound strategy, and this requires collaboration.

Gathering your stakeholders

Gathering your stakeholders is a process that requires careful effort. It’s key to get the right people involved at the right times so that collaboration is seamless.

If you’re getting started, begin with those closest to your department or role. If you’re a design team of one, reach out to stakeholders whose decisions will have a major impact on the product’s KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and OKRs (Objective Key Results). These stakeholders include product managers, project managers, and lead software engineers. These include those whose leadership role lies in sales and customer engagement.

Once you’ve gathered the important people for discussion, it’s time to move on to the next step.

The Next Step: Value Canvas Mapping

You’ve got the right people for the job. Now what? Standing around isn’t how great ideas form. You’ll need a means of formulating a plan.

That’s where the value canvas comes in. It’s a template used as a guide for discussion. It is outlined by 9 key areas:

• Key Partners. These may be entities outside of your organization providing sponsorships, or customers that act as a key provider of revenue. Whether you’re B2B or B2C, this area is essential to measuring the value of your user experience strategy as it relates to organizations outside of your own.
• Key Activities. These are actions within your organization that factor into the design of your organization’s value proposition. Think of key activities as the development of the onboarding experience of your product, or the testing of key features.
• Key Resources. These are resources that can be used to achieve the goals and are set by the product manager. Take count of the number of developers, researchers, and analysts needed for the job to make the end result a reality.
• Value Proposition. This is the go-to description of what makes this new product or feature valuable. Forming this the right way requires the agreement of all stakeholders.
• Customer Relationships. Who is buying your product? Why are your current customers choosing yours over others? And how can you keep them coming back? Answer these questions when thinking about this key item on the value canvas.
• Customer Segments. Customers don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in relation to one another. Segmenting these relationships means understanding how these customers interact. Mastering this relationship means creating a usable and scalable product to meet their needs.
• Channels. This is how your customer gets their first impression of your product. Social media, email, and websites come to mind, as these are the ways you engage with customers.
• Cost Structure. If you’re designing a new product, creating a pricing structure is essential to its future success. Seeing cost from the user’s perspective is especially helpful here.
• Revenue Streams. How will/does your product make money? Note all the current means within this area of the value canvas.

Next Up: Delivering User Delight

Now that you’ve mapped the requirements with your stakeholders, it’s time to focus on the customer’s needs and goals. In this case, it’s all about creating user delight.

Source: twitter

As defined by B.J. Fogg of Stanford University, user delight is when you’ve exceeded the user’s expectations. Mastering the relationship between usability and functionality is key here.

When building your strategy, consider these four key components to delivering delight: the look and feel of your product, the “sound” of its message, its ease of interaction, and how your product meets user needs.

Look and Feel

Good design makes a difference.

Rounded edges instead of sharp edges in buttons. Lighter and calmer tones instead of harsh primary colors that clash. Animations that guide the user rather than work against their workflow. These are all traits of a product that has a good look and feel.

If you identify any of these basic issues during the evaluation of your product, resolving these issues requires some attention to detail. And while all of these problems can’t be solved in a day, you can start small by identifying the easiest fixes that result in the greatest customer value.

Sound (tone of voice)

Friendly tone goes a long way.

Even though it’s essential to building trust, tone is easy to overlook.

Tone is the structure of the content that makes up your product. In other words, the quality of UX copywriting that guides the user through their workflow. The destruction of delight can happen if your messaging isn’t engaging and clear. Your users don’t want to spend too much time trying to understand your message.

Take it from this study conducted by the Neilson Norman group, which concluded that trust and credibility are critical to users’ perception of a product. So critical in fact, that it was made a difference of 52 percentage points when tested against language focused on establishing a tone of friendliness.

Ease of Interaction

Better empathy = ease of interaction.

This one is a no-brainer. Shouldn’t all software be easy to use? The easy answer is yes. The reality is typically different, however. After all, it’s why your company hired you as a UX Designer.

Strategizing ways to deal with ease of interaction can be like untangling knotted yarn. It’s likely that the usability problems you’re supposed to solve are in plain sight to you, but not as obvious to your product manager and other senior stakeholders. They simply won’t see the value of your observations until you show them the data. Here are some simple steps you can take to get started:

• Factor in a testing plan. A testing plan is a means of gathering data via usability studies or focus groups. By this point, it’s likely you’ve outlined the details in the key activities area of your value canvas.
• Figure out whether you’re gathering qualitative or quantitative data. Quantitative data is statistical — this usually requires a large sample size. Qualitative data is emotional and measures user satisfaction in the form of key phrases.
• Consider the context. What resources does your company have to allow you to accomplish the above two steps? Do they have a list of existing customers gathered by the sales team, or support forums you can leverage to attract potential test subjects? Use their environment to your advantage and you’ll find some of the work has already been done for you.

In the end, it’s all about the user.

Strategy is a process of priority, not elimination. It’s about working together to see clearly what needs to be done to meet the user’s needs, and setting out to solve the problem at hand.

The key to a successful design strategy is leverage. Leverage your time and resources, and your stakeholders (and future you) will thank you for it. I hope is that this comprehensive guide serves as a means of making strategy a little less complicated.

References

The Impact of Tone of Voice on Users’ Brand Perceptionby Kate Moran. Neilson Norman Group, 08/07/16.

Tone of Voice and User Experienceby Seda Manucharyan. UX Magazine, 09/16/20.

A Theory of User Delight: Why Usability Is the Foundation for Delightful Experiencesby Therese Fessenden. Neilson Norman Group, 03/05/17.

All You Need To Know About The Value Proposition Canvasby Daniella Varga. Digital Natives, 08/10/20

What Is A Key Performance Indicator? KPI.org, 2021.

What Are Objective Key Results? Asana.org, 2021.

The UX Collective donates US$1 for each article we publish. This story contributed to World-Class Designer School: a college-level, tuition-free design school focused on preparing young and talented African designers for the local and international digital product market. Build the design community you believe in.