Up until now, the practice of UX Strategy has been overrun by highfalutin propaganda and no practical guide that explained the strategic techniques as an easy-to-apply methodology. That's why Jaime says she wrote her book UX Strategy. At this talk, Jaime discussed what user experience strategy looks like in practice and explains how it intersects with UX design and business strategy.

2. @jaimerlevy #uxstrategy
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6. So I’m sure we all know what User Experience Design is….

7. Which is mostly an easy gig… if you can draw a box.

8. About a decade ago, I got asked to lead my first “Discovery Phase”

13. THEN we spent 6 months WIREFRAMING boxes

14. The Traditional Discovery Phase (UX Strategy) was A FARCE

15. What is UX Strategy?
User experience (UX)
strategy lies at the
intersection of UX design
and business strategy.

16. What is UX Strategy?
It’s a plan-of-action on
how to ascertain that the
user experience of a
product is aligned with
the business’s objectives.

17. What is UX Strategy?
It's the method by which you
validate that your solution
actually solves a problem for
real customers in a dynamic
marketplace.

18. What is UX Strategy?
It’s a practice that when done
empirically is a better
guarantee of a successful
digital product than just
crossing your fingers and
writing a bunch of code.

19. And the PRACTICE requires that we SPIN a lot of plates…

20. THE FOUR TENETS OF UX STRATEGYThese are the four tenets of my UX Strategy FRAMEWORK

21. Case Study of a Well-Executed UX Strategy

30. BUSINESS STRATEGY - Kicking the Ass of ALL your Competitors

31. VALUE INNOVATION - Offering a Leap in Value for Customers!

32. VALIDATED USER RESEARCH - Evidence of a Needed Solution

33. KILLER UX DESIGN - Providing an Addictive User Experience

34. What “Winning” Looks Like

35. THE FOUR TENETS OF UX STRATEGY

36. Business Strategy is the identification of guiding
principles for how a company will compete in its
industry and where it should invest to achieve
business objectives.

37. In his now
classic1985 book
Competitive
Advantage, Michael
E. Porter lays out
the two most
common ways to
achieve a
competitive
advantage.

38. (1) cost leadership

39. (2) differentiation (2) differentiation

40. A promise of value to be delivered and a belief from
the customer that value will be experienced.
What is a Value Proposition?
The Ultimate Driving MachineBMW
Sportiness, Progressiveness, and SophisticationAudi

41. Mental models are the steps we need to take to
accomplish a task. Often they combine a real
world business process and a digital interface.
Digital Value Propositions can create new MENTAL MODELS
Hitchhiking UBERing->

42. Airbnb is a community marketplace for people to list,
discover and book unique spaces around the world
through the Internet.
Snapchat is the fastest way to share messages,
photos, videos, text and drawings with friends for a
limited amount of time.
Waze is a social traffic and navigation app based on
the world’s largest community of drivers sharing real-
time road info and contributing to the “common good”
while driving.
Innovative Digital Product Value Propositions

43. Direct competitors are companies who offer
the same, or a very similar, value proposition to
your current or future customers.
Indirect competitors offer either a similar-ish
value proposition as yours, or target your exact
customer base without offering the exact same
value proposition.
Who is Competing Against your Value Proposition?

44. Find your Competitors and Make a List

45. Research Everything you can about them in a Systematic Way!

46. (Note: Feel free to use my FREE UX Strategy Toolkit)

47. Why you MUST Conduct Competitive Research and Analysis

48. Value Innovation can be accomplished by
focusing on the primary utility of a product and
making the experience of it an indispensable
aspect of how we live our lives.

49. In this game changing
2005 book Blue Ocean
Strategy, the authors argue
that companies can succeed
by creating value
innovation for an
uncontested market space,
thus making the competition
irrelevant.

52. Sustaining Innovation vs. Disruptive Innovation

53. Super Disruptive 21st Century Products

54. Value Innovation for Digital Products
It offers a new mash up of features from both
competitors and relevant existing alternatives.
(i.e. Meetup + transactional system = Eventbrite)
It transcends a value proposition from existing larger
platforms.
(i.e. Google Maps + crowdsourcing = Waze)
It consolidates formerly disparate user experiences
into one single solution
(i.e. Smartphone with camera - YouTube = Vine)

55. Validated User Research is when the proposed
product is approached as an “experiment” that
needs to be tested by your hypothesized customers.

56. In his mind-blowing
2011 book
Lean Startup,
Eric Ries's philosophy on
Validated User Research
and the Build-Measure-
Learn feedback loop has
totally recast the way both
startups and enterprises
release products into the
marketplace.

57. Customer Discovery User Research
These Two Books had a Big Influence on Validated User Research

58. Traditional User Research AKA “Ethnography”

60. We want to think of our PRODUCT as EXPERIMENTS

61. Validation
Is when we prove something to be true.
Is when we prove something not to be true.
Invalidation
WTF is Validation?

63. The PROTOTYPE is what we are
putting in front of these customers
to help us measure SIGNAL.

64. Storyboard to get Stakeholders Aligned on the Primary Utility

65. The Prototype shows the essential Key Experiences of your Value Proposition
Easy Search Smart Filtering

66. The Prototype shows the essential Key Experiences of your Value Proposition
BEAUTIFUL CONTENT AFFORDABLE PACKAGES

67. The Prototype shows the essential Key Experiences of your Value Proposition
TOUR SCHEDULING PRICE TRANSPARENCY

68. Then get your Prototype in FRONT of your Hypothesized Customer

69. More IMPORTANTLY, with the Stakeholder Sitting There!

70. Be Sure to Capture Feedback in a Systematic Way!

71. Killer UX Design is accomplished when
the product interface allows its users/
customers to easily accomplish their goals
with little resistance.
In a word, Killer UX design enables an
experience that is FRICTIONLESS!

72. Killer UX Design (WAZE)

73. Killer UX Design (UBER)

74. Killer UX Design (TINDER)

75. Ferret Out the Key Features from your Competitive Research
Key experiences are what make your product
unique. You need to focus on making them so
incredible and utilitarian that they suck your
customers down your transaction funnel. The MVP
you create for your product needs just enough of the
Key Experience to fulfill it’s value proposition.

76. 1 2
3
Collect Emperical Evidence by Split-testing Value Propositions

77. Use Growth Hacking techniques to get USERS down the Product Funnel

78. Why you MUST Design for Conversion
$$$ / happy repeat customers
Killer UX Design = Better Conversion

79. A unique kick-ass user experience aligned with the right
business model can define a “disruptive” product.
It helps the entire team and the stakeholders reach a
shared product vision for greater efficiency.
By doing everything you can to validate your User
Experience strategy, you reduce the risk that you are
wasting your life making things that nobody wants.
Why UX Strategy is Crucial (the recap)
P.S. Your existence is what you make of it!

80. Thank You!
Questions or Feedback?
Get my FREE Toolkit = UserExperienceStrategy.com
Email me = jaimerlevy@gmail.com
Follow me = @jaimerlevy