balancing ux strategy with lean and agile _ roles in ux strategy _ ux versus cx strategy __...
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8/13/2019 Balancing UX Strategy With Lean and Agile _ Roles in UX Strategy _ UX Versus CX Strategy __ UXmatters
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Send your questions
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No matter what design
or development process
your team chooses to
employ, UX strategy
Balancing UX Strategy with Leanand Agile | Roles in UX Strategy |UX Versus CX StrategyBy Janet M. Six
Published: July 22, 2013
In this edition ofAsk UXmatters, our experts discuss
balancing UX strategy with lean UX and agile
development, describe roles in UX strategy, and
compare user experience strategy with customer
experience strategy.
Every month inAsk UXmatters, our panel of UX experts
answers our readers questions about a variety of user
experience matters. To get answers to your ownquestions about UX strategy, design, user research, or
any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition
ofAsk UXmatters, please send your questions
The following experts have contributed answers to this edition ofAsk
UXmatters:
Leo FrishbergProduct Design Manager at Intel Corporation
Pabini Gabriel-PetitSenior Director, User Experience and Design at
Apttus; Publisher and Editor in Chief, UXmatters; Founding Director ofInteraction Design Association (IxDA);UXmatterscolumnist
Adrian HowardGeneralizing Specialist in Agile/UX
Yury VetrovHead of UX at Mail.Ru
Balancing UX Strategy with Lean andAgile
Q:How do you balance the need for a user experience strategy with leanUX and agile development?from a UXmattersreader
No matter what design or development process your
team chooses to employ, UX strategy plays an integral
role, especially when user experience is critical to a
products success, responds Pabini. Whether youre
doing lean UX or agile development, you need to
establish a vision for a product user experience. UX
strategy is inherent in lean UX.
http://www.uxmatters.com/authors/archives/2006/03/janet_m_six.phpmailto:[email protected]://www.uxmatters.com/authors/archives/2006/03/janet_m_six.phpmailto:[email protected] -
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plays an integral role,
especially when user
experience is critical to
a products success.
Pabini Gabriel-Petit
Agile and lean are
valuable tools that helpyou to determine
whether your strategy is
actually workingand
pointers on how to
correct it if it isnt.
Adrian Howard
We can view user
experience not as a
specified step-by-step
process, but as a set of
The first step in a lean process is stating a
hypothesisor dec laring your assumptions.
The second step is creating a minimum viable
product (MVP), so you can test your hypothesis.
The third step is conducting an experiment to
either validate or disprove your hypothesis.
The fourth step is obtaining feedback from users
through UX research.
Then, you either iterate on these steps orpivotthat is, start all over again with a new hypothesis.
All of this occurs in service of defining and continually refining your
vision, or UX strategy.
By asking for balance, the question implies that there is a tension
between UX strategy and agile or lean UX approaches, observes Adrian.
Its an implication that I reject.
For example, lean UX approaches are effec tive in
helping to define an organizations UX strategy. The
focus on validating the results of research and design
helps to convince the business of the value of UX
practicesand by forcing value to be made explicit,
aligns everybody on the same value.
Agile and lean do notnegate the need for
strategy. Neither are they opposed to it. What they do
give you are valuable tools that help you to determine
whether your strategy is actually workingand
pointers on how to c orrect it if it isnt.
For more on agile UX, see these editions ofAsk
UXmatters: Agile User Experience Design, which
includes a discussion on the need for a clear product
vision, and Integrating UX into Agile Development.
Take a Flexible Approach to Keep Your UXStrategy RelevantOur companys key products are on the Web, and agile development is a
great fit great for our organization, answers Yury. The UX team has
adopted agile. Were doing weekly sprints and using agile methods of
planning and execution. We strongly believe that the best specification of
a product is the shipped product itself. So were trying to cut as manydeliverables and process steps as possible, while still delivering clear
requirements to our developers and great user experiences to our users.
I like the ideas in When to Apply UX Effort in
Agile, by nForms Andrew Wright. We can view user
experience not as a specified step-by-step process,
but as a set of services that we can deliver to our
product team.
If we see the role of User Experience in the
product development process not as a rigid production
http://nform.com/blog/2013/02/when-to-apply-ux-effort-in-agi-1http://nform.com/blog/2013/02/when-to-apply-ux-effort-in-agi-1http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/04/integrating-ux-into-agile-development.phphttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2013/07/mt/archives/2012/04/agile-user-experience-design.php -
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services that we can
deliver to our product
team.Yury Vetrov
We assign our most
experienced individualsto strategy discussions.
They can speak the
language of business as
well as design.Leo
Frishberg
Defining a productvision and defining a UX
strategy are closely
related activities. Both
should be a
collaborative, team
effort.Pabini Gabriel-
Petit
line, but as a set of tools that we can apply during a
products development lifecycle, we can be really
flexibleand truly agile. You can add value to the
product at any time, whether youre adding a big
feature, making routine changes to polish a user
interface, or building something new from scratch.
What helps you to conduct a successful UX strategy?
Always staying relevant to current business problems and goals.
Roles in UX Strategy
Q:What roles are involved in user experience strategy in your
organization?from a UXmattersreader
We assign our most experienced individuals to
strategy discussions, replies Leo. They are
experienced not only in design and user engagement,
but in business and technology as well. Meaning thatour strategists are broken-comb peoplenot just T-
shaped or pi-shaped people. They are folks who have
experience in a variety of contexts, who can speak the
language of business as well as design.
The Power of Collaborative TeamsDefining a product vision and defining a UX strategy
are closely related activities. Both should be a
collaborative, team effort, advises Pabini. Ideally,
collaborative envisioning should involve key
stakeholders, all members of a product team, and in
some cases, customers whose needs are driving the
vision. While a Product Owner or Product Manager
owns the final decisions regarding product strategy,
through the creative foment of collaboration, a team is
more likely to innovative and can coalesce around a
viable vision more quickly. In the same way, while a UX
Strategist or UX Lead owns decision-making regarding
UX strategy, taking a collaborative approach to
ideation ensures both that there is a wealth of ideas
on which to draw and that the UX strategy is feasible.
For more about the power of collaborative teams, I
invite you to read my UXmatters article Sharing
Ownership of UX, as well as the edition ofAsk UXmatters on Teamwork
and Collaboration Across Departments, both of which provide helpful
advice on working collaboratively with multidisciplinary teams.
In our company, strategic decisions about specific products and the
whole product portfolio come from top management and product
managers, says Yury. Theyre carefully monitoring the marketplace and
seeking new business possibilities, new ways to grow our user base, and
new growth areas for our current businesses. They find the right audience
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2011/05/teamwork-and-collaboration-across-departments.phphttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2007/05/sharing-ownership-of-ux.php -
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A key part of UX
strategy is the ability to
drive product changes
from the bottom up. Your knowledge about
users, their needs, and
their behavior patterns,
expectations, and habits
gives you valuable
insights on how to make
the product more
successful for your
business.Yury Vetrov
UX strategy should
influence product
development priorities.
Your UX strategy should
show not only thedirection in which the
product should evolve,
but also persuade
management that this
should happen faster.
for our products and learn what their problems are, so we can solve those
problems and profit from doing so.
Once the business has determined its product
vision, its time for our UX team to step inincluding
UX designers, visual designers, and researchers. We
work closely with executives and product management
on a products feature set and user interface. We
research the products target audience, their needs,
habits, and expectations. We show how the productwill work and look and fight to deliver a great user
experience. We follow a typical UX design process like
those youve heard about hundreds of times. But
wheres the strategy part?
I believe that a key part of UX strategy is the
ability to drive product changes from the bottom up,
continues Yury. This happens when your knowledge
about users, their needs, and their behavior patterns,
expectations, and habits gives you valuable insights on
how to make the product more successful for your
business. UX designers and researchers own this deep
knowledge, giving us the chance to provide value to
the business, to be recognized for the value that we
provide, and to get involved in product decisions.
So, in our company, every role is more or less
involved in UX strategyincluding executives, product managers, UX
designers, visual designers, researchers, analysts, and technical leads. Ill
borrow a slogan from a previous UXmatterscolumn on this topic
work withstakeholders, not for stakeholders.
One problem is that knowledge of UX strategy is often implicit and
personaland owned by specific UX people as a part of their professional
competence, admits Yury. But to make UX strategy work, you should
make it visible to everyone on the team.
Were building a UX knowledge base right now to
enable us to share the knowledge that is key to
devising a successful UX strategy. I was totally
amazed by the talk Aarron Walter gave on Big Data
UX, at the UXLx conference. His team at MailChimp is
gathering every possible bit of data relating to UX
including user feedback and surveys, market and user
research, Web analytics, industry trends, and muchmoreinto a single publicly available database. And
they can search the database for patterns and insights
at any time, without having to spend several hours
using different tools to dig through documents and put
together a report. Thats the perfect way to make this
knowledge explicit.
Another important requirement of UX strategy is
that it should influence product development priorities.
Your UX strategy should show not only the direction in
which the product should evolve, but also persuade
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The scope of CX
strategy is broader than
that of UX strategy,
encompassing all
interactions that acustomer has with an
organization across all
touchpoints.Pabini
Gabriel-Petit
We use customer
journey maps to modelperfect experiences, then
try to get closer and
closer to this vision with
every product
iteration.Yury Vetrov
management that this should happen faster. To do this, you need to show
the value of making changes to the product. A good way to do this is with
metrics. Yury recommends his UXmattersarticle How to Calculate the
ROI of UX Using Metrics.
UX Strategy Versus CX Strategy
Q:How does user experience strategy compare with customer experiencestrategy and design thinking?from a UXmattersreader
Customer experience (CX) strategy and UX strategy
share many goals and approaches, answers Pabini.
Both must align with an organizations business
strategy, or vision. But the scope of CX strategy is
broader than that of UX strategy, encompassing all
interactions that a customer has with an organization
across all touchpoints. CX strategy considers such
matters as cross-channel experiences that involveboth digital experiences across multiple
devices andreal-world customer experiences. UX
strategy focuses on digital product experiences.
Regrettably, within large corporations,
responsibility for CX strategy often rests with an
organization that is completely separate from that
responsible for UX strategy. For an organization to
provide a coherent and consistent customer
experience, CX strategy and UX strategy should be closely coupled and
look at customer experience holistically.
At Mail.Ru, we make only Web and mobile products, so in our case, the
customer = the user, and we have fewer channels to work with, replies
Yury. But ideas and methods from service design are still useful to us. We
use customer journey maps to model perfect experiences, then try to get
closer and closer to this vision with every product iteration. We are
constantly rethinking these journeys to determine whether we can do
more for our users.
We have about 40 products in our portfolio, and
most of them include features on mobile or tablet Web
sites and apps. Because people often use several of
these services, there is another dimension to thecustomer experienceseamless transitions between
various products. Thats a more complicated design
problem, and even the worlds largest technology
companies are struggling with it. For example, see
Manus famous Microsoft org-chart infographic in Seth
Godins Getting Serious about Your Org Chart. And
check out the discussion of Googles instant messaging
unification troubles in Exclusive: Inside Hangouts,
Googles Big Fix for Its Messaging Mess. Because of
the technology, vision, and political issues that are
http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-messhttp://www.theverge.com/2013/5/15/4318830/inside-hangouts-googles-big-fix-for-its-messaging-messhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/09/getting-serious-about-your-org-chart.htmlhttp://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/09/getting-serious-about-your-org-chart.htmlhttp://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2012/07/how-to-calculate-the-roi-of-ux-using-metrics.php -
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Design thinking
benefits people in allroles that engage in
creative problem
solving.Pabini
Gabriel-Petit
Often, you have only
assumptions about a
product until it ships. So
you should be ready to
test them early and
often and change the
product if your
hypothesis turns out to
be wrong.YuryVetrov
involved, dealing with product portfolios is one of the most challenging
tasks for UX strategists, so well definitely see more articles and talks on
this topic.
Design ThinkingDesign thinking benefits people in all roles that engage
in creative problem solving, including UX Strategists
and CX Strategists, says Pabini. We covered the
topic of design thinking in depth in another edition
ofAsk UXmatters, titled Design Thinking.
Design thinking is one of our favorite topics at
Mail.Ru, enthuses Yury. Two years ago, we had a
wonderful workshop by Jeremy Utley and Perry Klebahn
from Stanfords d.School. The best part of it was that
not just designers, but also executives and product
managers participated. It helped us to show them
what designers do and how we work, so we became a
better product team after that. Here are several
concepts and methods that I especially love from thatworkshop:
The problem that youre trying to solve may be
wrong. Often, you have only assumptions about a
product until it ships. So you should be ready to
test them early and often and change the product
if your hypothesis turns out to be wrong. Just
launching a product or feature is not enough. It
needs to fill a real need to make it a success. This
is one of the core concepts of lean UX.
Explore a solution space fully. Dont fixate on the
first solution that you like. Almost any problem hasmore than one possible design solution. You need
to be aware of all possible solutions and compare
their pros and cons to find the best solution.
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