Strategy is a word that has been used lightly and often interchangeably with tactics. Here are some reflections on what is strategy and how does it come to be in user experience. This is based on my experience and it is evolving.

Strategy is an action plan. However, it is not any plan but it is a plan to win. A plan to capture a certain land (market) so that you operate at a competitive advantage and can win. It is a plan to get or maintain competitive advantage in order to win.

UX strategy is a plan to get and maintain competitive advantage through user experience.

Essentially, how will your company’s user experience help you stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage so that you win. In addition to your product, your customer support, pricing, ease of billing etc. all contribute to the competitive advantage.

Here, winning is not a zero-sum game like in war. It is about capturing a certain piece of the land so that you can happily co-exist.

How to arrive at a strategy?

To arrive at a plan to create competitive advantage, you need a vision. A vision tells you WHERE you want to be. Strategy then tells you HOW to get there.

Strategy without Vision is meaningless. It is like starting your travel without knowing where your destination is going to be.

So, when you talk about experience strategy, it should be backed by solid vision 🔮

How do you get vision? These two questions are a great place to start:

• Who your customer wants to be?

• Where the business wants to go?

I hear senior designers mentioning that they want to operate at the strategic level. That means, they need to understand what contributes to the business’ value proposition and there by the competitive advantage. Value proposition is about how it contributes to someone’s life. This is about experience and something that senior designers should focus on.

In order for teams to be strategic, we ought to be in a space where we truly understand what is of value for customers. There is no substitute to this. This also helps product teams answer one of the most important questions: “How do you decide what to build?”

Strategy backed by vision is the answer.