UXIndia14 | Workshop: UX as Business Strategy | lfriedland

@liamfriedland | UX India 2014

UX as Business Strategy

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@liamfriedland | UX as Business Strategy

Acknowledgement

The ideas and content in these slides are the result of a 14 year long creative collaboration with Jon Innes. Over the years Jon and I have had many lengthy and animated discussions on the topics of UX strategy, leadership, management, and tactics. The fruits of our chats have resulted in a series of tutorials, workshops, and presentations that have been delivered at CHI, UXPA, UX Strat, IXDA, and now UX India. Any errors in these slides are entirely my own.


Conceptual framework for workshop

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Moving to a strategic orientation • Framework as a means for thinking about UX

activities as they relate to core business processes

• Benefit from a systematic, structured, approach

• Process areas function as lenses to focus thinking and approach

• Interaction between key processes to create business value


Why does UX need to be strategic?

Effective UX organizations imagine the future • Scenario planning + risk reduction

• More accurate + early determination of product concepts

UX becomes a differentiating factor in a commodity market • Competitors develop comparable offerings over time

• Mainstream markets value UX more than early adopters

High technology businesses are maturing • Design becomes a more distinct phase

• Design orgs become innovation competency centers


Need to move from this worldview…

One external worldview of UX teams

UX as consulting / service organization • Design: Makes things look good

• Usability: Tests to find bugs after the code is working

• Not a core business competency

• Important but not essential

• Practitioners don’t have a good sense of business issues


…to a more strategic orientation

Strategic worldview of the UX team

New framework: Strategic UX • Innovation driver

• UCD informs all aspects of product direction

• Essential—no product development without UX

• Key contributions throughout the development cycle

• Business value is large, wide-ranging, and demonstrable

• Quantifiable, reproducible, high-quality processes


Operational processes

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Overview • UX outputs

• Measuring UX investments


UX outputs

UX

Formative Research

Summative Research

Interaction Design

Information Architecture

Visual Design

Concept Prototyping

TM: Jon Innes | UX Innovation


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Measuring activity levels: Design-focused teams

Design-focused


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Measuring activity levels: Research-focused teams

Design-focused Research-focused


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Measuring activity levels: UX-focused teams

Design-focused Research-focused UX-focused


Organizational processes

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Overview • Effective cross-organizational collaboration • Broadening perspectives with joint initiatives

• Disciplinary blinders


Collaboration is key

Big picture, organizational perspective • Step outside of your cube or office & engage

• Perform an organizational audit

• Establish a foreign policy

• Define your goals and strategies for influencing others

• How do you interact with other groups in your company?

• Cultivate allies in other groups to help + help you

Initiatives of common interest


UX outputs + organizational synergy

Market Research

Innovation Mgmt.

Project Mgmt.

Support Subject Matter Experts

Documentation

Brand

Quality

Marketing

Sales

Engineering Product Mgmt.

TM: Jon Innes | UX Innovation

UX

Formative Research

Summative Research

Interaction Design

Information Architecture

Visual Design

Concept Prototyping


Disciplinary lenses as blinders

Developers As seen by

Designers As seen by

PM As seen by

QA As seen by

Developers Designers PM QA


Strategic processes

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Overview • What is strategy + what it isn’t

• Forces impacting business

• Inflection points

• Case study In

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Strategy

Unique + valuable position

Strategy is not: • A vision

• A plan

• Optimization of the status quo, i.e., refinement

• Following best practices

• Efficiency measures

• Innovation or technology

Strategy is: • Differentiation activities: Where to play

• How to win

• Core capabilities & effective combinations

• Management systems

• Saying no to say yes


Six forces impacting businesses

The Business

Power, vigor, and competence of existing competitors …of complementors …of customers

…of suppliers …of potential competitors

Possibility that what your business is doing can be done in a different way

From “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andy Grove


Strategic inflection points

Business goes on to new heights

Business declines

* Requires a fundamental transformation from what you were to what you will be

Inflection Point *

From “Only the Paranoid Survive” by Andy Grove


Inflection points in detail

Agile UX

Distributed development

University to online learning

Nuclear family to aging boomer

Database to big data

Blackberry to Smart Phone

iPod to iPad to Watch

Laptop to tablet

Lab testing to remote usability testing

Enterprise to pro-sumer

Brick & mortar to eCommerce

Hardware to software

Local to global

Software utilities to enterprise security

Lean startup

Version 23 to concept car

Total design management Data-based design

West to east Market

Tech

Product

Process


Case study: Concept Car | Forces + inflection point

Forces • Acquisition strategy fragments product architecture

• Mature competitors integrate offerings

• Startups deliver innovative solutions

• Users & field teams demand improvements

Inflection Point • Product focused:

• Fragmented offerings • Unified, cloud-based concepts • Create a shared vision—a new way of doing business


Case study: Concept Car | Current + future activity levels

Before

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Concept Car


Case study: Concept Car | Organizational synergies

Synergies • Collaborate with PM’s to build a shared

understanding of competitive trends

• Collaborate with Architects to build a shared understanding of data technology trends

• Conduct market demographic research to understand next generation’s (millennial’s) technology preferences and share with organization

• Conduct UI technology research to understand new trends and share with organization

• Collaborate with marketing to enhance product branding and extend and renew the visual language

• Evangelize and share knowledge company-wide in order to get execs and products teams energized by and enrolled in the new vision


Group Activity


Group activity | Tying it together

Instructions • Form teams of 6 • Select a captain for each team • Read through the provided case study with your teams

• Team Work on the case study:

• Describe the forces at work? • Describe the inflection point? • Current UX activity levels for your team (provided) • What are the future UX activity levels for your team?

• What new activities will be necessary? • What will be the effort levels for new activities?

• How do your activities synergize with other teams at the company?

• Prepare a presentation to your execs: • 1 page with Forces + Inflection point • 1 page with Activity Levels • 1 page describing the synergies of the activities with other

teams at the company

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UXIndia14 | Workshop: UX as Business Strategy | lfriedland

Design

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